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Original Pirate Material

The Streets

(Vice/Atlantic)

If hip hop is about representing your local culture on a global scale — something it’s become over the course of its 25-year journey from New York block-party entertainment to the dominant form of pop music — then Original Pirate Material, the debut album from the Streets, aka 23-year-old British MC and producer Mike Skinner, is true hip hop.

Original Pirate Material doesn’t sound much like American hip hop. Skinner’s competent vocals are generally a flat, deadpan brogue, with little of the playful or complex technique that marks the best American rappers. The music has more in common with Euro-identified techno subgenres such as jungle, garage, and drum ‘n’ bass than with the more assertively funky boom-bap of African-American music-makers. And Skinner seems even less concerned about appropriating the attitude and style of American hip hop than he does about copying the sound. “I’m just spitting,” Skinner raps on “Has It Come to This?” “Think I’m ghetto?/Stop dreaming.” Everyone’s calling him the “British Eminem,” but skin color seems to be about the only thing Skinner and Marshall Mathers have in common.

The differences between the two are telling: Eminem’s subject matter is either intensely private or mass-cultural –taking on either a relative or personal enemy or a music, a media culture, a nation. By contrast, Original Pirate Material is all subcultural ethnography — “a day in the life of a geezer,” a guided tour of a British youth cult consumed with “sex, drugs, and on the dole” (in ascending order of importance), a “local city poet” negotiating a landscape of “deep-seated urban decay.”

Skinner’s world is so thoroughly explored and feels so intensely lived-in that the album should come with its own for Dummies guide — more than a dozen listens in and there’s still plenty of local color I can’t quite parse. “Has It Come to This?” maps out a lifestyle: “Cos this is our zone/Videos, televisions, 64s, PlayStations/We’re pairing with precision/Few herbs and a bit of Benson.” “Same Old Thing” tracks the circularity of flat-rat lifestyle: “Football and smut daily as I ponder winning the lottery.” Call it Trainspotting hip hop.

In the true tradition of hip-hop regionalism, Skinner embraces his Britishness (“Around ‘ere, we say birds/Not bitches,” he raps, offering a helpful distinction for Yank tourists). He elucidates his sexual prowess in tennis metaphors and imagines himself as “U.K.’s ambassador/Holding up Excaliber.” And though there’s plenty of standard hip-hop braggadocio and dozens-playing here, the essential Englishness changes the tenor of Skinner’s barbs. He dismisses one sucker MC with “You can’t do half/My crew laughs/At yer rhubarb-and-custard verses,” while my fave dis is the oh-so-polite “Your beats are inferior/Don’t want to embarrass ya/So call your solicitor/The jury voted unanimously against ya!”

The record’s first four tracks are brags, the best being the audacious anthem “Let’s Push Things Forward” (though Skinner says it’s not an anthem but a “banger”), in which Skinner makes good on claims like “This ain’t a track/It’s a movement” and offers images like “As London Bridge burns down/Brixton’s burning up!” But after that, the album’s finest songs are more thematically focused. “Geezers Need Excitement” offers a series of vignettes where macho violence erupts in public places, most vividly in a concluding verse set in an after-hours club in which the narrator, cheating on his girlfriend, discovers his girlfriend cheating on him and attacks her guy pal “football-fan style.” With bittersweet synthesizers and a sung chorus, “It’s Too Late” is a regretful relationship song with an insight and sensitivity that compares favorably with underground American MCs such as Aesop Rock and Atmosphere’s Slug.

“The Irony of It All” is the record’s most playful track, Skinner playing both roles in an argument between beer-swilling lad “Terry” and herb-smoking student “Tim” that is a very funny, sharp, and pointed consideration of the legal and public attitudes toward alcohol and other drugs and their respective users. This is then followed by the jazzy “Weak Become Heroes,” a lovely and seductively nostalgic memory of a first Ecstasy hit.

In its ambitious sweep and confident execution, Original Pirate Material is that rarest of contemporary creations, a Great Album — a definitive slice of pop culture with tangible literary value. That’s one more thing that distinguishes Skinner from Eminem: In 2002, the Brit has made the better record. It’s the most important British debut album since Tricky’s Maxinquaye back in 1995 and a massive success in its homeland, even if, stateside, it’s more liable to confirm Skinner’s own prognosis on “Let’s Push Things Forward”: “Cult classic, not bestseller.”

— Chris Herrington

Grade: A

Close Cover Before Striking

Luna

(Jetset)

Guestroom

Ivy

(Minty Fresh)

New York dream-rock quartet Luna has always been one hell of a cover band. With classic renditions of Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer,” Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier singing Bardot’s part), and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine” under their belt, it was probably only a matter of time before the band dove all the way in with an album entirely composed of other artists’ material. The wryly titled Close Cover Before Striking doesn’t go quite that far. Sure, each song originated with someone else, but its seven selections last a mere half-hour, meaning it falls somewhere between an EP and an LP. (The preferred terminology for these things lately seems to be “mini-album.” Whatever you say.) Nevertheless, CCBS rolls along as smoothly as anything the band has recorded. Kraftwerk’s “Neon Lights,” originally a 1999 b-side, is given perhaps the most ingenious overhaul, with guitarists Dean Wareham and Sean Eden rendering the original moot.

Ivy, on the other hand, tends to step other folks’ material up a notch. Appropriately, the NYC trio fronted by Paris-born singer Dominique Durand recycles about half of Guestroom, its 10-song covers collection, from previous albums, usually compilations, though its version of the Blow Monkeys’ “Digging Your Scene” can also be found on last year’s Long Distance. It sounds better here, though, probably because it’s in such close proximity to Ivy’s gorgeous rendition of the Go-Betweens’ “Streets of Your Town” — two songs Ivy was, from the sound of it, born to perform. Apart from a draggy “Be My Baby,” the rest is as lithe as you might hope.

