Tag: record

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Record Number to Travel in Tennessee, Nationwide This Holiday

A record number of Tennesseans are expected to travel this holiday season.

The auto group AAA predicts that 2.76 million Tennesseans will travel this year between Saturday, December 21st and Wednesday, January 1st.

That’s a 4 percent increase over last year. Nationwide, 115.6 million Americans are expected to travel during the holiday season. That’s 4.3 million more than last year and the highest travel volume since AAA began tracking the numbers 20 years ago.

“Holiday cheer is at an all-time high this year, with unemployment at historically low levels, and noted improvements in both disposable income and household net worth,” said Paula Twidale, vice president of AAA travel. “Travelers should be getting used to crowded highways and airports, as this marks the eighth straight year of new record-high travel volumes for the year-end holidays.”

Of the 2.76 million Tennesseans expected to travel over the next week, AAA anticipates 2.59 million will travel by car, 74,000 by plane, and 97,500 will take trains, buses, cruise ships, or other modes of transportation.

TDOT

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is halting all construction-related lane closures between noon on Friday (today) and 6 a.m. on Thursday, January 2nd.

“With 2.59 million motorists expected to travel Tennessee roadways during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, keeping traffic moving and getting motorists to their destinations safely is our top priority,” said TDOT Commissioner Clay Bright. “As always, please wear your seatbelt, reduce your speed, avoid distractions, and never drink and drive.”

A few long-term lane closures will still be in effect for safety reasons, and workers may still be on-site in some construction zones. TDOT reminds drivers to obey all posted speed limits, including the slower speed limits posted in construction zones.

Drivers convicted of speeding through work zones when workers are present face a fine of $250 to $500 plus court fees.

Stay up to date on Tennessee road conditions here.

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Music Music Features

Hard-Earned Homecoming

CREDIT: Lance Murphey

Even for those with proven greatness, the pursuit of stardom can be a cruel fate. For John Gary Williams — the singer for the Mad Lads, whose success on Stax’s Volt subsidiary was derailed when he was drafted in 1966 — the possibility of redemption is at hand. Thanks to the hard work of Williams, Emmy-winning producer John Hubbell, and Stax eminence Deanie Parker, Williams has another shot.

When Williams returned to the U.S., he was reinstated into the Mad Lads (against the wishes of his band mates) at the insistence of Stax founder Jim Stewart. A mix-up in 1968 involving the civil-rights-era agitators the Invaders landed him in prison. Upon his release, Williams recorded a long-missing 1973 self-titled solo album. Williams’ album was not released: a casualty of label mismanagement on a scale comparable to the period’s musical grandiosity. This is late-period Stax: Strings and a funky rhythm section combine for epic soul music.

This Saturday, he will perform in concert with Opus One and soul revivalists the Bo-Keys at the Levitt Shell. It’s the first performance of music from Williams’ album. Hubbell and Parker have worked for nearly a decade to locate the masters and negotiate their release, an effort still in the works. Hubbell and photographer Lance Murphey are also producing a documentary to tell Williams’ story. To watch the trailer, go to iseehopememphis.com and get on board with this Memphis homecoming.

John Gary Williams with Opus One and the Bo-Keys, Levitt Shell, Saturday, September 28th, 7:30 p.m. The concert is free.

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Sports Sports Feature

New Wave?

With apologies to Jean-Luc Godard, here’s a series of discrete observations on the Grizzlies after nine regular-season games:

1) They’re better than their record. The Grizzlies may have a new coach and lots of new players, but this is still a franchise with a fan base that’s long past celebrating moral victories. That said, this team has played better basketball than its 2-7 record (heading into Monday night’s game against the Sonics) suggests. Of the seven NBA teams with two or fewer wins, none has played closer games against a tougher schedule than the Grizzlies. Over the course of a 1-3 stretch last week, the Grizzlies’ opponents had a combined 21-9 record, with the Grizzlies beating the then 6-1 Rockets and losing to the Bucks, Hornets, and Mavericks by a total of eight points. Since this Grizzlies team seemed predestined to start slow and improve over the course of the season, the team’s ability to be so competitive against such quality competition is a legitimate reason for optimism.

2) Pau’s not right. Rather than stepping up his production early on to help a young roster get through early-season struggles, Pau Gasol has been less productive than even during his rookie season. If you don’t think the problem is primarily physical — a result of the phalanx of minor injuries (back, ankle, finger) Gasol has been struggling through and the fatigue that comes from another summer of international competition — then take a look at the dramatic reduction in Gasol’s rate of blocked shots. After averaging 1.9 blocks in 35 minutes a game through his career, Gasol is averaging 0.6 blocks in 34 minutes a game so far this season. This indicator of athleticism confirms what the naked eye sees: Gasol is showing less lift and quickness this season.

