An appliance-repair center on Park Avenue seems to offer quite a range of services. We just hope that the people who use these devices can tell them apart, or they’re going to feel mighty sore in the mornimng. A little nick from shaving is one thing, but a trolling motor can really mess up a face. Believe us, we know.
Queens Of The Stone Age
(Interscope)
Spiced throughout with satirical DJ chatter and radio announcements à la The Who Sell Out, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf is an attack on rigid radio formats that also serves as a quasi-ironic survey course on all permutations of hard, fast, and heavy music. It includes high-octane punk-pop, Zeppelinesque tales of ancient woe, psychotic mid-’60s garage romps, sing-along stadium chants, at least two epochal power ballads, at least one jokey goof-nut ballad, and a few indescribable fusions of “metal heavy, soft at the core” (like the mechanical two-step single “No One Knows”) that take hard rock closer to and farther away from its sources than anyone thought possible.
Sadly, it is also an album with reach and grasp that might never be approached again, for Queens Of The Stone Age is a kind of rotating hard-rock supergroup: Founders Josh Homme and Nick Olivieri are the only permanent members, and they form new editions of the band with anyone who has the talent and interest to play along for an album and tour. The first new member on Songs for the Deaf is guest vocalist and former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, who is one of the only grunge singers who never fell prey to the vocal hysterics of Eddie Vedder or Chris Cornell. But the biggest difference between this edition of the band and previous incarnations is the presence of second new (and since departed) member Dave Grohl, who took much-needed time off from fighting foo to play some drums.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the album hinges on his performance, and, gamer that he is, Grohl does not disappoint. I’ve been waiting for Grohl to play drums for eight or nine years now, and he gives the QOTSA rhythm section more flexibility, muscle, and unpredictability than ever before. On “Song for the Dead,” Grohl rolls and rumbles his way into the best solo I’ve heard in years, nearly reversing the rock hierarchy by turning the song into a drum showcase that also includes the obligatory guitar riff.
My only qualm is the way the record sounds. I want this snarling, circular music to appropriate the high gloss and polish of a Nevermind or even an Ænima, and when it doesn’t, I keep reaching for the volume knob to add more definition to the guitars and, especially, the bass lines, which are catchy in a Paul McCartney-in-a-lake-of-fire sort of way whenever they can be heard. As a result, this is an album that simply cannot be played loud enough — if you can call that a criticism.
— Addison Engelking
Grade: A
Neko Case
(Bloodshot)
Death certainly becomes Neko Case; the Grim One lurks menacingly on her third album, the forceful Blacklisted (the first without backing band Her Boyfriends). Crows flock around her, Hitchcock-style, on the leadoff track, “Things That Scare Me,” portending some future tragedy, while on “Tightly,” she seemingly pleads for mercy, singing, “I cling tightly to this life.”
Death-wise, the penultimate track is “Deep Red Bells.” A “handprint on the driver’s side” marks the car of a lover (presumably) who was “murdered on the interstate.” Death’s calling card “looks a lot like engine oil and tastes like being poor and small and popsicles in summer.” Case isn’t just summoning death, she’s creating her own mythology of it, fashioning it from the same Northwestern soil that David Lynch used to form the White and Black Lodges.
The songs on Blacklisted, which can be awkward in their wording, are full of fleeting imagery and fragmented narratives. They whisper their meanings rather than reveal them outright, as if Case wants to protect herself and her emotions.
She offsets such spooked desolation with her expansive, expressive voice, which can convey immensely complex fears and emotions. While her cover of Aretha Franklin’s “Runnin’ Out of Fools” is a showcase for her powerhouse vocals, she is at her best when she holds back: Her subdued version of Sarah Vaughn’s “Look for Me (I’ll Be Around)” captures the sad resignation of the lyrics, and “I Wish I Were the Moon” glides along on a fragile melody that would shatter under too much singing.