— Michaelangelo Matos

Grade (both albums): A-

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Well, live-music nights downtown won’t get much bigger than this Wednesday, October 30th. Luckily, the big shows aren’t liable to attract the same audiences. While Wilco is rocking away on the rooftop of the Lounge, hometown heroes Saliva will make a return for one of the first shows on a fall tour in support of their forthcoming sophomore album Back into Your System (due November 12th). The album’s first single, “Always,” is already scaling the Modern Rock charts, a power ballad (with the emphasis on power) that eschews both hip-hop and hard-metal influences in favor of a radio-friendly arena-rock sound. Saliva will be at their old stomping grounds, the New Daisy Theatre, with current MTV darlings Audiovent (of the long-haired pretty-boy video “The Energy”) along for the ride.

Those looking for cheaper and more low-key alternatives the rest of the week could try these: Austin-based bluegrass-babe and folkie Caroline Herring hits the Hi-Tone Café that same night, Wednesday, October 30th. Onetime Memphian Bob Frank makes a second trip through town on his comeback jaunt, setting up shop at Murphy’s Sunday, October 27th. And Louisville’s VHS Or Beta, who make dance music indie-rock-style, return to the Young Avenue Deli Saturday, October 26th. — Chris Herrington

Garage mania continues to build, and not a day passes that some new garage band with some new gimmick comes to light. The problem with the revival (like all recent revivals, including trad-country and swing) is this: It’s hard to fashion a retro feel while avoiding a damning aura of insincerity. The White Stripes have done it; the also-awesome Forty Fives have not. Memphis’ Reigning Sound pulls it off legit, while New Orleans’ Royal Pendletons, as dedicated and fanatical as any band might hope to be but cursed with bowling shirts and pompadours, come off like big pretenders. Though they might occasionally call to mind the Nashville Teens, ? and the Mysterians, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, and even the Association, Ohio garage band The Greenhornes have wielded their soulful, totally retro sound masterfully without giving off the faintest whiff of kitsch. Whether they are aping the Stones with “Satisfy My Mind” or idolizing ’50s feminine accoutrement on “Pigtails and Kneesocks,” the Greenhornes’ crunchy grind embodies all the best of the garage-rock ethos. They’ll be sharing a bill with the always-satisfying Subteens at the Young Avenue Deli Tuesday, October 29th. — Chris Davis

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

City Sports

Train Wreck

The Tigers’ football season went the way of Casey Jones last Saturday night.

By Kenneth Neill

For the past few years, I’ve lived a mile east of the Liberty Bowl and thus have made my way down Midland Avenue on foot or by car five or six times a season, en route to a Tigers football game. As those of you familiar with the neighborhood know, there are railroad tracks running right along the south side of the football stadium, going across Hollywood, right as you turn off Midland.

Amazingly, in Murphy’s Law fashion, I’ve found myself stalled in front of those tracks while a train goes by half the time or more as I’ve approached the Liberty Bowl. It hasn’t mattered if that kickoff has been at noon, 3 p.m., 7 p.m., or whenever: A train comes rumbling by, and we, the loyal Tigers football faithful, sit silently in our cars, waiting.

Last Saturday night was no exception. Like clockwork, at 6:45 p.m., a BNSF engine blew its horn and came rumbling across our path, forcing our little group and a couple of thousand other folks to stop in their, um, tracks for five minutes or so.

“You know,” observed one of my regular companions, equally familiar with this peculiar pregame ritual, “you’d think R.C. [Johnson] or the president [of U of M] or somebody over there might just have enough influence with the train folks to call them up, explain what’s happening, and get them to keep the tracks clear for an hour before game time. How hard is that?”

Evidently very hard. But then again, the inconvenience we all experienced at 6:45 Saturday evening was small potatoes compared to the train wreck of a football game that followed. The Tigers football program crashed and burned ignominiously, losing to Mississippi State 29-17 in a game every bit as disheartening as any I’ve ever seen in that stadium.

I was in Birmingham three weeks earlier, where I saw this Tigers football team shoot itself in the foot against UAB. But then, I saw this same bunch play with grit and determination against a clearly superior Louisville squad last week and almost stage a historic comeback. So, train delays notwithstanding, I showed up at the Liberty Bowl cautiously optimistic.

Silly me. We watched the Tigers “play” Mississippi State, the 11th-best team (maybe) in the SEC. We watched the U of M gift-wrap a victory for a Bulldogs program desperate for any kind of good news. I left, yet again disappointed in and for the Tigers. But my dominant emotion was anger — anger at a coaching staff who apparently hasn’t a clue about how to keep such train wrecks from happening.

Don’t take my word for this. Just listen to Jackie Sherrill. “The kicking game has been a downfall for them,” the MSU coach said, speaking of the Tigers. “They’ve had some problems protecting the punter. The punter has been very erratic.”

So these were Coach Sherrill’s post-game observations? Not exactly. Believe it or not, this is what he had to say about the Tigers before the game, not after, as printed in The Commercial Appeal Saturday morning.

So Saturday night was, as Yogi Berra might say, déjà vu all over again. James Gaither’s first punt was a low line drive with less hang time than an iron butterfly. It led to a 57-yard return that destroyed the Tigers’ early-game momentum after they’d scored a quick touchdown. A second shanked 27-yarder helped give the Bulldogs a chance to equalize in the second quarter, which is also when the U of M drove to the Mississippi State two-yard line, before deciding to settle on fourth down for the “automatic” field goal. Just one problem: Stephen Gostkowski missed from the 18-yard line. When he did, the Tigers faithful exhaled en masse, almost audibly. That was the sound of the last air left in the 2002 Tigers football balloon rushing out into the cool night.

To be blunt: Tigers’ special-teams performance this even-more-painful-than-usual season has been a disgrace. Tigers radio commentator Bob Rush, in his post-game remarks, jokingly suggested that the team might need to conduct campuswide auditions next week for possible upgrades in the punting and field-goal kicking positions. Rush was being facetious. I’m not.

