Tag: Crosstown Arts

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Memphis Gaydar News

Pro Pronouns: Gender Identity In the Workplace

Bianca Phillips

A transgender flag flies over OUTMemphis.

Eagle-eyed emailers have noticed something new in some email signatures: pronouns.

Signatures are those few lines of information at the bottom of an email that tells the receiver basic information about the sender, details like their name, title, company, phone number, address, and more. Some senders’ signatures around Memphis now include their preferred gender pronouns, or personal gender pronouns, sometimes just called gender pronouns, or, more simply, just pronouns.

All of the words are ways to describe a person when you are talking about them. Typically, those identifying as male will use “he/him/his;” those identifying as female will use “she/her/hers;” and some transgender people, gender noncomforming people, and others use the gender-neutral “they/them/theirs.” However, there are more sets of pronouns out there.
Lambda Legal

Kayla Gore, of Memphis, speaks during a news conference Tuesday outside the federal courthouse in Nashville.

“Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity,” reads an explanation from those behind International Pronouns Day, set this year for October 16th. “Being referred to by the wrong pronouns particularly affects transgender and gender nonconforming people.”
[pullquote-1] LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have popped up at some of Memphis’ largest organizations and corporations. Now, preferred personal pronouns (sometimes called PGPs), are popping up in work culture, including email signatures.

Mary Jo Karimnia is the residency manager at Crosstown Arts. She added “she/her/hers” to her signature over the summer but wished she’d done it sooner. She said preferred personal pronouns, “in reality are not ‘preferred’ pronouns, just pronouns.”

“As the residency manager for Crosstown Arts, part of my job is to welcome the entire community to the residency program,” Karimnia said. “Although my she/her pronouns are somewhat predictable, this signals that I am accepting of other people’s pronoun choices.”
Justin Fox Burks

Ellyahnna Hall

As gender issues and preference rise to the mainstream, discussing them and the pronouns that go along with them is becoming more common but maybe still tricky to those not accustomed to it.

That’s why the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQI) Resource Center at the University of California Davis devised a website to help. There, you can find a list of many of the lesser-known, gender-free pronouns like ”xie/hir/hir,” “ey/em/er,” “co/co/cos,” and more. You can also find some easy ways to talk about pronouns with others.

So, the site suggests you ask, “What pronouns do you use?” You could also share yours by saying, “I’m Jade and my pronouns are ze and hir.”
[pullquote-2] Pronouns in email signatures (and other spots in the workplace) caught on early among Memphis health care providers, said Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis. But they are now popping up in signatures of other businesses “that may or may not have anything to do with gender identity, or sexual orientation, or health.”

Justin Fox Burks

Cole Bradley

Quinn’s pronouns — “she/her/hers” — were displayed on her work name tag during an event recently. She said part of the work of OUTMemphis is to serves the transgender community here, “to make the entire world a comfortable place for people who are trans.” This includes her email signature, where she shares her pronouns.

“In the past five years, and certainly in the past 15 years, the visibility, the legal advocacy, the political narrative, and the services that are available to our trans community has expanded nationally in every way,” Quinn said. “Regardless of your gender expression, we really believe that gender expression and gender identity should be the choice of each individual. We believe that you should have the choice of the way you are referred to, what you’re called, and how you’re classified by the world.”

Back at Crosstown, Karimnia said being upfront about pronouns is “a good way to let people know in advance that we are a queer-friendly place.”

“We also ask for pronouns on our (residency) application,” Karimnia said. “We make a point of introducing ourselves at our first dinner meeting with residents using pronouns.

“This creates space for people who use pronouns besides she/her or he/him without singling them out. It can also be an educational tool for those who aren’t yet used to this convention.”

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Mellotron Variations

Increase your chill with Music Video Monday.

It’s the weekend after Gonerfest, and you’re too tired to be at work. But here we are. Chill out with Mellotron Variations.

The groundbreaking project from Robby Grant, Johnathan Kirlscey, John Medeski, and Wilco’s Patrick Sansone now has a second album, recorded at the April 24, 2018 Crosstown Arts show. That was the first time in history that four Mellotrons had been on stage at the same time—but not the last.

