Tag: New Orleans

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

A Louisiana Fairy Tale

The author reminisces about her Mardi Gras escapades, from taking in the sounds and sights of the French Quarter to attending the Rex Ball in a vintage red dress. (Photo: Rhett Ortego)

Occasionally in life, if we are fortunate, we may forge the kind of friendship in which both parties are completely comfortable with one another. I personally have found such a friendship in Rhett Ortego, a New Orleans native. Our particular, and perhaps peculiar, bond can be summed up in a tableau: Rhett sitting in my bathroom reading aloud a history of Mardi Gras to me while I am in the shower. (This may be a good time to mention that I am a heterosexual cis gender woman and Rhett is a homosexual cis gender man, and therefore, there is no danger of sexual tension in this anecdote. Much to the dismay of Rhett’s grandmother, who pulled him aside during my visit to his family home and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to be anything more to Coco?” But I’m getting ahead of myself.) This is how I ended up on my first-ever trip to New Orleans during Mardi Gras with my own personal tour guide.

On Sunday, February 19, 2023, Rhett and I are strolling through the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, and I am falling in love with the brightly painted houses and maze-like streets. It is a lovely day, the sun is shining, and everything is bright. I knew Mardi Gras was a big deal, but I was not quite prepared for the festive atmosphere that permeates the city. Beads hang off balconies and porches; lawns are decorated in purple, green, and gold; and businesses all over the city display repurposed Christmas trees — now Mardi Gras trees — in shop windows. People everywhere are wearing the most outrageous and fantastic clothes. I see a man dressed all in white, wearing giant white angel wings riding a bike down Napoleon Avenue, under a canopy of toilet-paper-rolled trees. A man who looks like he could be a Hell’s Angel sports a gold tiara.

Photo: Coco June

As we drive and walk through the city, Rhett nonchalantly peppers our conversation with statements such as, “That house was owned by a silent movie actress, and now it’s a library,” or “The Heebe family lived there.” He tells me the history of many buildings, often including the date they were built or what their original purpose was. As we enter Jackson Square, I notice that I am the fastest walking person in the crowd. I point it out and Rhett simply says, “The Big Easy.” Everyone is unhurried, including the albino horse wearing a unicorn headband pulling a carriage down the streets of the Vieux Carre. We eat lunch on a balcony (which differs from a gallery, I learn, in that it isn’t supported by columns or poles in any way). This particular balcony slants toward the street at such an angle that it feels as though we could spill over onto the sidewalk at any moment.

Photo: Coco June

What strikes me in many places are not the sights of the city, but the sounds. I take several videos just to capture the aural experience. Being from Memphis, I especially appreciate another city that is permeated with music. I hear violins, homemade drums, and saxophones, and they are all layered between the voices of thousands of people having a good time. On Lundi Gras, the Monday directly before Fat Tuesday, we go to one of the many parades. The walk to the route takes us along St. Charles Avenue, past houses whose architecture dates back to the 1800s. The parade offers up a completely different, more cacophonic, variety of sounds. Multiple marching bands, floats, and horses file through a throng of shouting people, and the distinctive sound of a wad of plastic beads being caught flashes periodically through the din.

On Fat Tuesday itself, Rhett and I get to experience our own grown-up platonic version of prom at the Rex Ball. After the event, I finally slow down to match the pace of the locals, mincing along in my four-inch heels and floor-length vintage red dress. When we get back to Rhett’s parents’ house, we rewatch the ball (apparently an Ortego family tradition) with his dad, a hilarious experience made more palatable by the bottle of whiskey he breaks out for the occasion. A fitting end to our Louisiana fairy tale.

Coco June is a Memphian, mother, and the Flyer’s theater columnist.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Secrets That’ll Haunt

Doc and me in Dorea's house. (Photo: Maureen Morici)

My grandmother can’t keep a secret, specifically my mother’s secrets. When I was 12, she spoiled the surprise trip to Disney World that my parents had planned to take my sister and me on. When I was 21, she broke the news that our two family dogs (may they rest in peace) ate our pet bird (may he rest in peace) when I was in kindergarten. Admittedly, even as a 5-year-old, I suspected that Doc had died under hushed circumstances, and now, at least, I know that my suspicions were right. Guess you could say that I have a sixth sense (more on that in the next paragraph).

