Category: Music Features

Belated thoughts on the Beale Street Music Fest: Outside of some personal musical high points, the most memorable moments of the fest were the exciting performances given by locals-gone-national The North Mississippi Allstars, Saliva, and Three 6 Mafia — and the huge audiences who came to see them. The massive crowds who showed up at the Budweiser Stage on Friday and Saturday for Saliva and Three 6 Mafia, respectively, were the largest Memphis crowds to ever see those groups. And the possibly larger audience who took in the Allstars performance Friday at the AutoZone Stage may well have been bigger than the crowd they played to at the Coliseum last year.

All three bands were in fine form. Saliva put on a show — the kind of performance that might have occasionally elicited Spinal Tap giggles from a more jaded crowd, but the band’s fans ate it up. Lead singer Josey Scott stalked the stage in a flashy white suit while the band delivered energetic renditions of their hit “Your Disease” and hit-to-be “Click, Click, Boom.” Some of Scott’s stage patter (“Memphis, I want to thank you for making me a superstar!” introducing the song “Superstar”) was identical to what he said at the band’s New Daisy showcase earlier this year. The band may actually be a little too professional. But seeing the lackluster performances given at the festival by other lab-tested local hard-rock climbers — Dust For Life and Breaking Point (formerly Broken) — confirms just how good Saliva is at what they do. I only wish the atmosphere in the crowd had been more inviting. But if your idea of good company is frat boys attempting to slam-dance and encouraging women to show their tits, then it was utopia.

Three 6’s show was really great and pretty lame at the same time. The crowd was huge and hyped and the group (along with an entourage pushing triple digits) was a blur of energy. It was an exciting homecoming for Memphis’ most successful musical act, and most of the group’s hits sounded great on the big sound system. But as a live musical performance it was still mostly an amped-up listening party. The group seemed pretty clearly to be rapping over the actual records — vocals and all. This is not unusual in live hip hop and I should say that I don’t think the practice in any way takes away from the medium’s artistic vitality. But as live performance, it’s still pretty chintzy. The point was driven home rather hilariously when the group did several Project Pat songs despite the fact that Pat wasn’t even on stage.

Personal weekend highlights included: hearing the North Mississippi Allstars’ version of “Casey Jones” fade away and Keith Sykes‘ version of “Broke Down Engine” come in while walking between the two performances; seeing Ike Turner do “Rocket 88”; hearing how good bar-bands Lucero and The Pawtuckets sounded on the big stage; Ben Harper‘s ferocious set-opening cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Manic Depression”; Alvin Youngblood Hart bringing Jackie Johnson and Susan Marshall on stage for a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sway”; Bob Dylan playing two of the greatest songs ever written — “Desolation Row” and “Tangled Up In Blue”; closing out the festival with the inspirational second half of Sonic Youth‘s set, including a blistering version of “Kool Thing” that was the single most exciting moment all weekend.

A couple of final notes: As everyone knows at this point, the festival sold out all three days. A record 165,000 attendees. People who really like outdoor festivals (and I’m not sure I fall into that category) probably had a blast, but I talked to a lot of serious music-lovers who thought it was too crowded this year to enjoy the music. I know that the crowding at the Cingular Stage for the Ben Harper and Willie Nelson sets was particularly unbearable. Perhaps Memphis In May should reconsider what constitutes a sellout.

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

“I felt sort of like Dirk Diggler,” Cory Branan jokes about accepting the Phillips Award for Best Newcomer at this year’s Premier Player Awards.

Branan’s emergence on the local music front may not have been as swift and scene-changing as that Boogie Nights protagonist’s rise through the film’s ’70s porn milieu, but it has been a very real occurrence nonetheless. Not that Branan himself thought the award was that big of a deal.

“My mom loved it,” Branan says about the award. “It was cool, but I know what it is. Not that many people know me, but not that many people vote, and I happen to know enough people in NARAS. I got to play The Pyramid, but I still got the feeling that maybe 10 people in the crowd knew who I was. But I have other things that’ll make me happy. My CD in a jukebox. That’ll make me happy.”

Well, if the city’s jukebox operators have much of a clue, Branan may be on the verge of fulfilling at least that dream. This week Branan will celebrate the local release of his startlingly assured debut album, The Hell You Say — the best record yet from the local label MADJACK.

Cory Branan is a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Southaven who started playing on his own four or five years ago — singing covers at the Daily Planet — and didn’t start writing original songs until a couple of years ago, around the time that he began to discover the songwriters that now serve as his prime influences.