Case’s mortal dread — a distillation of the paranoia that has haunted country music for almost a century — threatens to overwhelm much of Blacklisted, but she balances the strange restraint of her songwriting with the authority in her voice. Adding light and air to what could have been a dark and claustrophobic record, she ultimately sounds triumphant, if not over death, then at least over her own fears. — Stephen Deusner
Grade: A-
The Songs of Lee Hazelwood
Various Artists
(Astralwerks)
Not all tribute albums are nightmarish messes. The second volume of the Rolling Stones tribute series, Uncut, had some good stuff by Lambchop and the MC5. And there was that version of Springsteen’s Nebraska a couple of years ago on Sub Pop that featured great covers of “Highway Patrolman” and “Downbound Train” by Dar Williams and Raul Malo of the Mavericks, respectively. That record also featured some embarrassing denture whistle from Johnny Cash on “I’m on Fire.” (Yes, he’s an icon and very ill, but a little Poli-Grip would affix that upper plate securely.)
Lee Hazelwood has always been a storyteller in his songs, kind of like a non-redneck Tom T. Hall with a functioning neocortex. (Hazelwood has lived rough, but he’s never been as scary-looking as Hall, who resembles a golem at times.) And in recent years, he has experienced a resurgence in popularity. The stuff he recorded with Nancy Sinatra and on his own 30-plus years ago now sounds cool and ironic instead of corny and overblown (as his material did to this reviewer at the time).
So it was inevitable that a Lee Hazelwood tribute record would eventually appear. Several of these remakes best the Hazelwood originals, which is not that difficult a task, considering how tame and dated much of Hazelwood’s recorded work sounds today. Tribute compiler Wyndham Wallace deserves credit for picking mainly moody and somewhat obscure Hazelwood tunes to redo here. The matching of contributors with songs is mostly genius, particularly professional Southern geek Johnny Dowd’s take on Hazelwood’s California hippie-lifestyle anthem “Sleep in the Grass.” Dowd’s “I’m gonna cut you” shtick finds its proper application on this grotesque remake.
However, K Records majordomo/head doofus Calvin Johnson stinks up the joint with a truly horrific reading of “Sand,” on which he adopts an affected baritone croak (as bad as Cash’s denture whistle). Not too many big names here (unless you count Evan Dando and Jarvis Crocker as biz heavyweights), but the use of less well known artists emphasizes the songs over big-name singers. Total Lee is that rarest of creatures, a tribute record that improves on the originals. — Ross Johnson
Grade: B+
Interpol
(Matador)
Because they draw from pretty obvious sources in pretty obvious ways, a band like Interpol is waiting to be dissed by a dude like me. They sound like the Strokes played at half-speed and mixed with some of the contrapuntal skyscraper guitars of Television and grounded by the occasional near-perfect off-tink of a Feelies percussionist. The vocalist sounds like a more ethereal, less suicidal, and half-poetic Ian Curtis singing through that famous distorted Strokes-aphone. The band is from New York, a place I love but one that seems really into the cannibalization of its musical past right now. And still they do not move me.
The problem for any music fan is that while listening to Interpol’s record, the pedigree of the music and the rampant copycatting force a never-ending game of spot-the-influence every time you listen to it: It’s like being forced to read Lolita only for the number of times Nabokov mentions “Annabel Lee” or watching Goodfellas just to spot the allusions to B-Westerns and Abraham Polonsky movies. Leave that shit to devotees with more time and money. Interpol does not repay such efforts.
If you’re not a serious music fan or an idiot or buying your first Matador record, you might love these guys without question. If you’re human, you will be amused and mildly entertained by three or four tracks because they steal from the best. If you’re me, you’ll keep wondering why Turn on the Bright Lights sounds like one of the longest 49-minute albums in history. —AE
Grade: B-
The Bigger Lovers
(Yep Roc)
The Bigger Lovers’ second album, Honey in the Hive, may not be the best album of the year, but it is perhaps the most surprisingly consistent. Listening to these 11 songs, you continually expect the band to falter; at least one song will surely fail to live up to the others or will lack a smart melodic hook or a catchy lyric. But, track for track, Honey in the Hive is an unexpectedly solid album, an out-of-nowhere charmer that will hopefully gain this Philadelphia quartet a respectable audience.
The Lovers uphold the fine tradition of post-REM college pop — jangly guitars, wry and occasionally obscure lyrics, highly hummable melodies — that put them in rank with the dBs, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the Caulfields, and the Connells. Power chords and drumrolls propel the opener, “Half Richard’s,” while “Make Your Day” gets high on Skylarking-era XTC.
