I’m OK with Zac. Country gives me an advanced case of the creeps when it gets Nashville polish all over it. Zac ain’t having that. Their music manages to keep a fuzzy (marijuana-addled?) relatable aspect to them. You won’t get impaled on hair gel if you go see Zac Brown Friday at FedExForum.
Tag: FedExForum
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Justin Timberlake at FedExForum
Years ago, I wrote some unkind things about J.T. in this paper. When Justin Timberlake decided to base his record label operations in L.A., it seemed, well, un-Memphian. But, boy, has that changed.
In the decade since, Timberlake has capitalized the Mirimichi Golf Course in Millington and ponied up like a boss to represent Memphis in the roster of local Grizzlies ownership. He closed out his fifth stint hosting Saturday Night Live wearing a Griz T-shirt and a Tigers hat. Time for me to shut up.
Say what you will about him being a Mouseketeer, ‘N Sync member, or Britney’s thang, Timberlake was part of Mammon’s entertainment machine because of his undeniable talents. The guy is as funny as any cast member on SNL, and word is he hits his parts in one take when he’s in the studio. Elvis won three Grammys. Timberlake has six. Let that bounce around under your mouse ears.
His latest visionary move is The 20/20 Experience, an album in two parts. The first installment debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. It sold nearly a million copies in its first week. The second installment arrived in late September. Critical reviews were mixed. But did those critics wear Tiger hats on SNL? No, they did not. So they can all go to hell.
Welcome home, J.T.
Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience World Tour comes to FedExForum on Monday, November 18th. Tickets available at ticketmaster.com.
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AutoZone Park and the Steroids Era
AutoZone Park is the Mark McGwire of minor-league baseball stadiums.
Like the former St. Louis Cardinal slugger, the park is gigantic and juiced.
This week the national media rediscovered a story that has been around for more than a year about the likely future of the ballpark and the Memphis Redbirds. My colleague Frank Murtaugh interviewed John Pontius a year ago. Frank also wrote this story about the park’s financial plight before other local and national media jumped on it.
McGwire was juiced on steroids when he hit 70 home runs in 1998, setting the all-time single-season record, and when he appeared in Memphis with the Cardinals at the opening of AutoZone Park in 2000. The ballpark was juiced on hype and an unsustainable financing plan.
AutoZone Park has more than 14,000 seats plus a left-field berm and right-field picnic area and cost $80 million. It was a thrilling sight to see when more than 15,000 people came out to see the Cardinals and McGwire open the stadium with an exhibition game in 2000, just as it was thrilling to watch McGwire break Roger Maris’s home run record and match Sammy Sosa home run for home run during the 1998 season.
By the same token, it was sad to see the crowds decline to a couple thousand or so, and McGwire descend into disgrace.
Thirteen years later, AutoZone Park is still a beautiful sight but too big and expensive by half. There are 44 luxury suites, many of them rarely used, whose leases expire after next year. Meanwhile, newer minor-league parks have no suites. The math on $80 million simply doesn’t work.
McGwire was a very good ballplayer who juiced to become a muscle-bound behemoth and a great home run hitter. The ballpark failed its bondholders. McGwire failed his fans, and fell well short of the number of votes needed to get into the Hall of Fame again this year.
A no-juice major-league hitter does very well to hit 35 home runs year in and year out. A no-juice minor-league baseball stadium does very well to draw 7,000 fans per game year in and year out. Double those numbers and something’s not going to add up.
The Memphis Redbirds open the 2013 season tonight with a double-header and, Murtaugh says, a line-up of future stars.
AutoZone Park was a case of Memphis thinking big but not being able to meet expectations; FedExForum was a case of Memphis thinking big and rising to expectations. Some of the credit for the latter must go to the former. The optimism was contagious, and spread to an ownership group and pursuit team determined to build a major-league stadium and attract a major-league team and a city and region willing to support it.
AutoZone Park was part of a development package that included the apartments to the east, the downtown elementary school, and the renovation of the William Moore office building. It replaced a blighted empty building, a porno theater, a mule barn, and parking lots on the corner across from The Peabody, downtown’s most enduring commercial landmark. Sooner or later, the city will make a deal to buy the ballpark for a fraction of what it cost, as it should.
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Bob Seger at the FedEx Forum
This week, Memphis transitions from unreliable arena rock — see last week’s preview in this space to the since-aborted Guns N’ Roses concert — to old reliable arena rock in the form of rock-and-roll lifer Bob Seger. Motown’s Kid Rock precursor, Seger started as one of Chuck Berry’s children and has now made a transition from Dad Rock to Granddad Rock: It’s been 35 years since Seger exhorted “sweet sixteens turned thirty-one” to stay in the game. But however corny “Old Time Rock and Roll” may be, actual old-time rock-and-roll — the Berry/Stones riff tradition Seger built his career on — holds up pretty well, as most of the new two-disc Seger compilation Ultimate Hits: Rock and Roll Never Forgets attests. And amid the most familiar hits — including, of course, the classic “Night Moves” — expect Seger to pay his local respects with his “old Memphis song,” his cover of Otis Clay’s Hi Records soul single “Trying to Live My Life Without You.” Bob Seger plays FedExForum on Saturday, December 10th. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $69 and $43.
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Motivation on a Budget
I plan to get motivated this month, and it’s going to cost me less than two bucks.
For $1.95, I got myself a seat at FedEx Forum March 28th to hear Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Forbes, Laura Bush, Terry Bradshaw, Lou Holtz, Leigh Anne Tuohy and others speaking at the “Get Motivated Business Seminar.”
“Get Motivated” has been running full-page ads in The Commercial Appeal as well as radio spots and billboard ads around town for a few weeks. The ads promise that all speakers are “live and in person, all in one day!” Pretty good deal when you consider most of these folks get at least five-figure speaking fees and probably don’t need the extra cash from selling their books and tapes. I believe Colin Powell got $80,000 when he was here a few years ago for a talk.
I am fully aware of the power of salesmanship. And I have read skeptical reports about Get Motivated in other newspapers, claiming that if you sign up you subject yourself to a hard sell to buy various upgrades and accessories.
Fair enough. It’s not like my email box is exactly pristine.
I bought my ticket, plus a workbook for $4.99, online. With 17 cents for taxes and facility fee, my total outlay was $7.11. I called the website’s 1-800 number to confirm that all speakers would be here in the flesh, and was told by a female voice that indeed they would. After I placed my order, a man called to confirm it and repeat that assurance. He also told me I would be at FedExForum and not at the convention center, which will hold the overflow if any and get a satellite feed.
I plan to attend the motivational marathon with an open mind and a positive disposition, such as it is. I have listened to and written about Don Hutson, Cavett Roberts, Zig Ziglar, Holtz, Bradshaw, and other professional speakers before, although it is certainly debatable whether it did me any good. Granted, eight hours is an iron-butt assignment, but I am a veteran of school board meetings and have the right stuff.
If there are any shenanigans or no-shows before or during the event I will report them.