But perhaps the biggest secret that has slipped through my grandma’s well-lipsticked lips was one that drastically shaped my identity: I had a ghost friend when I was 3, back when my family was renting a house that happened to be directly across the street from a cemetery in New Orleans. Reader, this meant that six years, two-thirds of my life at the time — I knew my fractions — had gone by without mention of the fact that I had my very own Casper. I had no memory of this, of course, but the betrayal I had felt in that moment at 9 years old, from the very woman who touts “no secrets in this family,” was like none I’ve felt since.

Once those beans were spilled at that fateful lunch, my mom looked like — well, she looked like she had just seen a ghost. Unlike the killer-dog secret which garnered nervous laughter upon revelation, this secret made my mom give Gammy the look I had thought was only reserved for when my sister and I were in deep, deep trouble, the kind of trouble where we went to our room without having to be told. This secret was unspeakable, and she said as much: “I’m not talking about it.”

To this day, I cannot get this woman to tell me all the dirty, ghostly details, and I try. Trust me, I try. In between begging for answers and “Jesus Christ, Abigail, ask me again and see what happens,” I’ve gathered a few tidbits. My mom would see me talking to nothing, though I claimed to be talking with my friend. I called her Dorea. She was around my age. She had a brother. She came to New Orleans on a ship. I told my mom Dorea wore “pantaloons” under her dress — a word far outside my 3-year-old vocabulary. I said she looked “strange” — the only word in my vocabulary that I could muster to describe whoever, or whatever, I was seeing.

Regardless, it was enough to freak my mom out. She won’t drive past that house anymore. The family that lived there after us died in a plane crash. I’m sure there’s no relation; she’s not so sure.

Despite my mother’s clear aversion to the topic, after I found out about Dorea, I felt like a badass. I was (am) a shy kid, but apparently my shyness didn’t stop me from speaking with the dead. Dare I say, I felt like the Virgin Mary, the ultimate lady in my Catholic schoolgirl frame of reference — hand-selected for something greater than what the skeptics in this world could handle. I longed to find a way to wedge Dorea into my story, to make her more than just a one-line anecdote that my grandmother casually mentions in a conversation at a random Tuesday lunch.

I’d try to force a memory of that time, to picture what Dorea looked like, what our conversations could’ve been, but all I can remember from that house was the green carpeted staircase that I took a tumble down in front of the young handyman (the embarrassment!) and the PBS Kids logo that floated on the TV screen when my mom told me that our dog Hobbes (who we had before the bird-killing ones) had gone off to heaven, and that no, the vet didn’t kill him, no matter how convinced I was. (I guess my sixth sense wasn’t fully formed then … or maybe it was. Now, that’s a haunting thought.) Oh, if only I could remember Dorea instead.

But I don’t.

So now Dorea really is simply an anecdote with just enough embellishment to fill this short space in the Flyer, but not enough to write the next Nancy Drew-esque book that 9-year-old me had planned to get out of the whole “Dorea thing.” (Dorea would’ve been the perfect Bess to my Nancy, I was convinced.) Every now and then, I’ll hop onto Google and go down hours-long rabbit holes of census records, looking for some kind of answer, but I’m as clueless as ever.

There’s a part of me that thinks I should just let the idea of her go and be grateful that I had a friend when Hobbes died or when my mom was dealing with my grouchy, recently born little sister. I was never alone or lonely in that house. I wonder, though, if Dorea is.

I’m going back to New Orleans for the weekend, which just so happens to be Halloween, when the veil between this world and the next is thinnest. Maybe I’ll drive by that house. In theory, I’m old enough to go by myself, but my mom has volunteered Gammy to go with me. Maybe I’ll see Dorea, or maybe I’ll just get another secret out of my grandma. Either way, I’ll be in good company.

Categories
Music Music Features

Thomas Dollbaum: Conjuring Souls from the World’s Edge

Thomas Dollbaum (Photo: Cora Nimtz)

Though he settled in New Orleans to hone his craft as a poet, the faces and voices of Florida still haunt Thomas Dollbaum’s songs. “Nothing good comes from Florida, including you,” he sings with a weary croon, and he could be singing about himself or that hooker “riding high with some trick” — or both. Indeed, the song “Florida” is the perfect lead track on Dollbaum’s debut, Wellwood, out this week on Big Legal Mess Records.

