Tag: Memphis

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From My Seat Sports

The Memphis Redbirds’ Dan Johnson: A Long Odyssey

CREDIT: Roger Cotton

Roger Cotton

Dan Johnson

The Memphis Redbirds were stumbling along with a record of 8-15 on May 4th when their parent club in St. Louis signed Dan Johnson. The transaction didn’t make headlines, not even here in Memphis. Johnson had been released by the Cincinnati Reds two weeks earlier after playing nine games with Louisville, the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate in the International League.

Two days later, Johnson slammed a 3-run, walk-off homer at AutoZone Park to give Memphis a 6-5 win over Colorado Springs. It was Johnson’s first home run in a Redbirds uniform . . . and the 240th of his lengthy minor-league career. (Only Toledo’s Mike Hessman has hit more among active players.) Since the 35-year-old slugger’s arrival, Memphis has turned its season around, going 26-15 and climbing back into contention in its division of the Pacific Coast League.

Johnson is Crash Davis — of Bull Durham fame — come to life. He played his first professional game (with Vancouver in the Oakland A’s system) in 2001 and his first game at the Triple-A level (with Sacramento) in 2003. Unlike Kevin Costner’s character, though, Johnson has had some time in The Show, appearing in 431 games with five major-league teams. He hit the most famous home run in Tampa Bay Rays history, a ninth-inning shot in the last game of the 2011 season that tied the score and allowed the Rays to later clinch a playoff berth. But Johnson’s big-league achievements have been interspersed with stints in the bushes. He’s one of two men in baseball history to be named MVP of both the Pacific Coast League (with Sacramento in the River Cats’ 2004 championship season) and the International League (with, you guessed it, the Durham Bulls in 2010).

The secret to sustained happiness when traveling so many miles — over so many years — on the baseball map? According to Johnson, it’s as simple as being a good teammate.

“I enjoy being around the guys,” he says, “and helping out. If you get the label of being a bad clubhouse guy, or selfish . . . teams don’t want that around. It wears on other players. When I first got to Triple-A, it was unheard of for a young guy to be at that level. You respected the veterans. I learned from the vets in front of me, and listened to what they had to say.”

Johnson’s felt the sting of being traded or demoted, but each time has dusted off any bitterness, packed his gear, and headed for the next franchise and next challenge. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself,” he says. “I got traded from a good situation in Houston [last spring] to Cincinnati. From the beginning, it didn’t seem right, and it never was right. But if it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to play for the Cardinals. Things happen for a reason.”

Johnson won’t accept credit for the Redbirds’ improved play since his arrival. (Despite not appearing with the Redbirds in April, Johnson is second on the team with 28 RBIs.) “It wasn’t that the talent wasn’t here,” says Johnson. “We just needed to put it together; change the mindset a little bit. This game is very humbling. If you stay down, you’re never going to win. You go out there and know that you can win, instead of just hoping.”

The Cardinals’ system is the eighth in which Johnson has played, and he recognized a different culture within days of his arrival in Memphis. “It’s been awesome,” he says. “The way you go about your business here, the way everybody’s pulling for everyone else. It’s not something you see often. The guys here are rooting for the players with the big-league club. In a lot of organizations it’s, ‘I hope that guy stinks, or that guy’s hurt.’ There’s no negativity here. The value this organization brings, and the tradition in St. Louis is amazing. The way they teach things, the thought process.”

Johnson’s entire family — his wife and four children — have joined him for a summer in Memphis, one he hopes takes a detour through St. Louis. He’s seen much of the baseball world (including the 2009 season in Japan), but has yet to land the sport’s most prized possession. “There’s nothing like the playoffs in the big leagues,” says Johnson. “There’s no better feeling as a baseball player. I don’t have a [championship] ring, and I’d love to get one. I’d love to play till I’m 100. Until I can’t compete, I’m going to go out there and try to get a job and make a difference.”

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: John Kilzer

By any measure, John Kilzer has had an eventful life. He’s been a college basketball player, an English professor, an internationally renowned recording artist, and a Methodist minister. Now, at age 57, he has put out a new album of original songs on Memphis’ Archer Records. 

“California” is the second video from Hide Away. The song is about trying and failing to make it in the wilds of Hollywood. Director Melissa Anderson Sweazy and editor Laura Jean Hocking put Memphis actor Drew Smith back in the silent era for this beautiful and poignant video—and be sure to watch for the cameo by Drew’s son Hank. 

Music Video Monday: John Kilzer

If you would like your video featured on Music Video Monday, just email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

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Editorial Opinion

B.B. King, the Maestro

CREDIT: Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

B.B. King

For all that has been written about Memphis as a popular-music foundry, as the major originating point of blues and rockabilly and soul and so much else that the world now takes for granted, there is one aspect of the city’s endemic sound that is often overlooked, even in otherwise reasonable and authoritative accounts. 

