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Sound Advice

I know it’s the beginning of Elvis Week, but if you want to bask in some classic musical Americana of a different stripe, the Live At the Garden Summer Concert Series is offering one of its finest shows this week. New Orleans hipster/piano man Dr. John, who inherited the Crescent City piano tradition from the late Professor Longhair, is no stranger to Memphis audiences after hosting the past two Handy Awards ceremonies, but he’ll be the featured attraction this time around. He’ll be joined by N’awlins mainstays The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who gained new cultural currency when they were embraced by the jam-band nation, and the always-great Mavis Staples, the former Stax artist who gave a strong performance last time she was here when she “opened” for Sonic Youth, of all acts, on one of the stages at the 2001 Beale Street Music Fest. These three roots-music stalwarts join forces for “Mardi Gras At the Garden” at the Memphis Botanic Garden Thursday, August 8th.– Chris Herrington

It’s hard being a Memphis rock band. Little grows in the shade, you know, and Sun Studio has cast a mighty long shadow. Since those shaking-crazy days half a damn century ago, the world has had some pretty high expectations for Bluff City artists, and who can really measure themselves alongside Billy Lee Riley, let alone Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, or Johnny Cash. The rockabilly explosion only lasted a few short years, and its stars are, at once, the least emulated and the holiest of all the saints in the rock-and-roll church. Memphis should have a whole festival devoted to nothing but that rocking hillbilly sound. Libertyland should construct Disney-lite extravaganzas around it. But year after year, it takes a backseat to the blues. Jackson, Tennessee, hometown of Carl Perkins and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, has picked up the slack with an annual festival devoted to that crazy hillbilly sound. Saturday, August 10th, ace sax man Ace Cannon will be tooting his own horn, Bill Haley’s Original Comets will (you guessed it) rock around the clock, and Sun Studio’s legendary guitar hero Sonny Burgess will sing about red-headed women. And oh, yes, there will be Elvis impersonators. Best of all, Wanda Jackson will be in the house. And who is she? Let’s just say it would take a helluva lot of leather to make the Shangri-Las sound half as tough as Jackson did when she sang “Riot In Cell Block Number 9.” Location: Carl Perkins Civic Center, 400 South Highland Avenue. While in Jackson, vintage-guitar nuts (and aren’t all rockabilly fans?) might want to visit Player Guitars next to Casey Jones Village. It’s your best bet for fondling a guitar you’ll never be able to afford since Rod and Hank’s closed shop on Main Street.

Or if you’ve got the rockabilly itch but can’t get out of town, you can head down to the Lounge Friday, August 9th, where Burgess and his band The Pacers will be giving an early show. —Chris Davis

Categories
News The Fly-By

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Make of this one — which appeared mysteriously Monday on the south side of Stage Road, just west of Covington Pike — what you will. It went up four days after the Shelby County mayor’s race was over, three months after the mayoral primaries, and five months after Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, at the time a leading candidate, withdrew from the mayor’s race.

Categories
News The Fly-By

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Make of this one — which appeared mysteriously Monday on the south side of Stage Road, just west of Covington Pike — what you will. It went up four days after the Shelby County mayor’s race was over, three months after the mayoral primaries, and five months after Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, at the time a leading candidate, withdrew from the mayor’s race.

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Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Heathen

David Bowie

(ISO/Columbia)

David Bowie hasn’t sounded quite like this in over 20 years. On Heathen, his new album, it’s not that he’s revisiting his old sounds and styles, as the hype has it, but he does more closely resemble the artist as a young man, his creations purer and less tempered by trends — whether he’s starting them or buying into them — than most of his work from the last two decades. Subdued craftsmanship marks this album. Co-produced and engineered by Tony Visconti, who also plays guitar and bass here, Heathen gives us a mature, meditative Bowie/Visconti production reminiscent of yet unlike Bowie’s best work, which, tellingly, was made with Visconti (1980’s Scary Monsters was the last they co-produced).

With covers of the Pixies’ “Cactus” and Neil Young’s “I’ve Been Waiting For You,” Bowie gives a lesson in making someone else’s song your own, inflecting each with his own emotional perspective and time signature. Still a chameleon, he channels contemporary Peter Gabriel (or perhaps Gabriel channeling Bowie circa ’71) on the “Biko” doppelganger “5:15 the Angels Have Gone,” and, to give some idea of the range, sections of the album evoke the Stooges and Lou Reed, both of whom Bowie produced in the past. Serving as guest guitarists are minor deity and Scary Monsters backer Pete Townshend and Nirvana alum and current Foo Fighter Dave Grohl.

Unlike the intimation of its title, which sounds like the name of some laughably awful death-metal band, Heathen is actually a very pretty, pleasant collection of songs. But the first tune, “Sunday,” sets the tone for some other album. Though, according to Bowie, it was written before 9/11, “Sunday” opens into a weighty, otherworldly darkness punctuated by electronic dots and dashes and ominous, ambient humming before delivering some frighteningly clairvoyant lines: “Nothing remains”; “Look for … signs of life”; “Look for the drifters”; “It’s the beginning of nothing/And nothing has changed”; “It’s the beginning of an end/And … everything has changed”; “Now we must burn … /Rise together/Through these clouds/As on wings”; “This is our number/All my trials, Lord/Will be remembered.” — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B+

The Peer Sessions

Merle Haggard

(Audium)

“Stand up and meet the real Merle Haggard” boasts Roy Horton in the liner notes to The Peer Sessions, the seventh Haggard-related release of 2002. Then Horton goes on to write how great Hag is at mimicking other singers, as if imitation were synonymous with interpretation and the sacred nature of the dozen “classic” songs on the album inspired, perhaps demanded, faithful recreation instead of risky reinvention. Now, country music has always prospered in spite of its conservatism, but anyone can see that this is probably not the best strategy for a cover album.

