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Atlanta X Data Center Proposal May Offer Hints for What’s to Come With xAI in Memphis

Memphians still don’t have many details on xAI’s massive supercomputer project planned for Memphis, though a recent $700 million data center deal for X in Atlanta may offer some clues.

What we don’t know is:

• How much will the company actually invest here? (It’s been touted as “multibillion” and the “largest single capital investment in Memphis history.”)

• What exactly will the so-called Gigafactory of Compute do? (It’s proposed to power X’s Grok artificial intelligence. But how that will happen in Memphis remains hazy.)

• How many employees and new jobs will the project bring to Memphis? (Speculation says about 200 hundred jobs. But no one in the public is yet certain.)

• What will the real economic impact of the project be for Memphis?

• What will local leaders offer to the company in incentives to bring them here?

Many of the questions were slated to be answered next week. The project was supposed to go before the Memphis-Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) on Wednesday, June 19. Officials cancelled that meeting in observance of the Juneteenth holiday. So, locals could be left waiting for a month for answers on xAI, unless EDGE calls a special meeting.

In the meantime, I took a suggestion from someone on the Memphis subreddit. (I couldn’t find the comment or I would’ve given you a shoutout). For what could happen in Memphis, they suggested looking to Atlanta.

Atlanta case study

X Corp. (not xAI) proposed to build a $700 million data center there in December. It already had a data center in the city and another in Portland, according to WSB-TV Atlanta. Incentive packages would decide whether the company brought its big, new project to Portland, Oregon or Atlanta.

“Either location, in addition to similar alternative locations, could serve as the near-term location for this infrastructure investment,” reads the company’s application to Develop Fulton, Atlanta’s EDGE equivalent. “The incentive is a critical part of the analysis and decision process of whether to locate the equipment in Atlanta, Portland, or other locations.”

For the new Atlanta project, the company asked Develop Fulton to approve a $700 million inducement and final bond resolution “to acquire, install and create the next generation of high-performance computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) products for the X platform.” The company also asked for a tax break of more than $10.1 million over 10 years.

Taxes for the project in its first year were promised to be more than $4 million. Taxes over the project’s first 10 years would be more than $16.5 million.

The project would retain 24 jobs in Atlanta, not create new jobs. X Corp. predicted an overall economic impact of the project to be more than $241.7 million in 10 years.

The economic impact figure changed, though, from when X first brought the project to Develop Fulton, according to WSB-TV. The company’s original pitch to the board said the economic impact for the project would be more than $1 billion, way higher than the updated $241.7 million figure:

Credit: Develop Fulton/ X application from December
Credit: Develop Fulton/ X application from January

X Corp.’s proposal ended in a deadlock from the Develop Fulton board in December. The vote came after the board “got an earful from opposed residents,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

One board member, Laura Kurlander-Nagel, said the X platform’s value dropped by more than half after xAI founder Elon Musk bought it. For her it was a concern and she voted against the project, according to London-based Data Centre Dynamics blog.

The Atlanta site, northwest of Downtown on Jefferson Street, was once proposed for another data center. Kansas-based Quality Technology Services (QTS) wanted to build a center there but asked Develop Fulton for a $45 million tax break over 10 years. The board voted against it, and, apparently, QTS moved on.

However, when the X project came back before Develop Fulton in January, it passed with that $10.1 million tax break included. Two board member voted against it.

Data boom

Data centers are booming in Georgia’s capital city. Atlanta City Council member Jason Dozier said the market is growing faster there than in any other U.S. city. Construction for data centers in Atlanta grew by 211 percent, Dozier said, from 2022 to 2023.

This is partly why he and council member Matt Westmoreland proposed a ban on building them close to transit stations and the Atlanta BeltLine. It was unclear whether the ban had yet passed.

“Despite their growth, data centers don’t create many local jobs compared to other sectors,” Dozier tweeted in mid-May. “This limits economic benefits for our communities. Their existence presents a trade-off, diverting resources and focus away from alternative, people-oriented development priorities.

Their existence presents a trade-off, diverting resources and focus away from alternative, people-oriented development priorities.

Atlanta City Council member Jason Dozier

“Additionally, the energy demand of these centers is substantial, oftentimes equivalent to an entire natural gas plant’s output, further stressing our fragile electric grid.