Imagine a Tampa kid who grows up seeing more than he bargained for. Caught between the metal and rap scenes, he holes up at home to write songs evoking the damaged, yearning souls around him. “Going to high school in Florida, heroin was becoming really big again,” Dollbaum says. “I wasn’t that involved with it, but a lot of my friends ended up getting addicted in the opiate epidemic. Seeing people you grew up with ending up lost, where you don’t even know where they are anymore, those kinds of stories have always been wild to me.”

Dollbaum is a songwriter who completely inhabits his characters. Points of comparison might be Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, or other singers with a poetic bent, but unlike them, Dollbaum is writing from a land without a past. “Florida is cookie-cutter,” he says. “Everything’s new. Nothing’s got any history to it. People from all over move down there to start again. Everyone I knew as a kid was from somewhere else.”

The melodies are as sparing and unsentimental as the words, delivered unhurriedly, as when he sings “I walk hand in hand with my death.” The final result has a freshly minted quality, even where influences are apparent. Though the songwriters Dollbaum admires are in the mix, from the Silver Jews’ David Berman to Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell, or Neil Young, every move grows organically from the songs, Dollbaum’s own distinctive voice, and the lives he conjures up.

As Dollbaum stresses, these songs are more than mere diary entries. “Even in poetry, everything’s moving more to confessional stuff. I just don’t have much interest in that. These are songs and characters coming from growing up in Florida, a mixture of my own life and some of it very fictional. Lou Reed does that too. A lot of it is made up, but he makes these interesting worlds. That’s always interested me.”

Music has always fascinated him as well, though not the polkas his father played on accordion in his youth. “I played bass first, until fifth grade or so,” he recalls. “And then I wanted to write songs, so I moved to guitar. I’ve always been playing music.” Extended family in Indiana both taught him guitar and introduced him to the music of John Prine, and folk-rock graced with a realist poet’s vision is what Dollbaum has aspired to ever since.

He first won accolades for his poetry, which in turn took him to the University of New Orleans. Having completed his master’s degree there, now laboring as a carpenter, he and friend Matt Seferian began recording the demos that grew into this album just before the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Work continued under lockdown conditions, as they slowly built up tracks that initially featured only acoustic guitar and singing. From those labors comes a painstakingly crafted album that sounds as airy, natural, and flowing as anything from the 1970s’ Golden Age of singer/songwriters.

But this isn’t the California of a half century ago. The setting of Dollbaum’s debut is more like today’s America: a broken land that wanderers still flock to, in search of whatever they can’t find at home. Perhaps growing up in such a land gives you a sixth sense for uprooted souls and the desperate dreams that drive them. They’ve burned themselves into Thomas Dollbaum’s mind in ways he may never shake. Instead, he builds worlds for them and invites us in.

Thomas Dollbaum appears with Bailey Bigger and Kate Teague at Bar DKDC on Saturday, May 28th, 8 p.m.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Goner and Unapologetic Join Forces For Downtown Meltdown

The true genius of Memphis music has always been our willingness to mix and match. A show tonight in a Downtown alley proves that tendency is alive and well.

“We keep it fresh by following this one idea: If it doesn’t intimidate us, we didn’t think big enough,” says IMAKEMADBEATS, mastermind of the Unapologetic label. “Every show we throw, we try to do something we’ve never seen or done before. We try to scare ourselves with our own ideas, and then we take the necessary steps to make it happen. The adrenaline alone pushes us somewhere new in each show.”

Goner Records co-owner Zach Ives says when he was approached by the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) about scheduling a show, he thought it was a great idea.

“I love what [IMAKEMADBEATS] is doing over there,” Ives said. “We’ve met up and talked some over the past year. Nice to share experiences. While our avenues are different, there are plenty of similarities. We are both doing it our own way and figuring it out as we go along.”

Both Goner and Unapologetic follow in the Memphis tradition of independent record labels making and selling the music they want to hear, and then creating the audience for it.