Think of the exemplary cover albums of the past decades, such as John Prine’s In Spite Of Ourselves or Bob Dylan’s Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. Both artists took chances with older material and brought out either its commonness or its strangeness. It’s not unreasonable to expect the same thing from Merle Haggard. His singing and writing can rival both Prine’s and Dylan’s, he’s already got a couple of good tribute records under his belt, and as 2000’s If I Could Only Fly showed, his voice is still capable of a rugged, bellicose grandeur. But on The Peer Sessions, security and comfort are the order of the day. The ease of the armada of session musicians and Haggard’s own nonchalance ensure the uniformity and anonymity of the performances. The closest thing to a memorable track is the opener, Jimmie Rodgers’ “Peach Pickin’ Time In Georgia,” mainly because Haggard’s off-pitch crooning makes him sound like Kirk Douglas. At other times, the laid-back odes to women and the South flit through the breeze on their way to oblivion, just a ripple in a long and winding career that’s not half as dead as this release indicates. — Addison Engelking

Grade: C+

Sharpen Your Teeth

Ugly Casanova

(Sub Pop)

Okay, I’ll play along. Who is Ugly Casanova?

According to the press release accompanying Ugly Casanova’s debut album, Sharpen Your Teeth, he’s Edgar Graham, a “mentally unstable” fan of Washington state’s existential art-rock trio Modest Mouse. He allegedly wrote all the songs on Sharpen Your Teeth, sent the demo to Sub Pop Records, and promptly disappeared.

The production notes credit him with most of the guitar parts and vocals, but he sounds suspiciously like Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock (except for lines like “all the government workers heading south,” when he sounds like Beck). He’s got the same high-pitched, hysterical voice, and his lyrics are similarly cracked and metaphysically minded. So either the Notorious E.G.’s obsession has graduated to perfect mimicry, or Brock has resorted to that age-old rock-and-roll cliché, the alter ego.

The songs on Sharpen Your Teeth reveal a lot. While Modest Mouse songs traffic in a bizarre brand of metaphor — “My brain’s the weak heart and my heart’s the long stairs” or “You’re the extra ton of cash in my sinking life raft” — Sharpen Your Teeth‘s emphasis is on metaphor’s little brother, simile: “We clung like barnacles to the hull” goes the lead track, “Barnacles.” The comparison is telling: The difference between metaphor and simile mirrors the difference between these two indie entities. But Ugly Casanova is the weaker of the two — unfocused and lacking the reckless daring, lyrically and musically, that enlivens Modest Mouse albums.

Buried in the back of the CD booklet, the songwriting credits reveal the truth. Brock and his collaborators are listed for each track, dispelling any doubts about who’s really behind Ugly Casanova. It’s a disappointment, especially coming from the man behind the Mouse. Chalking your eccentricities and neuroses up to mental illness is a lot less interesting (and uncomfortably exploitative) than claiming them as your own. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: B-

Try Again

Mike Ireland and Holler

(Ashmont)

For the last decade, Mike Ireland’s life has read like a bad country song: His wife left him for his guitar player, destroying his marriage, his home, and his band, the Starkweathers. Fueled by his broken heart, Ireland launched Holler, built from the remnants of the Starkweathers, in the mid-’90s. A rootsy outfit in the vein of Conway Twitty and Charlie Rich, Holler is more countrypolitan, with its sophisticated instrumentation and traditional song structures, than alt-country. Take, for instance, the weeper “Mr. Rain” on Holler’s latest, Try Again. A string section gracefully anchors the song, bringing to mind Chet Atkins’ saccharine-sweet country of the late ’60s. It’s your grandparents’ music but better: Ireland’s gritty tenor overrides the syrupyness, while guitarist John Horton’s leads keep the orchestration on terra firma.

Jim Reeves would’ve killed for a song as good as “Right Back Where I Started,” a delicate, acoustic-driven ballad that could flatten Nashville’s current country scene like a steamroller. “I just tried to leave this place,” Ireland croons, “Thinking I’d erase my sorrow with the miles/But you don’t outrun a broken heart/You just put it off awhile.”

