Pezz, the Memphis punk legends, have been spreading their hardcore gospel for thirty years. Marvin Stockwell, Ceylon Mooney, Scott Bomar, and Nic Cupples played their first show as Pezz on June 11th, 1990 at the Singleton Community Center in Bartlett. That September, they made their debut at the Antenna, where their all-ages free-for-alls would become iconic moments in Memphis music history.
Bomar left the band after recording two EPs to become the bassist for surf-rockers Impala. He is now a producer and Emmy-winning soundtrack composer, and was instrumental in founding Memphis soul revivalists The Bo-Keys. But Bomar was just the first of dozens of Memphis rockers who cut their teeth on stage with Stockwell and Mooney.
“Pezz was one of the bands that made me want to play music,” says Christian Walker, longtime Pezz bassist and music video director. “Back then it was still a revelation to me that normal people could play music, and not only that, that they could play music and say something important. They promoted the idea that if you had a platform, it was your obligation to say something important. All these years later, we still feel that way.”
Pezz’s discography includes 14 full lengths, EPs, and singles. The group toured relentlessly in the 1990s and early 2000s, playing thousands of shows all over America.
“We really wanted to play a show to commemorate 30 years of Pezz, but when COVID made that impossible, I thought, ‘What better way to celebrate this milestone than by finally digitizing old tour footage and sifting through all of these moments in the 30-year history of the band?” Walker says. “Honestly, I could have used more time to gather long-forgotten VHS tapes from people, but I believe I found plenty of material that represents different eras of the band, and the people who have played with us and friends we’ve made along the way.”
Currently at work on their sixth full-length album, the punk ethos that has animated the band for three decades has not faded.
“For this video, we had in mind a sickness of the heart and a condition of isolation and disconnection, but here we are with the disease of police violence as well, and, as always, it’s more deadly to people of color than the rest of us,” says Ceylon Mooney. “Don’t wait any longer. Do what your conscience demands and what your resources allow,” he said. “You can give your time to the struggle, your body to an action, your support to the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, and your money to the Black Lives Matter bail fund.”
Music Video Monday: Pezz
If you would like your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
The year 2019 will go down in history as a watershed. Avengers: Endgame made $357 million on its opening weekend, which was not only the biggest take for any film in history, but also the most profitable three days in the history of the American theater industry. It was the year that the industry consolidation entered its endgame, with Disney buying 20th Century Fox and cornering more than 40 percent of the market. Beyond the extruded superhero film-type product, it turned out to be a fantastic year for smaller films with something to say. Here’s my list of the best of a year for the history books.
Worst Picture: Echo in the Canyon Confession: I decided life is too short to watch The Angry Birds Movie 2, so Echo in the Canyon is probably not the worst film released in 2019 — just the worst one I saw. Laurel Canyon was brimming over with creativity in the 1960s and 1970s, with everyone from Frank Zappa to the Eagles living in close, creative quarters. How did this happen? What does it say about the creative process? Jakob Dylan’s excruciatingly dull vanity documentary answers none of those questions. The best/worst moment is when Dylan The Lesser argues with Brian Wilson about the key of a song Wilson wrote.
‘Soul Man’
Best Memphis Film(s): Hometowner Shorts I’ve been competing in and covering the Indie Memphis Hometowner Shorts competition for the better part of two decades, and this year was the strongest field ever. Kyle Taubken’s “Soul Man” won the jury prize in a stacked field that included career-best work by directors Morgan Jon Fox, Kevin Brooks, Abby Myers, Christian Walker, Alexandra Ashley, Joshua Cannon, Daniel Farrell, Nathan Ross Murphy, and Jamey Hatley. The future of Memphis filmmaking is bright.
Apollo 11
Best Documentary: Apollo 11There was no better use of an IMAX screen this year than Todd Douglas Miller’s direct cinema take on the first moon landing. Pieced together from NASA’s peerless archival collection and contemporary news broadcasts, Apollo 11 is a unique, visceral adventure.
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Amazing Grace
Best Music: Amazing Grace The year’s other direct cinema triumph is this long-awaited reconstruction of Aretha Franklin’s finest hour. The recording of her 1972 gospel album was filmed (badly) by director Sydney Pollack, but the reconstruction by producer Alan Elliott made a virtue of the technical flaws to highlight one of the greatest performances in the history of American music.