Change is urgently needed. Do something now, Coach West. Give those of us who have witnessed and winced (“Where have you gone, Jeff-y Buffaloe? A program turns its lonely heart to you …”) some reason to think you understand that the kicking game is the reason you’re 2-5, not 5-2. Give those of us who call ourselves fans some reason — any reason — to come back to the Liberty Bowl two more times this season.

In recent times, excellent kicking has been a Tigers football trademark. Not anymore. The school that gave the world all-American kickers such as Ryan White, Joe Allison, and Jeff Fite (not to mention Jeff Buffaloe, who averaged a school record 43.5 yards per punt over his Tigers career in the early 1990s) has guys in these positions today who would be an embarrassment to a halfway decent high school program. I have watched Tigers football for the better part of three decades and can’t remember a single season so dominated by inept kicking.

Well, Coach West, at least you know what your recruiting needs are for next year. And, yes, perhaps I’m being a little obsessive. After all, our rushing defense gave new meaning to the word “porous” Saturday, and if the NCAA had a statistical category for dropped passes, I feel confident we’d be leading the nation. And, yes, Danny Wimprine, the best quarterback we’ve ever had, had a stinker game of the first order as well, particularly in the fourth quarter.

But none of this would have mattered — certainly not against a team as mediocre as Mississippi State — had we had any semblance of a special-teams game. How many times do our kickoff receivers need to catch the ball in the end zone and run it out to the 11?

It may not be quite time to write off this season, but that time is getting close. For now, the coaching staff needs to focus upon the things that might bring much-needed progress in 2003. Insist upon playing a punter who can regularly kick the ball at least 30 yards. Make a rule that if a guy drops a pass when he’s wide open, he sits for a quarter. Hell, sit Danny Wimprine after he throws his third interception. Despite his talent, the young man could sure use some thinking time. Meanwhile, get rid of this absurd no-huddle offense that continues, clearly, to confuse us more than it confuses our opponents.

The mood was decidedly ugly among the blue-clad masses filing silently and despondently into the parking lots after the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them don’t return, at least during the 2002 season. I can’t say I’d blame them at this stage. There’s nothing pretty about watching a train wreck.

Misplaced Priorities

The media are poor aims with the spotlight.

By Ron Martin

I tried with all the power within me to stay away from writing about the pre-meditated autograph session conducted by a San Francisco wide receiver during last week’s Monday-night football game. Since I couldn’t resist (it’s a media thing), there is one adjustment I’ll make: I refuse to mention the player’s name. For the sake of this column, we will dub him “Whatshisname.”

Although I don’t see how anyone could’ve missed the story, I’ll take a moment to rehash the ugly incident. Whatshisname caught a touchdown pass late in the game against Seattle. Then he reached into his sock, pulled out a famous brand-name pen, performed a cocky walk, signed the ball, and gave it to his financial adviser, who was sitting in the stands. The sports world hasn’t been the same since.

Wearing a shirt displaying his sponsor’s logo, Whatshisname later appeared on ESPN for a three-and-a-half-minute interview, which was replayed on MSNBC between its “Tracking the Sniper” update and the “Countdown to the Strike on Iraq” segment. After screaming at my television set, I muttered something to myself regarding my embarrassment over my chosen field of endeavor.

Whatshisname’s selfish act doesn’t really concern me. It’s the fact that he has garnered so much fame for merely signing his autograph. It’s a nothing story, but it was treated as a possible story of the year. Why? It made great video and easy talk-show fodder. And believe it or not, the move made good business sense.

The best way for athletes to land publicity is to perform video-friendly acts while on the field. Their scoring or tackling or home-run celebration just needs to be more outrageous than the next guy’s. Before you know it, high school athletic departments will hold special classes to teach ways to lure the camera.

The NFL has tried to contain such antics, but it was blasted by the media for becoming the No Fun League. The NCAA tried, but their officials can’t decide the difference between the normal excitement of the moment and an “in your face” celebratory display.

Until we — fans and media — turn our eyes away from athletes like Whatshisname and focus instead on stories such as the one about the Chicago Bears football player who recently pulled a motorist from a burning car, nothing will change. His name? I can’t remember. I spent too much time watching Whatshisname sign a football.

Flyers It was a storybook finish at the NASCAR Busch Series race at Memphis Motorsports Park last Sunday when Scott Wimmer won the Sam’s Town 250 benefiting St. Jude. Wimmer won driving a car owned by Batesville, Arkansas, native Bill Davis. Winless, the team lost sponsorship following the July Daytona race, but Davis decided to personally fund the team. The also-ran quickly became a frontrunner, winning his first race at Dover in August. Memphis is his second win.

A note to the Memphis RiverKings: The ex-communications director for the Redbirds would be a perfect addition to your staff. Excuse my biased opinion, but Bob Brame is well respected by both the sports media and the Memphis corporate community. Baseball fans are losers in the Redbirds’ decision to dismiss Brame in a cost-cutting move. One has to wonder how these recent cost-cutting decisions will affect the team.

Ramblings Who will be the first to call the FedEx Forum “the house Jerry built”? Tuberville and Cutcliffe: Other than coaching at Ole Miss, what do they have in common? Most interesting college football game this week: Notre Dame vs. Florida State.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Sweet and Low

Then I first read Tuck Everlasting, oh, about 20 years ago, I think I missed the point. A thoughtful children’s novel that meditates on the big issues of life and death, Tuck asks, Is life worth living forever? As a child unfamiliar with illness or dying, I was so afraid of the abstract concept of mortality that I couldn’t imagine not wanting to live forever. Watching the film version of Tuck as an adult in the 21st century (I don’t think the 1980s was the best decade for a young person to learn life lessons), I was able to look back and see that many of my perceptions about life and its beautiful “finity” had their genesis in my response to this book.