Like its predecessor (1998’s Learning How To Live), Try Again is an autobiographical song cycle — this time about the pains of starting life over. The album’s opener, “Welcome Back,” finds Ireland visiting his hometown (“Damned if I can find/A single thing that looks the same”), a journey that’s spiritual as well as physical. He addresses nostalgia, reconciliation, and, finally, renewal in under four minutes, heady topics for a country song. These themes run throughout the album, underscored by enough bitterness to keep Ireland in therapy for years. Yet Try Again is ultimately a redemptive effort — 12 beautiful songs that will keep you thinking long after they’re over. — Andria Lisle

Grade: B+

Categories
Music Music Features

sound Advice

Wow. A lot going on this week. Aside from The Down From the Mountain Tour‘s stop at the DeSoto Civic Center (see Music Feature, page 37), the best touring-act bets are a couple of shows at the Hi-Tone Café. Nashville-based singer-songwriter Josh Rouse produces gentle, literate songs superior to similar artists such as Ron Sexsmith and Richard Buckner but with a lilting musicality that recalls Rouse’s Nashville buddies Lambchop. Rouse’s most recent release, Under Cold Blue Stars, is a real gem, and fans of exquisite songcraft will definitely want to check this show out when Rouse plays on Wednesday, August 7th. And Texas indie rockers El Gato are a highly regarded new band whose show shouldn’t be much of a gamble given the presence of two of the local scene’s finest, Mouserocket and Snowglobe, on the bill. El Gato will be at the Hi-Tone Saturday, August 3rd.

But there are also plenty of locals-only shows this week that register as special events. Frequent tourmates The North Mississippi Allstars, Lucero, and Burnside Exploration will join forces for a massive bill at the Budweiser Pavilion in Handy Park Friday, August 2nd. One of the most interesting local shows I’ve seen lately was the first installment of Tha Movement a few weeks back at a packed Hi-Tone. Well, this fledgling monthly concert series returns with its second show this week at the Lounge Saturday, August 3rd, with an eclectic lineup that includes folk-rocker Native Son, the mariachi band Los Cantadores, and soul acts Toshia and Soul Project. Finally, Loggia, whose smart chamber-rock sound is a distinct part of the local indie-rock landscape, will hold a CD-release party at Young Avenue Deli Thursday, August 1st, with The Coach & Four and The Glass. Loggia will then have a second release party for a disc of remixes the next day at Shangri-La Records. This show will be a cookout starting at 6 p.m., with all proceeds going to benefit the Memphis Digital Arts Co-operative. This will be Loggia’s last local show before relocating to the East Coast. Another benefit for the MeDiA Co-op will happen later Saturday night at Young Avenue Deli and is scheduled to feature acoustic soul duo Bella Sun, the Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright in a solo set, and newcomers Dearest Darlin’. — Chris Herrington

The Country Teasers, who will be appearing at the Hi-Tone Café Sunday, August 4th, appear to take their cues from the miserably misdirected troubadour Johnny Dowd. That is to say, they begin with certain country-and-western fundamentals they attempt to destroy with a battery of two-minute synth-driven songs that range in theme from masturbation to my-baby-done-left-me. Sometimes, it’s all just a mess of synthesizer and clipped, risk-free vocals running through a well-known litany of millennial disaffection. Their cover of Ice Cube’s “We Had To Tear This Motherfucker Up” lacks the cleverness and surprise of Dynamite Hack’s almost Beach Boys-like take on “Boyz In the Hood.” When lead Teaser B.R. Waller launches into the song “Can’t Sing,” it becomes apparent that sometimes honesty is not the best policy. That bit of unflattering commentary said, the Country Teasers are playing on a double bill with our own The Reigning Sound, and there is nothing wrong with that. With a new and, I might add, fantastic album under their belt, the Sound are better than they have ever been. Whether they are reinventing classic Harold Arlen covers or racing through new originals like the unsettling (but oh-so danceable) “Time Bomb High School” or the Modern Lovers-esque “She’s Bored With You,” the Reigning Sound continue to prove that they are the best band in Memphis. Moreover, they make it all seem so effortless. — Chris Davis

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Big Trouble

K-19: The Widowmaker starts off a lot like another good-ship-gone-wrong film of recent memory: Titanic. Much like the infamous luxury liner whose name has become synonymous with disaster, the Russian nuclear submarine K-19 was supposed to be the biggest and the best. K-19, like Titanic, starts off obviously but appropriately foreshadowing why the voyage is doomed from the beginning. Pride in both country and manufacturing is at play here: K-19 was a triumph of engineering and capability for a Russia desperate to assert itself as a world power at a time when World War III looked more like a looming inevitability than a worst-case scenario.

Harrison Ford is Alexei Vostrikov, a respected and feared senior navy captain brought in to supervise the finishing touches and maiden voyage of K-19 (nicknamed the Widowmaker because 10 men died in separate incidents during its construction). He relieves of his command K-19‘s Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) and hastens the ship’s preparations for its essential first mission: the firing of a test missile from the Arctic Circle. Vostrikov pushes the limits of both vessel and crew by crashing through the forbidding Arctic shelf and plummeting to crushing depths — all to prove to his crew that were they at war, there would be no opportunity to make mistakes, nor would there be time for fear. Tensions boil between Ford’s and Neeson’s captains. Polenin knows the limits of his craft and crew, while Vostrikov must exceed and expand them. And they are indeed tested when the reactor’s coolant system springs a leak and the lives of all aboard are weighed against the success of the mission. Vostrikov is placed in a political and logistical nightmare: If the ship explodes, it will detonate the sub’s warheads and destroy a nearby U.S. Navy destroyer — which would probably be interpreted as an act of war and could kick off WWIII. If the crew abandons the ship, they could be surrendering the Russian flagship and all of its secrets to the U.S. If they stay, they could die from hideous radiation poisoning. All the while, mutiny hangs in the air and the temperature of the reactor climbs ever closer to its terminal 1,000 degrees.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, who knows the craft of suspense (Blue Steel) and action (Point Break), has put together an effective, if unextraordinary, thriller. Tensions run high, of course, and there is plenty of expected sub-related excitement afoot — scenes with rivets popping out of the hull, water leaking, and the insanity that comes when claustrophobia and disaster combine. There is one particularly harrowing scene where men take 10-minute shifts repairing the leak in the reactor. Each enters the reactor after seeing the last worker exit, ravaged by radiation. The film is at its best when showing this kind of reality: the fear and determination of its crew, whose heroics are the kind typically reserved for movies about Americans in similar peril.