The quartet has since played at Wilco’s Solid Sound festival in Maryland, and will perform in Nashville in December. The video, directed by Ben Rednour, is a psychedelic feast, incorporating footage from John Wayne westerns and vintage home movies. Go “Into The Sunrise!”

Music Video Monday: Mellotron Variations

If you would like to see your music video appear on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

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Music Music Blog

Katharine Hedlund: Soul, Standards and Rhythm in a Live Recording Session

Katharine Hedlund

Paul Taylor, the local multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire who manages the recording studio at Crosstown Arts, recently approached me about a project he was particularly excited about: a live jazz recording session, open to the public, that would be held in the Green Room listening space this weekend. The band would include Taylor on drums, Carl Caspersen on bass, and Jim Spake on saxophone.The band leader? Pianist and singer Katharine Hedlund, who lived and played in Memphis for a few years before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Intrigued, I spoke to both Hedlund and Taylor about jazz, soul, show tunes, and the unique experience of playing and recording with a Steinway in the Green Room.

Paul Taylor


Memphis Flyer: How did you start working with Katharine?

Paul Taylor: Year before last, right before Katharine moved, we started playing jazz together and we just locked really well. It was super fun, and I immediately regretted that we hadn’t been playing together for the entire time she’d been in Memphis. So when she came back to visit last year, I invited her to come record in my residency space, before I was hired at Crosstown Arts. We made some recordings that I thought were really fantastic, but the only limitation was that it was a digital piano. So I asked her, when are you coming to Memphis? I thought we could book a show at the Green Room and record it live, because they often have a real piano up there. Right now they’ve got a Steinway baby grand which sounds fantastic. 

So it really worked out. All the elements came together perfectly for us to make a more authentic-sounding record. And she’s one of the best pianists and vocalists I’ve ever worked with. So I’m thrilled that it could work out. She was making waves on the scene and we really hit if off. Sometimes when you’re playing music with people, especially jazz, it can get really cerebral and really academic really fast. And she is extraordinarily well-educated, but it’s always a blast to play with her. The rhythmic things we wind up doing together are always super fun. That just doesn’t happen with everybody. That’s an important part of it. 

Katharine Hedlund

So Katharine, you’re not from Memphis?

Katharine Hedlund: No, my family’s from Connecticut, the New York metropolitan area, essentially. My brother went to Rhodes College. He loved it here and stayed after Rhodes. I started working at the same company he was at and ended up here for three and half years or so. Now I’m in the Bay Area, playing music and back in school studying computer science. It’s kind of a transitional career shift. Basically, I put all of my free time into music, but I’m not trying to do it for money. That way I get to put my time into music that I really care about, which is awesome. You can really be fully present for the music then, and it doesn’t feel like as much of a burden.

So you recorded with Paul Taylor and this Memphis band last year?

Yeah, it was just kind of a casual recording session he put together, all first takes.

I heard some of the tracks. There were some cool choices of soul tunes and a nice arrangement of “Skylark.”

Thank you! Yeah, I feel like every Hoagy Carmichael song is this little musical gem. Tomorrow night, that’s definitely the energy we’re going for: soul tunes and standards and a few that will just be us jamming out. But quite a few are arranged with a Katharine perspective, you could say. It’s gonna be really fun.

What’s your musical background?

I started off playing classical music, but I always really liked singing, and I was really into musical theater. So when I discovered jazz — and standards are basically songs from musical theater that jazz musicians decided to start playing around with — I got really into it. I started listening to Ella Fitzgerald and joined the jazz band, and my musical affinity shifted towards jazz. And I also loved playing with other people. I loved the social aspect of it. The collaborative aspect of it.

After high school, I went to Northwestern University and studied jazz piano and economics there. It was a great experience. I was able to play in small jazz ensembles all around Chicago. And I did fun original bands with friends from Chicago. So it was really a great experience.

