Category: Music

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Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Malaco recording artist and blues legend Little Milton will
bring his band to the Center for Southern Folklore on Saturday, May 12th.
Advance tickets are $20, $25 at the door. This is the most high-profile show
at the center since reopening at Peabody Place last year, and center regulars
The Fieldstones and The Daddy Mack Blues Band will open
the show to make it that much more special.

There’s more than enough in this issue about the Guided By Voices
show this week at Last Place on Earth. But openers Creeper Lagoon are a
damn good reason to show up early for the May 15th show. This San Francisco-
based alt-rock band released their sophomore album, Take Back the Universe
and Give Me Yesterday, a few weeks ago, and it finds impressively sunny
middleground between the noisy indie rock of Pavement and the spirited arena
rock of Everclear.– Chris Herrington

The names of the clubs have changed, but other than that it feels
exactly like 1995 all over again. The Clears’ eccentric geometrist Shelby
Bryant played the Hi-Tone Café last Sunday, and Bob Pollard, the pop
bard of beer, bongs, and imaginary avionics, is bringing the never-ending
Guided By Voices rockathon to Last Place on Earth on Tuesday, May 15th
(see feature, page 54). Situated in between shows by these bright lights from
the heyday of indie rock are The Grifters, who will be playing Last
Place on Earth, Saturday, May 12th, with Califone.

Now you might think that there is nothing that we can say about
this group of art rockers (with the emphasis on rockers) that hasn’t been said
both before and better by former Flyer scribe John Floyd during the
group’s most productive, volatile, and amazingly influential period. And up
until this particular point in time you would have been correct. But in
addition to playing hits like “Bronze Cast” and “Get Out of
That Spaceship and Fight Like a Man,” the Grifters will be using this
show to test out a whole new body of original material. Jared McStay, the
driving force behind the Simpletones (Simple Ones, Simple One, etc.), will be
joining the band on guitar, allowing co-front man Dave Shouse to take on
keyboard duty. In other words, if you didn’t think it was possible for the
Grifters sound to get any bigger, well, you’ve got another think coming.

If you are interested in seeing a group of truly inspired folk-
punks whose oeuvre owes much to the Clash but in the end makes those angry
Brits sound like a bunch of sullen fussbudgets, then This Bike Is a Pipe
Bomb is the band to see. The last time This Bike was in town the group
befriended the boys from Lucero and they ended up playing an impromptu show
together at the Buccaneer. This time around they’ll be at the Map Room, their
regular Memphis venue, on Thursday, May 10th, with Pezz. But that may
very well turn out to be merely the first show of this hard-working band’s
evening. — Chris Davis

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

As its title might indicate, The Facts of Life is a concept
album about sex. But unlike Let’s Get It On or, well, pretty much any
Prince record, celebrating carnal pleasure isn’t its primary point. Instead,
this British band has crafted a complicated, caring song cycle that addresses
sex among the young and inexperienced (and demystifies sex for the
young and inexperienced) from several angles, including the physical
difficulty of the act itself.

In terms of music and attitude, Black Box Recorder splits the
difference between archetypal, femme-fronted, trip-hop bands such as
Everything But the Girl and Portishead and the more lyrically pointed Brit-
rock of Pulp. The musical masterminds behind the group are Luke Haines of the
Auteurs and John Moore of the Jesus and Mary Chain, who craft minimalist
keyboard-based pop with subtle dub undercurrents — it’s sturdy, catchy stuff
that sounds as good on listen one as it does on listen 15, but it never draws
attention to itself. Instead singer Sarah Nixey’s voice is left up top,
putting across one whip-smart song after another. Nixey’s vocals are formal,
elegant, and considered but also convey compassion. She turns The Facts of
Life from an ethnography on the travails of teen sex to a compendium of
sisterly (or even motherly) advice.