Beneath the veneer of explosions and last-second saves, however, there is a refreshingly complicated and engaging political adventure unfolding. Bigelow and screenwriter Christopher Kyle take a very objective perspective in showing us the realities of the Soviet political machine, as national priorities are juggled in favor of beating the Americans to technological superiority and control of the world’s interests — at the expense of safety and sense (a practice common in this hemisphere as well). Additionally, we are given a complex yet uncompromising treatment from both sides of the argument of the two captains, whose tensions rise to a surprising and satisfying climax, and we see that the Russian code of honor leaves no room for doubt. Ford and Neeson are a great match, both with their own brand of authority and concern. While their Russian accents leave much to be desired, their credibility as men who may hold the fate of the world in their hands is absolute. And in our current world, where that very fate sits in too many hands, this film shows us, challengingly, the honor and heroism of the “enemy” within.

— Bo List

If you see only one monster movie this summer don’t see Eight Legged Freaks. An agreeable but hackneyed comedy about giant, mutated spiders attacking a small, Southwestern mining town, Freaks hits the big screen one week after an even more ridiculous monster movie, the retro-futuristic Reign Of Fire. (Wouldn’t you have loved to have been in that pitch meeting? “It’s Matthew McConaughey fighting dragons in the future!“) And the differences between the two films are instructive: Where Reign Of Fire is a great bad movie, Freaks is merely a lazy, conventional one.

Several films over the last couple of decades have taken on material similar to that in Freaks (a community besieged by alien creatures, terrestrial or otherwise) and with a similar tone (jokey, amiable, cartoonish homage to earlier creature features) — obvious antecedents like Arachnophobia and Tremors, Tim Burton’s alien-invasion Mars Attacks!, and Joe Dante’s genre standard-bearer Gremlins among them — and all have fared better than Freaks, which reaches for freshness in what has become the stalest way possible: by incorporating oh-so familiar and half-hearted attempts at witty self-referentiality à la Scream. There’s the clip from one of those ’50s-era scare films playing on the television in the room of the preteen boy who, per convention, is the only person in town to understand what’s going on, and then there’s the same kid’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge speech about how “they never believe the kids.” And worst of all is one character’s desperately topical exclamation “It’s a spider, man” followed by a double-take just in case the viewer doesn’t get the lame pun.

Reign Of Fire, by contrast, pays truer homage to B-movie matinee fare through the utter conviction it invests in its preposterous narrative, charming partly through unpretentious fantasy escapism and partly through moments of giddy ludicrousness far more entertaining than the standard Mystery Science Theater 3000 kitsch. When ugly American McConaughey (sporting camouflage and one of those wild-eyed-Southern-boy stares) dukes it out with Englishman Christian Bale (wearing a Euroweenie turtleneck sweater!) in some fever-dream reenactment of a closed-door argument between George Bush and Tony Blair, it’s one of the most ridiculously entertaining things on the big screen this year, its unintentional comedy far outpacing any of the telegraphed laugh lines or too-familiar visual jokes found in Freaks.

Eight Legged Freaks, despite its too well-worn, genre-spoofing intentions and too by-the-numbers script, could have saved itself with its cast and its critters, but it flubs both. Kari Wuhrer (MTV’s Remote Control, countless second-grade “erotic thrillers”) and Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World) might make one of the most fetching mother/daughter tandems ever put on-screen, but the latter, especially, isn’t given enough to do here in her marginal, conventional scream-queen role. Instead, most of the action is given to the kid (Scott Terra), a Harry Potter look-alike who doesn’t register much of an impression, and David Arquette, who gives a slightly toned-down version of his standard schtick.

As far as the critters, the film is plagued by the technological “advantage” it has over the vintage B movies to which it seeks to pay tribute. While it may be cool to see the car-sized jumping spiders taking down dirt-bikers in mid-air, the dull two-dimensionality of the computer-generated spiders gets a little tiring after awhile, especially when compared to the cheaper-looking but more engaging mythic, painterly Reign Of Fire dragons (especially in scenes in which the fire-breathing baddies are viewed from a distance).

So if you’re only going to see one monster movie this summer ask yourself if you want to see a slapdash product that pays homage to great B movies (which, chances are, you haven’t even seen) or just a great B movie? — Chris Herrington

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

By the Way

The Red Hot Chili Peppers

(Warner Bros.)