When I moved to Memphis, I was a total jazz nerd. I hate to admit it, but I totally was. And I started playing at the Zebra Lounge at Overton Square. I thought, ‘This’ll be fun.’ I had never played in a piano bar. Though I had played and sung before, I never played all the pop and soul and everything under the sun. That turned out to be the most amazing gig ever. I actually got really into it. My singing got better, and I started learning all these soul and pop songs and doing fun arrangements, and talking to the audience. It just ended up being this amazing community and an amazing musical experience. That was awesome. So a lot of what I’m playing on Saturday are these songs that I’d been playing for years at the Zebra Lounge. I had these arrangements in my mind and just had to write them out for the rest of the band.

So, coming from playing jazz in college, I saw it as coming back to my original love, which was singing these songs. I love the performance of it. So I’m taking all that musical knowledge and all that nerdy stuff you learn in college, but making it more accessible and fun and a real performance — combining all that together. That’s really my home: playing jazz and standards, making them musically interesting for everyone to play, but the audience doesn’t feel alienated, ‘cos it’s fun, and I’m talking to people. That’s the energy I’m going for.

Learning jazz academically can get kind of cerebral, as Paul said…

Definitely, when you study it in school. So what I’m doing with these soul songs is kind of like what jazz musicians were doing with musical theater songs back in the day. Just putting your own energy into it.

Tomorrow’s show will be music in three categories: one is arrangements of soul-oriented stuff, and the second will be standards I’ve arranged, and the third category will be me playing with really great musicians, just playing some instrumentals and having a really fun time. I mostly wanted to reconnect with people I’ve played with here. I’m sure we’ll do another one next year sometime. That size of room, like the Green Room, is my favorite kind of space to perform in and even to see music in. It’s big enough that you can feel the energy of the audience, but you’re close enough to the musicians that you feel you’re a part of it. I’m so happy that Memphis has that space, it’s so awesome.

Did you play out much with a band like this when you were living in Memphis?

Not at first, but I came to that point where I realized, ‘Everyone’s making it up and I’m gonna make it up too. Let’s just see where this goes.’ Then I started playing with Daniel McKee and Paul right before I left. And Jim Spake and Carl. That was three or four months before I left. And just as we started getting going, I was like, ‘Sorry guys, I’m leaving.’

Are you forging ahead with music in the Bay Area?

It’s been good so far! But during this visit, it’s gonna be great playing with good friends and good musicians in a really wonderful place. And I feel like, now that I’ve been away from Memphis I have even more love for Memphis and what Memphis is. It’s gonna be great. This is going to be a long-overdue concert.

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Music Music Features

Artina McCain’s Celebration of Black Composers

Artina McCain, assistant professor of piano at University of Memphis, is a busy woman. In addition to teaching and performing locally, she and husband Martin McCain, a bass trombonist who teaches at Texas State University, regularly tour as a duo. And she produces concerts and programs on her own on an international scale. Given all that, it’s not surprising that when I do catch up with her to discuss A Celebration of Black Composers, her concert with three other artists at Crosstown Theater on Friday, she’s halfway around the world.

Artina McCain

Memphis Flyer: Where are you calling from?

Artina McCain: I’m in Malaysia now. My husband is playing here, and I’m tagging along, doing some concerts and master classes. And then we’re going to Bangkok to play a concert for bass trombone and piano at Mahidol University.

Who will be joining you for the concert at Crosstown Theater?

The performers are James Rodriguez, a baritone who teaches at Texas Christian University; and a soprano, Gwendolyn Alfred, who teaches at Texas Southern University; and then a local cellist, Alisa Horn, will join us for some chamber works and also a solo feature of the George Walker Sonata for Cello and Piano, Movement II. And then, of course, myself on piano.

James and I performed a few years ago in a black composers concert in Austin, Texas. We had sold-out shows every weekend, so for the last two years or so, James and I — and we added Gwendolyn — have been doing this tour of works for voice and piano primarily, and some chamber music, by black composers. In the upcoming concert, I’ll play with everybody, James will sing some pieces by himself, Gwen will sing some pieces by herself, and we’ll do some trio stuff. So we’ll have a lot of variety, with baritone, soprano, and cello, and I’ll also be playing some solo piano works.

Who are some of the composers you’ll be spotlighting?