“Not long after I first started putting my own songs together, someone gave me a John Prine record,” Branan says. “It wasn’t pretentious. It was pretty good ol’ boy but still poetry — and conversational. And then Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. I pretty much discovered them all in a few-months stretch.”

Like those songwriters and others Branan speaks warmly of — Randy Newman, Freedy Johnston — Branan’s songs are literary but colloquial, suffused with compassion, humor, and an intentional edge that rejects those elements that can give the term singer-songwriter a bad reputation — the confessional solipsism, the sentimental poesy, the folkie puritanism.

The Hell You Say is a glorious showcase for Branan’s inspired wordplay, with the troublesome girls who populate the album lavished with the most vivid imagery. The Hell You Say introduces us to women who “come around at midnight like a Sunday afternoon/with a purpose and a manner like a needle and a spoon.” Who are “a stained-glass window on a back-door screen.” Women with “eyes as black as a police boot with a $3.50 shine” who inspire memories that stick like shivs.

The verbal facility displayed on The Hell You Say is no surprise — anyone who’s seen Branan perform live lately knows his way with words — but the musicality of the album is a bit of a shock. Produced by Branan and Pawtuckets guitarist Kevin Cubbins, The Hell You Say is remarkably as much a musical triumph as a verbal one, with Branan’s own sharp guitar work leading the way.

The album was recorded half at Posey Hedges’ Memphis Soundworks (the full-band tracks) and half at Jeff Powell’s Humongous Studios (the mostly acoustic cuts) and has the semi-intentional side-effect of showcasing not only Branan but much of the city’s roots-rock scene. The album features bountiful assistance from members of Lucero, the River Bluff Clan, and, most crucially, the Pawtuckets. Pawtuckets bassist Mark Stuart is a mainstay. The River Bluff Clan’s Richard Ford punctuates “Pale Moon On Paper Town” with perfect steel guitar. Other guests make essential contributions: Eric Lewis gives “Troublesome Girl” a Western feel with lovely, whimsical Spanish guitar. Kim Richardson adds harmony vocals to “Crackerjack Heart,” “Love Song 8,” and “Closer.”

The group-effort feel of the record is most prominent on the sinner’s prayer “Wayward and Down,” a sort of local roots-rock “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” where Branan swaps verses with the River Bluff Clan’s Jimmy Davis, Lucero’s Ben Nichols, and the Pawtuckets’ Andy Grooms and enlists a group chorus that includes local singers Nancy Apple, Scott Sudbury, and Wayne LeeLoy.

But the real musical triumph of The Hell You Say is in the diverse, imaginative scenarios Cubbins and Branan concoct to put across Branan’s songs.

The album opens with its sure shot — the rousing, word-drunk “Miss Ferguson.” A catchy blast of heartland rock with sneaky-smart lyrics (“The angle of her cheek is the math of persuasion”), “Miss Ferguson” is like a great John Mellencamp single as rewritten by John Prine. Organ and percussion come blaring out of the opening verse while Branan’s own deft guitar carries the melody and the song piles up sly come-ons (“Ain’t got no Purple Heart/no blue ribbons/blow out them candles and I’ll show you where I’ve been”), dumb-fun sha-la-la-las, and antsy, overactive vocals.

“Crush” follows as an unintentional — though perhaps subconscious — update of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” a song Branan has covered live. “Crush” occurs three years later, after the hormones have really kicked in, resulting in a love letter from a “16-year-old Hitler with a troubled, lovesick mind.” The song erupts in the middle with a wild, unexpected, and deeply funny “surprise party” of mandolin, banjo, kazoo, stray voices, and barking dogs.

The spare “Spoke Too Soon” is driven not so much by words as by a drum beat so unwavering it sounds looped and a guitar line inspired by indie bands like Yo la Tengo and Ida. The high point of the song is a drum break recorded in such a way that it sounds like it exists outside the world of the song, thus carrying a different emotional resonance. It sounds like an echo of the past — a blast of wistfulness and regret that works brilliantly with the song’s evocative and mysterious lyrics.

On “Green Street Lullaby (Dark Sad Song),” the false reassurance of “There’s still time/you’re still young/and there’s always tomorrow” is greeted with a feedback-laden rebuke. The song is an album centerpiece, an ode to a Memphis where “Mosquitos hum like window units/but you gotta move if you want a breeze.”