Winnie Foster (Gilmore Girl Alexis Bledel) is a proper turn-of-the-20th-century young lady with stern parents and a very conventional, corseted life. One day, while taking a forbidden walk in the nearby woods, she stumbles upon the mysterious Tuck family charming and strange, wise and static all at once. They have a secret they are willing to protect at any cost, but it’s love at first sight for Winnie and 17-year-old Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson, brother of Dawson’s Creek-er Joshua), so they include Winnie in their lives and their secret: Jesse’s not 17. More like 104. The family and their horse drank from an enchanted spring some 87 years ago, ensuring eternal life for all of them. They keep to themselves to avoid suspicion from small-minded townsfolk who may wonder why they don’t age like the rest of them. Who wouldn’t kill for the secret? Enter Ben Kingsley as the mysterious Man in the Yellow Suit, who’s on to the Tucks and is searching for their secret spring. Things get tough for Winnie and the Tucks as their fountain of youth becomes endangered, and Winnie is faced with a choice: Life and love eternal with Jesse? Or nature’s course replete with illness, loss, and death?

Mostly faithful to the 1975 Natalie Babbitt novel, Tuck Everlasting is the welcome return of the good, old-fashioned Walt Disney family drama. Remember Old Yeller and Pollyanna and all of those wonderful “historical” films from your youth? And your parents’ youth? Tuck Everlasting fits snugly into the canon. Beautifully filmed, with a haunting and mystical Celtic score by William Ross, the film looks good, sounds good, and is handsomely acted by its Oscar-pedigreed cast members (and its not-so pedigreed cast members). William Hurt and Sissy Spacek are warm and honest as the everlasting Tucks. Hurt, in particular, makes the most of some obligatory nuggets of folksy wisdom like “Don’t be afraid of death. Be afraid of the unlived life.” Ben Kingsley excellently vilifies himself without the requisite period-melodrama ham that would have so tempted a Tim Curry or Geoffrey Rush. As Winnie’s parents, Amy Irving (Spacek’s surviving Carrie co-star) and Victor Garber (the sensitive ship-designer in Titanic and Daddy Warbucks in TV’s Annie) paint with shades of dour and strict in, surprisingly, three dimensions.

Leading lady Alexis Bledel makes a fine transition to the big screen. Subtle and passionate, she carries the film and its Big Ideas with believable youth and wonderment never showing too much scripted maturity or self-awareness. She discovers as we discover. And this is a challenge in a story that asks its audience (mostly pre-teen girls, I predict) to ask important, painful questions from a deceptively difficult children’s fantasy. Fortunately, Bledel is paired with the charismatic Jackson, whose portrait of eternal youth is aided by a striking beauty so pure and wholesome it would put shame to milk. At 104, I’m sure he still gets carded.

Purists will allege that the movie oversimplifies by emphasizing cheesy romance over the awe and splendor of Winnie’s coming-of-age amidst extraordinary, fantastical circumstances and that’s true. I say, Pooh pooh, purists. This is a gorgeous, well-acted film that young people should see.

When death is in every headline, how excellent that a film deals so sensitively and respectfully with an issue so difficult for children of any age to discuss, much less see. Bo List

A big hit at both the Sundance and Toronto film festivals, director Steven Shainberg’s Secretary is an erotic fairy tale, though not the kind you’re likely to find on Cinemax late at night. It’s a richly designed, luxuriously stylized tale of two people unhappy, self-mutilating Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal of Donnie Darko) and her complement, obsessive-compulsive lawyer E. Edward Grey (James Spader) who find contentment in a dominant/submissive relationship. In other words, it’s a love story, with nary a shred of ironic detachment.

Secretary is basically a two-person film. Other bit characters show up in Lee’s orbit: Stephen McHattie as her alcoholic, abusive father; Lesley Ann Warren as her overprotective mother; and Jeremy Davies (lending the film some second-hand kink through his work in the incest comedy Spanking the Monkey) as sad-sack suitor Peter. But Secretary is basically an elegant, tentative pas de deux between Gyllenhaal and Spader as they negotiate their way around the ineffable mysteries of desire, warily pursuing happiness in a sexual and emotional construct that flirts with taboo. If someone as transgressive as David Lynch had directed a romance as emotionally delicate as, say, Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, Secretary might be the result.

Spader has traveled in this territory before, of course, most notably in David Cronenberg’s brilliant Crash, though the sexual subculture here is a lot more common and believable than that film’s world of car-crash fetishists. Spader’s performance is reserved his Edward a man (initially) ashamed of his desires even as he indulges in them. But however much the audience may want to recoil at Edward’s dominant place in this office power play, Spader imbues his character with a steadfast moral center by underplaying moments of startling generosity. Noticing the needles and iodine with which Lee secretly abuses herself after a particularly stressful call from Dad, Edward brings her into his office to confront her. “What’s going on with the sewing kit and the band-aids?” he asks. Then, when she demurs, he verbalizes her situation in a way that perhaps Lee has never really comprehended before, explaining that by cutting herself she brings the pain inside to the surface and finds comfort in watching the pain heal. “You will never, ever cut yourself again. That’s over,” Edward says. And Gyllenhaal’s mini-symphony of facial expression recognition, gratitude, emancipation is but one of many grace notes.

If you haven’t figured it out already, this is not Sweet Home Alabama. Many viewers may find the subject matter distasteful especially since the aforementioned relationship breakthrough leads to harder stuff, like a good, stiff spanking in response to a few (perhaps intentional) typos and some may want to judge the sexual lives of these characters. But Maggie Gyllenhaal won’t let that happen. Like Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, except in a far lighter manner (this is a very funny film), Gyllenhaal carries the film through its most precarious moments. The look of satisfaction Gyllenhaal gives Lee when she has a carrot in her mouth and a saddle on her back or when she’s crawling down the hall on all fours, a memo between her teeth, has nothing to do with sexual manipulation or titillation. It’s real and true and demands believability. Her confidence emboldened by her relationship with Edward, Gyllenhaal’s Lee comes off as something like a sexpot Janeane Garofalo brainy, charming, bringing deadpan flair to her vanilla lovemaking scene with Peter (“Did I hurt you?” Peter asks, worryingly. “No,” Lee sighs with languid disappointment) and screwball grace to a lovably silly laundromat courtship scene. This would be a star-making performance similar to Diane Keaton’s in Annie Hall if the movie itself weren’t too outré to find a vast audience (and these days, Annie Hall itself might be too outré to find a mainstream audience).

