Tag: Pezz

J.D. Reager: Tales of Two Cities

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date September 2, 2020

J.D. Reager (Credit: Jennifer Brown Reager).

J.D. Reager, who has written extensively for the Memphis Flyer, has been making things happen in the Memphis music scene for most of his life. The founder of the Rock for Love benefit concerts for the Church Health Center over a decade ago and a key player in the Makeshift Music collective and label, he’s been an often-underrecognized presence on the scene.

But if you think that ended when he moved to Chicago in 2017, think again. Though he is fully owning his new adopted home as never before, he continues to fuel the flames of the Memphis-Chicago connection. When Chicago music fans look across the landscape for inspiration, Memphis looms large on their horizon. It’s something Reager is aware of now more than ever.

Jennifer Brown Reager

Back to the Light host J.D. Reager

“I noticed when I moved up here, a lot of my Memphis ‘credits’ that didn’t mean shit in Memphis at all, to anybody, suddenly meant something to somebody,” he notes. “One of my managers at Reckless Records told me the Pezz record I played on was one of his all-time top five favorite records. When I tell folks that I know Jeremy Scott, they think that shit’s a big deal. And most of the bands I’ve played in have had better shows in Chicago than in other places. I can’t explain the connection, but it’s definitely there.”

Reager himself is helping stoke continued interest in Memphis music through his Back to the Light podcast, produced from his Chicago basement. Scanning through the list of interviewees reads like a who’s who of Memphis music. Local stalwarts such as Graham Burks, Joshua Cosby of Star & Micey, Oxford/Memphis phenom Ben Ricketts, and Music Export Memphis founder Elizabeth Cawein are just a few examples.

“That’s who my friends are, that’s where I’m from,” explains Reager. “And that’s gonna continue. My next interview will be with Ross Johnson. Even some of my outside interviews have Memphis connections. Like Ken Stringfellow [the Posies founder who joined the latter-day Big Star]. Dave Catching [Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age], who played with [legendary ’80s rockers] the Modifiers, has Memphis connections. Everything I do comes from Memphis. It’s still in my heart, even though I’m not there. I feel, in a weird way, more connected to it now than I did when I was living there.”

But Back to the Light isn’t the only expression of Reager’s deep roots here. It’s not even the only podcast. “Back to the Light is not just gonna be a show. We’re gonna have a podcast network, with three shows: Back to the Light, The Jack Alberson SongStory podcast, and, starting in September, we’ll have the first episode of a monthly Shangri-La Records podcast.” Beyond that, his Back to the Light record label will be launching a new series of releases in November. “I need to make a list of everything I have going on,” he says, “because it’s a lot.”

The label will be similarly Memphis-centric, beginning with older recordings Reager made with his Memphis band, Two Way Radio. “We were in $5 Cover, the Craig Brewer show. And we made a record with Scott Bomar. That was 10 years ago. It never came out, but it’s coming out in November.” Look for records by Alyssa Moore and Reager himself next year on the Back to the Light label.

A life centered on Memphis music comes naturally to Reager. He sees it as having been inevitable. “My late father, John Paul Reager, was one of the many bass players of the Modifiers, and was also the soundman at the Antenna Club in the ’80s and early ’90s. He was better known as the guitar player in the Blues Alley Orchestra. He played with B.B. King and Rufus Thomas and every famous blues musician who came through Memphis in the ’80s. There was a John Paul Reager day in the city of Memphis in, like, 1984. I probably had no choice in the matter. I’m not built for much else.

“But,” adds the lifelong fan of the Modifiers, “I think of [Modifiers founder] Bob Holmes as my true spiritual father. I feel like I’m carrying on his legacy, not my dad’s.” Since Holmes’ death last fall, “something has awakened inside of me that’s been closed off for a long time. It’s lessons learned from Bob, honestly. Time’s too short. We need to get this shit out while we’re still alive.”

Visit backtothelight.net for more information and J.D. Reager’s Patreon page to contribute.