3) They still need a closer. One reason the Grizzlies have lost so many close games this season is that they’ve struggled to score on half-court possessions at the end of games. Other than a flurry of desperate three-pointers (three in the final 13 seconds) to send their game against New Orleans into overtime, the Grizzlies haven’t been able to convert on crucial possessions late in games, searching fruitlessly for reliable scoring options: Kyle Lowry getting stripped against the Bucks; Gasol getting stripped against the Mavs; Juan Carlos Navarro missing consecutive open threes against the Mavs. Rudy Gay is developing nicely as a scorer, but his off-the-dribble game is still too suspect to be a reliable go-to guy.

4) The future is now or should be. Heading into the season, the conventional wisdom on the Grizzlies’ point-guard situation was that veteran Damon Stoudamire would give the team a better chance to win now than “raw” rookie Michael Conley. Nine games in, I think we can put an end to that assumption. At 34, age and injuries have robbed Stoudamire of the quickness he had in his 20s. His advantage over Conley was supposed to be his superior shooting and ability to lead a team. But, over last week’s four-game stretch, Stoudamire shot 6-21 and left the Grizzlies with a first-quarter deficit in three of four games.

Conley has played only 72 minutes in five games (all on the road) but has outplayed Stoudamire in virtually every way: better shooting percentage, more prolific scoring, a higher assist rate, and a lower turnover rate. He’s not just the point guard of the future; he’s the better player right now. Conley strained his shoulder against the Mavericks, but as soon as he’s back to 100 percent, he deserves to supplant Stoudamire in the rotation.

5) There’s a missing piece. The Grizzlies are still a bad defensive team. There’s plenty of room for internal improvement in this area, but the team could use a physical defender off the bench who can guard both wing positions. Tarence Kinsey is too slight for this role; Casey Jacobsen is too slow. If there’s an in-season trade, look for a player of this type to be the target.

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Music Record Reviews

Release the Stars

Rufus Wainwright cheekily kicks off his fifth album, Release the Stars, with “Do I Disappoint You?,” a bombastically symphonic song that recalls his previous albums, Want One from 2003 and Want Two from 2004. That title question is ostensibly directed toward a lover, but it might as well be posed to fans and critics frustrated by his departure from post-SoCal folk rock and the increasingly dreamy indulgences of his operatic leanings. Like those two previous albums, “Do I Disappoint You?” replaces guitars with rococo orchestrations and catchy choruses with soaring Valkyries, exaggerating pop emotions to operatic proportions.

What might have seemed like a restless artist’s diversion turns out to be a sea change for Wainwright, as Release the Stars makes abundantly clear with that immediate rhetorical question. Release the Stars, which was produced by Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, retains the overreaching sweep of its predecessors. These songs lumber instead of glide. “Between My Legs” begins as a yearning ode to a faraway lover, but Wainwright piles on the music, ending the song with a “Thriller”-style narration and the central theme from Phantom of the Opera.

This is an unfortunate turn. On his early releases, Wainwright’s openly gay sensibilities threatened to upend many of the clichés of the singer-songwriter genre he was born into. (His father is Loudon Wainwright III; his mother is Kate McGarrigle.) He was never a natural fit in that field, but the awkwardness gave his laments extra gravity. Lately, fronting an orchestra instead of a band, he trades his barbed wit for indulgent camp, which is a surefire recipe for disappointment. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C

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Music Record Reviews

Unique Brit band Art Brut aces its sophomore exam.

Britain’s Art Brut have to be one of the most interesting rock bands to emerge this decade. On their 2005 debut album Bang Bang Rock & Roll and even more in concert, every signifier suggested standard-issue hipster sarcasm and diffidence, but closer listening and watching revealed that frontman Eddie Argos meant every word he sang.

The band’s obvious comparison was to the Modern Lovers, where Jonathan Richman morphed Velvet Underground cool into guileless romper-room pop. But Richman was (and is) touched in some way. The optimism and sincerity of his music feels involuntary.

With Everyman Argos, clarity and good humor feel strived for — hard won — and more heroic for it. The band’s follow-up to Bang Bang Rock & Roll, It’s a Bit Complicated, doesn’t score as direct as its predecessor. Led by rousing instant anthems such as “Formed a Band” (the group’s autobiographical debut single), “Modern Art” (“Modern art makes me want to rock out!”) and “Good Weekend” (on the subject of a new girlfriend: “I’ve seen her naked! TWICE!”), Bang Bang Rock & Roll opened up a whole world. It’s a Bit Complicated is more limited — or focused — with doomed relationships and pop fandom the core of the band’s concerns.