The Red Hot Chili Peppers occupy a strange place in popular music: Springing from a scene most famous for its ’70s SoCal lite-rock and ’80s El-Lay hair bands, the Peppers blend the former’s peaceful, easy feelings with the latter’s party vibe. But Anthony Kiedis’ staccato-rap delivery and the band’s Bad Brains-style funk have influenced numerous rap-rock and nü-metal bands — such as Crazytown and Korn — who cribbed the Red Hot sound without thinking to build on it.

On their eighth album, By the Way, the Peppers shift the balance between rock and funk, favoring catchy rock choruses and tuneful verses over mad grooves to create a more mature sound. More important, these Los Angelenos have looked beyond their immediate forebears to earlier, slightly less mainstream influences, especially Brian Wilson.

Almost every song on By the Way has harmonies: bassist Flea and guitarist John Frusciante oooh and aaah behind Kiedis’ vocals, which, as ever, are a little flat in pitch yet endearing and vulnerable. And tracks like “Can’t Stop” and “The Zephyr Song” are built around catchy hooks that continually fold in on themselves.

For California pop breeziness, “Tear” stands out: Its Mellotron intro gives way to an easy vibe and a heraldic chorus punctuated by a concise, note-perfect solo by Frusciante, which is repeated by Flea on trumpet. It’s not only the album’s finest moment but also one of the best updates on Wilson’s signature orchestral pop, all the more moving for being so unexpected.

Such a sunny surface hides typically dark subject matter, specifically drugs and death — twin demons that have haunted just about everything the band has done since the overdose death of founding member Hillel Slovak. The album’s more expansive, more adventurous sound lends gravity to such fears, making songs like “This Is the Place” and “Dosed” all the more devastating.

Simultaneously haunted and hopeful, By the Way is not only the Peppers’ best effort to date, it’s also one of the best mainstream rock albums in ages.

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

The History Of Township Music

Various Artists

(Wrasse import)

After years of housecleaning the vaults of U.S. record companies, we now have access to everything you could possibly hope to know about the history of American pop. So it’s about damn time it started happening with Africa too, and, lo and behold, it has. There may be no better example than this more-or-less chronological 28-song compilation of classic South African singles — a great history lesson, especially if you read the liner notes, and, even more importantly, a cavalcade of pleasure.

The disc opens with three important pre-’50s songs. Thomas Mabiletsa’s 1944 “Zulu Piano Melody No. 1, Pt. 1” looks back (already) at marabi, South Africa’s indigenous early take on ragtime, which had been steadfastly ignored by record companies that hated its lowbrow origins. It’s followed by the minstrel-show tune “Rea Gae” by the Pietersburg Melodians and Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds’ “Mbube,” the first incarnation of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and Africa’s most famous melody, both from 1939.

But it’s with the Royal Players’ “Khala Zo°Me,” from 1954, that the disc really picks up speed, introducing the township jazz style that dominates the disc’s middle tracks. Sweet but not treacly cuts like the Young Stars’ jazzy girl-group “Ulova” and the cotton-candy melody of the Solven Whistlers’ “Something New in Africa” achieve a grace that, as the disc progresses, gives way to the grittier sound of mbaqanga, or township jive. The guitar rhythms jump harder and weirder on Big Four’s 1966 “Mr. Music” and the Mahotella Queens’ 1967 “Mama Thula.” By the time the disc reaches the Boyoyo Boys’ 1975 “Tsotsi” and Izintombi Zesi Manje Manje’s 1977 “Omzala Bakho,” the lithe beat of old has been upended and hardened.

History ends in 1981, the same year the earliest tracks from the classic 1985 compilation The Indestructible Beat Of Soweto were cut, and it’s a hell of an efficient map of Indestructible Beat‘s lineage. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: A

Romantica

Luna

(Jetset)

Alt-rock perennials Luna have managed to fashion a (semi)profitable career building mid-tempo guitarchitecture leavened with the occasional dumb joke. But this isn’t a glib dismissal of a band and a subculture: Consistent success within a genre is a remarkable accomplishment, even if it eventually puts the band in a no-win position. Veer off the path with too much noise or percussion or story songs or whatever and the band has “lost the magic”; stay the same and risk permanent irrelevance to lovesick kids and wistful art fascists alike.

Besides, when a band does what it does as well as Luna, demands for evolution seem hasty and infantile. They make rock-and-roll comfort food for at least a couple thousand folks out there, and Romantica is more of the same: 12 tunes with a cumulative know-where-when-we-get-there attitude so palpable, it’s downright seasonal. The songs about girls and crushes and “the agony of love” suck you in, but my favorite line comes from “Black Postcards,” in which Dean Wareham sings, “If I had to do it all again/I wouldn’t/Throw it all away/Throw it all away.” Aw, c’mon: Throwaways (and repetition) have lit up his albums for as long as he’s been making them.

A timeless band if you’re not in a hurry.

— Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

On

Imperial Teen

(Merge)

How many perfect pop records does the world need? For what it’s worth, here’s one more. Yes, another of those vexing recordings that does everything right from start to finish. And Imperial Teen has produced two such albums already.