With two such great performances amid such daring material, there’s a lot of pressure on Shainberg to not let his actors and script down, and he doesn’t. He gives the initial meeting of Lee and Edward a striking fairy-tale quality, the raincoat-clad Lee entering Edward’s office like Little Red (or Blue, in this case) Riding Hood into the Wolf’s lair. And his thoughtful, judicious use of nudity (its late appearance used only as a symbol of a comfort Lee’s never had before) is a master stroke that establishes the film as anything but the prurient investigation of sexual taboo that some reactionaries are liable to brand it. n

Chris Herrington

Categories
News News Feature

A Sniper and His Spectacle

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Here in the Washington area, all 143 Starbucks have stacked and chained their sidewalk tables, lest the chain’s customers be shot by the rampaging local sniper (or possibly snipers). Schools are locked down and guarded by police. Four of the sniper’s victims were shot dead while in gas stations, and many nervous drivers are reportedly running on empty; station operators are reporting that people are paying for gas and then driving away without pumping any. Radio “experts” have been advising that drivers crouch low while filling up and that pedestrians walk around in zigzag patterns. Every day brings another long list of cancelled events.

What’s been going on here? It may be worth somebody’s life to speculate. The chief of police in the Maryland county that has taken the investigative lead, Montgomery County’s Charles Moose, exploded at the local press for reporting that a tarot card was found at one shooting site, sarcastically offering to turn the investigation over to the media.

But the relationship between Chief Moose’s press conferences and the shootings are among the few apparent patterns that have emerged in the bizarre case. To some degree, the later shootings appear to be “about” the investigation of the earlier shootings.

For example, no sooner had Chief Moose announced that a “geographic profile” of the murderer was in the works (to deduce information about where he or she might live) than the shootings moved from his county to a neighboring Maryland county and into Virginia. In a second example, no sooner had Chief Moose pronounced schools to be safe than a 13-year-old student was shot. After that shooting, a tearful Moose appeared at yet another of his multiple daily press conferences to say that things had gotten “really personal,” and he was literally right. The sniper appeared to be monitoring the cops attentively and may have been basing some of his murderous choices on the chief’s remarks.

There’s one sensational “clue” — that tarot “Death” card found in Maryland’s Prince George’s County with a note to police scrawled on it. “Dear policeman,” it reportedly read, “I am God.” Obviously, nobody currently knows what this may reveal about the sniper (assuming it was the sniper who placed the card), if indeed it reveals anything. But what has struck a number of observers is that leaving such a card, and such a message, has the appearance of a cheesy cliché. It may be an action borrowed from low-grade movies and bestsellers. In other words, it may be a media-conscious effort to create a criminal “signature” and perhaps even a media “character” and thus to add melodrama to the narrative. If so, it would be another indication that the spree has become, in some sense, about itself and the spectacle it has generated.

You could interpret last Friday morning’s Virginia murder much in the same way. Police have yet to confirm that the shooting is related to the spree, but an attorney in Virginia’s Prince William County was all over the news Thursday, announcing his intention to seek the death penalty for the sniper if he is caught in that state. Perhaps the shooter returned to Virginia to rise to the challenge.

In the meantime, there are quite a few popular melodramatic narratives making the rounds for the sniper to plug into. Among the unofficial “theories” in the air: Maybe the sniper is a Middle Eastern “terrorist” doing free-lance al Qaeda work. Maybe this is the work of an angry veteran of the American military. Maybe it’s somebody driven mad by playing too many violent video games. Maybe it’s a Serbian sniper hardened to shooting children. Maybe it’s a disgruntled employee of Michael’s, the crafts chain involved in two of the shootings. Maybe it’s Joe Nut.

I overheard some Starbucks customers trading such theories the other day. They were outside, among the chained tables and chairs. They might have sat down more comfortably on nearby public benches, but they preferred to lean on the stacked furniture. It was as if they were trading comfort for a sense of the normal. The upturned chairs notwithstanding, that was their space, and they were going to use it.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Wiretap Scars

Sparta

(Dreamworks)

On the one hand, thank God this album comes with a lyrics sheet. For much of Wiretap Scars, Jim Ward’s vocals scour his words beyond recognition as he howls and shouts his way across some of the most compelling punk-flavored noise this side of Kill Rock Stars. On songs like “Mye” and “Rx Coup,” Sparta — spun off from one-time buzz band At The Drive In — rocks with a precision that sounds like absolute abandon, and they craft bring-it-all-back-home hooks better than anyone since the Archers Of Loaf. This record is damn exciting, and you never know where the songs are headed, even after you’ve heard them all a dozen times. It’s only natural to want to know what all that fuss is about.

On the other hand, even the most charitable fan of populist poetry has to admit that the lyrics are the kind of noble drivel best glimpsed in shards buried under mountains of reverb and feedback. For instance, I really love the one-two-three punch of “Light Burns Clear,” but I work just as hard to ignore the chorus — “Fan the flames in the landslide/Crown yourself in the wake/We play the disaster/Fanfare, fanfare, liar.” Huh? Wha?

If you examine the words, especially ones like “faux obsolete,” “arsenals,” and “monovision,” it seems that Sparta wants to use their rock muscle to articulate the links between love, surveillance, technological failure, and natural disaster. But like most propagandists and all but a handful of rock songwriters, Sparta’s strength lies in their catchphrases rather than their prolix and convoluted doomsday scenarios. They can write ’em too: Two thorny phrases from two of the best songs on the record — “How can you sleep at night?” and “This time, I’ll get it right” — say more about resistance and resilience than the rest of the album.

