ROCKAPELLA. The a capella group will perform their blend of rock, pop, jazz, and R&B. Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center. 3663 Appling Rd. 8 p.m.
SOUTHERN HERITAGE CLASSIC PARADE. Presented by the Orange Mound Parade Committee, the route runs along Park Ave. from Haynes to Airways, featuring high school marching bands. 9 a.m.
MEMPHIS CITY SCHOOLS PARENT SEMINAR. Parents will learn about testing, effective parental involvement, the No Child Left Behind act, and how to help their children succeed. Holiday Inn Select. 2240 Democrat Rd. 7:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m.
TOMAS KUBINEK. The Canadian “Certified Lunatic & Master of the Impossible” will perform his show, which balances the absurd and the profound. Buckman Performing and Fine Arts Center, St. Mary’s Episcopal School, 60 N. Perkins Ext., 8 p.m.
The Dixie Chicks
(Columbia)
It may not be hip, but I’d gladly trade Gillian Welch’s (not to mention Ryan Adams’) entire recorded output for one good Dixie Chicks single. With their bluegrass roots (and bluegrass chops), the Chicks may be the rare mainstream country act poised to get respect from the legions who have bought into the O Brother fetishization of “old-timey” music, but they’re better than that. Rather than pine for a world that no longer exists, the Dixie Chicks make music that speaks — with wit, heart, and smarts — to a contemporary reality. Theirs is music made by and for the Suburban Cowgirls who make up the largest segment of the country music audience, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Bluegrass-bred sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire may provide the acoustic grounding that allows the band to come off as more than just the rootsy pop band that they mostly are, but it’s lead singer Natalie Maines who closes the deal. Maines may be a pedestrian vocalist by the high standards of country music, but she’s also a positively era-defining bundle of energy and attitude, her unabashed, guilt- and defiance-free expressions of feminism and sexuality, her tomboy playfulness and everygirl enthusiasm striking just the right tone for a country music audience mostly a generation or two removed from rural roots.
Home is the Chicks’ third album and marks the third straight time the lead single has come on like a nonchalant cultural manifesto. “Long Time Gone” expresses the demographic shift that the band rides atop even more directly than either “Wide Open Spaces” or (still my fave Chicks single) “Ready To Run,” melding bluegrass inflections with let-‘er-rip, rock-schooled propulsion. The lyric, penned by a guy named Darrell Scott, may familiarly yearn for a more “authentic” country music past, but the gals’ performance springs eternally forward. When they leap into the final line of the chorus — “and it ain’t coming back again” –it’s neither lament nor exultation. Just a fact to be dealt with and moved past.
After opening with this, Home dips into a cover of “Landslide,” a move that may sound unduly crass for honky-tonk diehards, but I say if you’re gonna make modern country’s connection to El Lay soft rock explicit, better Fleetwood Mac than the dread Eagles.
But the limitations hinted at in the “Landslide” lyrics are instructive. Home backs away from the ace pop move of their 1999 album Fly, instead embracing two predictable and decidedly less exciting musical directions: getting serious with some slow songs and focusing more on their bluegrass roots.
This means a bluegrass instrumental (“Lil’ Jack Spade”), a downbeat, orchestral closer (“Top Of the World”), and a song about the Vietnam War, of all things (“Travelin’ Soldier,” as effectively tearjerking and devoid of political perspective as you’d expect from Nashville). And though they make the formula work most of the time (“More Love,” the quietly moving “A Home,” and the would-be bluegrass standard “Tortured, Tangled Hearts” are standouts), the record just doesn’t have the spark that made Fly live up to its title.
The light moments here fall short. The too-easy one-note joke “White Trash Wedding” has none of the daring of Fly‘s “Goodbye Earl” or “Sin Wagon,” though, as a bluegrass showcase, they have plenty of fun with it. By contrast, the O Brother divas (even good sport Alison Krauss) would probably be mortified to bite into something so silly and undignified.
In the end, the titles tell the story: Wide Open Spaces yearned for more than three cute blondes in a country-pop band are expected to want. The simple, expansive Fly tossed self-consciousness out the window and pursued complicated fun at all costs. The comfortable Home is a bit of a retrenchment. Here’s hoping the Dixie Chicks are merely preparing for another takeoff the next time out. — Chris Herrington
Grade: B+
VHS or Beta
(On!)
Credibility has always been a problem for the dance music left in disco’s wake. You know: It’s soulless; it’s just a bunch of machines; it takes no talent to make. So it’s somewhat ironic to find bands of live instrumentalists making or approximating house music. But while live instruments can give the illusion of spontaneity, they can also run the risk of being merely gimmicky.