“By prohibiting new data centers near transit and the Atlanta BeltLine, we aim to preserve these vital corridors for people-oriented priorities like housing, retail, transportation, and green spaces.

“It’s time to ensure that our city’s growth is sustainable and equitable for all residents. Let’s work together to shape Atlanta’s future in a way that prioritizes the needs of our communities and that benefits all Atlantans.”

But urban Atlantans aren’t the only ones with qualms over data centers in the Peach State. Georgia state lawmakers voted to temporarily suspend a tax break on equipment for data centers, according to the Associated Press. The legislation followed a monthslong review of all of the state’s many tax breaks and incentive programs.

The bill gained traction as Georgia Power reported a massive spike in electricity demand, and the data center industry accounted for 80 percent of that growth, it said. Also, one lawmaker also cited a 2022 state audit report that found that the tax exemption for data centers returned 24 cents on the dollar.

However, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp vetoed the legislation in May. He said the bill’s July 1 deadline would have interrupted “projects that are already in development — undermining the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.”

Sierra Club Georgia Chapter Director G Webber called the move “beyond disappointing.”

“The surge in the demand for power from data centers is propping up old coal plants and causing a rush to build new gas infrastructure,” Webber said in a statement. “As a result, Georgia communities will see higher levels of air and water pollution, and our fight to curb the worst effects of climate change is hampered. Kemp is burying his head in the sand by refusing to address an issue already having such a significant impact on our state.”

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Cover Feature News

Just the Ticket

Three hours separate Bluff City and Music City on an I-40 straight shot Memphis drivers know all too well.

“Oh, Jackson is bigger than I remember! Look kids, the Tennessee River! Ha, Bucksnort! There’s the Batman Building!”

Any Memphian who has routinely made that drive will have at one point wished for (a Buc-ee’s, of course, but also) a rail line to connect the two cities. This is especially true for any Memphian who has ever boarded the City of New Orleans train for a hands-off-the-wheel trip to another city up or down the rails.

But those choo-choo wishes here fade into the same place as win-the-lottery daydreams. Passenger rail is for those East Coast types or some European travel show on PBS. This is Tennessee. We won’t even expand Medicaid to save lives, let alone build a statewide train set so the fancies can swan around like they’re Rick Steves. So, I-40 drivers’ dreams go poof, they sigh, turn off the cruise control, and wait to pass a Big G Express truck in the left lane.

But a few things have happened recently to give those rail dreams a flicker of hope.

In 2021, Congress passed President Joe Biden’s massive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It promised $1.2 trillion in transportation and infrastructure projects with $550 billion for new projects. That pot of money opened the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Corridor Identification and Development program. Flush with $1.8 billion, it will help cities and states pick new routes for intercity passenger rail service.

In 2022, the Tennessee General Assembly publicly but quietly directed a state-housed group of experts called the Tennessee Advisory Commission for Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR, pronounced TASS-err) to study the feasibility of passenger rail here.

The bipartisan bill was sponsored by the unlikely duo of Sen. Ken Yager, a Republican from the far-east corner of Tennessee (Bristol), and Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from the far-west corner (Memphis). But they had one thing in common — rail could help their cities. For Yager, Bristol could connect to Virginia’s ever-growing rail system. Memphis could connect to Nashville and beyond, and all of it could bring in people and their money.

“I have all the faith and confidence that [TACIR is] going to bring us back something completely comprehensive, whether it shows that rail is feasible or not,” Parkinson said when he introduced the bill. “It might not even be feasible, but whatever alternatives are available for us, we just need something to connect all of our people and all the tourists that come into our state.”

But as Parkinson introduced the bill to just even study the idea, GOP members quickly questioned the cost of rail. Many thought the idea was a good one (if not at least a pretty one), and no one voted against the study. But some knew already the Feds would not pay for the lines, nor the equipment, nor the resources it would take to maintain it. Hawk mode, it seemed, was already engaged.

In March 2023, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly announced on X that “it’s time to bring the Choo Choo back to Chattanooga! This week, I submitted an application for federal funds in partnership with [the mayors of Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis] to begin planning for a new Amtrak route through our cities.”

It’s unclear just where in line that application is now. But if the project is picked, the cities will get $500,000 to earnestly study routes and crunch numbers.