One piece is by William Grant Still. It’s called “A Deserted Plantation.” It’s based on poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar, who many people may know, and it was commissioned by a famous composer in his era, Paul Whiteman. The first movement, “Spiritual,” is a pretty popular gospel tune in the black church, called “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” The third movement of “A Deserted Plantation” sounds like something that people would dance to in a club back in the ’50s or ’60s. It’s a kind of ragtime music that we might associate with New Orleans.

So in combining such forms with his conservatory training, he was sort of a Gershwin-type figure.

Yeah. It’s funny that you say that because he was the first, actually. He was before Gershwin, but Gershwin got more of the credit for using genres like the blues.

Is Florence Price part of this program?

Yes, she is. Florence Price is making a resurgence these days. James will be performing a few of her pieces, like “A White Rose” and “Song to the Dark Virgin,” with poetry by Langston Hughes.

Who are some of the other composers involved?

Gwendolyn will be performing pieces by Moses Hogan, who did quite a number of arrangements of negro spirituals. Then we’re doing a piece by Undine Smith Moore, “Love Let the Wind Cry.” And to bring the cellist in the group, we’ll be doing a piece by George Walker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who just passed away last year. There’s a lot of diversity in the programming, from the negro spiritual to maybe the more stereotypical classical art song. It’s such a fusion of genres that most people will feel it’s very familiar.

A Celebration of Black Composers, Friday, Sept. 13th, at Crosstown Theater, 7:30 p.m., $12; A Celebration of Black Female Composers, Sunday, Sept. 15th, at Harris Hall, University of Memphis, 7:30 p.m., free.

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Music Music Blog

Looking Back at the Continuum Music Festival 2019

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

Jamie Harmon

Project Logic, with DJ Logic, Vernon Reid, MonoNeon, and Daru Jones

The Continuum Music Festival has come and gone once again, leaving many reeling from over two solid days of innovative sounds. Here, we present a slideshow of some highlights, by photographers Jamie Harmon and Jillian Baron.

Your faithful correspondent was able to witness one highlight of the weekend, Opera Memphis’ staging of the modern opera As One, by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettists Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell. Since its premier in 2014, this has become the most produced new opera in North America, and upon seeing the performance at Continuum, it was easy to see why.
Jillian Baron for Opera Memphis

Blythe Gaissert, mezzo-soprano, and Michael Kelly, baritone, in As One

Featuring Blythe Gaissert, mezzo-soprano, and Michael Kelly, baritone, singing with the  Blueshift Ensemble String Quartet (Marisa Polesky, Jessie Munson, Beth Luscombe, Alisa Horn), the piece tells a heart-wrenching saga of a transgender person grappling with her identity. The two singers orbit around each other throughout, each furthering the tale of a young boy’s struggle with, and gradual acceptance of, his often secret female identity. The effect of the two singers inhabiting different aspects of one life is indescribably captivating; coupled with the string quartet, it is gripping.

The music ranges from the hypnotic or pastoral pulses of childhood, to ever more strident and dissonant harmonies as the dual protagonist, Hannah after and Hannah before, confronts misunderstanding and threats from the world at large.

For impressions of the remainder of the festival, I asked Paul Taylor, aka New Memphis Colorways, to describe his impressions of the festival’s second day.
Jamie Harmon

New Memphis Colorways

Paul Taylor: There was a restorative yoga thing led by Sean Murphy and Anne Froning. That was a nice addition to both days. Sean does a really interesting looping with a bunch of wind instruments and delay pedals. Pretty cool.

The Theremin-Lap Steel duo was super beautiful and tranquil. It was really refreshing and surprising. They took it in a direction that was totally not directly linked to the expected sounds of those instruments.

Then I played my set, which was a re-imagining of my New Memphis Colorways Vignettes. That’s a project I’m doing on social media this year, releasing little 60-second video clips that are intended to exist only on social media. They’re not advertisements for anything else. They’ve just reached their destination and I’m done with it when they wind up on social media, as art intended to live there.

But I decided, for this show, to reanimate them into longer versions by mapping out sections of each of the videos to a MIDI controller, so I could trigger start points in the video and audio in each of them, and spontaneously improvise longer compositions. And that sort of created new chord changes and beats by utilizing different start points as they were not originally intended to be. And I think I survived relatively unscathed.