“In ‘Dark Sad Song,’ I was trying to be really specific about what it is about Memphis that’s different,” Branan says. “The thing about Memphis is that I could see myself relaxing and becoming a drunk and settling in. It’s a real laid-back comfortable town. The laid-backness is one of the town’s charms, but if you’re not self-starting it’s real easy to fall into a rut.”

That song rhymes with “Pale Moon On Paper Town,” which invokes the same dark, sad song by asking, “Am I the only one who hears that sound?” and contains the observation “It’s never a good sign/when the whole state line is outlined in chalk.”

But the heart of this honestly extraordinary debut is its delicate, prickly love songs: “Tame,” which juxtaposes “40 days and 40 nights of hard-candy snow” with “The center of the girl I love is the 23rd Psalm”; the hushed “Crackerjack Heart,” a signature tune at once elegant and playful; the harsh but beautiful “Love Song 8.”

Branan will unleash this album on Sunday, May 20th, with an afternoon performance at Shangri-La Records and an official release party at the Hi-Tone Café. It’s good enough to make him a star, at least on the semipopular level where this kind of music now operates. But Branan has no illusions about that.

“Take my hero, John Prine,” Branan says. “If you ask 10 people who John Prine is, maybe two or three will know. And yet, if I could have just a tiny fraction of the career he’s had I’d be very happy.”

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

Cory Branan

record release party

The Hi-Tone Café

Sunday, May 20th

Back in ’93 or ’94, at the height of his legend, Guided By Voices’ Robert
Pollard was like the proverbial dancing bear. The audience applauds the
performance not because the dance itself is good but because a bear is doing
it.

Similarly, Pollard became an indie superhero not because the
songs he wrote were all that great (along with some truly remarkable tunes, he
had a lot that were underdeveloped, abrupt, or just plain bad) but because the
songs were penned by a proudly alcoholic former fourth-grade teacher from
Dayton, Ohio, who was famously prolific and an obsessive archivist.

As it would for anyone, it proved difficult for Pollard to keep
dancing for very long. Although GBV released one of the all-time classic lo-fi
albums, 1994’s Bee Thousand, the band’s subsequent material proved too
self-indulgent and choppy, too sloppy and slapdash to maintain the myth, and
they veered dangerously close to self-parody and irrelevance. Pollard’s own
prolific nature didn’t help much, and the seemingly unending parade of
overlong albums and twice-a-year EPs — as well as the two immense and aptly
titled box sets Box and Suitcase — were overwhelming in their
density and too often underwhelming in their quality. The overall impression
was that despite the quantity of material, Pollard simply didn’t have a lot to
say.

In 1999, GBV tried sincerely to sell out with Do the
Collapse, which showed they were willing to put on a straight face and be
serious, but the album’s pristine production, courtesy of ex-Car Ric Ocasek,
turned off many long-time fans and failed to catch the attention of many new
listeners.

Isolation Drills, their second album for the TVT label and
their 12th overall, finds them still trying to claw their way out of lo-fi and
into a little bit of commercial/critical respectability. This time around,
they’ve enlisted the help of alt-producer Rob Schnapf (Beck and Mary Lou
Lord). Schnapf proves a wise choice, as he injects a little nuance and a lot
of life into the band’s sound. The guitars especially benefit from his knob
twiddling: “Skills Like This” gallops along on a major rock-and-roll
riff, while all six strings shimmer distinctively on the sublime “Chasing
Heather Crazy.” Isolation Drills is GBV’s guitar album, if you can
believe that.

Pollard himself also rises to the occasion with 16 well-crafted
songs, all of which — from the short but bittersweet “Sister I Need
Wine” to the anthemic “The Enemy” — are absolutely crucial. In
fact, while most rock albums feel too long at 12 or 13 songs, there is not an
ounce of filler on Isolation Drills, each of its songs contributing to
a very cohesive whole.

As a vocalist, Pollard has developed a surprisingly wide if still
somewhat limited emotional range. He recalls a young Michael Stipe on
“Fair Touching,” all dry mumbles buried beneath the dense guitars,
while on “Want One?” he fronts like the glam-rock god he posed as on
“The Weed King” from 1993’s Vampire on Titus. And on the
just-over-a-minute “Frostman,” his voice aches with age and sobriety
as he surveys his life’s winter. It’s a supremely jarring moment on an album
with so many high points.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Pollard seems to finally have
something to say. “How’s My Drinking?” is a gentle assessment of his
famed you-know-what, on which he exclaims, “I don’t care about being
sober/but I sure get around.” “Run Wild” plays like an anthem
to his past: “Leave your things in the streets/and run wild,” he
sings, but he knows he can’t heed that advice. The song is at once a
bittersweet ode to the past’s many indiscretions and a monument to his own
individualist ideals. Regrets but no regrets.