While rail in Tennessee has seen a flurry of activity over the last couple of years, Parkinson said it could take up to 15 years for a new passenger train to leave a station here. TACIR said if the process gets started and leaders remain committed to it, a train line could be operational in a hasty seven years.

Rail action could likely see the floors of the Tennessee state House and Senate in its next session this winter. Parkinson added that any rail ideas would need buy-in, also, from the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and Gov. Bill Lee’s office.

For now, lawmakers are likely mulling the TACIR study and, maybe, gauging where the political winds blow on it. Also for now, it still takes three hours of hands-on-the-wheel, going-the-speed-limit driving for an I-40 nonstop trip between Memphis and Nashville.

Central Station Hotel seen from South Main Street (Photo: Calvin L. Leake | Dreamstime.com)

A Rail Assessment

Rail travel shriveled across the U.S. over the last few decades. While Tennessee was never famous for its great passenger systems, the state certainly had more lines than it does today.

For example, ever wonder why Nashville’s beautiful Union Station luxury hotel is called a “station,” sits on train tracks, but has no trains? Well, it used to. It was once a major stop on Amtrak’s Floridian line, a 1,400-mile route that ran from Chicago, through Nashville, to Miami. But Amtrak stopped the service in 1979.

So, what does Tennessee have now as far as real, people-moving rail service, not meant as nostalgia machines? Very little.

Amtrak stations at Memphis and Newbern to the north are the only two such stations in the state. It’s another sort of feather in West Tennessee’s cap. It seems glitzy, but ridership figures dull the story. Ridership was still below pre-pandemic levels last year when about 40,000 boarded the train here. That’s roughly 3 percent of the Memphis MSA population. That ridership figure is down from a recent high of about 72,000 in 2017, or about 6 percent of the population. The station was on a shortlist for closure with looming budget cuts in 2017, but it was saved with the stroke of a Congressional pen.

Amtrak’s only train running through Tennessee, the City of New Orleans, runs between Chicago and New Orleans. The route through Tennessee follows the Mississippi River along the western border of the state, making only two stops, one in Newbern (close to Dyersburg) and another in Memphis at Central Station on South Main Street. Memphis is the state’s busiest station. While ridership here may have ducked during and after the pandemic, numbers climbed through the aughts, growing 15 percent between 2010 and 2018.

Nashville’s WeGo Star (formerly known as the Music City Star) began operations in 2006 and remains the state’s lone commuter rail line. The train runs east from Downtown Nashville to nearby Lebanon with several stops along the way on a 32-mile line. It was heralded as a helping hand to remove some congestion from the city’s famously jammed interstates. Ridership figures there haven’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, either, down by about 67 percent in fiscal year 2022. A WPLN story in July said that number rose to 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels this year, and now about 400 people ride the WeGo Star each day.

Trolleys move people in Memphis, but mostly tourists. Even though they run regularly enough (and usually on time), when was the last time you heard someone talk about their commute to work and say, “You won’t believe what happened on the trolley this morning”? However, sharp-eyed Memphians may have glimpsed sleek, modern streetcars on the Madison Line last year. The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is testing the new cars that could, one day, regularly carry commuters. The rail trolley system here is the only one in the state.

That’s really it. Other Tennessee trains do carry passengers, but do so for pleasure’s sake, not efficiency. That is, unless you count Lookout Mountain workers taking the Incline Railway.

Proposed rail infrastructure could connect Memphis to the rest of Tennessee and to states like Virginia and Georgia. (Photo: TACIR)

What’s Proposed

Parkinson said when he proposed a transportation study from TACIR, it wasn’t only about rail. It was about moving people across the state and beyond, and about economic opportunities.

“I wanted to keep it broad enough for us to look at everything — not just rail — but any alternatives,” he said. “I wanted to know what those alternatives were, whatever the future of transport is. And if not rail, then what’s the future of transportation so we can be on the front end of it?”

The legislation he sponsored wanted a top-to-bottom review of the idea. That review had to look at physical train tracks in Tennessee, show what an intercity rail network would look like, and find alternatives to rail that might get the same job done. Lawmakers also wanted to see what kinds of projects like these have been done over the last decade. They wanted to hear from three other states about their rail projects. They wanted to know about possible stakeholders, costs, ridership estimates, operations, equipment, and more.