This second Black Box Recorder album has the audacity to begin
with three straight driving/sex metaphors — each at least in the same
aesthetic ballpark as “Little Red Corvette” and a whole lot more
honest and responsible. These songs are sweet, sly, and vivid. On “The
Art of Driving,” Nixey plays a sexual beginner cooly counseling an
overeager lover: “I wish you’d learn to slow down/You might get there in
the end/Don’t think the accelerator pedal is a man’s best friend/You don’t
have to break the speed limit/You don’t have to break your neck/Another speed-
boy racer/cut out from the wreck.” “Weekend” uses a weekend
road trip as a metaphor for sexual uncertainty, Nixey swooning to her driving
companion, “Maybe this weekend [pregnant pause] maybe never.”
And “The English Motorway System” contemplates the patience and
attention that go into the journey itself.

The lovely, hushed “May Queen” dramatically yet lightly
presents the first fumbling steps of school-age romance as private pact — its
first-kiss hesitancy rhyming with the carnal finale “Goodnight Kiss”
(“Use your imagination/We can go anywhere Tonight we’ll draw
blood”). But the centerpiece is the title track, an actual hit in
England. Most of the songs, understandably, are pitched from a female
perspective, but here Nixey turns a kind eye to the plight of an adolescent
boy phoning a girl for a date: “Now’s the time to deal with the fear of
being rejected/No one gets through life without being hurt/At this point the
boy who’s listening to this song is probably saying/that it’s easier said than
done/and it’s true.”

Not every song on The Facts of Life tackles Topic A.
“Straight Life” is a sardonic take on class and domesticity
(“home improvements/in our dream home,” Nixey croons) that recalls
Roxy Music and latter-day Gang of Four. But Black Box Recorder’s measured look
at the messy reality of physical intimacy among adolescents is what makes the
album special. With kids today subjected to a constant bombardment of teen-
diva sexpots and booty videos, it’s almost a public service announcement. —
Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Catch-all, SWAG (Yep Roc Records)

SWAG is a Nashville “supergroup” composed of Robert
Reynolds and Jerry Dale McFadden, both of the now-defunct Mavericks, as well
as former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, Cheap Trick bass player Tom Petersson, and
solo artist Doug Powell. As its title suggests, their debut album is a catch-
all of such pop influences as the Beach Boys, Big Star, and the Kinks — to
name just a few — and the band relies on them very heavily for direction and
inspiration.

Songs like “I’ll Get By” and “Ride” sound
like vintage Cheap Trick, and “When She Awoke” contains some very
Beach Boyish ba-ba-bas and lush orchestration. Both Reynolds and guest singer
Scotty Huff sound eerily like White Album-era Paul McCartney on
“Near Perfect Smile” and “Different Girl,”
respectively.

But the band plays with such energy and obvious affection for
these self-penned tunes that Catch-all becomes more than just the sum
of its influences. There’s a playful inventiveness here, evident in the
harpsichord groove on “Please Don’t Tell,” the smooth harmonica that
graces “Near Perfect Smile,” and the call-and-response solo between
baritone guitar and piano on “Eight.” Such unexpected flourishes add
life to the album. This project could easily have been derivative and stiff,
but Catch-all sounds spontaneous, endearing, and heartfelt. —
Stephen Deusner

Grade: B

Do What You Want, Garageland (Foodchain Records)

On Garageland’s second album, Do What You Want, singer
Jeremy Eades sounds like a forlorn, lovesick teen, inflating everyday romantic
confusion to dramatic life-or-death proportions. In the process, he and his
three fellow New Zealanders create catchy indie pop with occasional flashes of
eloquence and wit.

Eades is a master of portraying pain through small gestures. For
example, on the deceptively laid-back “Good Morning” he invests the
simple question “How are you?” with bittersweet yearning,
concluding, “It’s a small town/I’ll probably see you around.”

But Eades isn’t the only star on Do What You Want. Andrew
Claridge’s surprisingly versatile guitar scorches and burns through songs like
“Burning Bridges” and “Love Song” and shimmers
reassuringly on quieter numbers like “Good Luck” and “Good
Morning.” His playfully funky groove gives “Kiss It All
Goodbye” its sunny mood, while “Middle of the Evening” hinges
on his aching, echoing solo. There are a few moments, as on “What You
Gonna Do?,” when Claridge overpowers Eades’ vocals, upsetting the
otherwise appealing balance.