Directly after me it was the Blueshift Ensemble playing music by ICEBERG. And the pieces they played were just astonishing. I was absolutely blown away at the breadth and scope of those tunes. They’re really challenging, they’re really enlightening.

And after that was Project Logic. That was a really interesting show, in that I think a lot of people expected Vernon Reid to just be a shredder, which he is, but man, he was playing the holy hell out of funky neo-soul repetitive groove guitar, and those guys were in a trance for, like, two hours straight. They had the audience completely entranced. And the venue and lights were fantastic.

[slideshow-1]

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché Explores The Beginning Of Narrative Film

A scene from one of the 1,000 movies made by pioneering director Alice Guy-Blaché.

Everything that seems natural to us now about video content is actually deeply unnatural. It was all invented. An edited video, consisting of different clips strung together to produce a narrative, is profoundly different from the way we visually experience reality. We don’t get to skip over the boring parts, and we rarely have the best angle to view the action.

If all of this film language we now take for granted was invented, that means there was someone who did the inventing. Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers are usually put forward as the inventors of film, and that’s true enough, from a technical standpoint. But their idea of a good movie was filming the workers leaving the Lumiere factory, or a train entering the station — literally “moving pictures”.

The person who came up with the idea of using motion pictures to tell a story was a former secretary named Alice Guy-Blaché. She was arguably the first film director, as we now recognize the job description, who made more than 1,000 films over her career, including the very first film with an actual story, The Cabbage Fairy, in 1896. She invented the close-up, and experimented with synchronized sound two decades before it would be commonplace in theaters. She founded her own studio, Solax, which was the largest film studio in America in the 1910s. And yet, while many giants of that era like D. W. Griffith are remembered today, Guy-Blaché has been largely forgotten. Pamela Green’s film Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché wants to restore her place in history.

Be Natural screens on Thursday, August 15 at Crosstown Theater as a part of their Arthouse film series. Afterwards, Memphis filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking will lead a remote Q&A with director Pamela Green. You can win two tickets to the show by either emailing cmccoy@memphisflyer.com or sending The Memphis Flyer a direct message on Facebook or Twitter. We’ll draw the winner at noon on Thursday. Good luck!

Be Natural : The Untold Story Of Alice Guy-Blaché TRAILER#1 from Be Natural on Vimeo.

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché Explores The Beginning Of Narrative Film

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Music Music Blog

From Continuum Fest to A Change of Tone, Crosstown Keeps It Edgy

CREDIT: Ben Rednour

Ben Rednour

Jenny Davis plays amplified cacti in John Cage’s ‘Child of Tree’ at the 2018 Continuum Fest

While several cities have renovated former Sears, Roebuck & Company warehouses/retail centers, including Minneapolis, Atlanta and Boston, Memphis’ own Crosstown Concourse may take the cake in terms of grounding such projects in community art projects and concerts. And, far from curating softball ‘pops’ concerts and blockbuster movies, Crosstown Arts, the nonprofit that jump started the local Sears building’s revitalization in 2010, has kept the “urban” in its original vision of a “mixed-used vertical urban village.”

In this context, urban means bringing to Midtown the kind of pioneering music that one might find at world-class halls like the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) or C4 Atlanta’s FUSE Arts Center.  With three venues, an artist fellowship program, a recording studio, a music film series, and other resources for local and international musicians (and other artists), Crosstown Arts has become one of the nation’s premier centers of innovation.

Case in point: the upcoming Continuum Music Festival, now in its third year, which, in hosting events in the Crosstown Theater, the Green Room, and the East Atrium Stage, may make the fullest use yet of all the old retail center’s environs. As a festival of new sounds, from experimental to electronic, classical to multimedia, Continuum is beyond most precedents in the local scene. Headlining is Project Logic, featuring local bass wunderkind MonoNeon, guitar virtuoso Vernon Reid (Living Colour), and drummer Daru Jones. The festival also features Opera Memphis’ staging of the transgender-themed work As One, a chamber opera created by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, and Kimberly Reed.

CROSSTOWN ARTS PRESENTS: CONTINUUM MUSIC FESTIVAL 2019 from Crosstown Arts on Vimeo.