Two recommendations from the study made headlines when it was released in July. One, an intercity passenger rail system could “improve mobility and the state’s economy,” meaning it could work. Two, the group recommended five routes built in five phases.

The first would connect Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. To this, many Memphians likely sighed a unanimous “well, of course, Nashville ….” But the decision was based on moving the most people, connecting larger swathes of the country via rail, and existing infrastructure, like rail lines at airports in Chattanooga and Atlanta.

The next proposed route would connect Memphis and Nashville. The route was mentioned in 2020’s massive Southern Rail Plan from the Feds but was given a lower priority, though details on why were not given. That plan, however, saw the route as best suited as a link from the East to Midwest cities served by the City of New Orleans.

Well before TACIR recommended the Memphis-Nashville line, mayors of Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and Chattanooga had done one better and applied to the FRA’s Corridor ID Program. That application seeks to get rail done quickly with minimal investment.

Letters of support for the application flowed from every corner of every state involved right into the mailboxes of Pete Buttigieg, secretary of transportation, and Amit Bose, administrator of the FRA. Many of those letters refer to the proposed route as the Sunbelt-Atlantic Connector Corridor, even though that name does not yet even appear in any Google search.

“Each of our four cities are leading transportation and tourism hubs in their own right, and such a service would connect many millions of residents from beyond our municipal and state borders to reliable and frequent rail travel opportunities,” wrote Dennis Newman, executive vice president of strategy and planning for Amtrak.

Many of the letters read the same, including mentions of how the route could expand the economy and mobility, drive higher workforce participation and equity, advance “our international climate commitments,” and push tourism and leisure travel.

But letters from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) mention one Memphis-specific need of the proposed route: BlueOval City. Work is underway now on the massive, Haywood County campus that will house Ford’s production line for its electric F-Series pickup trucks and batteries.

“The Memphis region will most benefit from the opportunity to help connect the 5,800 new workers needed to power the coming BlueOval City,” Strickland and Cohen wrote in their letters. “This mega-campus is envisioned to be a sustainable automotive manufacturing ecosystem. The $5.6 billion battery and vehicle manufacturing campus just outside of Memphis will be the largest in the Ford Motor Co. world.”

TDOT studied BlueOval City’s transportation needs, but only a passing mention of it made TACIR’s final report. TDOT aimed to figure out ways to move what it said could be between 5,800 to 7,000 employees from Memphis, Jackson, and nearby areas to the site, “and to try to avoid a surge in congestion along the I‐40 corridor.”

They came up with three ideas. Two of them are mixtures of buses and vanpools with start-up price tags ranging from $8.6 million to $14.6 million. Another option included a passenger rail system with a price tag between $490 million and $600 million. All of these transit options “would be used only by BlueOval workers,” according to TACIR documents.

While the 234-mile Memphis-Nashville route came in second, it does have a few things going for it, adding to its feasibility. For one, freight tracks already exist between the cities. Also, the TACIR study found lower freight volume between them, causing fewer supply-chain disruptions. The route is mostly flat, making it easier to build. While the population it would serve is smaller than the route to Atlanta, it would still connect a collective 3.4 million people in both cities and the roughly 171,000 folks who live in the 29 cities between them. Finally, other transportation infrastructure already exists in both cities.

Another Memphis route recommended by the TACIR study would enhance service from here to Chicago. Amtrak now runs this route once a day. But the study suggested connecting two other train routes — the Illini and Saluki routes — to increase daily frequency and mobility between the states.

Photo: Iandewarphotography | Dreamstime.com

The Money Barrier

Money will easily be the biggest barrier to making any Tennessee passenger rail dreams come true. They’re not cheap to build, they’re not cheap to run, and the state will likely have to pay for most, if not all, of it.

“The experience of other states suggests that costs can range from the hundreds of millions of dollars for more straightforward passenger rail projects to billions of dollars for more intensive projects,” reads the TACIR report. ”For example, Virginia estimates spending $4.1 billion on capital projects over 10 years.”

For costs to run a rail network, TACIR looked to North Carolina, another state making major investments in passenger rail. State-supported Amtrak routes there between 2015 and 2019 ranged from about $14 million to $17 million each year.

But as the study pointed out, Tennessee has, for years, committed millions upon millions of dollars, and staff, and other resources, to roads.