On the whole, the peaks on Do What You Want are higher
than the lows are low. It’s a fine album, uneven and a little misguided at
times, but it succeeds with frequent bursts of charm and insight. —
SD

Grade: B

Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal (Columbia/Legacy)

The second half of the 20th century saw numerous blues revivals.
The one that happened in the late ’60s is particularly memorable for much of
the execrable music made live and on record. White middle-class American and
English musicians who quickly made the transition from garage bands to yowling
hippie bluesmen should probably never be forgiven for the sheer tonnage of
crap they made from 1967 to 1972. Anyone who ever suffered through a boogie-
band night at the Overton Park Shell during that period will be quite familiar
with this phenomenon.

But there were exceptions, like the Massachusetts guitarist,
singer, blues historian and popularizer Taj Mahal, who was one of the first
out of the blues-revival chute with this recently re-released 1967 debut for
Columbia. What the screechy hippies strained for he simply delivered with only
a minimum of patchouli reek. The songs recorded here were all blues
clichés even by 1967 — three by Brownsville’s Sleepy John Estes,
Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues,” Sonny Boy Williamson’s
“Checkin’ Up On My Baby,” and even the inevitable cover of Robert
Johnson’s cover of “Dust My Broom.” But what’s interesting is the
alternating playfulness and reverence Mahal brings to the performance of these
predictable old chestnuts. No, the record is not a classic by any means, but
it sure beats the hell out of Keb Mo and the entire Alligator Records catalog.
— Ross Johnson

Grade: B+

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

Categories
Music Music Features

Currently Fabulous

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

Categories
Music Music Features

BEALE STREET FRIDAY

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.”

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Music Music Features

For Those About To Rock

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.

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Music Music Features

SOUND ADVICE

One of the most enjoyable and relaxing days of live music every year has to be the Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford, Mississippi. A free, all-day festival of music, food, and arts and crafts centered on Oxford’s lovely town square, the Double Decker is a blast and will happen again this Saturday, April 28th.

Headlining the roots-music-heavy bill this year is British folk-rock legend Richard Thompson, who will be closing the festival with a solo acoustic set. An accomplished songwriter and extraordinary guitarist, Thompson has been a force since the late ’60s, when he was a founding member of Fairport Convention, sort of the British Byrds. Thompson went solo in the early ’70s and has been making well-regarded solo records ever since, with 1999’s Mock Tudor being the most recent. Arguably, though, Thompson’s greatest contribution to rock history was the music he made with his ex-wife, Linda Thompson, including two legitimate classics, 1974’s I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight and 1982’s devastating, end-of-a-marriage song cycle, Shoot Out the Lights.

But Thompson isn’t the only reason to head to Oxford this weekend. The rest of the Double Decker lineup is fairly predictable but still impressive, with North Mississippi stalwarts Blue Mountain, The North Mississippi Allstars, and ex-Neckbones front man Tyler Keith leading the way. Louisiana will also make its presence felt in the form of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Cajun institution The Hackberry Ramblers, and various members of the roots-rock supergroup the Continental Drifters — Peter Holsapple playing along with singer-songwriter Syd Straw and Drifters Susan Cowsill and Vicki Peterson performing as The Psycho Sisters.

— Chris Herrington

You must give in to my hypnotic suggestion and go see The Reigning Sound at the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, April 28th. This band is, without a doubt, the best new band to emerge in Memphis in more years than I can count. Greg Oblivian, the frenzied singer and guitarist for both the Oblivians and the Compulsive Gamblers, fronts this garage-influenced country-soul outfit which also boasts Alex Green, a founding member of Big Ass Truck, on keys and rhythm guitar; Greg Robertson, who produced the compilation Memphis in the Meantime, on drums; and relative newcomer to the Memphis scene Jeremy Scott, from the New Jersey band Maximum Jack, on bass. Their sound is almost impossible to describe, but not because it is unusual in any way. It’s difficult to describe because it is such a potent combination of so many relatively ordinary styles. Imagine a post-punk version of the Byrds and you’ll maybe get some idea of what it is that the Reigning Sound does so very well. While Greg Oblivian’s previous projects have been volatile homages to ’50s and ’60s pop filtered through two decades of punk, the Reigning Sound gives voice to his, until now, less obvious inspiration — folk rock. He’s perhaps the only performer in Memphis who is every bit as convincing singing sweetly sincere ballads as he is screaming, “I’m not a sicko/there’s a plate in my head.” If you have even the slightest interest in contemporary Memphis music, you simply must see these guys.