On “Fair Touching,” he delivers a line that is
painfully direct: “Currently fabulous/perhaps at last/the song you sing
will have meaning. ” Isolation Drills is shot through with a deep
sense of remorse over missed opportunities and a lurking fear of loneliness.
Pollard’s not speaking romantically but publicly — he seems aware that this
is probably GBV’s last shot at greatness and he sounds desperate to live up to
it. “There’s a better road ahead,” he sings on “The Brides Have
Hit Glass,” adding that “I just don’t know how to make it there/so
I’ll just hang around and take my chance.”

Ultimately, Isolation Drills is GBV’s All That You
Can’t Leave Behind, their triumphant return to form — even though they’ve
never sounded this good before. And early sales point to impending commercial
success as well. During the week following its release in early April,
Isolation Drills sold more copies than any of the band’s previous
albums, debuting on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart at number 168.
It’s the first time any of the band’s albums have appeared on the list.

This time, the applause is for both the bear and the dance: the
grumbling, never-say-die Pollard and his spirited, poignant career album.

You can e-mail Stephen Deusner at letters@memphisflyer.com.

notes

by CHRIS HERRINGTON

After breaking into the Top 10 of our local music poll last week,
Greg Oblivian’s new band The Reigning Sound has a big week ahead of
them with a 7″ single and debut album, Break-up Breakdown, due out
on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label. The Reigning Sound will be
performing on the porch at Shangri-La Records Friday, May 11th, at 5
p.m. and will be signing copies of the new records. Shangri-La has another
front-porch, record-release performance slated for Sunday, May 20th, at 4 p.m.
when singer-songwriter Cory Branan will be playing and signing copies
of his MADJACK debut The Hell You Say.

Also at Shangri-La this week, author Richard Younger will
sign copies of his new book, Get a Shot of Rhythm and Blues: The Arthur
Alexander Story (University of Alabama Press). The late Alexander was
one of the soul stars of the Muscle Shoals sound in the ’60s and produced such
classics as “Anna,” “You Better Move On,” and
“Rainbow Road.” Younger will be at Shangri-La on Wednesday, May
16th, at 5 p.m. and will also be giving a reading and signing at The
Deliberate Literate at noon on Thursday, May 17th.

On the strength of the breakout hit “Chickenhead,”
Project Pat‘s Mista Don’t Play has been certified gold. The
video for the album’s second single, the ubiquitous-on-local-radio “Don’t
Save Her,” was recently shot in Miami with what the band’s label
characterizes as a Baywatch theme. It was directed by the same team who
helmed Three 6 Mafia‘s upcoming straight-to-video feature
Choices.

After two shows from the man himself a couple of weeks ago,
B.B. King’s Blues Club turned 10 on May 3rd. The club plans an official
anniversary celebration for this August.

Plan ahead: There are plenty of notable concerts on tap in
the coming weeks, with a special reunion by D.C. hardcore legends Bad
Brains leading the way. Re-dubbed “Soul Brains” for legal
reasons, H.R., Dr. Know, and company will be at Last Place on Earth on
Friday, June 15th. Tickets went on sale last Friday for a big hip-hop and
R&B show slated for the Mid-South Coliseum on Thursday, June 14th. The
Seagram’s Gin Live tour will feature Mystikal, Ludacris,
Jagged Edge, Jaheim, and Lil’ Jon and the East Side Boyz.
Bluegrass elder statesman Del McCourey will grace the stage at the
Hi-Tone Café on Thursday, May 17th, and will be followed at the
club on Sunday, May 20th, by the official release party for Cory Branan’s
debut album. — Chris Herrington

O’Landa Draper’s Associates kicked off a sold-out Friday night at Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Fest. Performing at 6:30 before a rather sparse audience on the Budweiser Stage, the gospel choir performed a capella or — rather disappointingly — over pre-recorded instrumental tracks. The Associates’ lackluster and poorly attended performance only confirmed the awkwardness of gospel music at an outdoor rock festival. The group ended its show by bringing out a teen group called the Cathedral Christian Steppers and a rapper and had the kids dance to a hip-hop gospel number called “All About Him.”