King Ghidorah, Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Best Performance by a Nonhuman: King Ghidorah,Godzilla: King of the MonstersGodzilla: King of the Monsters was a tasty treat for megafauna fetishists. Godzilla, the Cary Grant of kaiju, looked dashing, but he was upstaged by his three-headed arch enemy. King Ghidorah, aka Monster Zero, whose pronoun preference is presumably “they,” is magnificently menacing, but versatile enough do a little comedy schtick while pulverizing Boston.
Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore
Slickest Picture: Dolemite Is My Name Eddie Murphy’s comeback picture is also Memphis director Craig Brewer’s best film since The Poor & Hungry. Murphy pours himself into the role of Rudy Ray Moore, the comedian who transformed himself into a blaxploitation hero. The excellent script by Ed Wood scribes Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski hums along to music by Memphian Scott Bomar. Don’t miss the cameo by Bobby Rush!
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
MVP: Brad Pitt Every performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is great, but Brad Pitt pulls the movie together as aging stuntman Cliff Booth. It was a performance made even more remarkable by the fact that he single-handedly saved Ad Astra from being a drudge. In 2019, Pitt proved he’s a character actor stuck in a movie star’s body.
Beanie Felstien as Molly and Kaitlyn Dever as Amy in Booksmart
Miss Congeniality: Booksmart I unabashedly loved every minute of Olivia Wilde’s teenage comedy tour de force. Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are a comedy team of your dreams, and Billie Lourd’s Spicoli impression deserves a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Booksmart is a cult classic in the making.
Chris Evans in Knives Out.
Best Screenplay: Knives Out In a bizarre twist worthy of Rian Johnson’s sidewinder of a screenplay, Knives Out may end up being remembered for memes of Chris Evans looking snuggly in a cable knit sweater. The writer/director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi dives into Agatha Christie mysteries and takes an all-star cast with him. They don’t make ’em like Knives Out anymore, but they should.
Lupita Nyong’o in Us
Best Performance: Lupita Nyong’o, Us If Jordan Peele is our new Hitchcock, Get Out is his Rear Window, an intensely focused and controlled genre piece. Us is his Vertigo, a more complex work where the artist is discovering along with the audience. Lupita Nyong’o’s dueling performances as both the PTSD-plagued soccer mom Adelaide and her sinister doppleganger Red is one for the ages.
Parasite
Best Picture: Parasite Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or winner absolutely refuses to go the way you think it’s going to go. There was no better expression of the paranoid schizophrenic mood of 2019 than this black comedy from Korea about a family of grifters who infiltrate a wealthy family, only to find they’re not the only ones with secrets. It was a stiff competition, but Parasite emerges as the best of the year.
Indie Memphis 2019 kicks into high gear on Friday with its first full day of films and events. The first screening of the day comes at 10:40 AM with the music documentary The Unicorn, director Tim Geraghty’s portrait of gay psychedelic country musician Peter Grudzien.
Indie Memphis Day 3: Legends, Queens, and Sorcerer
3:30 at Playhouse on the Square is the second annual Black Creators Forum Pitch Rally. Eight filmmakers will present their projects they want to film in Memphis on stage, and a jury will decide which one will receive the $10,000 prize, presented by Epicenter Memphis. The inaugural event was very exciting last year, and with this year’s line up of talent (which you can see over on the Indie Memphis website), it promises to be another great event.
Over at Studio on the Square at 3:40 p.m. is the final work by a giant of filmmaking. Varda by Agnes is a kind of cinematic memoir by the mother of French New Wave, Agnes Varda. It’s a look back at the director’s hugely influential career, made when she was 90 and completed shortly before her death last March. Here’s a clip:
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Part 2 of the unprecedentedly strong Hometowner Narrative Shorts competition field screens at Ballet Memphis at 6:15 p.m. “Shadow in the Room” is an impressionistic short by director Christian Walker. Based on a Memphis Dawls song, and featuring exquisite cinematography by Jared B. Callen, it stars Liz Brasher, Cody Landers, and the increasingly ubiquitous Syderek Watson, who had a standout role on this week’s Bluff City Law.