— Chris Davis

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Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

A Man Under the Influence

Alejandro Escovedo

(Bloodshot Records)

Relief is something that seldom comes easy for the battered souls who populate the work of Alejandro Escovedo, the most masterful essayist of all things melancholy to come along since Townes Van Zandt. More times than not, relief never comes at all: Instead, men stagger to bed alone, drunk with desolation, booze, and fear; women fight futilely with loneliness and rejection and work hard to cope with their youth becoming something gray and cracked but not yet forgotten; confusion and disappointment run rampant through their lives, haunting the days and ravaging the nights. Escovedo’s husky tenor offers little in the way of respite, and the naggingly morose strings with which he adorns his bleak character studies only emphasize the torment that bites at his sad cast of players.

On A Man Under the Influence, his first proper longplayer since 1996’s With These Hands, Escovedo hasn’t exactly found a place in this world that’s all shiny and happy; death, displacement, and shattered love and dreams blow through the songs like tear gas. But there’s a sense of hope and faith in life, love, and self forget the odds at hand that underpins its best songs. In “Castanets,” he’s dogged by the love of a woman he admits he likes best when she’s not around, and he drives his conviction home on a roaring riff that could demolish at least half of Exile On Main Street. In “Rhapsody” the kind of song you know upon first listen would be a hit if the world were a better place he’s already lost the one who never should’ve gotten away. But rather than mourn what’s lost, he sounds convincingly content with living with the memory, not wallowing in the loss.

Maybe that’s because Escovedo has turned his eye to a loss that transcends mere romance and strikes at the heart of his heritage. The highlights of A Man Under the Influence are pulled from his new play By the Hand of the Father, an extended ode to his family’s Hispanic heritage and the inherent hardships they endured as immigrants in the States. It’s a subject that’s driven some of his finest work including “Ballad of the Sun and the Moon,” “Nickel and a Spoon,” and “With These Hands” and it dominates his latest release even though only two songs are featured from the theatrical work.

They’re great ones, though. “Wave” details the tragedy of migration, the crushing hardship and displacement that most often awaits anyone who manages to cross the border without the ultimate face-off with an unfriendly floodlight. “Rosalie,” meanwhile, is a love letter both written and sung from one side of the border to the other a testimonial of love and endurance in the face of change, turbulence, and anguish, a flag of faith that is weathered but still standing. As the song builds dramatically to its finish, the pedal steel collapsing on a bed of acoustic guitar and plush bass, the incessant incantation “I love you, Rosalie” almost brings redemption to all the sorrowed lives Escovedo has written about in the past. Like everything on A Man Under the Influence, it is a moment of triumph, a thing of unspeakable beauty. John Floyd

Grade: A

Alejandro Escovedo will be at the Hi-Tone Café on Tuesday, May 1st.

Forever Changes

Love

(Elektra Traditions/Rhino)

What to make of a mixed-race rock band based in Los Angeles in the mid-’60s that called itself Love? Recorded in that vaunted summer of ’67, and remastered and re-released this year, Forever Changes‘ combination of unpredictable melodic themes, orchestrated acoustic rock textures, Memphian Arthur Lee’s quirky and gorgeous vocals, and his often unsettling lyrics had no precedent at the time. Lee was a black man who often sang in a voice that sounded almost comically white. He played with audience expectations of what a black man playing rock-and-roll should sound and look like, opting for a singing voice that shifted easily from effete art rock to Bo Diddley rave-ups. Sonically, the record is unique in its very sparing use of electric guitar. This was a departure for a guitar-laden time when it seemed that every rock guitarist alternated between distorted Claptonesque leads or leaden wah-wah pedal meandering. An unadorned acoustic guitar in 1967 was something of a radical proposition. Love did not have a virtuoso instrumentalist, so they concentrated on songwriting and performance in the studio. They also had an aversion to touring, which kept them from achieving the same prominence as Elektra label-mates the Doors.

