Tag: Antenna Club

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Music Record Reviews

The Subteens Get Out Alive — and Then Some

It’s quite appropriate that the return of the Subteens, via their first album in 18 years, is happening just as the Indie Memphis Film Festival celebrates the ten year anniversary of Antenna, the documentary on the famed club of the same name. But that’s not because the Subteens played there — they formed the same year the fabled venue was shuttered. It’s more because that group has perfected a sound that somehow defines not only the Antenna Club but the whole bedrock ethos of Midtown Memphis rock and roll.

I call it that “Bastards of Young” sound, after the classic Replacements song: big, broad, propulsive anthems, driving riffs, and soaring solos that offer portraits from an underground community teetering between hope, exultation, rage, and despair. It’s a huge, pounding rock sound carried on by diverse bands here, from those Antenna Club godfathers, the Modifiers, to the Psychic Plowboys, to Neighborhood Texture Jam, and beyond.

A band need not sound like the Replacements to capture that sound, as the Subteens demonstrate. Rather, they have a few extra dollops of the Damned or the Ramones, with those bands’ tighter focus and lack of drunken antics. The Subteens — Mark Akin, John Bonds, and Jay Hines — have a sound all their own, and it’s welcome news that their latest release, Vol. 4: Dashed Hopes & Good Intentions (Back to the Light), presents and preserves that sound in all its glory.

The Subteens (Credit: Back to the Light Records)

“You spend your free time running away/Now the loneliness is coming to stay, but/I believe in you/Even though you won’t hear me say it,” Mark Akin sings on side one’s closer, conjuring up a whole world of friends on the fringe, and what passes for affection among us.

There is much hard-won wisdom in these songs. “If we ever get out alive I’m going to tell you how I feel,” runs the title and first line of a personal favorite from the LP. Those awkward barriers to communication recur in this song, this time because “it’s hard to believe it’s real.” There’s a sense of leaning into one’s adulthood in these songs, despite the surreal quality of life. But here, that doesn’t sound like mellow country rock ballads. It sounds like someone stomping a hubcap back on a fixed flat and rolling on, gunning a rumbling engine of indomitable riffs.

The production is spot-on, a rock band in your face, stripped of most of the effects so readily available these days. Yet the songs are arranged with great care, the occasional background and doubled vocals helping choruses punch through. Overall, the mix favors parts that jump out with a bit of drama, as when a ripping guitar solo leaps from the speakers in “If We Ever Get Out Alive.” It’s a difficult trick to pull off without irritating the mastering engineer.

And it’s yet another sign that producer J.D. Reager is guaranteeing down to earth, imaginative, rocking good times under his Back to the Light imprint. That’s all the more true because this LP is being released alongside a solo album by Reager himself, Where Wasn’t I? But that’s another story.

Both albums will be celebrated at a double record release show at the Hi Tone, featuring the Subteens, J.D. Reager, and Seize & Desist, Friday, October 14, 9 p.m. $10.

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Music Music Blog

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64

This week the Memphis music community was dealt another tragic blow with the death of Bob Holmes on October 16. Holmes, the lead guitarist and songwriter behind one of the city’s foundational punk rock bands, the Modifiers, as well as Angerhead, Sarah & the Eyes, and the Binghamptons, had been in declining health in recent months due to a variety of illnesses, including cancer. He was 64.

Those closest to him (myself included) were not entirely shocked when the news broke, as Holmes was unable to make a scheduled appearance with the band at B-Side for the Antenna Club historical marker dedication event earlier this month. The Modifiers even played the venue when it was known as the Well. Behind the scenes, Antenna founder Steve McGehee told me that one of his primary motivations for putting it on was to give Holmes one last chance to perform and visit with friends, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

“I swear to you, Bob inspired the whole thing,” says McGehee. “That was my main goal, getting him to play again. It’s sad that it couldn’t work out.”