From Continuum Fest to A Change of Tone, Crosstown Keeps It Edgy

The kick-off show on Thursday, August 15th features the Blueshift Ensemble playing compositions by longtime collaborators from the ICEBERG New Music collective and is to be held at Crosstown Brewing Company.The festival will also feature a Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, a concert by multi-instrumentalist New Memphis Colorways, and a performance of Sarah Hennies’ ‘The Reinvention of Romance’ by Two Way Street.

Finally, like any good gathering of the tribes, there will be many interactive workshops and talks: Sweet Soul Restorative (Yoga with Live Music); The Quest for the Perfect Pop Song; The Metaphysics of Sound; Sheltering Voices: Impactful Community Storytelling; Breaking Boundaries: The Music of ShoutHouse; and The Sounds of ‘Starry Night:’ Writing Music to Van Gogh’s Masterpiece.

But Continuum is really only among many examples of the cutting edge curation of the Crosstown Concourse space going on now. In addition to last year’s Mellotron Variations or this spring’s Memphis Concrète electronic music festival, more ideas are percolating in the wings. For example, musical artists who are pushing the very boundaries of how concerts are experienced will be featured in next spring’s A Change of Tone concerts.  

Four such shows are planned for April 18th-21st, 2020, but we don’t yet know what we’ll hear. Musicians of any genre are applying to be featured as we go to press, and may do so until September 10th of this year. Click here to submit a proposal.

One thing they all will have in common is thinking outside of the music box, or rather, outside of the venue. Subtitled “In/Out of Sync,” the concerts will be organized around a weirdly specific, yet open ended theme: Musicians will “exhibit” their music for a listening audience over loudspeakers in one venue as they simultaneously perform it in another, creating a non-traditional listening experience.

With a live-feeds between The Green Room music venue and Crosstown Theater, audio from the latter will be piped over to the audience in The Green Room to listen to, as the musicians, out of sight, perform their original work live in the otherwise empty Crosstown Theater auditorium. The second feed will video-capture The Green Room audience for the performing musicians in the theater to see on a screen, so that they may virtually watch their audience as they play. With such technological feats, concert organizers hope the performers “might achieve a vivid and seemingly living omnipresence.” As the organizers further expound:

Similar to the experience of being inside of a haunted house or abandoned building, this spectral approach to auditory perception will be, among other things, a sonic experiment in vulnerability. It will be an attempt to enhance and heighten the audio-sensory experience for the listener, and perhaps will intensify the presence and impact that music can have when our fight-or-flight response is instinctively activated, giving the sounds we hear the power to demand our full attention.

It’s an embarrassment of riches, really, for those hoping to reimagine their sonic art. In fact, the many series at the Concourse may be remaking the musical arts as Crosstown Arts remade the empty shell of an abandoned retail center only a few short years ago. 

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Do The Right Thing Returns for 30th Anniversary Screening

Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem in Do The Right Thing

What we call the indie film movement has its roots in Kubrick, Corman, and Cassavetes, but it really popped off in 1989 with a pair of films: Stephen Soderberg’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. It’s hard to overstate the impact of Spike Lee on a generation of filmmakers. He’s like Jimi Hendrix was for guitarists. You either embraced his approach and iterated on it or you consciously rejected it and went in another direction. There was no ignoring him.

Lee has made some great films in the last three decades, such as last year’s epic BlacKkKlansman, but Do The Right Thing remains a towering masterpiece of a film. It has also remained stubbornly relevant. The proxy fight over who gets to be on Sal’s Pizza wall is reflected today in a hundred conversations on representation in media. The senseless police brutality inflicted on Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) looks like a dress rehearsal for the 2014 choking death of Eric Garner. The dilemmas faced by the protesters were hashed out by Lee before many of them were born.

The cast is among the most amazing ever assembled: Samuel L. Jackson, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Giancarlo Esposito, Martin Lawrence, the recently deceased Paul Benjamin, and, in her film debut, a former Soul Train dancer named Rosie Perez. Lee opened the film with Perez dancing to Public Enemy’s anthem “Fight the Power” in what the film criticism website The Dissolve called the greatest pop music moment in film history.