So Love never became rock stars and, for all practical purposes, were finished by 1970’s False Start. Arthur Lee went on to a patchy solo career plagued by personal demons and currently is serving time in a California prison on a weapons charge. Rhino has done the usual solid job here by including outtakes, demos, alternate mixes, and hard-to-find singles in this re-release package, but the liner notes by former rock critic Ben Edmonds are a little too softcore and revisionist for a band that blew a massive talent in a big way. Edmonds tends toward hippie nostalgia in a way that Arthur Lee and Love never did. Forever Changes just might be the only cultural artifact from the Summer of Love worth keeping. Ross Johnson

Grade: A

Wandering Strange

Kate Campbell

(Eminent Records)

This long-awaited gospel album from Kate Campbell is a real joy. I haven’t heard anything this funky and quintessentially Southern in a gospel album for a long time (a few things Ray Charles did spring to mind). With a good chunk of original tunes, a few artful covers, and some soulful reworkings of Victorian and earlier hymns, Campbell delivers more of the Southern Gothic character for which she’s renowned. Recorded at the venerable Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Wandering Strange boasts electric guitar and organ trills that add a wonderfully authentic sound to these classic tunes. The daughter of a Mississippi preacher, Campbell absorbed gospel music practically through osmosis, singing in her daddy’s church from an early age. At the same time she was listening to ’70s soul out of Muscle Shoals and Memphis, as well as Southern rock and pop. Wandering Strange is a vivid amalgam of all these influences Southern to the core but universal in its yearning. Campbell’s original tunes, to her credit, stand proudly side by side with antique hymns she transforms into something of her own.

Wandering Strange kicks off with a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The House You Live In.” “Come Thou Fount,” with lyrics penned in 1758, is resurrected with mandolin and spirited electric guitar flourishes. Campbell’s pellucid vocals are perfectly suited to her otherworldly reworking of the early-19th century tune “The Prodigal.” My favorite cut, “The Last Song,” sounds like something straight out of the Hi Records stable, with that signature organ sound and lush, emotive background singers. (Cindy Walker and Ava Aldridge, who sang behind Aretha Franklin on several classics, provide back-up.) And, appropriately enough, Campbell finishes the record with a hidden track, a song Elvis recorded, “Miracle of the Rosary.” It was an oddly mystical song for a poor Baptist boy from Mississippi to cover but entirely fitting in the context of this wonderful, soulful album. n Lisa Lumb

Grade: A-

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

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

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

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron: A Collection of Poetry and Music

Gil Scott-Heron

(TVT)

Dropping his charismatic, rhythmic patter over bluesy piano and laid-back beats, Gil Scott-Heron was as much proto-hip hop as anybody. A political radical inspired by the multi-dimensional artistry of icons Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes, Scott-Heron took his Tennessee blues background (he was raised in Jackson) up North, bringing Southern soul (and a casual wit) to coffee-house culture and cultivating a politicized jazz-soul sound that fit in nicely among contemporaries such as the Last Poets, Parliament-Funkadelic, and the then-nascent reggae scene.

Today, Scott-Heron sounds like an obvious godfather to politically inclined, cool-jazz hip-hop heads such as Common, Dead Prez, and Mos Def. That connection gives a commercial peg to the recent Scott-Heron reissue series undertaken by TVT, but the truth is that Scott-Heron’s recorded output was hit-or-miss in his own time and so much of his music was so of-the-moment that it can’t help sounding hopelessly dated today. Right?

Well, The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron is a collection of spoken-word pieces originally released in 1978 that covers the post-Watergate climate of 1973-1978, and part of what makes the collection viable as an early 2001 reissue is how oddly relevant it is to the current political climate.