Waheed AlQawasmi produced “Shadow In The Room” and directed the next short in the bloc, “Swings.” Based on the memoir by ballerina Camilia Del, who also stars in the film, it deftly combines music from Max Richter with Del’s words and movement.
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“A Night Out” is Kevin Brooks and Abby Myers’ short film which took this year’s Memphis Film Prize. It’s a technical tour de force—done entirely in a single, 13-minute tracking shot through Molly Fontaine’s by cinematographer Andrew Trent Fleming. But it also carries an emotional punch, thanks to a bravado performance by Rosalyn R. Ross.
In “Greed” by writer/director A.D. Smith, a severely autistic man, played by G. Reed, works as a human calculator for a drug lord. But while he is dismissed by the gun-toting gangsters around him, he might not be as harmless as he seems.
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Andre Jackson’s tense and chilling “Stop” finds two men, one a cop and the other a mysterious stranger from his past, reunited by a chance encounter on the road.
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Kyle Taubkin’s “Soul Man” earned big applause at the Memphis Film Prize, thanks to a heartfelt performance by Curtis C. Jackson as a washed-up Stax performer trying to come to grips with his past.
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Director Morgan Jon Fox, whose documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like is one of the best-loved films ever to screen at Indie Memphis, returns to the festival with his latest short “The One You Never Forget.” A touching story with incredible performances by two teenage actors, this film has had a killer run on the festival circuit that climaxes with this screening.
At Ballet Memphis at 9:00 p.m. is the Hometowner Documentary Short Competition bloc, featuring new work by a number of Memphis documentarians. Matthew Lee’s “9.28.18” is a wonderfully shot, verité portrait of a very eventful day in the Bluff City. Indie Memphis veteran Donald Myers returns with heartfelt memories of his grandfather, Daniel Sokolowski, and his deep connection with his hometown of Chicago in “Sundays With Gramps.” Shot in the burned-out ruins of Elvis Presley’s first house, “Return to Audubon” by director Emily Burkhead and students at the Curb Institute at Rhodes College presents an incredible performance by Susan Marshall of Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel. Shot in the churches of Memphis and rural Mississippi, “Soulfed” by Zaire Love will tempt your appetite with an examination of the intimate connection between religion and cuisine. “That First Breath,” a collaboration between Danielle Hurst, Madeline Quasebarth, and Kamaria Thomas, interviews Mid-South doulas and advocates for a more humane and natural childbirth experience. “How We Fall Short” by Brody Kuhar and Julie White is a six-minute dive into the Tennessee criminal justice system. “Floating Pilgrims” by David Goodman is a portrait of the vanishing culture of people who live on boats in the Wolf River Harbor. “St. Nick” is Lauren Ready’s story of a high school athlete fighting debilitating disease. “Fund Our Transit” by Synthia Hogan turns its focus on activist Justin Davis’ fight for better transportation options in Memphis. And finally, Zaire Love’s second entry, “Ponzel,” is one black woman’s search for meaning in an uncertain world.
The competition feature Jezebel (9:30 p.m., Hattiloo Theatre) by director Numa Perrier focuses on the story of a young black woman in Las Vegas who is forced to take a job as a cam girl when the death of her mother threatens to leave her homeless. The emotional heart of the film is the conflict that arises when the protagonist discovers that she kind of likes being naughty with strangers on the internet, and the dangers that arise when one of her clients gets too close.
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Outdoors in the big tent block party, the premiere musical event of the festival happens at 8:30 p.m. Unapologetic Records will celebrate the release of its new compilation album Stuntarious IV with a show featuring performances by A Weirdo From Memphis, IMAKEMADBEATS, C Major, Kid Maestro, She’Chinah, Aaron James, and Cameron Bethany. Expect surprises and, well, lots of mad beats!
Finally, at midnight, a pair of screenings of classic films—for various definitions of the word “classic”— at Studio on the Square. Queen of the Damned is Michael Rymer’s adaptation of the third novel in Anne Rice’s vampire trilogy. Pop star Aaliyah starred as vampire queen Akasha, and had just finished the film when she died in a plane crash in the Bahamas. The film has become something of a camp classic, and is probably most notable today for inspiring a ton of great Halloween costumes.