Do The Right Thing Returns for 30th Anniversary Screening (2)

Crosstown Theater’s Arthouse film series will present the 30th anniversary of Do The Right Thing on Thursday, August 8th, at 7:30 p.m. The Memphis Flyer is giving away free tickets to the screening. If you would like to be in the drawing for two free tickets to the film, you can either email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com or send a message to our Facebook page. We’ll draw names for the winner at noon on Thursday.

Do The Right Thing Returns for 30th Anniversary Screening

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We Recommend We Recommend

Memphis Zine Fest Returns to Crosstown

CREDIT: Crosstown Arts

Erica Qualy, an artist who dabbles in various forms of visual and performing arts, has been making zines since she was in high school.

“My friend and I were at the library, and we saw a book [Zine Scene: The Do It Yourself Guide to Zines by Francesca Lia Block and Hillary Carlip] about how to make zines,” she says. “A lot of the bands I admired growing up made zines. So, it just hit us. We thought, ‘Wow, this is so awesome.'”

The pair went home and created their first zine, complete with word finds, advice columns, and other quirky content fillers.

Crosstown Arts

Erica Qualy, organizer of Memphis Zine Fest V

Fast forward to 2019, and now Qualy is organizing Memphis Zine Fest V at Crosstown Concourse and working on the fourth issue of her zine — Facts, Advice, & Things to think about! — filled with poetry one-liners.

“When I first moved here from Minneapolis to go to Memphis College of Art, I realized there wasn’t really a zine scene here, or, if there was one, I didn’t know where it was,” she says. “So, I wanted to help provide a space where zinesters could come out and share their wares. Mary Jo Karimnia, a fellow Memphis artist, listened to my ideas for this event, and she helped me bring the event to life via Story Booth and Crosstown Arts.”

This year’s Zine Fest will feature the works of several zine makers, including various established zine makers and new makers who attended last week’s Youth Zine-Making Workshop.

Memphis Zine Fest V, Crosstown Concourse – Central Atrium, Friday, July 19th, 5-8 p.m., Free.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Win Tickets to a Punk Rock Classic: Suburbia at Crosstown Arts

Before she was the director of Wayne’s World, Penelope Spheeris was the cinematic poet laureate of punk rock.

She grew up in trailer parks in Louisiana and Orange County, California, and put herself through film school working as a waitress at IHOP. Her first feature, The Decline Of Western Civilization, was the first documentary about the West Coast version of the international punk rock scene. Where documentaries like The Song Remains The Same depicted Led Zepplin as golden gods of music, Spheeris told the unvarnished truth about her subjects: They were mostly poor, living in squalor, and using the radical music as a way to express their frustrations and to transcend their crappy lives.

Roger Corman, the low-budget producer of exploitation films who gave everyone from Jack Nicholson to James Cameron their first break into the industry, made a deal with Spheeris to make a fictional film set in the obscure world of punk squats and $5 shows. As usual with Corman, the only real requirements were some gratuitous sex and violence he could use to attract the prurient.

Given free rein, Spheeris made a social realist ensemble piece masqerading as a gritty exploitation flick for the drive-ins. Suburbia was largely ignored by mainstream audiences upon release in 1984, the year of Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, and Purple Rain, but it quickly became an underground classic in the video stores, as small town punks all over America passed the word around.

The film has more in common with tales of squalor and struggle like Roberto Russolini’s Rome Open City  than it does with John Hughes, but it’s kind of like The Breakfast Club if all five characters were variations of John Bender, the juvenile delinquent Judd Nelson character. Today, if you know it at all, you probably remember it as the movie where Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers puts a live rat in his mouth.

Crosstown Theater is screening Suburbia as part of their weekly film series on Thursday, June 13th at 7:30 p.m. Like a punk show, it’s a $5 cover, but if you’re as broke as the OC punks, you’re in luck! The Memphis Flyer is giving away tickets to the show! To enter, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. Two lucky folks will win two tickets each to the screening at the beautiful new Crosstown Theater. So get those entries in and see a postmodern punk masterpiece!

Win Tickets to a Punk Rock Classic: Suburbia at Crosstown Arts