Formed by Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum in 1994 as an alternative to the “heavy band” stuff he was mired in at the time, Imperial Teen signed with Slash very quickly and churned out a great first record, Seasick, in 1996 and an even better second record, What Is Not To Love, for the label in 1999. Then they got dropped in an artist purge by Slash’s parent company, Universal. Now they’re on the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, indie Merge with their best record yet. Sound familiar? Getting dropped by a pseudo-major label and getting picked up by an indie label is becoming the rule rather than the exception for a lot of bands these days. But, in Imperial Teen’s case, it’s a good thing.

So what does the band offer us with this third trip to the alt-pop well? Twelve great originals, subtle production by Redd Kross’ Steven McDonald, good guitar and keyboard work, and hooks, choruses, and melodies that just keep churning around in your noggin’ — in other words, just what fans have come to expect from this underrated band. Consider your purchase an investment in a culture that can keep on producing minor gems like this. n — Ross Johnson

Grade: A-

Categories
Music Music Features

sound Advice

Well, for starters, you can celebrate the return of local singer-songwriter Rob Jungklas with the CD-release party for his new MADJACK release Arkadelphia (see Local Record Roundup, page 33) on Saturday, July 27th, at the Hunt-Phelan Home. The house opens at 8 p.m., showtime at 9 p.m.

Then there’s another return of sorts as legendary drummer and regional favorite son Levon Helm brings his Barnburners back to Memphis for the first time since the 2001 Handy Awards. Helm doesn’t sing anymore, leaving the vocal duties to his daughter Amy and a generic if powerful male singer. But for Band fans who missed it the first time around, just watching Helm work a drum kit is a special treat. Helm and his young blues crew will be at the Lounge on Thursday, July 25th.

For you guitar-rock fans, there are a few notable acts hitting town this week. Knoxville’s Superdrag mesh Nirvana power riffs with Big Star (or maybe Teenage Fanclub) pop for a pretty heady alt-rock stew. They’ll be at Newby’s on Friday, July 26th, in support of their solid new album Last Call For Vitriol. Local popsters Crash Into June open.

And Chicago’s Dishes mix riot-girl-style punk with gritty garage rock for what should be a loud and energetic show at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, July 27th. They’ll be joined by dreamy locals Snowglobe and out-of-towners The Paper Hearts.

—Chris Herrington

I’m absolutely obsessed with at least one song by the power-duo Jucifer. On “Hero Worship,” the ever-radiant Amber Valentine comes on like a cross between Pixies-era Kim Deal and a star-struck Andy Warhol as she obsessively croons about how much she wants to be like MTV cutie Tabitha Sorin (“’cause I’m not happy with me”). Why Jucifer hasn’t found a larger audience, as the American fascination with all things metal continues to grow, is a curiosity. The group, which comes off as the perfect hybrid of Black Sabbath riffage and Pixies pop, should be just heavy enough for the headbangers and just smart enough to appeal to the indie crowd. Their 1998 album Calling All Cars On the Vegas Strip is an undersung treasure filled with punk fury, pomo logic, gothic sentiment, and big metal guitars. Best of all, Jucifer has no trouble recreating their recorded sound in a live setting, a rarity among duos. They will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Friday, July 26th, with the ever-radiant and occasionally nekkid Subteens. — Chris Davis

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

City Sports

Character Development

Elliot Perry’s return to the U of M brings a journey full circle.

By Ron Martin

Elliot Perry had just signed his letter of intent to play basketball

at the University of Memphis when Coach Larry Finch called him into his

office. “I’m going to put the ball in your

hands,” Elliot recalls Finch saying. “Where we

go is up to you.”

Perry took Finch’s words to heart but not just on the basketball court.

Perry takes everything to heart. “I realized at

a young age growing up in the ‘hood that I had decisions to make,” says

Perry. “Michael Toney [a family friend who mentored Perry when he was

younger] exposed me to a life outside my neighborhood, taking me to the University

of Memphis and [on a trip] with his family to California.These were things that

affected my future. It wasn’t much, but it sure meant a lot to me.”

When we spoke, Perry had just finished meeting with some kids from today’s

version of the ‘hood. While sportswriters and broadcasters were filing stories about

Perry’s return to his alma mater as a special

assistant in the Tiger Club fund-raising department, Perry was exposing youngsters to

the stumbling blocks that lay before them: “Develop character. Choose your

battles. You can’t fight every one; it may not be yours to fight,” he said in a tone

suggesting the words might be his creed.

Perry was born with enough talent to be good. He became great because

he worked hard. Each step of his basketball career presented new hurdles, but

Perry used those hurdles as stepladders. Each step of his personal life has followed

the same path. “We all make mistakes, do things we wish we could take back,”

he says. “Which is why I tell kids to map out their lives. Young players look at

guys like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett and think it’s easy.”

Perry seldom strays far from the point that basketball should be used by

youngsters to develop opportunities. “It’s

important to develop relationships. That’s what

it’s all about,” says Perry. “I try to tell kids

that good relationships last a lifetime.”

He remembers the mornings Coach Dorsey Sims pulled him out of bed to make class.

The prodding of coaches Sims and Finch is the foundation Perry uses today as he creates

relationships with the next generation. Of course, along the way, he could also be creating

relationships to generate money for the U of M athletic department, his new role in life.

But Perry keeps it all in perspective. He realized the definition of the term

“student-athlete” by earning his degree in four

years. “I thank the Lord every day for the

consistent opportunities He gives me,” he says.