That has to do with the elements of precision and control that underlie all the city’s characteristic musical products. From the tightly energized backing given to Elvis Presley’s earliest Sun recordings by Scotty Moore’s electric guitar and Bill Black’s bass to the massed harmonics of the Memphis Horns over at Stax/Volt, our city’s musical exemplars would pioneer in all the ways in which the raw and elemental stuff of life can be captured live and contained. That, if you will, is “the Memphis sound.”

No one represents this defining characteristic better than B.B. King, the maestro of the blues guitar, who died last week at age 89 and rightly received plaudits and eulogies from all over the globe. What distinguished B.B.’s playing was his unique single-string style, in which notes were played one at a time, rather than in ensemble or chord form, and each note sang its own song of sadness or joy or playfulness or indefinable longing. Each note — held or clipped, bent or played straight, isolated or in sequence — was an infinite universe of meaning.

Though B.B. King was no academic scholar, his knowledge of musical properties was profound and arose both from the gigs he did and from his path-finding service in the late ’40s and early ’50s as a disc jockey on Memphis’ WDIA-AM, the nation’s first all-black radio station. 

It was as a performer, though, that he was best known and will remain so, through recordings that will be played as long as there are means to hear them and places on earth where people are free to do so. B.B. King was not just a musical maestro, he was an emissary of civilization itself. God willing, he is one thrill that will never be gone.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis To Focus On Locals For 2015 Festival

At an event in Midtown Monday night, Indie Memphis announced that the 2015 edition of the film festival would be held in Overton Square on November 3-10. 

The 18th annual festival, the first held since the recent departure of Executive Director Erk Jambor will be spread out over an entire week to allow festivalgoers an opportunity to see more films. For the past several years, the festival has been a one-weekend affair with more than 40 features spread out over as many as 6 screens at once, often creating impossible choices for audiences. The festival date has also been moved away from Halloween weekend, which has hurt attendance in the last two years. 

“We want to give our audience more opportunities to see these great independent films. The extended festival will give people more options to enjoy the festival on both the weekend and weeknights. It also reduces the number of simultaneous screenings for our dedicated members who want to see a bunch of the films,” says Indie Memphis Board President Ryan Watt.

The call for entries to the features competition this year is open only to filmmakers from the Mid-South area. There is no entry fee for hometowner films submitted before July 17, thanks to a grant from ArtsMemphis. The shorts competition will be open to films from all over the world. National and international feature films will be chosen to screen at the festival on a curated basis.

For the second year, the Indie Grants program will award two Memphis filmmakers $5,000 each to produce a short film for the 2016 festival. Two additional grants for $500 will be offered to first time filmmakers from the Memphis area. Filmmakers can apply for the grants at the Indie Memphis website.  

Watt also announced a national search for a new executive director. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars

Today’s Music Video Monday also happens to be one of the biggest hits of the decade. 

In the six months since “Uptown Funk” was released by British mega-producer Mark Ronson and Hawaiian sensation Bruno Mars, it has spent 14 weeks as number one on the American Billboard sales charts, 7 weeks atop the British charts, has set records for the number of streams in a week, and has won Single Of The Year at the Brit Awards. It’s one of those seemingly rare moments when market success and artistic success converge. You can read all about its recording at Royal Studios with Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell in this Flyer story from February. The video is simple, energetic, and awesome. 

Music Video Monday: Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars

It was also the first song recorded in Memphis to hit number one since Memphis disc jockey Rick Dees’ novelty record “Disco Duck” topped the charts for one week in October, 1976. So as an added Music Video Monday bonus, here’s Dees and Duck live on The Midnight Special. 

Music Video Monday: Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars (2)

If you want to see your video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Nots

For 4/20 we have a psychedelic blast of color from Memphis garage punks Nots. 

The clip for the Goner Records artists latest single “White Noise” comes ahead of their upcoming tour with New Orleans’ organ maniacs Quintron and Miss Pussycat, who appear in the video (in drag, in Mr. Quintron’s case). Shot at the Saturn Bar and directed by New Orleans video artist 9ris 9ris, the fixed-camera video cranks up the chroma and exploits analog video distortion to create a warm, shifting color palette.

Music Video Monday: Nots

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Arella Rocket

This week’s Music Video Monday features a track from Memphis experimental hip hop artist Arella Rocket. 

“Cosmophobia”‘ opens with a beat that is laid back, but still insistent, that gradually erodes as the song progresses towards an unexpected climax. Rocket directed the video, which was shot and edited by Michael Norris. They make extensive use of layered images, incorporating both renaissance art and clips from classic film with shots of Rocket illuminated by a projector in a delicate balance of light and shadow. The song appears on Rocket’s new “dream hop” album Girls And Goddesses. 

Music Video Monday: Arella Rocket

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Vending Machine World Premiere

On today’s Music Video Monday, we’ve got the world premiere of “White Squared Potato” from Robby Grant’s ongoing music video project for his new Vending Machine album Let The Little Things Go. Director Andrew Trent Fleming takes us on a chase through space in a rickety, retrofuture rocket. 