Man, you know an art form’s been around a while when you start to preach incoherence. — Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

A New Commotion, A Delicate Tension

Viva L’American Death Ray Music

(Jeweled Red Tiger)

A no-filler 25 minutes of comeuppance to armchair whiners and the lazy cattle call of “Memphis doesn’t have any good bands,” A New Commotion, A Delicate Tension is exactly the type of fine-tuned document that could push these locals out of the circular constraints and figurative glass ceiling that ail all tireless and talented bands working a moderately sized city. They’ve toured, sure, but now, with the ammunition of a solid full-length and this arguably great EP, discerning ears everywhere should take notice of this band. This six-song EP is also the perfect medicine for both rock-and-roll’s naysayers and the trend-spotters who were listening to rave music last year but are now all “rocked-out” via Spin and Rolling Stone.

The Velvet Underground is a lazy reference seemingly hemorrhaged by everyone who hears Viva L’American Death Ray Music for the first time, but their sound, and, more importantly, the sound of this EP, is informed the heaviest by early Roxy Music — a wonderful stepping stone since, any way you slice it, Roxy Music was sexier, less constrictive, and much more fun than VU. Displaying a range only previously hinted at, A New Commotion contains at least two certifiably great rock-and-roll songs. That’s two more than 99 percent of the albums by the Hives/Strokes/Vines/(insert another innocuous plural noun here). “Sycophant” catapults the best of Iggy Pop’s late-’70s Berlin/Bowie into our world, and “Oh! Libertine” uses a wormy Eno keyboard to assign a menacing atmosphere to its golden swagger.

Go see this band. Buy this EP. Do what you need to do before their name changes (yet again) to a 30-word, garbled mouthful of non sequiturs or they become something that you can’t walk down the street to see. — Andrew Earles

Grade: A-

Viva L’American Death Ray Music will be at the Young Avenue Deli Friday, October 18th, with the High Strung and the Dearest Darlings.

Rough Guide to Youssou N’Dour & Etoile de Dakar

Youssou N’Dour & Etoile de Dakar

(World Music Network)

Before he became Peter Gabriel’s aide-de-camp or Africa’s biggest international pop star, Youssou N’Dour was a Senegalese cross between the young Michael Jackson and the pre-funk James Brown: an unholy charismatic, a freak-voiced teenager who intensified local rhythms until they nearly snapped apart. Paradoxically, the problem with the Rough Guide compilation of his first band, Etoile de Dakar, is that it isn’t nearly as rough as it could be. The album glosses over some of the singer’s most severe work (where, for instance, is the astoundingly intense “Thiely,” possibly N’Dour’s greatest recorded moment?) in favor of an almost folky flow.

Regardless, little about these 11 songs could be called polished. The 12-minute “Thiapathioly” from 1983 is typical, starting subdued and working itself into a lather, with coruscating tama drums hyping the beat and horns shouting more and more urgently with every reiteration. “Diokhama Say Ne Ne” moves fast from the jump, its goosed-up rhythm guitar holding the center of what sounds like a shambolic party. Loose and beautiful, it’s village music on the cusp of transforming a large portion of the world. And if it leaves you hungry for more, four excellent volumes of Etoile de Dakar’s work on the Stern’s African Classics label remain in print. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: A-

Lost in the Lonesome Pines

Jim Lauderdale and

Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys

(Dualtone)

This is the second collaboration between Jim Lauderdale and Ralph Stanley and his fine band. The first, 1999’s I Feel Like Singing, was nominated for a Grammy as best bluegrass recording of the year. This new release deserves similar kudos. Jim Lauderdale is a singer-songwriter who’s been responsible for some of the more intelligent material coming out of Nashville in the last decade. In addition to penning hits for George Strait, Patty Loveless, Vince Gill, and many others, he’s put out many superb albums that have gone mostly unnoticed by the public. A devotee of Gram Parsons, he’s a genre-jumper par excellence, and he was creating alt-country music long before it became a hot category.

Lauderdale was raised in North Carolina as the son of a preacher, and gospel and other roots music are a constant source of inspiration for his work. One of his early loves is bluegrass, so he jumped at the chance to collaborate with one of his heroes, Ralph Stanley, whose voice Lauderdale credits with making him want to sing in the first place. Stanley is probably most known in the pop world for singing the unforgettable “O Death” on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. He’s a bluegrass legend and the undisputed patriarch of the genre since the passing of Bill Monroe. A virtuoso banjo-picker, he’s been playing this music for over half a century, penning classics with his late brother Carter and inspiring countless generations of musicians. To hear Stanley’s nasal Virginia vocals entwined with Lauderdale’s Carolina drawl is pure bluegrass bliss.

As on their previous collaboration, there’s a plethora of Lauderdale-penned tunes that sound like they came straight out of the Stanley Brothers songbook, including two more collaborations with Robert Hunter (lyricist for the Grateful Dead). It’s scary how authentically old and grounded these tunes sound, especially the anthem-like “Zacchaeus,” with its blistering harmonies and holler-back choruses. And you couldn’t ask for a more sizzling house band than the Clinch Mountain Boys, some of them fine artists in their own right. It’s little wonder that country mavericks like Steve Earle and Lauderdale are paying homage to their roots by collaborating with legendary bluegrass figures like Stanley and Del McCoury or that those collaborations are respectfully traditional. Why tamper with such a good, pure thing? — Lisa Lumb

Grade: B+

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

As frontman for early-’90s punk band Jawbreaker, Blake Schwarzenbach was an innovator of sorts. The cult-favorite Jawbreaker was like a more modest Hüsker Dü or a positive thinker’s Replacements. For punk-reared high school and college-aged introverts, the band was a vital link between the indie and punk scene of the ’80s and the punk-pop explosion to come. Schwarzenbach’s current outfit, Jets To Brazil, is the planet’s greatest example of that peculiar strand of Sunday-morning emo that perpetually documents –with awe and unremitting nostalgia — punk rock’s transition into adulthood. In other words, they’re Jimmy Eat World with more gravitas and without the T-and-A MTV clip.