“H2O Gate Blues” — which opens with the great Public Enemy-sampled line, “I’m sorry, the government you have elected is inoperative” — portrays an America where “faith is drowning beneath that cesspool, Watergate.” But remove the proper names and portions of it could have been written yesterday. If you didn’t already know, what would you guess the following lyrics were about? “How much more evidence do the citizens need/That the election was sabotaged by trickery and greed?/And, if this is so, and who we got didn’t win/Let’s do the whole goddamn election over again!” And then there’s Scott-Heron’s “endless list that won’t be missed when at last America is purged,” which, in this 1973 performance, includes Strom Thurmond.

And, for equal opportunity outrage, there’s a sequel that also speaks clearly to our present quagmire: “We Beg Your Pardon America (Pardon Our Analysis),” a diatribe against Nixon’s pardon where the palpable disgust at the way the pardon system benefits the rich (no pun intended) is, of course, equally vital today. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Richland Woman Blues

Maria Muldaur

(Stony Plain Records)

Most people associate Maria Muldaur with her ’70s hit, “Midnight at the Oasis.” With her breathy siren whisper, long black tresses, and doe-eyed gypsy persona, she was the earth mother personified. Richland Woman Blues marks the first time she’s done an album totally devoted to the seminal blues of the ’20s and ’30s. She was inspired to create this powerful work by a trip to Memphis she made a few years back, when she got down and dirty singing with a group of street musicians in a Beale Street alley, much as Memphis Minnie herself did. A later trip down the road to Walls, Mississippi, to visit that venerable blueswoman’s grave sparked a desire to record these songs from the early masters.

On this, her 25th album, Muldaur’s wispy warble has deepened and blossomed into a robust sexy mama growl that sounds like she was born to sing this amazing music. Accompanied by some of today’s finest blues artists, Muldaur gives rich readings of these classics — some well-known cuts, some culled from obscure field recordings, but gems one and all. As a young woman in New York City in the ’60s, she was lucky enough to hear and sometimes play with some of these legendary performers, and it shows in her sensitive but faithful renderings of the songs. Favorites include Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “It’s a Blessing,” with slide guitar and soul-sister vocals by Bonnie Raitt; Blind Willie Johnson’s enigmatic “Soul of a Man,” accompanied by Taj Mahal’s signature Billy Goat Gruff vocals and guitar; and Roy Rogers’ fabulous fingerpicking on Memphis Minnie’s “In My Girlish Days.”

With Richland Woman Blues, Maria Muldaur establishes herself as a serious blues artist in her own right and pays homage to the hard-living and hard-dying men and women whose blood, sweat, and tears are immortalized in this vital American art form.

— Lisa Lumb

Grade: B+

Dog In the Sand

Frank Black & The Catholics

(What Are Records?)

If anyone in the history of post-punk ever needed a break, critically speaking, it’s Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis/Frank Black). Ever since his groundbreaking and endlessly influential rock band the Pixies broke up in 1993 and Thompson embarked on his more conventional-sounding solo career, he’s repeatedly been called a has-been and his records everything from disappointing to “pointless.” But for all its differences with his admittedly more important work with the Pixies, the Frank Black catalog has some incredibly pleasing rock-and-roll moments, with more than a few of those on his latest record, Dog In the Sand.

Dog In the Sand has a more relaxed and fully developed sound than the previous two albums Black recorded with his band, the Catholics. This is thanks to more varied instrumentation, played by a much bigger lineup, one that includes two of Black’s oldest associates, Joey Santiago and Eric Drew Feldman. Santiago, who played lead guitar in the Pixies, turns up on four tracks, including the epic “Robert Onion,” one of the album’s most rocking tracks. Feldman, a former member of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band and Pere Ubu and who worked with Black on his first three solo albums, serves as the group’s keyboardist. His presence is particularly valuable on tunes like “I’ve Seen Your Picture,” where his thick, throbbing electric piano helps plunge the ballad into the depths of true melancholy.