Tags JD Reager, Memphis/Chicago connection, Pezz, Rock for Love, The Modifiers

Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Pezz

Post author By Chris McCoy
Post date June 8, 2020

Ceylon Mooney on the road with Pezz.

Music Video Monday keeps going!

Pezz, the Memphis punk legends, have been spreading their hardcore gospel for thirty years. Marvin Stockwell, Ceylon Mooney, Scott Bomar, and Nic Cupples played their first show as Pezz on June 11th, 1990 at the Singleton Community Center in Bartlett. That September, they made their debut at the Antenna, where their all-ages free-for-alls would become iconic moments in Memphis music history.

Bomar left the band after recording two EPs to become the bassist for surf-rockers Impala. He is now a producer and Emmy-winning soundtrack composer, and was instrumental in founding Memphis soul revivalists The Bo-Keys. But Bomar was just the first of dozens of Memphis rockers who cut their teeth on stage with Stockwell and Mooney.

“Pezz was one of the bands that made me want to play music,” says Christian Walker, longtime Pezz bassist and music video director. “Back then it was still a revelation to me that normal people could play music, and not only that, that they could play music and say something important. They promoted the idea that if you had a platform, it was your obligation to say something important. All these years later, we still feel that way.”

Pezz’s discography includes 14 full lengths, EPs, and singles. The group toured relentlessly in the 1990s and early 2000s, playing thousands of shows all over America.

“We really wanted to play a show to commemorate 30 years of Pezz, but when COVID made that impossible, I thought, ‘What better way to celebrate this milestone than by finally digitizing old tour footage and sifting through all of these moments in the 30-year history of the band?” Walker says. “Honestly, I could have used more time to gather long-forgotten VHS tapes from people, but I believe I found plenty of material that represents different eras of the band, and the people who have played with us and friends we’ve made along the way.”

Currently at work on their sixth full-length album, the punk ethos that has animated the band for three decades has not faded.

“For this video, we had in mind a sickness of the heart and a condition of isolation and disconnection, but here we are with the disease of police violence as well, and, as always, it’s more deadly to people of color than the rest of us,” says Ceylon Mooney. “Don’t wait any longer. Do what your conscience demands and what your resources allow,” he said. “You can give your time to the struggle, your body to an action, your support to the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, and your money to the Black Lives Matter bail fund.”

Music Video Monday: Pezz

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

Tags Ceylon Mooney, Christian Walker, Marvin Stockwell, Nic Cupples, Pezz, Scott Bomar

Music Music Blog

Rock Against Racism Rises Again

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date December 7, 2017

The Subteens

For those who came of age in the first blush of punk rock, before it was codified into a “sound,” the movement known as “Rock Against Racism” was a clarion call of the new aesthetic. Even as it coalesced into a series of concerts in London’s East End, it sprang from a broader social movement that challenged and inspired bands to inject more political awareness into their sound. Nonetheless, it certainly was triggered by a musical event: Eric Clapton, during a 1976 show in Birmingham, launched into an anti-immigrant rant and endorsed U.K. ultra-nationalist Enoch Powell. It was the death knell, in a way, for any claim that classic rock had on the music’s original rebellious spirit. Taking up the mantle, and filled with disgust at the entitlement that Clapton expressed, was a new guard of punks and activists.

In my teenage years, as all this was going down, Rock Against Racism was more abstract, but I knew it fomented some great compilation albums, featuring the likes of the Mekons, Elvis Costello, X-Ray Spex, the Specials, or, maybe my favorite at the time, the Stiff Little Fingers. It grew into a conceptual concert series that spanned multiple years and multiple genres, as the first wave of rebellion splintered into a thousand different styles.

For many years afterward, RAR seemed an artifact of its time, as politically subversive music ebbed away and the splintering of genres continued apace into the new century. But with the current climate of rabid nationalism and bigotry, epitomized by the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and other American “alt right” groups, emboldened by a bullying loudmouth who fulfills their most garish fantasies of authoritarianism, Rock Against Racism is relevant again.