At 7:45 the North Mississippi Allstars performed before a huge crowd at the Autozone Stage, the event’s largest performance space. The crowd may have rivaled the sold-out Mid-South Coliseum shows the Allstars played last fall opening for Georgia jam band Widespread Panic as the largest hometown crowd the band has ever performed for. And the Allstars were in fine form. Bassist Chris Chew wore a bright red Cincinnati Reds baseball cap, its “C” logo fitting the man’s name. During the portion of the performance I saw, the band stuck to material from its only album to date, “Shake Hands With Shorty,” running through blues classics like “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” and a guitar-solo riddled “Po Black Maddie.” The Allstars then brought out R.L. Burnside’s grandson Gary for a spirited take on “Goin’ Down South.”

As I was leaving the Allstars show, they were launching into their version of the sly Furry Lewis classic “K.C. Jones” just as Keith Sykes was playing Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine” on the Budweiser Stage. The blues, on this night, were in full effect even outside the blues tent.

Local metal-band-made-good Saliva took to the Budweiser Stage at around 9:00 after a ridiculously interminable set-up and a silly and mostly indecipherable taped intro. Lead singer Josey Scott was decked out in a white suit while the rest of the band wore black. Scott worked the crowd like a Vegas pro, introducing the song “Superstar” by saying to the hometown crowd, “I wanna thank you for making me . . . a superstar!” It was the exact same schtick he used at a New Daisy show earlier this year. The band opened their set with energetic takes on songs from their debut album, Every Six Seconds – “Click, Click, Boom,” “Superstar,” “The World is After Me.” Rhythm guitarist Chris Dabaldo bounded around the stage and Scott informed the hyped crowd that he’d turned 29 yesterday and had come home to have a big party.

It has been said that bands get the crowds they deserve. If that’s true then apparently Saliva deserved drunken frat-boys trying to slam dance and encouraging women to “show your tits” – some of whom were happy to oblige.

After a few Saliva songs I wondered back to the AutoZone Stage where the legendary Ike Turner was leading his 9-piece Kings of Rhythm and Blues though a few blues standards. Turner was playing guitar and wearing a black suit and hat. The crowd was large, but most of them seemed disinterested. They were likely staking out a spot for the next act on that stage, the Dave Matthews Band.

Turner sat down at the piano for a rollicking take on his trademark “Rocket 88” and after that climactic moment I decided it was a good time to head back to Budweiser to see what Saliva was up to. Walking away from Autozone into a swarm of people heading towards it for the Dave Matthews set, I was hit with déja vu. Then I remembered – it was just last years that I was walking away from the same stage as hordes of Widespread Panic fans were descending.

Back at Bud, Saliva’s Scott was introducing the band’s final song, the current hit single “Your Disease,” with the perhaps unwise, Limp Bizkit-like comment, “this is your last chance to break stuff.” After the song, Scott left the stage by saying, “Memphis, you fucking rock. We love you.”

The F*****g Champs

Both dabblers and die-hard fans of underground metal will have a hearty palette to pick from this weekend when the first Mid-South MetalFeast is held at Last Place on Earth. A Friday, Saturday, and Sunday lineup (beginning in the afternoon on the weekend days) promises to deliver the goods in death metal, post-grindcore, metalcore, spazzcore, and er “sludgenoise.” Okay, so you see why I prefer the innocuous yet more appropriate term “underground metal.” And in case you haven’t ascertained this yet, the “metal” in MetalFeast means metal. It has very little to do with the loud pop music that saturated late-’80s MTV or with Renaissance fair regulars updating ’70s prog rock.

Friday night headliners Immolation have been around for 12-plus years, hammering away at a distinct black-metal/death-metal sound since before death metal sat next to the riot grrl movement on The Jenny Jones Show. Coming up alongside better-known contemporaries Cannibal Corpse, the New York City band’s more sporadic output and, well, better sound have unjustly caused them to fly under most metal radars. But they are definitely worth checking out in a day and age when most decade-plus “death-metal” careers end up sounding like bad new age.