Though it may not pack as much immediate wallop as the Pixies or his two previous, much rawer, Catholics records, Dog In the Sand proves to be a very rewarding record upon repeated listenings and may end up being one of Black’s finest solo efforts. — J.D. Reager

Grade: A-

Vanguard

Finley Quaye

(Epic)

Throughout this second album Finley Quaye keeps one foot planted firmly in reggae while he forays into several other genres. But at some point his emphasis on diversity becomes a liability, resulting in an off-putting lack of focus and cohesion. Songs like “Spiritualized” and “When I Burn Off Into the Distance” sound like a more polished Ben Harper, while “Chad Valley” skitters about on spoken-word non sequiturs and fuzzed-out house dance beats. Sadly, Quaye never gets too far below the surface of rock or dance. He re-creates their sounds effectively, but he displays no knowledge of how or why they work.

Vanguard sounds best when Quaye sticks to reggae pop at its purest. On the opener, “Broadcast,” his seemingly off-the-cuff lyrics about green peas and footwear are compelling in their rhythm and sound more than in their meaning. And in “Burning” Quaye tosses out absurd come-ons reminiscent of Prince’s “Kiss” — “You got to have humor,” he sings, “to stand the rumor /You got to be jolly.” Moments like these — together with the album’s occasionally breezy flow — portray Quaye as an accomplished reggae musician. Unfortunately, he’s still a student of most other genres. Maybe by his third album, he’ll have either dropped the dilettante pretensions or have mastered them a little more completely. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C+

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

Categories
Music Music Features

Still Going Strong

It was rock’s Reformation. That’s what critic Eric Weisbard claims about punk in the May issue of Spin, a well-done special issue on “25 Years of Punk” that has gained poignancy after the death last weekend of cover subject Joey Ramone. The issue was produced along with a documentary — All Access: 25 Years of Punk — which will debut this week on VH1, Thursday, April 19th, at 9 p.m.

Who’d have thought back when the Ramones were chanting about “beating on the brat” and Johnny Rotten was proclaiming “no future” that punk would one day be respectable enough to have its history recounted in a glossy national magazine and be celebrated by a television network once the adult contemporary answer to MTV? But this post-alternative pop climate — where decidedly non-punk genres like metal and teen pop and jam-rock are ascendant — is an ideal time to gauge the continuing vitality of a form (a philosophy? a spirit?) that, in Weisbard’s words, changed rock-and-roll from a fact to a question.

Weisbard’s first-rate essay makes some compelling claims for the music. Weisbard writes about the importance of preserving the parallel music-biz network that punk fostered — that loose affiliation of record stores, indie labels, alternative media outlets, clubs, and (college and public) radio stations that cultivated most of the best rock music of the last decade, and I couldn’t agree more. But the most interesting claim Weisbard makes is this: “For rockers, punk touches every decision a musician now makes, because to play contemporary rock without punk feeling has become as musically bankrupt as for a jazz musician to play without blues feeling. Punk is the bedrock you leap up from.”

This is a rather contentious statement, and while I believe there are plenty of exceptions, I still think there’s a lot of truth here. In fact, that statement hints at the deeper element of punk’s impact that Weisbard doesn’t even mention, perhaps because he’s such an alt-bred critic that he takes it for granted and assumes Spin‘s readership does as well. But it’s worth noting nonetheless: Most people who came of musical age prior to the late ’70s don’t really get this and, as hard as it is to fathom, a lot of people who came of musical age later don’t either, but the contemporary revolutions of punk and hip hop in the late ’70s were every bit as important as the rock-and-roll and soul music revolutions of the mid-’50s. Just as most of the vital pop music of the ’60s and ’70s was born out of what Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and Ray Charles did in the ’50s, most of the vital pop of the last 20 years was informed by punk and hip hop. Older forms endure, of course: Just as great jazz and blues and country records continued to be made after the birth of rock and soul, great “classic” rock records have continued to be made after punk and hip hop. But make no mistake. It is punk and hip hop that have most clearly defined who we are for the last two decades.