It’s hard for me to put into words just how important Bob Holmes was to the Memphis music scene. Bob (I’m just going to call him “Bob” from here on out), lead singer Milford Thompson, and their rotating cast of Modifiers poured their sweat and souls into every performance, breaking ground and opening doors for every original punk/alternative band in this town that followed along the way. The band’s reputation for both hi-jinks and debauchery was legendary, but Bob was every bit as prolific and accomplished as a songwriter and musician as he was a creator of spectacle. And make no mistake about it, even up to the end, Bob could still play a mean guitar. Here’s the last live version of the Modifiers: Bob, Terrence Bishop, John Bonds and myself  – but mainly Bob  – tearing it up on the now defunct Rocket Science Audio podcast:

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64

Over the course of the band’s roughly 35 year history, the Modifiers line-up ebbed and flowed as they bounced back and forth between Memphis and Los Angeles, and members – including the famous ones like the Doors’ John Densmore, Fear’s Derf Scratch, and Big Star’s Alex Chilton – came and went quickly. But one constant was the understated brilliance of Bob Holmes. And you don’t just have to take my word for it.

“I’ll never forget meeting Bob at the Well,” says David Catching, producer and guitarist for groups like the Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age, earthlings?, and the Modifiers. “He and Alex Chilton were my first guitar heroes I could actually talk to.”

The Modifiers at the Antenna, early 80s: Bob Holmes, second from right.

Catching also posted the following on social media via his studio’s (Rancho de la Luna) twitter account: “I played with the Modifiers from 1979-1989. Bob Holmes Ohm and Milford Thompson showed me some of the greatest times of my life and taught me more about life and living than anyone. I wouldn’t be what, or where I am without them. Love always. RIP”

“Bob, was one coolest cats around,” says Chuck Roast, former Modifiers and Suburban Lawns drummer. “Quiet, strong opinions, very talented guitar player, could shred on punk and the next minute lay down some sweet heavy blues. It was great time playing with him and Milford.”

“Milford was the method actor up front, but Bob was the engine. He was the musical director,” says Ross Johnson, drummer with Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and the Modifiers, among others. “He had a tone like no one else had, I could never figure it out. Like most signature players, like Chilton or Teenie Hodges, the sound came out of his fingers. It didn’t matter what guitar he was playing on, it was the sound of Bob playing. That made him very unique.”

The Modifiers

“He was an unbelievable, out of this world guitar player. Like no other,” says John Bonds, drummer with the River City Tanlines, Subteens and Modifiers. “It was an honor and a privilege, not just to be in the band but to become friends with Bob and be a part of his circle.”

I could quote a dozen more friends and bandmates, and they would all say the same thing: Bob Holmes was and is a wildly underappreciated figure in Memphis music history, and it’s a shame he’s gone.

As for me, I’ll certainly remember Bob as a brilliant musician. As I’ve written before, he was an inspiration and mentor to me as a young guitarist. But my favorite memories of him are of us just hanging out, winding up my dad for kicks, making fun of bad television, or posing ludicrous questions to my cats. (“Are you a cat?”).  He was a good, fiercely loyal friend and I valued the time that we got to spend together.

The music of Bob and Milford and the Modifiers is very important to me, and collecting as much of it as I could consumed much of my last few years in Memphis (my wife and I relocated to Chicago in 2017). There is a vast catalog of unreleased material, and I’m hopeful it will get released sooner than later. It’s long overdue. Until then, here are two things I uploaded (with help, thank you Fred Kelly) to YouTube this afternoon to tide the world over:

1. The rarely seen/heard A-side to the Modifiers only official release, and arguably the band’s most famous song, “Roweena.” The rock stars play on this one.

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64 (2)

2. The world premiere of “Peasant,” a song Bob and I “wrote” and recorded in my living room when I was 14 using my Casio keyboard. I have only played it for two other people before this publishing. It’s pure Bob.
 

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64 (3)

RIP, my friend. Your music will live on, I promise.