Jawbreaker made a few subcultural classics (and lent local band Lucero one of their finest songs in “Kiss the Bottle”), but Schwarzenbach’s finest moment is Four Cornered Night, Jets’ 2000 punk departure, an often piano-driven collection that at times sounds like a post-punk Pet Sounds in the way it maps out the romantic travails of early adulthood with both palpable longing and a remarkably light touch. It’s a record with a disarming sincerity easy to mock if it weren’t so utterly convincing. Courting disaster at every turn, Schwarzenbach sometimes sounds like a reformed punk kid who’s been turned on to All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and Chicken Soup for the Soul, but he walks the tightrope between sentimentalism and soulfulness with stunning aplomb.

The band’s latest, the solid Perfecting Loneliness, is a little more conventional but still marked by the little dramas and offhand epiphanies that Schwarzenbach’s songs seem to be constantly discovering. And the central persona is still the same: downbeat but generous and hopeful, lamenting lost love and (more subtly) lost youth with self-awareness and affection.

For this week’s Memphis appearance, Jets To Brazil will be paired with a local band whose frontman’s band-to-band evolution has been similarly fruitful — ex-Grifter Dave Shouse’s Bloodthirsty Lovers. This great indie-rock double bill happens at Young Avenue Deli Wednesday, October 23rd.

— Chris Herrington

It’s one of those rare and wonderful weeks where there is more good music to be heard than time to check it all out. For starters, The Iguanas, New Orleans’ party band of choice, will be playing Automatic Slim’s Tonga Club on Friday, October 18th, but that’s just the appetizer. On Tuesday, October 22nd, a quartet of Jersey-born cutie-pies known as The Lascivious Biddies will bring their jazz-infused crooner-pop to Murphy’s, of all places. Their sophisticated take on jazz standards like “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is rivaled only by their take on jazz standards-to-be like the Go-Gos’ “Head Over Heels.” There may be a certain tongue-in-cheekiness to some of the cabaret-style numbers they perform, but the Biddies are no joke. It’s your grandmother’s music, redesigned to suit your modern needs.

Speaking of your grandmother’s music, the most excellent Kay Kay & the Rays will be making with some old-school soul at the downtown Huey’s Sunday, October 20th. But for my money, the two most exciting shows this week are both at Young Avenue Deli. First up, Saturday, October 19th, Memphis’ Snowglobe is playing with the amazing St. Thomas, featuring members of Neutral Milk Hotel and the Olivia Tremor Control. St. Thomas’ first album sounds like Neil Young & Crazy Horse performing an homage to Neutral Milk Hotel’s masterpiece In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. As if things couldn’t get any better, The Warlocks (whose brand of psychedelic rock may be the best since the Flaming Lips got all serious on us) will cast their spell at the Deli Monday, October 21st.

— Chris Davis

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

City Sports

Misplaced Priorities

Long-needed reforms are finally coming to the NCAA. And pigs will fly.

by RON MARTIN

Collegiate athletics as we know them are about to change. Participants will truly become student-athletes instead of athletes who sometimes happen to go to class. At least, this is the early word from the incoming president of the NCAA.

Myles Brand, whose biggest claim to fame thus far concerns his firing of Bobby Knight, is the president of the University of Indiana. He says he believes the priorities of collegiate sports are misplaced. At Indiana, Brand often questioned the ethics of schools that seem more concerned about win-loss records than grade-point averages. Now, he’s in a position to lead the NCAA to change a system he considers broken. Brand seems almost giddy at the prospect. He could be in for a rude awakening.

Brand says he isn’t naive, but in fact, he is. The horse is out of the barn, and the barn has burned to the ground. The NCAA seems driven by profit-taking at all cost. While Brand talks about putting the “student” back into the phrase student- athlete, NCAA accountants are putting millions of dollars onto their ledgers. While university presidents denounce the power of athletics on their campuses, they fire athletic directors for not making budget, which is, in most cases, dependent upon winning. “Contradiction” is the current byword of collegiate athletics.

As long as collegiate sports are driven by the all-mighty dollar, ethical corners will be continue to be cut, athletes will continue to miss classes, and high-rolling boosters will have more control over their favorite programs. The only way Brand can make a difference will be to convince his bosses — his fellow university presidents — to limit the dollars a booster can contribute, using a formula similar to national election reform, and reduce the number of games produced by television networks or share the revenue among all Division 1-A schools. This will never happen. The powerhouse schools have too much power to allow the NCAA president to institute such radical changes.

But if Brand can dream, so can I. There is another situation that needs to be dealt with: the lack of African-American head coaches in college football. Tyrone Willingham’s success at Notre Dame (6-0) has raised the issue to a new level. Seventeen schools have hired African-American coaches. That low number has led the Black Coaches Association to issue a report and recommendations in a paper due to be released October 20th.

One popular theory about the problem is that schools are worried about a possible negative reaction by alumni if the school hires a black coach, which, quite simply, is poppycock. African-American basketball coaches have no trouble relating to the alumni, so why not a black football coach? The truth is athletic directors are afraid to hire a no-name coach, and since most African-American coaching candidates have little or no history as head coaches, their name goes to the bottom of the list. It’s a catch-22.

If Brand wants his presidency to be memorable, he needs to rid the college game of fat-cat alumni influence and find new ways to fund athletic programs. The rest will take care of itself.

Flyers The NASCAR Busch Series is at the Memphis Motorsports Park this weekend, featuring driver Jamie McMurray, who just made NASCAR history by winning a Winston Cup race on his second try.