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The other screening is Exorcist director William Friedkin’s masterpiece Sorcerer. Starring Roy Scheider as an anti-hero in charge of a ragtag group of desperados trying to move a truckload of nitroglycerin through the Amazon jungle, it’s a gripping ride through human greed.
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Come back tomorrow for another daily update on Indie Memphis 2019.
Last year, Marcella Simien got a temporary new addition to her band, Spooner Oldham He’s a keyboardist, songwriter, and producer who has worked with Chips Moman at American Studios in Memphis and FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The studio produced hits like The Boxtops’ “Cry Like A Baby” and Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally.”
Oldham joined the Lovers at the Midtown-famous P&H Cafe to shoot a live video for Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis series. The song they performed was “I’d Rather Go Blind”, a song Rock-and-Roll-Hall-Of-Fame-inductee Oldham first recorded with Etta James. Prepare to get smoky with this video, directed by Christian Walker and produced by Waheed Al Qawasmi.
Music Video Monday: Marcella & Her Lovers with Spooner Oldham
If you’d like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Last Saturday night, Beale Street Caravan held their annual Blowout party at Crosstown Arts, to celebrate moving to the Concourse. The finale of the hugely successful Blowout was a performance by Rev. John Wilkins. The current pastor of the storied Hunter’s Chapel in Como, Mississippi, Rev. Wilkins was returning from New Orleans, where he and his band, which includes his three daughters, played Jazz Fest.
Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis series made a music video with Rev. Wilkins in 2018. Director Christian Walker and producer Waheed AlQawasmi captured the family singing “May The Circle Be Unbroken” live in the country church. Here to lift you up for the tough week ahead, is the Reverend.
Music Video Monday: Rev. John Wilkins
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Today, Tony Manard brings a whole passel of friends to Music Video Monday. He and his Big Ole Band set up in Clayborn Temple to perform “Ain’t No Freedom” for director Christian Walker. His regular eight-member band was joined by a choir of 19 singers for this live-to-tape recording. “Like most independent artists, ‘I get by with a little help from my friends.’ This took a lot of friends. On top of Big Ole Band regulars, I wanted to enlist a choir of friends to help us get the message out,” says Manard.
“Ain’t No Freedom” is an epic cry for justice in our troubled times, filmed inside one of the spiritual homes of the Civil Rights movement.
Music Video Monday: Tony Manard and the Big Ole Band
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Winning filmmakers on the red carpet at the 2019 Oxford Film Festival, (left to right) John Charter, Paul Kaiser, Timothy Blackwood, Bradford Downs, Suzannah Herbert, Morgan Jon Fox, John Rash, Will Stewart, and Christian Walker
Memphis-born filmmaker Suzannah Herbert and directing partner Lauren Belfer’s documentary Wrestle took home the prize for Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Oxford Film Festival, which took place over the weekend. Herbert and Belfer were also awarded the Alice Guy Blaché Emerging Female Filmmaker Award. The sports documentary, about a high school wrestling team in Huntsville, Alabama, has also won the Ron Tibbets Excellence In Filmmaking Award at Indie Memphis, the audience and best sports documentary awards at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and the Best Documentary award at the Denver Film Festival.
The Narrative Feature Hoka, as the festival’s awards are called, went to Jordan Noel for This World Alone. Joey Brent
Sonya A. May, Hudson Phillips, Jordan Noel, and Trisha Solyn celebrate their win for Best Narrative Feature at the Oxford Film Festival.
Oxford’s Best Music Documentary Award went to John Rash’s Negro Terror, a portrait of the Memphis anti-racist hardcore punk band.
Memphis filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox’s short film “The One You Never Forget” tied for Best LBGTQ Short Film with Will Stuart’s “All We Are”. The documentary The Gospel Of Eureka by Michael Palmeri and Donal Mosher won in the LBGTQ feature category.
Memphis filmmaker Christian Walker won Best Mississippi Music Video for “Wash My Hands”, a video he made for Cedric Burnside with Beale Street Caravan.
Mississippi film awards included John Reyer Afamasaga’s Door Ajar: The M. B. Mayfield Story winning Best Feature, “Roots and Wings” by Hannah Miller winning Best Short, and Bennett Krishock winning Best Emerging Filmmaker for “Happy Birthday Papa”.