But VHS or Beta does more than just replicate machine-tooled precision. They may combine vintage disco with contemporary house, but they also add a loose, improvisatory feel that’s pitched somewhere between post-rave and post-Dead camps. Granted, that could just be the resemblance between Zeke Buck’s guitar tone and Jerry Garcia’s, but the group’s grassroots live following has something to do with it as well, as does the fact that there’s something genuinely shambolic about Le Funk, the Louisville quartet’s debut album. The beat is frequently loose enough to threaten to come apart entirely, and the best moments are filled with an interactive friction that recalls the Dead at their most responsive — only even the aimless stretches have a beat pumping away in the background to keep them from drifting off altogether.
Though Le Funk closes out with a pair of tracks performed in concert, VHS or Beta gets just as much of the gristle of live performance on the studio cuts as well. “Disco Paradise” layers robotic voices over analog synth lines like a Daft Punk song, but the fallible rhythms make it human-scale rather than overwhelming. “Solid Gold” opens with the sound of waves lapping ashore before breaking into a cool piano groove buttressed by congas and an echoed siren guitar, just like a real Ibiza anthem. And Buck turns “On & On” into a nasty wah-wah shred-fest. Pity the club kids who find it insufficiently credible. — Michaelangelo Matos
Grade: B+
VHS or Beta will play Young Avenue Deli Tuesday, September 17th.
Mali Music
(Astralwerks)
Most people take their cameras on vacation, but Blur frontman and erstwhile Gorillaz vocalist Damon Albarn takes along his Samick melodica and his tape recorder. During a recent trek through the African country of Mali, he sat in with and recorded native musicians playing in nightclubs and on street corners. When he returned to England, he transformed the fragments into song collages and sent them back to the Malian musicians, who recorded their own parts over Albarn’s tracks. The resulting album is simply called Mali Music.
While Albarn gets songwriting credit on almost every track, the album is neither vanity nor side project. In fact, the two vying traditions on the album are fairly well balanced, an equal cross-pollination of styles and influences. The laid-back “Spoons” and the upbeat “Makelekele” both thrum with westernized beats and samples, which are delivered with hand drums and a njurka (a traditional violin). Afel Boucom’s vocals perfectly evoke the haze and bustle of “Bamako City,” while singer Ko Kan Ko Sata Doumbia’s dusky syllables illuminate the too-short “Ko Kan Ko Sata Doumbia On River.”
What could have easily been an exploitive or imperialist effort is instead an enthusiastic undertaking by musicians from two very different camps. What’s more, it’s all for a good cause: Proceeds from Mali Music will benefit humanitarian organization Oxfam’s efforts in rural regions of Mali. — Stephen Deusner
Grade: B+
By Kenneth Neill
Last week, I pointed out that the score of the University of Memphis’ 52-6 victory over Murray State flattered the losers. So too, sadly for Tigers fans, did the 22-point final margin of victory Ole Miss posted in Oxford last Saturday.
True, the Tigers scored first, thanks to Danny Wimprine’s 50-yard bomb to Antoine Hardin. But as the game progressed, it became abundantly clear to Memphis and Ole Miss fans alike — all 55,000 masochists who chose to fry in the afternoon sun rather than sensibly watch the game on television — that the U of M could only win this game by hanging on by its collective fingernails.
Remarkably, the Tigers did just that, well into the second half, thanks largely to an uncharacteristically ordinary performance by Eli Manning (14 for 30, 174 yards passing — hardly the stuff of Heisman legend) and three botched early field goals by Ole Miss. But, eventually, superior depth on the Rebel side told the tale, particularly in the gruesome heat that left spectators gasping for mercy all around me in the north stands at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
I guess we’re going to have to have somebody up and die on camera before the TV networks finally stop scheduling midday college-football games in the Deep South in late summer. No players perished, happily, in Oxford last Saturday; thus, it was only metaphorically that the Tigers rolled over and played dead.
For me, the turning point came early, when Wimprine threw his first interception of the season, one of those classic “what in the world was I thinking?” flat passes quarterbacks should never throw when backed up against their own goal line. The interception gave the Rebels the ball inside the 15, set up their first field goal, and, more importantly, stifled the Tigers’ early momentum.
Forget that the ball was tipped by a defender. Ask instead: Why were the Tigers running such dangerous patterns deep in their own territory while holding that early 7-0 lead? Why not try a little ball control? The final game stats reveal that the U of M had no ground game whatsoever (18 yards on 20 carries), but that grim result seemed at least partly deliberate. For whatever reason, the U of M coaching staff made no attempt to establish a running game early.