But the album’s high point is “A Simple ‘How Are You?'” — one of the best, most addictive pop songs I’ve heard all year. As Scott Jefferson croons an unassumingly catchy chorus (“A simple ‘How are you?’/Makes me want you in so many ways”), Ed Hogarty earns an MVP award for the keyboard riffs that gleefully bounce through the song.
The Lovers are aware of and not entirely comfortable with their college origins: “Haunts Me Still” recalls the nights “hanging out with Meg and Billy” in the dorm room with shaky regret: “Sometimes, the bile makes it easier to live.” It’s this uneasiness that motivates the Lovers to sharpen the hooks in these songs, and it raises them above many of their post-college pop forebears. — SD
Grade: A-
A young Chicago-based post-punk band with some Tennessee roots (including Memphis), The Detachment Kit released what is probably one of the year’s best indie-rock debuts earlier this year with They Raging. Quiet Army. With their ear-candy guitar noise, herky-jerky riffs, unhinged vocals, and cryptic, cerebral lyrics and song titles, the band’s formula should appeal to fans of the Pixies-to-Pavement brand of art (-school) rock. After a couple of shows at the Map Room this past year, these college-radio chart-climbers move up to the Young Avenue Deli for their latest local show, setting up shop at that Cooper-Young oasis Saturday, October 12th, with The Ghost and The Cost.
Another Deli show of note this week is an appearance by some Americana royalty, husband-and-wife team Victoria Williams and Mark Olson. Idiosyncratic singer-songwriter Williams and ex-Jayhawk Olson will bring their band, The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers, to the Deli Friday, October 11th.
Finally, blues fans can treat themselves to one of the genre’s most likable contemporary songwriters when Mem Shannon performs at Huey’s Midtown Sunday, October 13th. — Chris Herrington
Blue Mountain, which will, when all is said and done, be counted among the better bands of the Americana movement, sang souped-up hillbilly songs about whiskey, heartbreak, and dangerous highways. But they never limited themselves to the tropes of trad country. Heck, they even performed a song about the early days of Memphis rockers the Grifters, who were just about as far away from honky-tonk as a band called A Band Called Bud can get. While Blue Mountain’s recordings could always be a mixed bag, ranging from the divine to the unconscionably awful, their sweaty live shows were quite often don’t-miss affairs. Frontman Cary Hudson would joyfully take requests and play past closing time. Though the band split for good last year, Tonight It’s Now or Never, a recent release on DCN, preserves Blue Mountain’s abundant energy, unfailing charisma, and genuinely Dylanesque songcraft for the generations. It’s a far cry better than Hudson’s first solo outing, The Phoenix, which mixes back-to-basics rock-and-roll with some less than fortunate lyrics even William Shatner wouldn’t recite in a full-on fit of self-deprecation. That said, should you choose to see Hudson when he plays the Hi-Tone Café Saturday, October 12th, you will see an amazing performer and one of the few people who ever culled genuine classics from the derivative-to-a-fault Americana format. — Chris Davis
An appliance-repair center on Park Avenue seems to offer quite a range of services. We just hope that the people who use these devices can tell them apart, or they’re going to feel mighty sore in the mornimng. A little nick from shaving is one thing, but a trolling motor can really mess up a face. Believe us, we know.
From time to time — as witness the set-to with neo-Confederates that we experienced a couple of years back after we editorially doubted the saintliness of Nathan Bedford Forrest — the Flyer finds itself immersed in controversies about the Civil War. Herewith the last word on the question from author James Dawes in The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S. From the Civil War through World War II: “Union soldiers of all ranks, ethnicities,and levels of education were motivated to fight because they perceived secession as an unacceptable subversion of the hallowed idea that a generalized communicative consensus buttressed by a verbal artifact could achieve a force equivalent to the physical coercion that attacks monarchy.” Got that? Well, that ought to be the end of the matter.
Two for one burgers at Old Zinnie s for Monday Night Football.
A recent e-mail from the Raelian Movement, whatever that is, loudly announced, “RELIGIOUS LEADER THINKS THAT PARENTS SHOLD GIVE THEIR TEENS CONDOMS.” More specifically, Rick Roehr,the president of said movement, urged parents to leave condoms lying about in their children’s bedrooms with a message on them — on the condom, we mean, and taped on, not stapled, we hope — reading, “Make love not war.” After all, as he explained, “teenage sex is quite natural.” Now, if that’s true, then why did they send Uncle Billy to the state pen?