“As a result, [Tennessee] has a first-class road network,” the study said. “The experience of other states demonstrates that a similar approach can be used to overcome the barriers to establishing passenger rail.”

When asked about costs as a barrier, Parkinson was quick to say that, “operationally, they lose money.”

“But when you think about the indirect impact to the cities, to those towns, and those rural areas that are going to benefit from it, it would prove profitable from the rippling effect,” he said.

Others agree. The Southern Rail Plan said the Nashville-to-Atlanta route could produce a total economic output of $18.2 billion and support over 17,000 construction jobs. For travelers, the route could save $1.8 million every year.

Tennessee state numbers say 141 million tourists spent $29 billion here last year. Most of those originated from nearby states, all of which could be connected to Tennessee by rail. How could that impact tourism spending here? The closest analogue is a 2020 study from the Southern Rail Commission. It found that if rail brought even 1 percent more tourists to Alabama, it would generate an additional $11.8 million each year.

But For Now …

Where Tennessee will land on passenger rail is anyone’s guess. It will take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. That’s even if the idea gets off the ground, and getting there is promising to be a fist fight in the state capitol.

Now, however, most Memphians will do what we’ve always done: fill up the tank, buckle up, hit the gas, and, maybe, dream of a rail system one day. But we’ll definitely dream of a Buc-ee’s, preferably near Bucksnort.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Staks Pancake Kitchen Embraces Expansion Opportunity

Staks Pancake Kitchen is about to have a new home outside the Mid-South. Ten new homes, in fact.

Owner Brice Bailey recently announced plans to franchise the Staks brand at 10 new locations through his LLC, The Bailey Group, in partnership with Lynda Sanford, CEO of Atlanta-based Classics Dining and Hospitality group.

“We’ve been working on this for 11 months now, and signed a Franchise Disclosure Document back in June,” Bailey says. “Lynda came to us with a good plan, and we really like the market. She’s done a great job of identifying locations across the state of Georgia, but mainly in the greater Atlanta area.” There have been approaches for franchises in other states as well, but Bailey doesn’t want to rush the process. So for now, the focus remains on Atlanta.

The expansion comes as an added boost for Staks, which bucked the trend and saw increased sales during most of 2020 and 2021. That leaves Bailey confident that the new restaurants can make a big impact beyond the comforts of home.

“We’re a breakfast and lunch place, but I think our uniqueness really helps,” he says. “We’ve got some menu items that are really creative and have become favorites here. For example, our Bomb Melts are made from bomboloni bread, which is used to make Italian donuts. I haven’t seen that anywhere else. It’s just a lot of items you won’t see at your typical upscale breakfast and lunch places.”

Oreo Praline pancakes at Staks Pancake Kitchen

Many of the familiar favorites will remain constant from franchise to franchise, but Bailey wants each new Staks to be a reflection of its environment. He and other leadership at the Bailey Group will urge new owners to add some of their own ideas, all while incorporating ingredients sourced from farms local to the restaurants’ respective areas. “It should feel like a hometown store in whatever market we go into,” he explains.

Bluff City breakfast lovers need not worry — in coming up with new creative items, Staks isn’t turning its back on its two Memphis locations. “We’ve been workshopping a few new things here,” says Clint Kelso, COO of the Bailey Group and general manager at Staks’ Germantown location. “We’ll have stuffed French toast made with that same bomboloni bread. It’s stuffed with cream cheese, covered with a blueberry glaze, and topped with fresh blueberries and strawberries.

“We’re also adding a breakfast Reuben sandwich. The bread is French toast, and it will have cinnamon sugar sauerkraut instead of a traditional thousand island dressing.”

One new item that Bailey is particularly interested in is a barbecue hash recipe. “It’s like a hash-brown from the skillet,” he says, with ham, pulled pork, sausage, and Staks’ own jerk sauce.

But the most exciting development for pancake lovers is proposed additions to an already robust selection of “Sophisticated Staks,” the restaurant’s list of inventive takes on pancakes. Bailey says that pancakes and French toast sales soared during the pandemic. Coupled with plenty of extra time in the kitchen, the team has plenty of ideas.

“We’re definitely going to expand on those menus,” says Bailey. “So if you want to switch it up with something like cinnamon roll French toast, things like that, we’ll be able to accommodate you.”