In the case of Goner, Ives and his partner, Eric Friedl (aka Eric Oblivian), that music is the raw, rootsy garage punk that emerged from the Antenna and Barrister’s scene of the 80s and 90s.

For Unapologetic, it’s cutting edge hip hop.

“I really believe people value sincerity and vulnerability in music over everything else,” says IMAKEMADBEATS. “I think things like genre and other divisions come second to those things.

“These kinds of shows are great for us for the obvious reasons of getting in front of new people with open minds, but also because people like the good folks at Goner understand pushing boundaries and creating the kinds of atmospheres that allow people to be unapologetically themselves.

“Beyond the music, shows like these are great for the people, how they feel there, and the kinds of minds they’ll meet there. It’s great for community.”

Ives says after the initial conversation with Unapologetic, “One thing we both agreed on, our different parts of the music community don’t interact enough. This seemed like a good opportunity to try and correct that.”

The show will kick off around quitting time on Thursday, July 12th with Unapologetic rapper PreauXX and wunderkind producer Kid Maestro.

“There are few people as naturally talented as PreauXX,” says IMAKEMADBEATS. “[He] can go anywhere and share the stage with anyone and be a showstopper.”

New Orleans-based retro-synth wizard Benni will echo his spacey vibes  through the Downtown cityscape.

“The Unapologetic guys are super into Benni, so it was a no-brainer!” says Ives. “They demanded it! Also, he has a new record about to come out next month, so it made sense to get him back up and fill Downtown with new space sounds. It also felt like a good transition with the Unapologetic artists.”

Unapologetic R&B sensation Cameron Bethany will lend his smooth, emotive voice to the chorus.

“Cameron found me, actually,” says IMAKEMADBEATS. “We’d met before because someone I was working with in the studio called him in for some background vocals. He told me that he’d kept up with some of the things I was doing with PreauXX years ago.

“One day in 2015, Cameron called me and told me he wanted me to produce a single for him. We met, talked some business and artistic direction, then set a date for him to come and work on the record.

“The music on his Soundcloud page was mostly cover songs and when I’d asked peers about him, a handful mentioned an amazing voice but no one knew what his music sounded like. We started working on his single and after hearing the hook on it, alone, I knew we had something special. Something different. I listened to it on loop after Cam left the studio for almost 3 hours.”

Fresh off a sold-out European tour with Superchunk, Memphis punk legends The Oblivians will be joined by New Orleans vocalist Stephanie McDee.

The Oblivians covered McDee’s “Call The Police” on their last album, Desperation.

“It’s such a party anthem,” says Ives. “And her original version is soooo fast! We’ll see if the guys can keep up. Can’t wait to see what happens.”

The free show, sponsored by the DMC, begins at 5 p.m. in Barbaro Alley Downtown. 

Categories
Music Music Blog

Ponderosa Stomp Recap: 24 Hours in NOLA

CREDIT: Alex Greene

Alex Greene

Andria Lisle, Vaneese Thomas, and Carla Thomas

Although Ponderosa Stomp, the New Orleans-based love letter to lesser-known soul, blues, rockabilly, and garage artists, was cut short by the fizzled Hurricane Nate, the festival was hopping last Friday. Many of the performers and audience alike stayed at the Ace Hotel, where the daytime hours were filled with panel discussions and interviews as part of the event’s Music History Conference. While vinyl junkies perused the record bins in a side room, and that evening’s bands rehearsed in a closed space near the lobby, hundreds more filed through the hotel’s main event hall to hear some history.

For those eager to hear personal tales of the music world, it was an embarrassment of riches. An early highlight was the panel dedicated to the late Billy Miller, visionary co-founder of Norton records. The label has released many Memphis treasures, from archival re-issues of rockabilly and Big Star to more recent works by the Reigning Sound. Miller passed away last year at the young age of 62, making this memorial panel an emotional one. His wife and partner, Miriam Linna, said that she was especially proud of his last labor of love, a collection of lost Dion tracks from 1965. The panel was moderated by the unflappable Michael Hurtt, of Royal Pendletons fame, also a musicologist in his own right.