A recent e-mail from the Raelian Movement, whatever that is, loudly announced, “RELIGIOUS LEADER THINKS THAT PARENTS SHOLD GIVE THEIR TEENS CONDOMS.” More specifically, Rick Roehr,the president of said movement, urged parents to leave condoms lying about in their children’s bedrooms with a message on them — on the condom, we mean, and taped on, not stapled, we hope — reading, “Make love not war.” After all, as he explained, “teenage sex is quite natural.” Now, if that’s true, then why did they send Uncle Billy to the state pen?
Okay, Memphis. I’m going to make a deal with you. I’m going to save you about $7.50 and roughly two hours of your time by steering you away from The Banger Sisters if you promise to put that money and time toward a ticket or to a rental of a better Chick Flick (see suggested titles below). Promise! A theme of my recent reviews has been the despairing dearth of good roles for women, having seen several grade-A, often Academy Award-winning actresses accepting grade-C roles in high-profile films. The Banger Sisters is a different monster altogether: The roles are great but the movie is so damn lousy that it’s impossible to care.
The Premise: Goldie Hawn (in extremely fine comic and touching form) and Susan Sarandon play Suzette and Vinnie, well-known rock-band uber-groupies in the ’60s nicknamed “The Banger Sisters” by Frank Zappa for their, ahem, sexual congress with varying Rock Gods and their roadies. It’s now 20 years since they’ve seen each other, and while Suzette is still living large in L.A. as a rock-club bartender, Vinnie (now the more dignified “Lavinia”) is the proper wife of a Phoenix lawyer/politico, with two spoiled daughters and a posh lifestyle. When Suzette is fired from her job (seems having Jim Morrison pass out while on top of you doesn’t have the clout it used to), she drives to Phoenix to find her old friend. Along the way, she picks up Harry (Geoffrey Rush), a nervous screenwriter on his way to Phoenix for a different kind of reunion: to shoot his father. The two are a proverbial odd couple: Suzette, the promiscuous party girl; Harry, a germophobic nerve-worm. The expected sparks fly between them.
When Suzette finally arrives in Phoenix, she encounters the unforeseeable and shocking reality that Vinnie is now a square. She’s an uptight, doting, enabling mother, and she wears beige all the time. Yet another odd couple! It’s as if the Vinnie that Suzette knew has amnesia and has been absorbed into a Martha Stewart catalog on Laura Bush’s coffee table. Meanwhile, both of Lavinia’s daughters are having problems: Hannah (Erika Christensen from Traffic) is drinking and doing drugs, and the younger Ginger (Sarandon’s real-life daughter Eva Amurri) fails her driving test and makes weird throat noises. Chaos! The rest of the movie is about the effect Suzette’s presence has on the family and how all Vinnie needs is to lighten up, and she will find herself again.
The Diagnosis: This movie is garbage. Well-intentioned garbage. By well-intentioned, I mean that it is a film with two interesting and promising characters for mature, attractive women in their 50s (Hawn is 56, Sarandon is 58, and both look terrific) that allows them to be unapologetically fun and sexy. But casting two great, funny ladies together isn’t enough. There’s just no script here, and things that are meant to be funny fall flat. Harry’s attempt to shoot his father, for instance. Ha ha. And it’s two bad movies in one: The Harry subplot is its own film and doesn’t complement the story of the two gals. Regardless, aside from having bratty daughters and a stiff husband, we never see why Lavinia’s new life as a society matron is SO bad. She seems fine. Not fun but fine, until she snaps. Suzette needs the help, in the form of AA, Sexaholics Anonymous, and whatever support groups exist for Women Who Have Slept With The Lizard King (surely there’s at least one). Her message of redemption through smoking pot and having promiscuous sex goes unchecked in the film, and that’s a problem. The rest of the movie is a slow montage of Lavinia lightening up and getting “real,” concluding with a poorly written high school graduation speech about being “true.” It’s all very insulting.