Cue the indie Memphis rock scene, who will gather at the Hi Tone this Saturday to bring Rock Against Racism into the 21st Century. Making use of both stages at the venue, the gathering will bring together The Subteens, Pezz, The Gloryholes, Negro Terror, Arizona Akin & The Hoodrat Hyenas, who will donate all door proceeds to Bridges USA.
Michael Donahue

Negro Terror at Our Scene United

The nonprofit’s mission states: “In greater Memphis, young people’s day-to-day interactions and relationships are racially, ethnically, socially, economically and/or religiously segregated. These are huge divides that block collaboration, trust-building, mutual understanding and empathy. Our intensive training teaches not only respect for diversity and inclusion, but it also builds skills for the 21st Century like creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, effective citizenship and social responsibility.”

Such a radically inclusive vision is sorely needed today, according to co-organizer and Subteen member Mark Akin. “I work about a block from immigration court and have for the last seven years,” he says. And all of a sudden, in the last three or four months, every day there are families of brown people, all dressed up and looking slightly anxious, making their way to immigration court, mostly Hispanic and Middle Eastern. The Subteens has never been a political band, ever. It’s just never really been our thing. But it seems like now, you almost have to pick a side. Anybody that disagrees with what the current administration is doing has to stand up and say ‘I disagree.’ The luxury days are over now. The luxury of keeping your mouth shut and your head down doesn’t exist anymore. Those of us with a conscience have a responsibility to do something. And this is something we can do. To donate the money to Bridges is a very useful endeavor.”

Pezz has long been on the more political side of the local hardcore scene. Negro Terror packs a political punch simply by virtue of being one of the few African American hardcore bands on the scene. Others, like the Subteens, simply want to rock and roll. But all are committing themselves to a larger vision of justice and inclusiveness. The original activists behind Rock Against Racism would surely approve, though Eric Clapton might still take some convincing.

Tags Arizona Akin, Hi Tone, Negro Terror, Pezz, Rock Against Racism, Subteens, The Gloryholes, The Hoodrat Hyenas

Music Music Features

Pezz: Hardcore Survivors

Post author By Chris McCoy
Post date June 29, 2017

What is Pezz fighting for? In the liner notes of their new album More Than You Can Give Us, they tell you: “Honor, dignity, justice, fair play, equal treatment, the benefit of the doubt, a leg up.”

Since their first all-ages gig at the Antenna Club on June 19, 1990, Pezz have been the quintessential Memphis hardcore band. In a few short years, they were touring incessantly and packing the New Daisy Theatre with scruffy kids. Last month, they returned to the renovated New Daisy for Memphis Punk Fest. “It sounded awesome. It looks like somebody cares,” says Pezz founding member Ceylon Mooney.

Unlike the English variety, the first wave of American punk was apolitical. Birthed in the Reagan ’80s, hardcore changed that. The music inspired the members of Pezz not only to write political songs, but also to live lives of social consciousness and political activism. Mooney acknowledges the similarities between today and the Reagan era, but from his point of view, Trump is just a symptom of a diseased system. “You have a cartoonish villain, but these institutions of power operate by design, regardless of whose face is in front of them.”

The cover of Pezz’ More Than You Can Give Us pairs images of striking Memphis sanitation workers from 1968 and last year’s I-40 bridge protest. The band started tracking for the album in 2012, says Pezz singer/guitarist Marvin Stockwell. “We’re purists in the sense that we like to record to tape, but ProTools has been a helpful thing. It’s a help and a hindrance. The good news is, you can mess with it forever. The bad news is, you can mess with it forever.”

Originally, the band wanted to use an image of the Ferguson Black Lives Matter protest for the cover, until they were inspired by the bridge shutdown. “I’m glad it didn’t work out with the Ferguson photos,” says Stockwell. “It allowed us to have, as bookends, two Memphis events. The reason we juxtaposed them is because they represent different moments in our city’s history where regular Memphians stood up and said, ‘The status quo will not stand. We’re going to take radical action!'”