Another Memphis panel featured Reggie Young, guitarist extraordinaire with Hi Records and American Studios. Young was not in the best health, but certainly of sound mind and body as he exchanged comments with moderator Red Kelly on the landmark singles and albums of his career, beginning with his first encounter with Jack Clement and Bill Black at the Memphis “Home for Incurables” in the 1950s. The success of the Bill Black Combo (who were known to wear “BBC” suit coats) led to tours with the Beatles, Kinks, and Yardbirds. When Kelly cued up James Carr’s “The Dark End of the Street,” featuring Young’s guitar work, the crowd gave the record a standing ovation. Similarly, upon hearing just the guitar break in Joe Tex’s “Skinny Legs and All,” the crowd once again rose to applaud. Young also recalled taking a lunch break while recording with King Curtis. At the local diner, Curtis picked up a menu and began riffing on menu items in musical terms, including some “boiling Memphis guitar.” The group loved it so much, they skipped lunch and returned to the studio to cut “Memphis Soul Stew.”

Another fine panel tied to Memphis was Andria Lisle’s discussion with Carla and Vaneese Thomas. They recounted their early love of the Teen Town Singers, and the pride they felt when Dave Clark, being dubbed “The World’s Oldest Teenager” at an award ceremony, turned to kneel before Rufus Thomas as he looked on, saying that honor could only go to him. Carla also recalled writing songs just for fun as a teen, as her father recorded on a home reel-to-reel tape deck. One of these was a little tune called “Gee Whiz (Look at his Eyes),” the recording of which Rufus took down to Stax on a whim, launching her career.

When dusk settled on the Crescent City, festival goers migrated over to the Orpheum to see that evening’s full roster of bands. It all kicked off with Billy Boy Arnold, who delivered a soft-spoken “I Wish You Would,” along with other blues. A swamp pop revue followed, featuring T.K. Hulin and G.G. Shinn, and the latter’s “Harlem Shuffle” was galvanizing. Some fine, funky soul followed with Warren Storm and Willie West, but it was Winfield Parker who really brought the house down with his voice, an under-appreciated treasure of the soul genre.

It should be noted that a perplexing audio mix plagued much of the night, but every performer rose above it with aplomb. Barbara Lynn, a Stomp regular by now, was in fine voice and demonstrated some sublime guitar work. Archie Bell whipped the house into a frenzy, both with his “Tighten Up” and the lesser-known “Strategy,” which had him screaming “I’m soaking wet! I’m soaking wet” at the song’s climactic chorus, perhaps in sympathy with the Gulf Coast being on the receiving end of Hurricane Nate.

Roy Head carried on over the full horn section rave up during “Treat Her Right,” another Stomp favorite. And then came the abrupt shift to cajun stomping music with Doug Kershaw, who was a little out of it, but sang with gusto every word of his hit that he could recall. “He’s got Muskrat hides hanging by the dozens/ Even got a lady Mink, a Muskrat’s cousin/ Got ‘em out drying in the hot, hot sun/ Tomorrow papa’s gonna turn ‘em into money.” It had the floor shaking with knee-slapping joy, and Kershaw’s freestyle fiddling over the chord changes made the band sound almost psychedelic.

But the psychedelia was just beginning. Roky Erickson, who’s reprise of 13th Floor Elevators cuts has been known to be spotty at other festivals, was completely on point this night, and the band supported him mightily. The chemistry in this band led “Dr. Ike,” festival organizer Ira Padnos, to exclaim that it was the closest thing he could imagine to seeing the Elevators themselves.

Finally, show closers the Gories hit the stage fast and furious, building a glorious wall of noise with minimalist, primitivist swagger. Again, the ferocious music rose above the sound mix and the house was gyrating to Mick Collins’ blasts of noise guitar, soaring over the wiry groove of guitarist Dan Kroha and drummer Peggy O’Neill. For those Memphians who have long adulated this stunning band, it was a fine, gritty apotheosis to the night and the perfect melding of R&B, blues, punk, and unclassifiable parts and grease off the garage floor.

Alas, though Nate was a fizzle in the Big Easy the next day, a city curfew forced the cancellation of the second night’s show. Although there was an impromptu concert in the Ace Hotel on Saturday afternoon, this did not include performances by Don Bryant or the Thomas sisters. Indeed, the Bo-Keys, crack soul band of the current era in Memphis music, didn’t even make it to New Orleans due to bad weather or the threat of it.