The Prescription: For a first-rate Susan Sarandon buddy film, rent Thelma & Louise or, to see her let her hair down, The Rocky Horror Picture Show or White Palace. For truly funny Goldie Hawn, try Protocol or The First Wives Club. You’ll get more “bang” for your buck. — Bo List
YOU CAN HAVE ROOTS AND wings, Mel. This is the thesis statement of the funnel cake of a film Sweet Home Alabama.
Mel is Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon), who has escaped her small-town Alabama upbringing and stumbled into a storybook fantasy life as an up-and-coming Manhattan fashion designer. Her new line of (unattractive) clothing is the breakout success of the season, and to top it all off, her boyfriend Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), an aspiring politician and the mayor s son, has rented out Tiffany s so he can propose to her and let her pick her own ring (swoon!). There s a hitch: Melanie is still married, technically, to childhood sweetheart Jake (Joshua Lucas), who never signed the divorce papers. After seven years without so much as a visit home, Melanie must go back to Pigeon Creek to finally end her marriage, obligatorily pass by her mom and dad s, and scoot back up to the Big City to marry Mr. Perfect and forget her roots forever.
But small-town hilarity ensues. Jake still won t sign the papers. And while, at first, it seems that he just wants to be obstinate about it, we soon come to realize that it s because, lo these seven years, he has been trying to figure out how to get his life together and become something worthy of Melanie and her big dreams. Melanie, incidentally, is culturally shell-shocked. Not only does Pigeon Creek have no ATM machines, there are women in their late 20s who have gasp! babies. This finally unravels Melanie, and in a spirited game of pool with Jake that gets ugly, she drunkenly tells it like it is to Jake and all of her old backward friends. Seems to her that they just don t know there s a whole world out there outside the confines of country music, Moon Pies, and homemade jams. She offends everybody, outs a closeted gay friend (wonderful Ethan Embry), then pukes in Jake s truck. Home, sweet home.
Meanwhile, Andrew arrives, unexpectedly, to see what the holdup is and stumbles into everything he s not supposed to see: Civil War reenactments, Melanie s folksy parents, and, worst of all, Jake, whom Melanie has never mentioned. The wedding s off! And then, suddenly it s on! Andrew quickly realizes he s been a jerk and that the best way to atone is a Big Fat Creek Wedding right there in Alabama. Will Jake be that guy at the wedding who says I do when the preacher asks if anybody has any objections? Will Melanie develop an appreciation for her upbringing and small-town values? Who will she choose? These are the pressing questions of Sweet Home Alabama.
You have seen this movie before with countless other titles and casts. Usually, it s very clear who the bride-to-be will choose in the end, and I ll give you a hint from this movie s poster slogan: Sometimes what you re looking for is right where you left it. The choice is at least very appealing: rich, political Andrew or Jake, who has that smile and those blue eyes (swoon!). I quote Charlie Brown: What a dilemma! Both actors are great. It s nice to see Patrick (Can t Buy Me Love) Dempsey back in a romantic role, and Josh Lucas is a handsome Matthew McConaughey for the 21st century.
The rest of the movie is disarming and fun, if slight. Pigeon Creek is a fantasy small town colorful and warm and full of obviously loving people. I anticipated some offensive redneck humor and stereotypes, but I found it to be relatively tame compared to how shallow and angry it made New Yorkers look especially the mayor played by Candice Bergen. Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place, as Melanie s parents, do a nice job being intelligent rubes with big hearts, and Jean Smart (from TV s Designing Women) has an all-too-small role as Jake s wise mother. Reese Witherspoon is a great comic beauty who does a good balancing act between the comedy of her return to Pigeon Creek and the drama of her big choice. And the film s theme, having roots and wings at the same time, is true and nicely played all the way to the music behind the ending credits. Now, guess which song is played. BL
HOW IS A METAPHOR LIKE A GOOD steak? Neither is enjoyable when overdone. If only someone had told that to Mostly Martha s director/screenwriter, Sandra Nettelbeck. If only.