Another reason to get out of the house for Friday’s lineup is Epoch of Unlight, a local band whose own black-metal/death-metal hybrid and full-length album for Pasadena’s End Records — a metal label that boasts an international roster — have deservedly garnered them positive national attention. The band recorded a second record for End last December, and hopefully that forthcoming release will give Epoch an even wider following in the metal community. Those privy to the mind-shattering live show put on by Today Is the Day will want to check out Mastodon, since they contain the rhythm section for Today Is the Day’s In The Eyes Of God tour and album. Or maybe you’ll just want to check them out because they have the greatest metal band name EVER.

It looks as though Saturday evening’s lineup will prove to be the weekend’s high-water mark. New Orleans is giving us a huge pummeling mess in the form of Eyehategod and Soilent Green. The former’s semi-legendary live set is a fine remedy to wasting your money on a DAT-backed Black Sabbath concert performance, especially since they deliver a wall-of-shit millennium version of Sabbath with nary a whiff of the revivalist rhetoric so common in the current “stoner-rock” scene. Soilent Green will headline the evening with their patented Molly Hatchet-meets-grindcore sound, as people explode on stage behind an 18-octave-vocal-range uh attack.

But most importantly, Saturday night’s lineup features the festival’s can’t-miss band, the Fucking Champs. The Champs exist entirely outside of the metal underground yet are greeted with irony by the indie-rock scenesters that they usually have to play for. But this band does not make ironic music. Is it funny? In that they have a sense of humor about their work, yes, it’s funny. People who are unable to let great music speak for itself will be left making dumb comparisons (“har har, they sound like Hanoi Rocks,” nudge nudge). The Fucking Champs possess a vast knowledge of music, metal and otherwise, as their records make plain. At a Champs show, spectators must be open to embracing an often metallic form of instrumental music that is much more fun than the staunch in-joke-isms enjoyed by Trans Am — a frequent and misguided post-rock comparison.

Some have come to the Fucking Champs by way of guitarist Tim Green, the only member of the revered D.C. punk band Nation Of Ulysses who decided not to make faux soul music with a band of human props (see the Make Up, or don’t). Green has also been moonlighting as an increasingly prolific producer/engineer, having manned the boards for the Melvins’ Maggot/Bootlicker/Crybaby trilogy and a Sleater Kinney release or two. Lesser histories suffice for the rest of the band, but Josh Soete led the untouchable one-shot Weakling through a double album of transcendent black metal before disbanding them to focus on the Fucking Champs.

For the Fucking Champs, two 1994 demo tapes graced with the eye-catching titles Songs For Films About Rock and Bad Recording LIVE!! launched a discography that was to cause the nodding and scratching of heads for the next six years — usually the same heads. In 1997, the more than 400-minute Home Taping Is Music (Frenetic Records) dropped on unsuspecting ears like a ’90s version of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music as if simultaneously interpreted by early Rush and New Order. This recently reissued opus defined the Champs’ (as they were called at the time) modus operandi: Thin Lizzy, Carcass, Steve Reich, Iron Maiden, Giorgio Moroder, and OMD all mix and mingle on Home Taping, as well as the band’s latest, IV (Drag City). The Fucking Champs will be playing at 9:15 p.m. sharp, and coupled with the rest of the roster, Saturday night may turn out to be this year’s local live-music landmark.

Origin and Catastrophic provide notable Sunday night closure to an exhausting weekend. Catastrophic were brought together by Trevor Peres, static guitarist for the now-defunct Florida death-metal band Obituary. Origin, like Soilent Green, call the lofty Relapse label home and seem to have perfected some spazz-out bastardization of death metal to boot. If any of this sparks your interest, then get off the couch and help put Memphis on the metal map.

The Mid-South MetalFeast

Friday-Sunday, April 27th-29th

Last Place on Earth

music notes

by CHRIS HERRINGTON

Book It

This Friday, April 27th, boasts a couple of competing music-related book signings, both scheduled for 5 to 6:30 p.m. At Burke’s Book Store in Midtown, British critic and historian Michael Gray will be signing copies of Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan (Continuum, $35). This third edition of Gray’s Dylan tome — an in-depth critical analysis, not a bio — weighs in at 918 pages, adding 75 percent new material since the 1981 publication of the book’s second edition. I haven’t read all 918 pages, but I have read enough to have my quibbles with Gray’s outlook and appreciate the intelligence and scope of the work.