“I try to tell kids that it’s too hard to come

back and get a degree after they leave school.”

It seems a lifetime ago when it was unusual for a collegiate star to turn pro

before his eligibility expired. Today, coaches

recruit with the knowledge that star athletes may stick around for a year at most.

High above the basketball court at The Pyramid hangs Perry’s number 34 jersey.

Maybe they should hang his cap and gown up there

as well, symbols of how to map out a life.

Flyers The annual C-USA football

media days were held in Memphis this week. After a golf tournament, coaches and

select players answered insightful questions such as “What do you expect this

season?” Another question making the rounds

concerned filling the C-USA commissioner’s office. It was a question left

unanswered and one that could remain unanswered

for some time … Bowling for dollars: The Professional Women’s Bowlers Association

is in Collierville this week at FunQuest Lanes.

Ramblings Archie Manning’s request

for Ole Miss not to hype son Eli’s Heisman Trophy candidacy will probably win the

trophy for him … Hats off to R.C. Johnson for

his desire to create a U of M athletic department that doesn’t depend on playing

Tennessee … Will Albert Means be the only Tiger on the sidelines because of academics?

Wanted: Talent

The Grizzlies’ West is determined to build a winner for Memphis.

By James P. Hill

Jerry West, the Grizzlies’ president of basketball operations, is

continuing his efforts to rebuild the Grizzlies into a team that can compete

with the NBA’s elite. It’s a simple plan: Get more talent.

“We need to get as many talented players as we can,” says West.

“Hopefully, we’ll have an opportunity some time

in the future to have a team where we have talent at all positions.”

The 2002 NBA draft and off-season trading spree is already yielding results,

if summer-league basketball competition can be used as a measuring stick. New

players such as Drew Gooden, Robert Archibald, and Gordan Giracek, a 6’6″ shooting

guard (CSKA Moscow, Russia) who was the 29th overall selection by the San Antonio Spurs

in 1999, offer youth and talent.

Giracek, who was acquired from San Antonio for a second-round pick in the

2004 draft, is already playing, knocking down jump shots, hitting free throws, and

fitting in. In a recent loss to the Portland

Trailblazers, Giracek led the Grizzlies in scoring

with 17 points.

“We feel that Giracek is a terrific,

experienced player who has played professionally for a number of years,” says West. “He is

a sharpshooter who is athletic and will bring additional quality depth to our

outside shooting positions.”

In the latest attempt to help solidify the backcourt, the Grizzlies have signed

former Seattle Sonics point guard Earl Watson

(6’1″, UCLA) to a free-agent contract. Seattle

has 15 days to match the offer, but at this point, it appears Watson is coming to

Memphis. As a Sonics rookie (2001-02), Watson averaged 3.6 points, 2 assists, 1.3 rebounds,

and .94 steals in 15 minutes per contest. Watson seems happy to be coming to Memphis.

“I am excited about the opportunity to play

for the Grizzlies for several reasons,” he says.

“I grew up in Kansas City, which is close to Memphis, and I consider it a privilege to

have a chance to play for Jerry West.”

The Grizzlies have also signed Cezary Trybanski, a 22-year-old, 7’1″,

254-pound center. Cezary, who comes to Memphis after three years of professional

basketball in Poland, is expected to provide rebounding and size. Cezary will test

his skills immediately in the Rocky Mountain Revue. (You can watch the

new-look Grizzlies play the Chicago Bulls on ESPN Thursday, July 25th, at 7p.m.)

West believes the new mix can only benefit the team. “I’ve always felt that

competition brings out the best in all players,

and we’re gonna have some very competitive times in our training camp,” he says.

“It really remains to be seen who’s going to win those minutes, but it wouldn’t

surprise me if this kid Gooden would get an opportunity to play more minutes than

any other rookie in the league.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Roller-coaster Ride

On September 10, 2001, a few months before they made the transition from underground sensation to full-fledged rock stars, Detroit’s White Stripes played at Earnestine & Hazel’s downtown. Mid-set, singer Jack White, who recorded the Stripes’ recent album White Blood Cells locally at Easley-McCain Studios, stopped to acknowledge the great debt his band owed the Memphis music scene. But unlike most tributes to Memphis music, he wasn’t talking about the bygone days of Sun and Stax and old Beale Street blues. In fact, many of the people White was paying homage to were in the audience, and one of them, Greg Cartwright (aka Greg Oblivian), had even helped book the show.

The band Cartwright founded seven years earlier with Jack Yarber and Eric Freidl, the Oblivians, might now be seen as the Meat Puppets to the Nirvana of MTV stars the White Stripes and the Hives. The Oblivians breathed new life into garage rock and influenced dozens of bands along the way, some of which are currently enjoying the commercial success that eluded the Oblivians during their chaotic mid-’90s run. You’d think that would be good news for Cartwright. The problem is his music doesn’t sound like that anymore. Cartwright’s current band, the Reigning Sound, have traded some of that raw, unfocused energy for a higher level of sonic craftsmanship, which is a fancy way of saying now you can actually hear all the instruments and there’s a bass in the band.