Categories
News News Feature

Wandering Through New Orleans

CREDIT: Lesley Young

Parnassus: home to the Muses, sacred to Dionysus and Apollo, and generally a center of creative activity. Also known as New Orleans. Creativity is part of the air you breathe in this mythological city. The street names, the mispronunciation of street names — ride the streetcar just to listen to the conductor. Locals dedicate entire rooms to costumes in this City of Festivals. Wandering is the best way to see it. That’s when you run into the milliner or the sno-ball stand that uses Louisiana cane sugar. Wander on your bike. Just recognize that the city was built on a swamp, so there are lots and lots and lots of potholes. And don’t be alarmed by how many people talk to you — it’s a stoop city.

So how does one break it down in a city so filled with … history/bon vivance/inspiration and food? By neighborhood.

Let’s start with the Bywater. There is a strong tinge of mini-Williamsburg to the neighborhood, but this section of the Ninth Ward is mostly residential, populated with Creole cottages and shotguns, with the little coffee shop here and the little junk store there. I’m a big fan of Booty’s Street Food, a virtual global food truck fest for around $10/dish. They have “globally inspired cocktails” and, say it with me, Stumptown coffee. Slick interior with friendly staff, outdoor seating and plenty of bike racks and dog bowls, and arguably the most interesting bathroom in New Orleans — the Bywaterloo, a set of washroom galleries curated by the owner, a travel journalist. Other places to check out include Bon Castor, with locally handmade goods; Maurepas, doing the local purveyor and hand-crafted cocktail thing, and well; Satsuma, the coffee shop and juice place; and two of my all-time favorite places in New Orleans — Elizabeth’s and Bacchanal Wine. Elizabeth’s I can’t even begin to suggest something. They take all the usual suspects — po’boys, eggs Florentine, shrimp and grits — mix them up, throw in some surprises, and everything is done to exact measure. I have a romance with Bacchanal Wine. Think wine shop with an elaborate backyard of all the leafy trimmings, lit by a lone strand or two of Christmas lights, well-curated live music on a rickety stage, and affordable and divine small plates that change frequently.

Lesley Young

New Orleans is the City of Festivals.

Next, the Faubourg Marigny (pronounced FO-burg MAR-i-nee. “Faubourg” means “suburb.”) It sits next door to the Bywater and is also mostly residential with some great neighborhood establishments. Mimi’s in the Marigny was voted Best Bar in New Orleans by the Gambit. I’m pretty sure that says a lot. A two-story corner bar, Mimi’s has the hipsters and millennials and long-time locals and seersuckers and tattooed faces and artists, walls of windows, a pool table and dart board, and food. The best tapas this side of the Atlantic, in fact. Just close your eyes and point to something on the menu, and you’ll be grand. The Orange Couch is a great little coffee shop with mochi Japanese ice cream, and at one point, their Wi-Fi password was “rickjames.”

Cross Elysian Fields to the Marigny Triangle, the real entertainment district. Many say Frenchmen Street has jumped the shark. I do remember the days when reservations were not a must to get into Three Muses, my personal favorite. I had a moment there. Wandering at high tea, I heard a blind Frenchman wafting accordion music out of this little gem, where I later heard Walloonian Helen Gillet chirping French chansons and playing the cello with a loop. I cried. But it might have been the Warm Chocolate Cream Cheese Brownie. Frenchmen is still quite possibly the best place to hear the best live jazz music in the world. Wander and pop in and out of all the venues. It’s usually only a one-drink minimum. Eat at Adolfo’s, a pocket-sized place with big taste offering Italian Cajun-Creole. You’ll have to wait, but it won’t matter, because you just head downstairs to the equally small Apple Barrel for another hit of phenomenal music.

Well, folks, we’re out of space, so we’ll make our way further upriver another time. In the meantime, I’ll take one for the team and do some more research for you.

Also. Take cash. Some places require it. The musicians live off of it. And it might be someone’s birthday.

Categories
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.