Instead, they went three-and-out — three incomplete passes, that is — time and again. I never thought I’d live long enough to criticize a Tigers coaching staff for throwing the ball too much, but I found their disinterest in the ground game peculiar. Perhaps the coaches saw something I didn’t. The Tigers seemed determined to throw the ball, come what may. Time after time, the team would line up with five wide-outs and no tailback, not exactly camouflaging its intentions.
On the other hand, Herschel Walker carrying the ball every down could not have saved the day for these Tigers, given what was perhaps the most pathetic special-teams display seen in these parts in some time. The Murray State victory was so one-sided that the Tigers didn’t even punt until the fourth quarter. Good thing. In Oxford, they punted early and often and about as ineffectively as a Tigers team has ever punted. And while Ole Miss blasted kickoff after kickoff into and through the end zone, the Tigers’ kicking game gave the defense little margin for error. Coach Tommy West put it succinctly, in the tones of a Zen master: “We played a long field and they played a short field.”
Although we’ll have to wait another two years for another crack at disrupting postgame festivities in the Grove, all is not lost. For one thing, teams as depth-challenged as Memphis are truly behind the eight ball when playing in miserable heat conditions like last Saturday’s. The good news is this: Winter is coming.
And, play selection notwithstanding, the fact remains that the Tigers do have a quarterback worth watching and talking about. On a day on which he was clearly a marked man, Wimprine threw for 271 yards in a valiant effort to keep the Tigers’ ship afloat. Indeed, if there were any Heisman judges in attendance, I dare say they paid more attention to the embattled Tigers quarterback than that other guy. (“Got Mannings?” read my favorite red T-shirt in the Grove game-day morning.)
Here’s hoping that next week in Hattiesburg the Tigers show up with a punting game and give Wimprine some breathing room by running the ball more consistently. And that a merciful deity brings along a nice autumn breeze.
By Ron Martin
It’s impossible TO write this column this week without thoughts of the tragedy our nation suffered one year ago. We mourn the thousands who died on September 11th and the many souls lost since that day in Afghanistan — all dead due to intolerance. Sadly, many Americans express the same intolerance in their everyday lives– and in sports.
The ongoing sports story and resulting rhetoric regarding the Masters Golf Tournament is a classic example. Hootie Johnson, the director of Augusta National Golf Club, states it is his club’s right as a private organization to limit its membership to men. Intolerant as his club’s stand may be, Johnson is on firm constitutional ground. Those in the media and those who issue threats are just as intolerant as Johnson. In my opinion, the members of Augusta National shouldn’t deny access to their club based solely on race, creed, or gender. But they have the right to do it.
Just as intolerant, in my opinion, is Martha Burke, chairperson of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, who has brought the wrath of protest to the club’s door. She has a right to her opinion regarding the need for an open-door policy to any organzation, private or public. But intolerance of those who don’t share your opinion is wrong.
Intolerance is also alive and well in some overly rabid sports fans. There is nothing wrong with cheering for your favorite team, but when it becomes personal, it becomes intolerance. Listening to radio talk shows can be scary. Interesting and informative conversation can quickly turn vindictive. A fan who supports an opposing school, whether it’s the University of Memphis or Ole Miss or any other university, suddenly becomes the devil incarnate.
Some talk-show hosts have common sense and quickly put such callers in their place. Unfortunately, sports-talk radio has become filled with “buy the time” hosts who use intolerance to provoke calls.
This weekend, the Southern Heritage Classic returns to the Liberty Bowl. There was a certain irony in having the game postponed last year due to the intolerance-driven attacks on our nation. When Fred Jones brought the game to Memphis in 1990, intolerance almost killed it. No one will admit it today, but it didn’t take an investigative reporter to find Memphians who were then opposed to this matchup of predominantly African-American schools.
City and county leaders weren’t quick to embrace the idea, but Jones stood his ground, and now, the SHC draws more fans to the area than any other local sporting event.
As we remember the emotions we felt on September 11th last year, let’s also remember to be tolerant, even when those around us aren’t.
Flyers The American Motorcycle Association will make its first flat-track appearance in Tunica’s Battle Arena this weekend. For those who have never witnessed this type of racing, it’s exciting but very loud indoors. It’s also worth it … The best moment of last weekend’s collegiate gridiron action came after Vanderbilt beat Furman. Both teams lined up at midfield to shake hands and even exchange a few hugs. Yes, you can hug in football, even when you get beat 49-18.
Ramblings With the NCAA cops investigating South Carolina, the number of SEC schools under the spotlight has grown to five. It’s easy to lose count … The city and county should be ashamed of themselves for the $30,000 bill they handed the Bridges Football Classic … Best example of what’s good about college football: Rhodes College … First NFL coach to be fired: Dave Campo of Dallas.