The Bailey Group plans to be hands-on with all the upcoming Staks locations (including a third local branch in Southaven slated to open within the next six weeks), and has training all planned out. “It’s too early to tell when the first Atlanta location will open,” Kelso says, “but Lynda has plans to open two to three new locations per year.”

The vanilla-glazed, rainbow-sprinkled Birthday Cake pancakes
Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Baby Driver

Of all the movies in theaters right now, Baby Driver kicks the most ass. Edgar Wright says he first conceived his film in 1994, and it shows. That was the year Quinten Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction premiered, plunging the indie film world into years of hep cat criminals snarling stylized dialog at each other. Tarantino’s use of pop music, drawn freely across genres from the past and present, was something new. Everyone wanted to try it, but not everyone had Tarantino’s ear.

Ansel Elgort in Baby Driver

1994 is also the year the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion recorded Orange. The former Pussy Galore frontman had made a pilgrimage to Memphis the year before to discover Stax soul and record with lo fi legend Doug Easley. Orange opens with “Bellbottoms”, a 5-minute epic that shifts gears from lush Issac Hayes strings to Oblivians-inspired, runaway train punk. Wright opens Baby Driver with a bank-heist/car-chase scene set to “Bellbottoms” that he’s obviously been planning in his head since the first Clinton administration. With Baby (Ansel Elgort) lip synching the words as he tears balletically through Atlanta’s nightmarish streetscape, the sequence plays as a perverse marriage between La La Land and Mad Max: Fury Road.

The best way to experience Atlanta.

Atlanta is just as much of a character for Wright as Los Angeles was to Damien Chazelle. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a creature of the streets, a supernaturally talented car thief whose knowledge of the city’s endless array of onramps to nowhere is surpassed only by his knowledge of banging tunes. His favorite leather jackets, with black body and white sleeves, make him look like Han Solo from a distance.

A while back, Baby tried to boost a car belonging to Doc (Kevin Spacey), a gangster in the mold of Harvey Keitel’s The Wolf. Rather than killing him, Doc decides to give him a job as a getaway driver, enabling a string of daring daylight bank robberies that, naturally, end in spectacular high-speed chases. The taciturn Baby is already having second thoughts about the collateral damage left behind by his partners in crime when he meets Debora (Lily James), a waitress at the local diner who instantly captures his heart. They make plans to run off together, but Doc keeps pushing him to do job after job, each one more dangerous and audacious than the rest.

Lily James and Ansel Elgort get cozy.

The plot’s pretty standard grindhouse crime fare, but it’s the execution that matters to Wright. Baby Driver sometimes feels more like a series of intertwining music videos than a feature film, with its 30-song soundtrack bleeding into the film’s reality at unexpected times. The editing by Scott Pilgrim cutter Paul Machliss is as immaculate as it is propulsive.

Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Elza Gonzalez, and Jon Hamm taking no guff.

Wright’s having a blast, and his fun infects the cast. Jon Hamm grows a beard and lays it on thick as a heavy named Buddy, who is hopelessly in love with the assault-rifle-toting sexpot Elza Gonzalez. Jamie Foxx brings unpredictable menace to Bats, a bank robber with a major impulse control problem.

But the music is the real star of the show. In yet another homage to Hustle & Flow, when Baby isn’t running from the law, he makes beats on his eclectic analog equipment. Carla Thomas, Sam and Dave, Martha and the Vandellas, The Beach Boys and The Commodores all get loving treatment. The Damned classic “Neat Neat Neat” becomes the car chase anthem it was always meant to be, while both T. Rex’s “Debora” and Beck’s “Debra” get dedicated to the leading lady.

Baby Driver aspires to be cinema, a film experience that brings fans together. It should definitely been seen in the theater, if for no other reason than to fully experience the mesmerizing sound design. It’s a terrible shame that, with a dozen channels of flawless digital sound reproduction at their disposal, the vast majority of filmmakers are content to just make explosions louder, or do that awful “whamp” noise from Inception again. Wright aims for a much higher bar, and clears it with ease.

Baby Driver

Categories
Music Music Features

Georgia Rule

With bands such as the Black Lips, Deerhunter, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Atlanta’s once-underground rock-music scene is on the rise.