Pezz’ music has always been fast and hard, with a melodic streak that endeared them to pop-punk fans. For this album, the band sounds heavier than ever. Mooney stepped out from behind the drums, where he was replaced by Recoil drummer Graham Burks, and returned to the front line with a guitar, joining Stockwell, guitarist Shawn Apple, and bassist Christian Walker. “This is a three-guitar record with a lot going on,” says Stockwell.

The lineup is uncommon for punk; Stockwell says they were inspired more by classic Chicago hardcore band Articles of Faith than Lynyrd Skynyrd. “When we first started to do it, it seemed like it was too much. But your mind spreads out and hears differently. We had been in a two-guitar dynamic for so long.”

Mooney compares the complex new arrangements to a conversation, as on the album closer “Guilty,” where Walker’s bass takes the lead while Mooney fills in a bass line before all four guitars join in unison for the album’s finale. “You can’t have everybody yelling all at the same time.”

But there’s still plenty of yelling on More Than You Can Give Us. On “Welcome to Palestine,” a song Mooney originally recorded in 2006 with his solo project Akasha, the singer delivers a full-throated tirade against “Occupation, subjugation of the land and its oppressed nation.”

“Unfortunately, that one is still relevant,” he says. “Sometimes I think, ‘We’re still talking about this shit?’ It’s like ‘Live Another Day.’ When people we love stop offing themselves, I guess we’ll stop talking about it.”

Pezz will play their record release show on June 30th at Growlers. Stockwell says he hopes the group’s fifth album (or tenth, if you count split LPs and cassette-only releases) inspires in others the same sense of urgency old school hardcore inspired in him. The vinyl insert contains both a list of local organizations working for change and the record’s mission statement, a call for people to “demand … their birthright as members of the human family.”

“I wrote that before Trump won the election, but if you read that with Trump in mind, it’s not hard to make it fit,” says Stockwell. “We are very fortunate in this band to be able to do the things we’ve done and to use our collective voice to demand change and to express ourselves. We realize not everyone has that opportunity.”

Pezz’ More Than You Can Give Us record release show is June 30th at Growlers.

Tags Ceylon Mooney, Christian Walker, Graham Burks, Marvin Stockwell, Memphis Punk, More Than You Can Give Us, Pezz, Shawn Apple

We Recommend We Recommend

A Roast for Jacob Flowers

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date June 26, 2014

Somehow former Mid-South Peace & Justice Center (MPJC) Executive Director Jacob Flowers managed to make a decade-long, full-time career out of being a hippie.

And now that he’s moved on to another — ahem, hippie — job pushing affordable health-care sign-ups at Enroll America, those who have worked with Flowers through the local social justice movement will have a chance to poke a little fun at Flowers at “Roast & Toast Jacob Flowers” on Thursday, June 26th, at the National Civil Rights Museum.

MPJC friend and wage-theft crusader Kyle Kordsmeier will M.C. the event. The list of roasters includes Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, AFSMCE director Gail Tyree, Manna House’s Pete Gathje, Pezz punk rocker Ceylon Mooney, First Congo Church’s Julia Hicks, former MPJC Board Chair Emily Fulmer, and Flowers’ successor as MPJC director, Brad Watkins. Flowers’ family will finish out the roast with jokes from his mother Sandy Furrh and his wife Allison Glass.

Before the roast, cocktails will be served as folk-jazz-pop trio Sibella performs. After the roast is a performance by Memphis United member and up-and-coming local rapper Knowledge Nick. Tickets are $10 to reflect Flowers’ decade with the organization.

“I think it’s pretty gracious that Jacob is still raising money in support of the work this organization does, even after he departs,” Watkins says. “And I think there are a lot of people out there who would be jumping at the opportunity to do a roast on Jacob.”