Categories
Music Music Blog

What We Listened to this Week: Vatican Dagger

The first single from Vatican Dagger came across my desk just in time for Good Friday. Released by Orlando label Total Punk Records, this single is short and sweet, featuring two blasts of treacherous punk rock, similar to the demo recordings of the now-defunct Connecticut band Guilty Faces. Hailing from New Orleans, Vatican Dagger features Gary Wrong (FKA Captain Beyonce) of the Gary Wrong Group and Wizzard Sleeve in addition to members of Necro Hippies. The A-side “Not To Be” isn’t that far removed from the type of scuzzy punk that the Gary Wrong Group creates, but B-side “The Mess” shows Vatican Dagger have more than a few tricks up their sleeves.

Josh Miller

Vatican Dagger playing a recent show in Orlando, Florida.

The artwork for the single was created by Wrong’s daughter Orb, and it’s a safe bet that she’s probably the only kid at her day care designing punk single covers. Total Punk Records has been cranking out the hits for a couple years now, so if Vatican Dagger gets your blood pumping be sure to check out the rest of the Total Punk Roster.

What We Listened to this Week: Vatican Dagger

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Summer Movie Journal #1

Note: Flyer reviewer Addison Engelking gets the summers off from work as a schoolteacher. He tends to watch 80-100 films during his annual time off, so this season he’s writing a movie diary encapsulating whatever it is that he watches in his spare time — old, new, foreign, domestic. Follow along weekly at the Sing All Kinds entertainment blog. — Greg Akers

The French Connection

The French Connection (1971; dir. William Friedkin) — I rewatched this dirty, rabid little cop movie in 35mm at a revival theater recently, and its reckless, galloping forward motion shocked me. So did its conception of New York City as a bombed-out, blocks-long oil drum fire where there’s probably a glassine envelope of heroin in your Christmas stocking, but you better watch out ‘cuz Santa Claus is a racist undercover cop. Gene Hackman’s brutish narco detective Popeye Doyle is a roughed-up charismatic whose mashed-in face rhymes with his mashed-in porkpie hat. The subway-train car chase is the most famous stretch of filmmaking here, and yes, it’s great. But I’ve always been partial to Hackman’s street-level horseplay with vacationing European drug kingpin Fernando Rey. There is a long flirtation between flatfoot and crook that’s heavy on hand-rubbing, foot-stamping, phony window-shopping, and bad takeout food. And insomnia, lots and lots of insomnia — what young John says about Robert Mitchum’s homicidal preacher in Night of the Hunter applies to Doyle sitting and smoldering in his unmarked squad car: “Don’t he never sleep?” The finale inside a suppurating abandoned warehouse is a dead end as dark as Chinatown. Grade: A+

The French Connection II (1975; dir. John Frankenheimer) — Did you even know there was a sequel? If you didn’t, you’re kind of right to wish it didn’t exist. It’s best looked at as Gene Hackman’s action-hero franchise audition, which he fails with integrity. Popeye Doyle is presented here as a no-nonsense, fashionable cop-movie axiom — there’s a heroic hat fetish in this movie that predates Raiders of the Lost Ark by six years — but the contempt with which Hackman spits out catchphrases like “Pick your feet in Poughkeepsie” or “Frog One” is more enjoyable and weird than any attempted bronzing of his personal accoutrements. The European location is seedy, maybe too seedy; they must have trucked in garbage from Manhattan to litter the streets of Marseille. The most memorable stretch of the film is a lowdown drug-addiction passage consistent with Frankenheimer’s interest in human transformations (see also: The Manchurian Candidate, Seconds). Doyle is captured, cuffed to a hotel bed, and forcibly injected with heroin until he’s a vacant, scab-armed mess begging for another hit. While he’s there, an old English lady visits him and steals his wristwatch. Where could anybody go from there? Grade: B

Rififi (1955; dir. Jules Dassin) — The blacklisted American director of Thieves’ Highway (my favorite produce-themed film noir) finally overcame cold feet from European producers and interference from the U.S. government and got back into the movie game with this precise, pissed-off heist epic. Every character in it is perennially leaning down to whisper something serious and important to someone else, a motif that culminates, during the famous 33-minute break-in at the film’s center, in a great overhead shot of pressed-together heads around a hole in the floor. That sequence, which relies on minimal lighting and incidental sounds (piano notes, suppressed coughs, the spray of wax), is one of the most influential stretches of filmmaking I can think of; dozens of caper films owe everything to Dassin’s mixture of craftsmanship, suspense, and sweat. One of those countless great movies I finally got around to see, and three cheers for its canny use of off-screen violence, too. Grade: A+