Filling out the band are Greg Roberson, a seasoned rocker who played drums for the rockabilly/punk Beat Cowboys back in the days of the Antenna club, New Jersey-bred bass player Jeremy Scott, an old friend of Roberson’s who cut his teeth playing power pop and whose emphasis on vocal harmony has provided a challenge to Cartwright (a noted throat-shredder), and Alex Greene, a veteran of such seminal Memphis bands as Panther Burns and Big Ass Truck, on organ, guitar, and backing vocals.

Swedish garage rockers and current critical darlings the Hives were one of the bands that loved the Oblivians. When they came to the United States to headline a tour, they asked the Reigning Sound to open for them. So the group accompanied the well-dressed Swedes for six dates on the West Coast earlier this summer. “They offered us the whole tour, but we’ve all got jobs,” Cartwright says from his fledgling record store, Legba Records. “The shows went great. The majority of these 800- to 1,000-seat crowds were, like, 17- to 18-year-olds, and they’d only heard the Strokes or the White Stripes. So at a lot of the shows, we’d come out — and we don’t have any kind of schtick … we’re all just wearing our street clothes, playing rock-and-roll — and there’s this weird thing at the beginning where the crowd is like ‘I kinda like this, but nobody told me I could like it.’ Pretty soon, they’re all moving around and liking it. They’re all cheering — well, they’re not all cheering. A good portion of them are cheering. Some of them are still like ‘Get off the stage! I don’t know who you are!'”

Cartwright’s new day job is running Legba, which recently opened near the intersection of Cooper and Young, adjacent to Melange restaurant. Cartwright hopes the store, named for the voodoo gatekeeper spirit who brought the knowledge of the gods to humanity, will help expose young audiences to good music. Cartwright laments the passing of the days when you could take a chance on a band by paying 50 cents or a dollar for their single or when DJs could play a band on the radio just because they loved the music. Today, CDs cost $20 and DJs play songs on corporate-dictated playlists. “I believe if you expose people to good music, they’ll [like it],” Cartwright insists. “You have to get them while they’re young and say, Here, listen to this. It doesn’t look very hip, but listen to it.” To that end, Cartwright will keep the selection of used vinyl and CDs at Legba diverse and the prices reasonable. And he will try to stock music different from Shangri-La and Last Chance Records, the two established independent record stores in Midtown. (Legba grew out of a failed attempt by Cartwright to buy Last Chance a few months back.)

“I think Memphis is big enough for [all three] stores,” Cartwright says. “Last Chance has a huge selection of jazz and hip hop. I’m thinking that I’m not even going to try to compete with that. I’m going to stick with what I know, which is rock and country and blues and R&B, and I think those stores are going to continue to do the business they do now. It’s very rare to find a lot of something at one store and also at another.”

On July 19th, the two aspects of Cartwright’s musical career will come together when Legba hosts a party that will serve both as its grand opening and record release for the Reigning Sound’s second album, Time Bomb High School. Their first album, Break Up Break Down, was quite a departure from the barely controlled anarchy of the Oblivians. “I had all these slow songs that I had been kicking around for a while, but I had no outlet for them,” Cartwright says. “The Oblivians couldn’t do that kind of stuff. Every decent songwriter writes more than one kind of song, so when I started the Reigning Sound, I thought the first thing I would do was clean house and get all this material down to record.”

The good reviews Break Up Break Down garnered were a surprise to Cartwright. “When we did it, I was really happy with it. But, afterwards, I thought, Well, maybe that was a bad idea, to put so many slow songs on one record. I always like a record that’s dynamic, like a roller-coaster ride, with slow songs and fast songs and mid-tempo rockers. It should be a real mixed bag. So with this record, that’s what I tried to do.”

Time Bomb High School is a roller coaster. With 15 songs, it alternates between Break Up Break Down-style chilled-out forays into country like “You’re Not As Pretty,” garage-rock hand grenades like the title track, and anomalies like the 6/8 time “I’m Holding Out For You,” its chord structure resembling nothing so much as doo wop. One thing the songs have in common is brevity — only two songs break the three-minute barrier, and they inevitably hit the chorus almost as soon as they begin. Either Cartwright has achieved a new level of lyrical sophistication or it’s just possible to hear what he’s singing now. The songs are heavy with multiple meanings. “Reptile Style” could be about a busted relationship or getting screwed by a record deal (“There’s two of us in here/But only one of us is having any fun”). The moody “I Walk By Your House” could be about pining for a lost love or a love affair with rock-and-roll that has yet to abate (“I thought it would be so easy to grow up and forget you/I was just 19/Now I’m 32”). The truth is they probably are meant to be understood in many ways.

With a move to California indie label In the Red and the commercial resurgence of guitar-driven garage rock, Cartwright has high hopes for the new album. “But even if it doesn’t garner any more attention than the last record, I’ll still be happy,” he says. “At this point, even if music never turns out to be so successful for me, it makes me happy just to have the opportunity to make records, to keep writing stuff and recording stuff and playing with good people. And if it never takes off, that’s okay, because I can keep doing it for as long as I want. It’s a good life for me right now.” With that, Cartwright laughs and knocks on Legba Records’ wooden countertop. “The minute I say that — colon cancer.”

Reigning Sound record-release party/

Legba Records grand opening

Legba Records

2152 Young Avenue

Friday, July 19th

7 p.m.