The film follows the life of an incredibly anal, ill-tempered head chef, Martha (Martina Gedeck), who works in a small upscale restaurant in a quaint German town. After a tragic car accident, Martha is forced to raise her niece, 8-year-old Lina (Maxime Foerste), who is just as bullheaded as her aunt, complete with demonstrative scowl. Throughout the film, Martha announces Lina s likeness to the girl s father an Italian whose name Martha didn t know until her sister s death but apparently has no qualms about hunting down so Lina will stop all her damn whining. And although the youngster s arrival appears to be the solution to Martha s inability to eat the gourmet meals she cooks alone, Lina forces a stake through her aunt s heart by continually refusing to eat. Things get even more shaken up when Martha returns to the restaurant after her short leave of absence only to find Mario (Sergio Castellitto), an eccentric but wonderfully charming Italian chef, blasting Sinatra and running the show. Not only is he in charge, his fellow employees actually like him, which poses great danger to Martha s job security, since she is clearly a raging bitch to everyone within a 100-foot radius of the kitchen.
So here we have Martha, whose sexual frustration is practically audible when she starts making googly eyes at Mario halfway through the movie, and Lina, who desperately pines to be with her estranged Italian father, and Mario, the fun-loving Italian who happens to be the only person at whom Lina will crack a toothy grin.
The ending to this simple, romantic comedy is predictable. Where the film really falls to pieces is its heavy-handed approach to the well-trodden food-as-life idea: Martha as a lobster eating itself in a tank, Martha as a tough gnocchi that must be cooked by an experienced chef, Martha raising Lina as if trying to make a dish without a recipe, and so on. It s the same old ploy that s been around as long as, well, movies about food.
I think what really made me mad, though, was that this movie couldn t even deliver on the simplest task of a food movie: It didn t make me hungry. But maybe it just wasn t to my taste.
ALISON STOHR
By Kenneth Neill
While driving to Legion Field last Saturday night in Birmingham, my local host for the evening pointed out that Vulcan, the massive statue of the god of fire that usually towers over Birmingham from high atop Red Mountain, was absent from his pedestal these days, off being “repaired” after a hundred or so years of reminding Central Alabamans from whence their meal tickets had come. Alas, I suspect this mythological man of steel was not resting comfortably in some ironmonger’s workshop last Saturday but inhabiting at least one if not several green-and-gold jerseys down on the gloomy turf at Legion Field.
How else do you explain the Tigers getting their brains beaten in by a football team coming off a 34-0 loss at Louisiana-Lafayette? How else do you explain the 31 points scored by an anemic UAB offense ranked 116th in the country? How else do you explain the miraculous way that virtually every bounce of the football — fumbles, interceptions, near-miss sacks — went UAB’s way?
Bad bounces notwithstanding, I have watched Tigers football for over two decades and never, ever seen a more dispirited effort or, for the fans, a more disheartening performance. Just before halftime, after UAB’s coach, Watson Brown, milked the clock and gigged the Tigers with a dispiriting last-minute TD, putting the Blazers ahead 28-17, I retreated, along with many road-weary Tigers fans under the decrepit gray-concrete stands on the U of M side, to sample a “loaded” hot dog, rumored to be the best dog in C-USA. It was.
We were in shock, no doubt. But we were calm. Along with my blue-clad peers who made up the majority of the crowd (forget that 14,179 attendance figure quoted in the CA; there weren’t half that many warm bodies in the stands), I returned to my seat, assuming — and hoping — that this was all nothing more than a bad dream.
If the first half was a bad dream, the second was a nightmare. UAB kept running the ball straight up the middle, and the Tigers defense, obliging fellows all, kept getting out of the ballcarrier’s way as expeditiously as possible. It got so bad that our sorry little gaggle of blue-clad masochists started cheering whenever we held the mighty Blazers to less than seven yards a carry. Even then, we didn’t cheer too often.
I was a little nervous before the season, when so much was being said about the team’s prospects and so little was being said about the defense. Now, five games in, I can see why; this Tigers defense looks utterly rudderless. Watching these guys go through the motions Saturday night, I asked myself, What would Danton Barto think of this crap? Barto, Tigers linebacker extraordinaire of the early 1990s, was a consummate team leader. I remember one sad but entertaining game in the old Orange Bowl in 1993, when the team was getting its proverbial clock cleaned by Miami. I can still see Barto in the third quarter, exhorting the troops as if the score were tied. It wasn’t, of course (the Tigers lost 41-17), but, trust me, that defense delivered a light-years better performance than the one this sorry bunch gave last Saturday.