Memphis music was vibrant as ever in 2018. Every week, the Memphis Flyer brings you the latest and best video collaborations between Bluff City filmmakers and musicians in our Music Video Monday series. To assemble this list, I rewatched all 34 videos that qualified for 2018’s best video and scored them according to song, concept, cinematography, direction and acting, and editing. Then I untangled as many ties as I could and made some arbitrary decisions. Everyone who made the list is #1 in my book!
10. Louise Page “Blue Romance”
Flowers cover everything in this drag-tastic pop gem, directed by Sam Leathers.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (13)
9. Harlan T. Bobo “Nadine” / Fuck “Facehole”
Our first tie of the list comes early. First is Harlan T. Bobo’s sizzling, intense “Nadine” clip, directed by James Sposto.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (11)
I used science to determine that Fuck’s Memphis Flyer name drop is equal to “Nadine”.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (12)
8. Aaron James “Kauri Woods”
The smokey climax of this video by Graham Uhelski is one of the more visually stunning things you’ll see this year.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (10)
7. Daz Rinko “New Whip, Who Dis?”
Whaddup to rapper Daz Rinko who dropped three videos on MVM this year. This was the best one, thanks to an absolute banger of a track.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (9)
6. (tie) McKenna Bray “The Way I Loved You” / Lisa Mac “Change Your Mind”
I couldn’t make up my mind between this balletic video from co-directors Kim Lloyd and Susan Marshall…
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (7)
…and this dark, twisted soundstage fantasy from director Morgan Jon Fox.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (8)
5. Brennan Villines “Better Than We’ve Ever Been”
Andrew Trent Fleming got a great performance out of Brennan Villines in this bloody excellent clip.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (6)
4. (tie) Nick Black “One Night Love” / Summer Avenue “Cut It Close”
Nick Black is many things, but as this video by Gabriel DeCarlo proves, a hooper ain’t one of ’em.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (4)
The kids in Summer Avenue enlisted Laura Jean Hocking for their debut video.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (5)
3. Cedric Burnside “Wash My Hands”
Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis series produced a whole flood of great music videos from director Christian Walker and producer Waheed Al Qawasmi. I could have filled out the top ten with these videos alone, but consider this smoking clip of Cedric Burnside laying down the law representative of them all.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (3)
2. Don Lifted “Poplar Pike”
I could have filled out the top five with work from Memphis video auteur Don Lifted, aka Lawrence Matthews, who put three videos on MVM this year. To give everybody else a chance, I picked the transcendent clip for “Poplar Pike” created by Mattews, Kevin Brooks, and Nubia Yasin.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018
1. Lucero “Long Way Back Home”
Sorry, everybody, but you already knew who was going to be number one this year. It’s this mini-movie created by director Jeff Nichols, brother of Lucero frontman Ben Nichols. Starring genuine movie star (and guy who has played Elvis) Michael Shannon, “Long Way Back Home” is the best Memphis music video of 2018 by a country mile.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (2)
Thanks to everyone who submitted videos to Music Video Monday in 2018. If you’d like to see your music video appear on Music Video Monday in 2019, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
When Brennan Whalen and Josh McLean’s band punk duo Heels were tapped to appear in Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis video series, director Christian Walker knew where to shoot them.
The Buccaneer was the Midtown music scene’s watering hole and home base before ownership troubles and a fire spelled the end of an era. Walker wanted to throw one more show at The Bucc before it’s torn down, and the new owners agreed.
Watch Heels perform their stomper “Off With Their Heads” on the front porch of the burned out bar, the last of thousands of shows that happened their over the decades. Give ’em a good sendoff, boys!
Music Video Monday: Heels
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
This week is Independence Day, which will see Americans all over this great nation lighting the fuse on recreational explosives. What does this have to do with Hippy SOUL? Memphis rappers Idi Aah Que and Teco got lit for Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis video series, and now they’re about to blow up.*
All the videos in the series are directed by Christian Walker and produced by Waheed AlQawasmi. The music is performed and recorded live, in this case in the Hi Tone in Midtown Memphis. You can find “My Dojo” on Hippy SOUL’s album Worthy Negro.
Music Video Monday: Hippy SOUL
*It’s a lyrical stretch, I know. Cut me some slack. It’s Monday. If you think your music video would play well on Music Video Monday without bad puns**, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
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Joey Brent 
Joey Brent 