“When Robby asked me to make a video for his new Vending Machine EP, I knew I wanted to do something off the wall,” says Fleming. “I wanted to do something I’d never done in a music video before (space setting, 3D graphics) and make it silly but a little dark. I also wanted to make a small joke about the plethora of locals (myself included) who shoehorn some iconic Memphis landmark into videos in which they don’t make any sense.”

Music Video Monday: Vending Machine World Premere

If you’d like your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email a link to cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Black Rock Revival

“The song is simple if you want it, take it. Freedom, quality of life, and the right to express yourself,”  says Black Rock Revival’s Sebastian Banks. “What could better express the push and pull of life than a wrestler?”

This clip for the band’s new single, “If You Want It”, produced by Banks and helmed by Atlanta-based director Nina Stakz, combines some hardcore wrestling action with moodily lit performance footage. 

“We shoot this in a one-day, 10-hour shoot,” Banks says. “The planning was key, with storyboards, fight choreography, and locations. We also where going for things we don’t usually see, an all-Black cast for a hard rock video. The action had to match the speed and intensity of the guitars and commanding vocal. Hopefully we made something MTV worthy and Memphis strong.”

Music Video Monday: Black Rock Revivial

If you have a music video you would like to see featured on Music Video Monday, email a link to cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

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Film Features Film/TV

Time Warp Drive-In: It Came From The Drive-In

The Summer Drive-In was built by Malco Theaters in 1950, on the cusp of the country’s big drive-in theater boom. At the height of their popularity, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins all over the country, comprising more than one quarter of all movies screens. Now, that figure is at 1.5 percent.

But the lost pleasures of the drive-in are not lost on Memphis filmmaker Mike McCarthy and Black Lodge Video proprietor Matt Martin, who, last year, started the monthly Time Warp Drive-In series, which brings classic films, both well-known and obscure, back to the biggest screens.

“We were accepted by a large part of the Memphis community,” says McCarthy. “[Malco Theatres Executive VP] Jimmy Tashie took a chance at, not only saving the drive-in, but plugging a program in that would use the drive-in for what its American function used to be.”

The eight-month series will once again run four-movie programs, once a month, each united by a theme, ranging from the deliciously schlocky to the seriously artsy. Last year’s most popular program was the Stanley Kubrick marathon, which ended as the sun came up. “Who says the drive-in is anti-intellectual?” McCarthy says.

The appeal of the drive-in is both backward- and forward-looking. The atmosphere at the Time Warp Drive-In events is relaxed and social. People are free to sit in their cars and watch the movie or roam around and say hi to their friends. It’s the classic film version of tailgating. “Matt from Black Lodge brought this up: It’s a kind of social experiment, like America is in general. It’s getting back to turntables and vinyl. Maybe it’s not celluloid, but it’s celluloid-like. You didn’t get to see that, because you weren’t born. But you can go back to that. It takes a handful of people who believe to make it happen. And that’s why Malco has been around for 100 years. They’ll take that chance.”

Malco’s Film VP Jeff Kaufman worked hard to find and book the sometimes-obscure films that Martin and McCarthy want to program. “I think we’ve got the material, and we’re trying to get things that people want to see, while kind of playing it a little dangerous around the edges,” McCarthy says. “This Saturday’s totally kid-friendly. We make a conscious attempt to show the kid-friendly stuff first, so people can come out with their kids.”

The series takes its name from the most famous song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so the opening program is, appropriately, movies that were mentioned in the show’s opening number, “Science Fiction Double Feature,” that also appeared on Memphis’ legendary horror host Sivad’s long-running Fantastic Features program. “We’re showing what many people believe to be the greatest film of all time, the 1933 version of King Kong,” McCarthy says. “It’s not the worst film of all time, which is the 1976 version of King Kong.

The granddaddy of the horror/sci-fi special effects spectacle films, King Kong has lost none of its power. It’s concise, imaginative, and best experienced with a crowd. The evening’s second film comes from 20 years later. It Came from Outer Space is based on a story by sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury and was prime drive-in fare. It features shape-shifting aliens years before Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 3D imagery from the original golden age of 3D, and a twisted take on the alien invasion formula.

It Came From Outer Space

The third film, When Worlds Collide, was made in 1951, but it doesn’t fit the mold of the sci-fi monster movie. Produced by George Pal, whose credits include the original film takes on War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, the film asks what would happen if scientists discover that Earth was doomed to destruction by a rogue planet, presaging Lars Von Trier’s 2011 Melancholia.

The evening closes with The Invisible Man, starring Claude Rains as the title scientist who throws off social constraints after rendering himself transparent. Directed by Frankenstein auteur James Whale, the film has been recognized as an all-time classic by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry and will richly reward intrepid viewers who stay at the drive-in all night long.