On offense, the team at least has a leader in Danny Wimprine and a talented one at that. But I must ask what offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner has been doing to mess with his squad’s heads lately.
Time after time, the whole team leaned expectantly toward the sidelines as the clock relentlessly clicked down, waiting for Fichtner to re-call the play. No telling how many of the team’s 11 players actually knew what was going on when the ball was snapped. My guess would be an average of eight, at best. Why continue bothering with a no-huddle offense — designed to “unnerve” the opposition — if one of its primary products, clearly, is team confusion?
Furthermore, if I live to be 100, I will never understand why Fichtner’s troops line up at least a third of the time in a no-tailback formation, clearly telegraphing Wimprine’s intention to pass. Why do this when you have two of C-USA’s best running backs on your roster? Maybe I’m just a little slow.
And, yes, the Tigers still have special-teams problems. In the game’s turning point, early in the second quarter, punter James Gaither chased into the end zone a snap that had sailed over his head then inelegantly whiffed as he tried to kick the ball over the end-line, thereby neatly converting a sure safety into a UAB touchdown. No offense to Gaither, who kicked impressively in the second half, but these are the kinds of mistakes that are getting downright monotonous. They say you can’t coach stupidity, but how come our team’s brain trust seems to be working so hard at it?
Coach West, if and when you read this, try to avoid the temptation to come after me with a gun. I think I speak for all U of M fans when I say we think the world of you and of the job you’re doing with the program.
But enough is enough, Coach. Losing to a bunch of pissants from Birmingham is not something we were expecting — and neither were you, I suspect. But if lose we must, when we least expect it, let’s lose with some class. We can deal with losing. We longtime Tigers fans are certainly used to it. But only if it’s the Danton Barto way. Not just going through the motions.
By Ron Martin
Despite the fact that it appears the sports world has become filled with lowbrow, self-absorbed types who think they live under different rules than the rest of us, there are plenty of reasons for me to be glad to be associated with the games people play.
I’m glad Rip Scherer brought Tommy West to Memphis, despite the UAB debacle. I’m glad there is a plaque hanging on the wall of the Tigers basketball practice facility dedicating it to Larry Finch. I’m glad to see the U of M’s Murphy Complex get its needed facelift.
I’m glad the latest NCAA report on athlete-graduation percentages showed Vanderbilt with 100 percent over the last six years. I’m glad Jerry West moved to Memphis and Bud Adams didn’t. I’m glad high school football and basketball are so popular in Memphis and that we don’t live in a city trying to do away with both because a wayward school board can’t see the positives in teenage athletics. I’m glad Wayne Weedon is the city schools’ athletic director.
I’m glad the following don’t call Memphis home: Alan Iverson, Randy Moss, Bobby Knight, and Lou Holtz. I’m glad the following do call Memphis home: R.C. Johnson, Shane Battier, Lorenzen Wright, Tiffany Brown, and John Calipari.
I’m glad we have the Liberty Bowl Memorial Classic and the Southern Heritage Classic. I’m glad we have the Redbirds and Grizzlies. I’m glad DeSoto County has the RiverKings. I’m glad we have the Spring Fling and that the rest of Tennessee is mad about it.
I’m glad the St. Louis Cardinals won their division. I’m glad Sammy Sosa finally spoke out, asking for teammates worthy of his talent. I’m glad there was no baseball strike. I’m glad Bud Selig has no direct effect on life in Memphis. I’m glad the New Orleans Saints look like a football team. I’m glad the Minnesota Vikings don’t. I’m glad Brian Griese’s okay after tripping over his dog for the second time. I’m glad I’m not his dog.
Flyers The Memphis-Shelby County Library has a new reading room called the Grizzlies Den. The library and a number of other charitable organizations received $200,000 from the NBA team last week. Combined with the $5 million pledge to build the Memphis Grizzlies House at St. Jude, the team is acting like it wants to make a difference here, not just a buck.
It’s one thing for the U of M to get beat by Ole Miss and Southern Miss, but at UAB, the team played as though they didn’t want to win, which is unacceptable. I spend a lot of time with the team, so to say I was shocked is an understatement, because I know how hard they work.
Ramblings Nashville talk-show host Phil Valentine after the Titans’ loss to Cleveland: “Now, Nashville and Memphis have something in common: We don’t want the Titans either.”