Tags Brad Watkins, First Congregational Church, Gail Tyree, Jacob Flowers, Kyle Kordsmeier, Manna House, Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, Pezz

Music Music Features

Pezz: Punk with a Conscience

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date June 19, 2014

“It’s unusual,” Ceylon Mooney says of his punk band Pezz’s 24-year existence. “There’s no financial incentive for us to stay together. In punk, you have all of these reunion acts around the country. Some are worth seeing and some aren’t worth reading about. We come out of a world where the lifespan of a band like us is four years. We’ve been doing this for about 25. I joined the band in 1989.”

Looking through old Flyer articles on Pezz, there are two that reflect on decades of work, one by Mark Jordan in 1999, and a full accounting of the band’s revolving personnel by Andrew Earles in 2010. Through the years, Mooney and guitarist Marvin Stockwell have held the group together as they grew up and found their places in the world. When we talked last week, Mooney’s place in the world was walking down a highway.

“We are about 20 miles west of Kalamazoo, Michigan, right now. Today is a 16-mile walk.” Mooney was marching with Voices for Creative Nonviolence from Boeing World Headquarters in Chicago to a proposed drone command center in Michigan.

Ceylon Mooney (center)

“It’s a walk against drone warfare. The slogan is ‘Ground the Drones.’ We’re here to highlight that the drones kill primarily civilian noncombatants and create enmity among the countries where we’re using them. And if there’s one thing that will create more terrorists, it’s to keep using these drones.”

Mooney became politically active in 1998, almost a decade after Pezz formed.

“It’s always in the tradition of punk that there is a socio-political bent to the music and to the culture. We’ve been singing about social unrest for a while. One of our first songs was about Jimmy Moore’s campaign to censor and ban certain concerts from being in Memphis because of obscenity and things like that. We grew up in a PMRC America.”

Moore was a city councilman in the 1980s who sought to ban the Beastie Boys and other allegedly lewd acts from Memphis. The PMRC was the Parents Music Resource Center, the work of Tipper Gore, wife of then Tennessee senator Al Gore. The PMRC created a pretty kick-ass playlist of “filthy” songs that sparked outrage and led to the parental advisory sticker being placed on “naughty” music back when you had to buy a tangible CD But as the members of Pezz grew up, they have stayed oriented toward activism.

“It’s just a matter of our culture,” Mooney says. “A lot of us, as we’ve grown up and moved on in our lives and doing what we do, have become much more focused. Marvin’s vocation is serving the working poor. I’ve spent years in conflict zones among people who are most affected by U.S. wars. My volunteer gig is supporting the homeless. I used to work at the Peace and Justice Center. Anthony Siracusa is one of the people responsible for the development of bike culture and accessibility in the city. So our music comes out of a world where there’s a social political bent. It’s just that we’ve become more actively involved in these things over the years. It’s a much bigger part of our lives. But it’s become more focused.”

The band members are comfortable with the new orientation to music as an avocation.

“We have to adjust our expectations,” Mooney says. “We’re not a band that practices three nights a week and tours for months at a time. Maybe in the quality of the songwriting you can set a high bar. But as far as how polished the recording is, the band doesn’t function as a machine. We’re weekend warriors. It’s a hobby and something we love doing with each other. We found a place in this city and we relate to the world around us. But we can’t set our expectations as high as we used to. You can’t expect to have your hair blown back after every time you finish a take.”

From his long walk, Mooney takes the long view on Pezz.

“To me, this band is like a conversation,” Mooney says. “It’s a relationship among all of the people who are playing in it. It’s a relationship between us and our city, between us and the world around us and the things we struggle with on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s as mundane as our everyday lives. We try to wrestle with the world around us and with our place in it — and what our place should be. What we keep coming to is that we can do better, and we should.”

Pezz plays with Chaos Order, Tanks, and Grave Pioneer at Black Lodge Video on Friday, June 20th.

Tags Pezz