 As recently as last year, the Black Lips — notorious for stripping off their clothes and making out with each other, urinating, and shooting off fireworks onstage — would play bars such as the Hi-Tone Café or the tiny Buccaneer Lounge when they’d roll through Memphis. Now, thanks to a label deal with Vice Records, a much-hyped set at the 2007 South By Southwest Music Festival, and exposure in Spin and Rolling Stone, they’re on the fast track to stardom — and Atlanta’s in the spotlight as the next über-hip scene to take off.

 Former Atlantan Alix Brown, a veteran of punk-rock group the Lids and a band called the Wet Dreams, which also featured Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox and the Black Lips’ Jared Swilley, moved to Memphis two years ago, after forming the Angry Angles with Jay Reatard.

 ”I grew up with all those guys in Atlanta,” she says. “The other day, I went to Schnucks and bought a magazine that had a two-page spread on the Black Lips. It’s really strange having people who hardly know them talking about ’em so much.”

 ”Honestly, I think the hype is terrifying,” says Josh Fauver, who pulls double-duty as bassist for noise band Deerhunter, famed for the raucous album turn it up faggot, released on Kranky Records in 2005, and as drummer/keyboard programmer in the lesser-known Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is playing Murphy’s this weekend.

 ”Once a particular scene gets really huge, everyone’s convinced that everything coming out of there is golden,” Fauver says. “But I’m glad it’s drawing attention. It’s definitely changed things for the bands. I can remember not being able to book a show outside of Atlanta, because no one gave a shit about anyone coming from here.”

 According to Adam Shore, general manager of Vice Records, “This is a meaningful time for Atlanta rock, no matter what happens.”

 Signing the Black Lips to Vice was, he says, an obsession: “I feel like they bring everything to the mix. They’ve been a band for so long, but they’re still so young. They’re fully formed, but they’re brand-new to so many people. For the last seven years, they’ve written great songs, put on great shows, and toured all over the world, but they never had a publicist or a booking agent. It’s rare to come across an artist like this. I’d compare ’em to [Memphis musician] Jay Reatard. He’s in a similar place. He’s been doing this forever, and he’s so underground but so ready to cross over.”

 ”Vice and our publicist have done a great job getting the word out,” says Black Lips guitarist Ian Brown, who lived in Memphis, off and on, for the last three years. (His gold grill, he brags, came from Regency Jewelers on American Way.)

 ”A lot more people know who we are — that’s the main difference,” Brown says. “The music is still the same, but the shows have a lot more people, and the money is a lot better. We don’t work [day jobs] anymore.”

 ”Lone geniuses can pop out anywhere. The only worry about trying to manufacture a scene out of Atlanta is the expectation that these bands will become superstars and yield massive record sales,” Shore says. “The Black Lips, SIDS, and Deerhunter are too individualistic to put into the mainstream, which is not to say that they can’t have great careers. It’s amazing that they’re selling as many records as they are and that a style of music that’s not the most easily digestible is being championed by a lot of people.”

 Record sales on indie label Rob’s House, which has released seven-inches from all three bands, confirm it: “We only pressed up 300 copies of the Deerhunter seven-inch, and they took six months to sell,” reports Trey Lindsay, who runs the label with the Black Lips’ tour manager, Travis Flagel. “But the band blew up, and now that record’s on eBay. We did 500 copies of a SIDS seven-inch, and those sold out immediately, too.”

 ”When SIDS started, it was kind of a joke band, and we’ve overstayed our welcome somehow. The group was supposed to last a summer, but that was three years ago,” says Fauver, who unhesitatingly credits the Black Lips with jumpstarting national interest in the current Atlanta scene.

 Fauver and Alix Brown, still friends, first crossed paths at an Atlanta house party nearly a decade ago.

 ”It was at a place called Squaresville,” he recalls, “where the Black Lips set up in the living room and the audience stood in the kitchen. It’s funny to think about, because everyone hated the Black Lips. People were like, ‘I don’t know about this band. They’re really rowdy.’ But in reality, they’re legitimately the sweetest kids I ever met. I dunno what happens to them onstage. They get some beer in them and go apeshit, I guess.”

 ”The question is,” Shore says, “if you have 50 kids in a basement, and they’re all going crazy, can that happen when there’s 500 or 5,000 people? I actually believe it can.”