Nicknames are tricky things, since they tend to stick with you long after you want them to. Case in point: an,intriguing gravestone in Forest Hill Cemetery. We didn’t know Harold E. Harvey, but we assume he was a nice fellow, perhaps rather large in girth, and his pals bestowed a friendly nickname on him during his rather brief lifetime. But do you think Harold, wherever he may be today, is happy that they also engraved “CHUNKIE BOY” on his gravestone?
BOOKSIGNING BY TINA BARR. Author will sign Red Land, Black Land, about her experiences in Cairo, Egypt. Burke’s Book Store. 1719 Poplar (278-7484). 5-6:30 p.m.
DISNEY ON ICE. Princess Classics. Seven of Disney’s princesses, including Cinderella and Mulan, will be included in this all-new performance. The Pyramid. Thursday through Sunday.
A recent e-mail to the Flyer alerted us to — well, we re not sure exactly, but clearly, somebody is upset about something, and it looks like those pesky Monarchists are causing trouble again. At least, we think so:
“All else has failed in Ray Halbritter s cover-up; so now, as many other Monarchists have done in the past, he has called in the spin doctors. When documented evidence prevails he then changes direction. This is no longer declared a forced removal. The deck is stacked against him, so in desperation he now turns to family ties. This is a simple family squabble.
“No, Ray! This is a challenge and defiance to your self-appointed Monarchy. You lost the option of claiming kinship when you denounced the traditional government and Clan Mother. DNA does not make you family. At least not your distorted version. Nor does gender actually make you a man in the strongest sense of the word.
“Material possessions are the simplest things to acquire, but you own only one thing of importance in your lifetime. That is and always will be your name and how it will be remembered and the acts it will be associated with. Your legacy. What you pass down to your children. Well, we all know the ending to that story. No doubt you will be up there with many infamous figures such as Fidel Castro, Adolph [sic] Hitler, and Dicky Wilson, to name a few.”
Dicky Wilson??
A recent e-mail to the Flyer alerted us to — well, we re not sure exactly, but clearly, somebody is upset about something, and it looks like those pesky Monarchists are causing trouble again. At least, we think so:
“All else has failed in Ray Halbritter s cover-up; so now, as many other Monarchists have done in the past, he has called in the spin doctors. When documented evidence prevails he then changes direction. This is no longer declared a forced removal. The deck is stacked against him, so in desperation he now turns to family ties. This is a simple family squabble.
“No, Ray! This is a challenge and defiance to your self-appointed Monarchy. You lost the option of claiming kinship when you denounced the traditional government and Clan Mother. DNA does not make you family. At least not your distorted version. Nor does gender actually make you a man in the strongest sense of the word.
“Material possessions are the simplest things to acquire, but you own only one thing of importance in your lifetime. That is and always will be your name and how it will be remembered and the acts it will be associated with. Your legacy. What you pass down to your children. Well, we all know the ending to that story. No doubt you will be up there with many infamous figures such as Fidel Castro, Adolph [sic] Hitler, and Dicky Wilson, to name a few.”
Dicky Wilson??
FASCIST FASHIONS
A story that originated in the Los Angeles Times reported that Target stores were pulling from their shelves all clothing carrying the logo 88 and Eight-Eight after store management became aware that the numbers are supposedly neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler. Rumor has it, however, that Target hopes their new line of 666 clothing will be a big hit this fall.
Normally, I dismiss sky-is-falling protestations from other music critics, but there’s no way around the conclusion that 2002 thus far has been the worst year for pop music in recent memory, and perhaps no corner of the pop landscape is as in the doldrums as hip hop, the locus of so much of the action for the past 20 years.
One can make the case that the dearth of good hip-hop albums this year is no cause for alarm, that the fact that the best rap records have largely come from indie/boho types and white people is no big deal. After all, though the ’90s produced several great mainstream hip-hop album artists — Outkast, Eminem, Jay-Z, Prince Paul, the Fugees, the Wu-Tang Clan, and their assorted spinoffs — it’s still primarily a singles form, best consumed one song at a time.
But now, even the singles well is running dry. If the chart action is still there, there’s a decided lack of artistic excitement. Most of the year’s high-profile hip-hop singles sound like generic product even when they sound good.