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Music Music Features

Alternative History: Antenna Club Gets a Historic Marker

What do Congressman Steve Cohen, psychedelic swamp-a-billy band the Hellcats, and the Sex Pistols all have in common?

They share a connection to the Antenna club, Memphis’ first alternative venue, a music space and bar that catered to all things weird and wild in the Bluff City. Rep. Cohen was the club’s attorney, the Hellcats were one of the bands who played there. And the Sex Pistols, many Antenna patrons agree, fired the shot that helped kick off the enterprise.

The Antenna opened in 1981 and closed in 1995; in its place now are an event rental space and the new Crab ‘N Go restaurant. But the storied Madison Avenue venue will get its due this Saturday, October 5th, with the unveiling of a historic marker, followed by musical performances by Antenna-era bands at nearby venues. The day before the unveiling, C. Scott McCoy’s (aka Flyer film editor Chris McCoy) award-winning Antenna documentary will screen at Black Lodge, with an after-party at the Lamplighter.

With the closure of Stax Records in 1976 and the death of Elvis Presley in ’77, the Memphis music scene entered a state of suspended animation. Bands still played, but the forward momentum was stalled. Then, in 1978, the Sex Pistols played Memphis, providing the jolt the city needed. That spark of inspiration ignited a thousand (or at least a dozen) punk bands, according to former Antenna owner Steve McGehee.

“When the Sex Pistols played here in Memphis, it really launched a lot of the music I was doing. It was like, ‘Oh, well, I can do this,'” McGehee recalls. “It’s the same thing with me with the club. I went to Atlanta and New York. I was wanting to open a club, and I would go in, and they were just dives. I was like, ‘I could do this.'”

That punk rock ethos informed much of what became the Antenna. Inspired by the Sex Pistols and led by Tav Falco’s Panther Burns (featuring Alex Chilton), the Randy Band, the Scruffs, and the Klitz when the club was called the Well, the venue was an oasis of reckless originality.

“It was the home base for the DIY movement,” says Doug Easley of the venue, founder of Easley McCain Recording, the studio that eventually drew bands such as Sonic Youth, Pavement, and Wilco to Memphis. That was well after acts like Panther Burns, Pezz, and the Grifters had already cut tracks there. Easley was a fixture at the Antenna, sometimes playing with bands there, sometimes recording those bands in his home studio.

One of the bands who cut its teeth on Antenna’s stage was Distemper, featuring a young Mike McCarthy, a fixture of the Memphis arts and music scene. It was McCarthy that McGehee turned to when he decided it was time to secure the Antenna’s place in history.

“Mike McCarthy is quite a force of nature,” McGehee says. “He’s preserving a lot of music history.” McCarthy, who sculpted the new Johnny Cash statue in Cooper-Young, helped set the historical marker machine in motion. “We were approved by unanimous vote,” McGehee says. “I was kind of surprised by that because of always being the punk rocker and being vilified back in the day.”

“A lot of people were afraid of the Antenna. They were totally freaked out by it. They were afraid they’d get spit on or something,” Easley adds.

All this is covered in depth in the Antenna documentary, along with clips of dozens of bands and gloriously camp black-and-white footage of a bespectacled Tav Falco, holding a large tome and hypnotically reciting clever asides about the club’s early years.

Antenna hosted local and national bands of vastly different sounds — punk, hardcore, country, and new wave — and pioneered all-ages shows in the city. It was, essentially, a box with a PA system and a bar. But for 15 years, that box gave Memphians a place to play, to experiment with sound and stage presence. And that is something worth remembering.

Screening of the Antenna documentary Friday, October 4th, 7 p.m., at Black Lodge. Alex Greene & the Weeds play the Lamplighter October 4th after the screening. The marker unveiling is Saturday, October 5th, 4:30 p.m., at 1588 Madison. Antenna bands will perform at Murphy’s, B-Side, and the Lamplighter Lounge after the ceremony.