From my perspective, Gray seems overly concerned with Dylan’s literary merit, a defensive bent that would seem to convey too little appreciation for pop music as a forum for great art. (The book actually has a chapter called “Dylan and Rock Music” — can you imagine a book on Chuck Berry having a chapter called “Berry and Rock Music”?) And, while Gray is far from sycophantic in his analysis of Dylan’s music, his Dylan-centric perspective still inspires some questionable hyperbole, such as Blood On the Tracks as “without doubt the best album of the Seventies” (I’d go either Exile On Main Street or The Clash, actually) and the recently released Live 1966 as “the most enthralling, truthful, priceless concert performance ever issued by a great artist” (I’m not much on live records, but I’ll take James Brown’s Live At the Apollo, Vol. 1 and Jerry Lee Lewis’ Live At the Star Club). But, nit-picking aside, after Paul Williams’ Performing Artist series and Greil Marcus’ Invisible Republic, this is the most impressive Dylan book I’ve laid eyes on.

While Gray is addressing the Dylan faithful at Burke’s, Oxford, Mississippi, writer Steve Cheseborough, who has written for Living Blues and Blues Access magazines, will be at Davis-Kidd to promote his new book, Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues (University Press of Mississippi, $18). Blues Traveling is a handsomely packaged travel guide for blues aficionados, full of detailed maps and good photos. Outside of a 20-page opening section on Memphis and brief stops in West Memphis and Helena, the book sticks exclusively to Mississippi, working its way down to Vicksburg and Jackson and over to Oxford and Tupelo. And the information is very up-to-date, with the Memphis section providing the new location for the Center for Southern Folklore and information on the artists who play there, as well as a mention of Robert Belfour’s Sunday night gigs at Murphy’s.

Best bet this week has to be an intriguing night of hip-hop DJs at Young Avenue Deli on Friday, April 20th. Local Memphix Records and the Bay Area’s Stones Throw Records are coming together for the first of what Memphix says will be other funk and hip-hop shows in town. Memphix DJs Chase and Red-Eye Jedi will be spinning. Stones Throw will be represented by Miles Tackett, who leads the highly regarded, nine-piece Los Angeles hip-hop and funk band the Breakestra, and Egon, a DJ with Nashville roots who currently manages the label. Stones Throw, which released last year’s underground cult fave The Unseen by rapper Quasimoto, is a label founded by Bay Area DJ Peanut Butter Wolf.

Singer-songwriter Mark Selby has penned hit songs for country stars the Dixie Chicks, Wynonna, and Trisha Yearwood, but as a solo performer he goes for more of a blues-rock sound. The Nashville-based Selby has been through town a lot lately, trying to build support for his recent solo debut, More Storms Comin’. He’ll be at Newby’s on Friday, April 20th, with the Zach Myers Band, giving fans of the genre two versions of blues-rock: one centered on songs (Selby) and one centered on flashy guitar (Myers). — Chris Herrington

One of these things just doesn’t belong here; one of these things just isn’t the same. First, we have Memphis’ own punk-a-blues band (with occasional hip-hop flavoring) The Porch Ghouls. Next, we have Little Rock’s Go Fast, a band that takes loud, scorching Southern rock to new extremes (and does a mighty fine cover of Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down” to boot). For raw redneck power filtered through a Fu Manchu, rendered totally shirtless, and fueled by a mighty beer gut, this band is hard, nay, impossible to top. Lastly, we have Syrup, a group of giant Floridians (each well over 6 feet tall) who might actually be able to make the boys of Go Fast look like a bunch of ukulele-picking sissies. These guys take scorching ’70s-style rock to new and sometimes quite unexpected extremes. Rumor has it that it was their performance that prompted the Subteens Mark Akin to disrobe at a recent show — so as not to disappear entirely after Syrup tore the house down. To be perfectly frank, I’ve no idea what the Porch Ghouls are doing on this bill. Actually, I do: The Ghouls’ El Dorado Del Rey cut his teeth in the same Florida scene as Syrup, so they’re buds, but still, they might just get blown off the stage. Then again, when a band that’s as much fun as the Porch Ghouls has the potential of being blown off the stage, you know you are in for one hell of a fine show. Check it out at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, April 21st.

And, of course, Earth Day is this week and there is no better way to celebrate that peculiar pot-party-cum-holiday than with the red-eyed Joint Chiefs, who’ll be bustin’ out all the dope-rock at the Map Room on Friday, April 20th. Revel to “Bong Queen”; rejoice to “Superdragon 69”; get lost in “Mr. Freedom”; and remember, it’s “Gas, Grass, or Ass,” because nobody rides for free.

— Chris Davis