One problem is the producer as auteur, which has had the effect of elevating form over content –great sounds without meaning or personality. That’s one of the reasons I like Lord Willin’ by Neptunes protégés Clipse a little better than the production team’s own far more celebrated “solo” effort, N.E.R.D.’s In Search Of … . The Neptunes may rival Timbaland as the most exciting and ubiquitous of contemporary hip-hop producers, but In Search Of only showed that they lack the persona to put over their own best soundscapes. With Virginia-based brothers Pusha T. and Malice, the Neptunes have found a couple of mouthpieces with a worldview.
Unfortunately, this worldview consists of familiar gangsta tales of drug-selling, which make for some (guilty) pleasurable pulp fiction for a few tracks but wear out real fast. On Lord Willin’, Pusha T. and Malice come off like onetime Queensbridge hard-asses Mobb Deep with better beats, their strong, sure, articulate flows riding easy over the Neptunes’ abrasively funky sonic architecture. But though tracks like the swaggering “Young Blood” and the distortedly percussive “Ego” can be exhilarating, the sharp edge gets dull after a while.
Another promising recent mainstream hip-hop album that falls short is Eve’s Eve-olution. Rather than the vision of one production team, Eve-olution uses an army of A-list hip-hop producers (Dr. Dre, Irv Gotti, and Swizz Beats, among others), along with the familiar framework of guest stars (Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys, Jadakiss), skits, and braggadocio broken up by token romantic songs.
In fairness, Eve has always been a singles artist, but the lead single here, “Gangsta Lovin’,” is generic and calculating, falling far short of the standard set by her previous records’ lead singles, the infectiously playful “Gotta Man” and the forcefully sexy Gwen Stefani duet “Let Me Blow Your Mind.” And there don’t seem to be any future ace singles lurking among the album tracks.
Eve is a solid if unspectacular MC and — given her preeminence among female MCs without coming across as just another boy-toy — a powerful cultural figure. She’s even likable. But she’s a marginal artist, and Eve-olution doesn’t change that.
So the search for a great major-label hip-hop record in 2002 continues. Jay-Z and Outkast are on deck. We need them now more than ever.
— Chris Herrington
Grades: B (both records)
This is the record that I thought would never be made. After starting out on the British folk circuit, Linda Thompson made a series of excellent albums in the ’70s with her then-husband, folk-guitar god Richard Thompson. She was named female singer of the year in 1982 by Rolling Stone with the release of her and Richard’s masterpiece Shoot Out the Lights. That classic album of dark, introspective songs (Richard’s specialty) chronicled the breakup of their marriage in harrowing detail. Shortly after its release, Richard left Linda and their three children to start a new life in America with a new woman. Unfortunately, the Thompsons had already contracted to do an American tour together, and it was pure drama. Linda kicked Richard in the shins during his solos and trashed many a dressing room but still gave the best performances of her life. She went on to make a mostly mediocre pop album, overloaded with synthesizers and slickness. Then, in the mid-’80s, she developed a rare anxiety disorder — she literally could not sing. (Now, what would Freud say about that?)
Fans like me grieved over this development — in a sense, it was worse than a death, for the purveyor of those wondrous but silenced pipes was still alive and kicking. I think Linda Thompson has one of the best voices in folk, by turns brassy or sensitive. But her talent transcends that genre, as her sense of timing and her interpretive skills allow her to sing pop, swing, folk, or rock with equal ease. Aside from the astounding fact that this record was made at all, another miracle: Lo and behold, who’s that singing and playing guitar on the opening track but Richard Thompson himself! I never thought I’d see a musical reconciliation between these two in my lifetime. Alongside Richard, two of their children, Kamila and Teddy, add vocals and guitar to this and several other tracks, so it’s truly a family affair.
Fashionably Late is the album Thompson fans all hoped she would make after the breakup. Living in the shadow of her ex all these years has not been easy, but she’s finally come into her own as a songwriter as well. (Richard wrote most of their songs, so she was often dismissed as “just the singer.”) She’s co-written a ’40s-style ballroom number with pal Rufus Wainwright, but her collaborations with son Teddy are among the best here, including the haunting “Nine Stone Rig.” On “Evona Darling,” Teddy does a melt-in-your-mouth harmony with his mum that recalls some of the seamless duets that his ma and pa are famous for, with Van Dyke Parks happily noodling away on Hammond organ and accordion in the background.
As this is primarily a folk album, sorrow, betrayal, and regret are major themes here, but underlying it all is a sense of joy in making music again and a wicked, defiant sense of humor. Linda has recruited many of her old folk stalwarts, including Martin Carthy, to play with her, as well as some of the new mavericks, including fiddler Eliza Carthy (Martin’s daughter) and Kate Rusby, the twentysomething reigning queen of the English folk-music scene. What a treasure this release is! May there be many more to come. —Lisa Lumb
Grade: A-