And, on the punk side of the equation, no record right now testifies to that enduring impact as much as the eponymous debut album from Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards. Alternating radical anthems with first-person tales of growing up punk in the late ’70s and ’80s, Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards might as well be subtitled “25 Years of Punk.”

Frederiksen is a guitarist/singer for Rancid, and since this “side project” was produced by Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong and all the originals were co-written by Frederiksen and Armstrong, it might as well be a new Rancid record. Taken as such, it’s better than the band’s last offering, the too-hard-edged 2000 Rancid.

Weisbard writes that punk is now “a way of life for some, a caricature to most others, and a surprisingly enduring pop force regardless.” He may as well be writing about Rancid specifically rather than punk generally. With the band’s stereotypical Mohawks-and-tattoos look and retro Clash-like sound, Rancid aren’t a particularly hip taste, but they’ve managed to develop into a surprisingly enduring pop force regardless, turning themselves into one of the best rock-and-roll bands of the last half-decade.

If Rancid’s criminally neglected 1998 opus, Life Won’t Wait, was, as one critic colleague insisted, the most ambitious punk record since the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, then this shorter, sharper shock of a record might be the most warmly nostalgic punk record since Double Nickels on the Dime. With a more limber, spacious, and accessible sound than the last Rancid record, the best songs on Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards bring out Rancid’s alway-present Springsteenian sense of rock-and-roll grandeur. With coming-of-age tales like “Six Foot Five,” “Campbell, CA,” and especially the ferocious take on Billy Bragg’s “To Have and Have Not,” the band has produced songs almost as moving as classics like the Clash’s “Stay Free,” the Minutemen’s “History Lesson, Pt. II,” and um Springsteen’s “No Surrender”? As Frederiksen takes a look back at his own 25 years-plus of punk, he makes it sound like a life well-lived.

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

music notes

by CHRIS HERRINGTON

McCarthy Screening/New Film Series

Local exploitation film auteur John Michael McCarthy will be making an in-store appearance at Black Lodge Video on Saturday, April 21st. The store will be screening two of his works — the recent Superstarlet A.D. and another of the filmmaker’s choosing — and McCarthy will be discussing his work. McCarthy’s appearance will coincide with the store’s unveiling of a special section devoted to local filmmakers. The event is scheduled for 9 p.m.

In related news, Black Lodge has also struck an agreement with downtown rock club Last Place on Earth to host cult film screenings on Wednesday nights. The first screening is tentatively scheduled for April 25th and according to Black Lodge co-owner Matthew Martin will likely feature a double bill of the animated classic Fritz the Cat and recent art-house hit Requiem for a Dream. Admission to screenings will be free.

Earth Day Lineup

The 14th annual Overton Park Earth Day celebration happens this weekend, with 16 bands and assorted speakers and activities spread out over Saturday, April 21st, and Sunday, April 22nd. Saturday’s schedule runs from noon to 10:30 p.m. and Sunday’s runs from 2 to 10 p.m. The band schedule is as follows. Saturday: Son of Soil, Blue Jazz, Jazz Midgets, Yard Sale, Seven $ Sox, the Gabe and Amy Show, Native Son, Instant Corndog, and the Joint Chiefs. Sunday: Phil and T., Healing Drum, CYC, Accidental Mersh, Speakeasy, FreeWorld, and Yamagata. Admission is free. For more information call 726-1473.

The King Is Back

B.B. King makes a rare appearance at his eponymous club on Beale Street this week. The Beale Street Blues Boy will play four shows, performing sets at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., respectively, on Monday, April 23rd, and Tuesday, April 24th. General-admission tickets are $35 with a $100 price tag for reserved seating and dinner.

New Releases

Significant new records expected to hit the racks this week:

Elvis Costello — The Very Best of (Rhino)

Creeper Lagoon — Take Back the Universe (DreamWorks)

Emmylou Harris — Anthology: The Warner/Reprise Years (Rhino)

Gram Parsons — Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels: The Gram Parsons Anthology (Rhino)

Tom Russell — Borderland (HMG)

Unwound — Leaves Turn Inside You (Kill Rock Stars)