With the “where will they play?” issue heating up, it seems to me that the University of Memphis holds the trump card. R.C. Johnson should ask each arena to ante up the first multimillion-dollar donation and spearhead a drive to build the Tigers football program a new stadium. You’ll never know unless you ask.

Ramblings The national respect each C-USA football program longed for in preseason is gone … Future trivia question: Who was the only coach to stay at Florida just one year? Answer: Ron Zook … Prediction: The most talked-about Tigers basketball player this season will be Billy Richmond … Mississippi State coach Jackie Sherrill said, “Call me a bad coach, but leave my 18- and 19-year-old players alone.”

Okay, Jackie: You’re a bad coach.

Tiger Football: A Metaphor for Life

Is the U of M the best bad team in America or the worst good one?

SPORTS by K E N N E T H N E I L L

We’re a strange crew, those of us who count ourselves among the U of M football faithful. We show up in remarkably consistent numbers, year after year, to root on our heroes. We enter each and every season full of hope, only to watch those hopes get dashed to bits, like so many leftover Cinco de Mayo piñatas.

Why do we do it? Over the years, I’ve been asked that question a hundred times by dozens of family members and friends, people who genuinely care about my well-being. They are always particularly concerned after heartbreaking losses like the one the Tigers suffered at the hands of Louisville, 38-32, in the Liberty Bowl last week.

Why, they ask, do you persist? Why, they say, don’t you take up a pastime more satisfying? Something less painful like, say, ritual self-mutilation?

No, I quietly explain, being a Tiger football fan is more than an avocation; it’s a way of life. Better yet, it’s a metaphor for life. For what we do is tough — way more difficult, and way nobler, than anything any Big Orange supporter, for example, could possibly imagine.

Hey, it’s easy to be a UT fan. You win eight times out of 10, 10 years out of 12, and plan your holidays around a bowl game. How hard is that? Lots of good times, lots of glory.

But, I ask you, is real life like that? Of course, it isn’t. Real life is about winning and losing, and, frankly, there’s usually a bit more losing than winning for nearly all of us. And keep in mind the bottom line. As an existentialist friend of mine likes to say about life on Planet Earth: “Nobody’s getting out of here alive.”

See? What could be a more perfect way to train for real-life adversity than by supporting a college football team whose entire modern history has been an exercise in near-futility?

You’ve all heard the adage “Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”? Well, it could be a U of M football mantra. So near yet so far, so many times that the faithful among us have long stopped counting.

Tuesday last week, for example, there we were on the verge of victory. With a couple minutes left, the Tigers had clawed their way back into a football game that half of the 44,081 in attendance had already abandoned. All around us in Section Eight, folks were going berserk. We had the ball on the Louisville 26, down just six points, first and 10, and …

“Damn,” I heard a voice next to me say, “it’s starting to rain.” Sure enough, out of nowhere on a brilliant autumn evening, a storm cloud had materialized just in time, as it turned out, to dampen our hopes yet again. Alas, the Tigers went four and out, failing even to get a first down and going down to defeat for the fourth time this season.

All around us were long faces. We regulars, however, were altogether calm about the outcome. After all, the last time Louisville visited the Liberty Bowl (in 1999), the Cardinals administered a painful 32-31 coup de grace with a TD completion in the end zone as time ran out. For loyalists, this was a preferable death, the kind Dr. Kervorkian could appreciate. “Must’ve been that damned cloud,” said a long-suffering colleague as we filed out silently, the rain stopping as suddenly as it had started.

But they say that every cloud has a silver lining, and this one, certainly, was no exception. Who knows what the future holds, but at least three things stand out as positives from an otherwise distasteful evening at the ballpark:

* The Tigers showed up to play. In sharp contrast to the “Sham in Birmingham,” the U of M this time around played with grit, heart, and intelligence, overcoming yet another special-teams goof in the first 90 seconds to take the lead at halftime and roaring back from an 18-point fourth-quarter deficit to take control of its own destiny in the game’s final minutes. Two second-half turnovers were fatal, but the defense played an inspired game, led by Tony Brown, whose switch from defensive end inside to tackle reaped huge dividends.

* ESPN2 got to showcase a big-time quarterback. No, not Louisville’s Dave Ragone but our own Danny Wimprine, who’s on course to break every modern U of M passing record if he doesn’t get killed running the football first. Wimprine out-passed and out-led Ragone, and, had Travis Anglin not mistakenly thought he was auditioning for a Butterfingers commercial, the Tigers quarterback may well have been all the rage on Sports Center Tuesday night.

* C-USA is all shook up, as Elvis might say. Look at last Saturday’s screwball results: Tulane beats Cincinnati? South Florida knocks off Southern Miss? Who’s in charge here? Evidently, no one. Which means that even three conference defeats may not be the end of the world for the U of M.

Okay, so maybe that’s a stretch. But that’s what makes U of M football fans so, um, unusual. We’ll be back in droves at the Liberty Bowl Saturday evening as the Tigers face off against Mississippi State, expecting the worst but always hoping for the best. Hey, at least we’ll never need a reality check.

Categories
News The Fly-By

PANDAS AND POLITICS

In light of a tentative agreement with the Chinese government, it appears that the giant pandas Le Le and Ya Ya will be coming to the Memhis Zoo’s China exhibit after all, perhaps even as early as January. Noting that Chinese resident Jiang Zemin will be visiting President George W. Bush’s ranch in October, former Senator Jim Sasser has been quoted as saying, “The Chinese always like to put some good news out in advance of a visit,” thus explaining Taiwan’s ongoing no-good-news-is-good-news policy.

Categories
News The Fly-By

SHAKY CITY

Dateline Memphis: This month, a team of scientists studying the New Madrid Fault intend to set off a series of explosions buried deep within the sediments of the Mississippi River to determine how seismic waves would move through deep sand and clay should a major earthquake actually occur in our region. In a related story, a team of mad scientists will be rerouting a portion of the river, igniting gasoline fires, and releasing locusts in order to determine how we might deal with flood, fire, and pestilence.