Dylan Dog

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010; dir. Kevin Munroe) — Some movies seem to know so much about how a city looks and feels that their visions coat your impressions of them whether you want them to or not. Others don’t. Which is why it’s such a dumb kick sometimes to experience movies whose vision of a city is so confidently and thoroughly absurd. Dylan Dog insists that vampire and werewolf clans run New Orleans and that its late-night bars and businesses are run by zombies who organize support groups to help the newly undead adjust to their new “lives.” Brandon Routh, a more handsome, less in-on-it (or is he more in on it?) Bruce Campbell-type, stars in and provides the solemnly comic-book voice-overs for this muggy, entertaining Buffy episode. Too bad it ends like every other action movie ever. Grade: B+

One Hour With You

One Hour With You (1932; dir. Ernst Lubitsch) — For a long time, the only Lubitsch I’d seen was The Shop Around the Corner, a delicate James Stewart/Margaret Sullavan romance from 1940. But the more I see of Lubitsch’s work, and the more I try to figure out what everyone means by the “Lubitsch touch,” the less interesting Shop seems. The series of musicals he directed in the late 1920s and early 1930s are so worthwhile because they luxuriate in a suave amorality best expressed through Maurice Chevalier’s bashful grin whenever someone busts him for cheating on his lady. (If you’ve never seen young Chevalier, picture former Steelers coach and current CBS football analyst Bill Cowher with a Pepé Le Pew accent and a tendency to burst into song.) One Hour With You, a silly soufflé about two marrieds who play around behind each other’s backs, overcomes the fixed-camera limitations of early sound cinema by providing tart, innuendo-filled dialogue — some of which is rhymed! — and keeping a discreet distance from its players. After some potentially final revelations that would topple a more serious-minded endeavor, the movie ends with a stylish shrug, as if the whole idea of fidelity is secondary to the satisfying of one’s baser appetites. It’s a fix-your-lipstick-before-the-firing-squad-shoots-you existential attitude that’s pretty much nonexistent in movies these days. Too bad. Grade: A

Categories
Opinion

Mayors Wharton and Landrieu and the 66 Percent Doctrine

Mitch Landrieu

  • Mitch Landrieu

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu came to Memphis and The Peabody Thursday and had the audience in the palm of his hand. Memphis Mayor A C Wharton came to the Memphis City Council Thursday and had them at his throat.

Landrieu was guest of honor at an event called “A Summons to Memphis” sponsored by our sister publication Memphis magazine. He said lots of nice things about Memphis and suggested that mayors and cities try to do things that two-thirds or 66 percent of “the people” will support, writing off the other 33 percent as hardcore opposed.
He contrasted the idea of trying to achieve a majority of “50 percent plus one” (“which doesn’t work because somebody can flip that one”) with “governing on the 66 percent model,” in that “Something that works for almost everybody is always better than something that works for half the people, plus one.”

Coincidentally, Landrieu, who comes from a political family, was elected in 2010 with 67 percent of the vote.

Wharton was guest of honor at an event that could have been called “A Summons to The Reckoning” with a mostly cranky Budget Committee of the City Council. Coincidentally, Wharton was elected in 2011 with 65 percent of the vote. Close enough to make him, like Landrieu, a certified 66-percenter.

But if you want to be hailed as a great guy mayor with a bright future, it is not a bad idea to travel to another city where you can smile, compliment, tell jokes, and speak in platitudes. I have no doubt A C Wharton would get a standing ovation as luncheon speaker next week anywhere in New Orleans.

The 66-percent doctrine is brilliant in its simplicity. And if it is not taken too literally, it makes some sense, particularly when a city is on its heels from a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina or reveling in euphoria over the success of its favorite professional sports team as New Orleans was with the Saints in 2010.

But it breaks down when you apply it to specific ideas and things and have to put a price on them, as Wharton did Thursday when he floated a 50-percent property tax increase and 3,250 city employee layoffs as the extremes of the spend-cut continuum.