Argos remains as sharp a wordsmith — conversational, funny, and perceptive — as rock music has right now. He shines on the sardonic, resigned break-up ode “People in Love”: “People in love lie around and get fat/I didn’t want us to end up like that,” he assures his ex. And on the nostalgic “Sounds of Summer,” memories of making a mix tape — consumed “under the cover of headphones/In the privacy of bedrooms” — are littered with telling details such as the “play and record button held down together.”

But It’s a Bit Complicated is at its best when these dual concerns collide. “Direct Hit” is a tale of a bloke who loves dancing with a new crush because he doesn’t have to come up with anything to say. “Post Soothing Out” is a break-up non-lament that muses on the function of pop songs to overdramatize romantic splits (“‘River Deep and Mountain High’/Those are words that will never apply/Cause I don’t lie awake at night/With thoughts of river depth or mountain height”). And “Pump Up the Volume” is the band’s new classic. Argos captures a fumbling make-out session in deft strokes — “We’re taking our clothes off in the wrong order/And you’re leaving your shoes on to make you look taller” — before a comic payoff that has him distracted from his paramour by the urge to turn up the radio to better hear the song that’s just come on. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

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Music Music Features

Second Time Around

The Final Solutions are celebrating the release of their second full-length album, which marks the latest chapter in the surprising story of what is, at this writing, Memphis’ best punk-rock band.

Named after the classic Pere Ubu song, the Solutions are an amalgam of local talent that avoids taking itself too seriously yet has emerged as an amazing live act with four singles and (now) two albums, both on Goner, under its belt. The cast is as follows: vocalist Zac Ives (co-owner of Goner Records), bassist Tommy Trouble (a high school honors English teacher by day), guitarist Justice Naczycz (leader of local hard-boogie enthusiasts Secret Service), and drummer Jay Reatard (you name it, but recently blowing minds with his solo album, Blood Visions).

For the sake of chronology, let us briefly travel back to the mid-’90s, when Ives, Trouble, and Naczycz were friends at Rhodes College. Those who paid close attention to show flyers or haunted Barrister’s during this period may remember a short-lived garage band by the name of the Jack Monkeys. “Tom was in a pop-punk band called Squirrels. They sounded like the Descendents or All, and Justice and I were in the Jack Monkeys with a drummer named Pete Nasty, who hadn’t played drums outside of the music room at Rhodes. We were really bad,” Ives says.

Reatard and Ives met at an Oblivians show when the former was in his mid-teens, and Ives began to give the future Reatard rides to shows. “During one of my last years at Rhodes, we put together a band for the talent show in the cafeteria and did Oblivians covers. That was one of the first times that Jay played drums,” Ives recalls.

Following graduation, Ives took a job in Washington, D.C. He returned to Memphis in 2000 to work for Archer Malmo and to eventually join Eric Friedl in the running of Goner Records. By this time, Trouble was teaching, Naczycz was following an acoustic singer-songwriter muse, and Reatard had retired the first version of his teen punk/garage band the Reatards to focus on the Lost Sounds.

“I started circulating compilation tapes of old Scandinavian punk rock,” Ives explains. “I’ve always been into the Television Personalities, especially the song ‘Part Time Punks,’ which I obsessed over for a while.”

Ives speaks loosely of the late-’70s/early-’80s “DIY” movement spearheaded by the likes of early Simple Minds, the Desperate Bicycles, the Homosexuals, and the aforementioned Television Personalities. The aesthetic was cheap, handmade packaging, marginal playing ability, and a turn away from the careerist direction that higher-profile punk rock had taken.

The four Memphians soon came together with Ohio transplant Quinn Powers on guitar (he was with the band for just over a year) and started making a mess of local club stages. “Our shortest show was probably one song, but we don’t really like to do that,” Ives says. “We want to put on a good show for everyone.”

Band activity ebbed and flowed over the next five or so years, resulting in a respectable discography and a much-talked-about live show.

Whereas the first Final Solutions LP was a mishmash of material, recorded at different stages in different places and pulled together to fill out an album, the new Songs by Solutions was a conscious effort. “We were writing for an album on this one,” Ives says. Recorded entirely by Reatard, Songs shows a band growing, even if they’re growing in a weird way to allow for the primary concerns of each member. “Reatard’s gotten extremely good at recording and knows exactly how he wants everything to come out,” Ives explains.

Everything came out nicely, albeit in very short, buzzsaw bursts of catchy aggro-pop. “Mental Shark Bite” and “Tammy” start things off in now-standard Solutions style, with repeated, almost spoken hooks, anthemic howls, smashed drums, and jagged or furiously strummed guitar. The minimal “I’m a Lightning Bug” sounds like pop music from an alternate universe that never experienced pop music, and the astonishingly long “Little Man in My Mind” clocks in at a whopping four-and-a-half minutes, which is like the Final Solutions doing Rush’s “2112.” (Not really, but you get the point.)

“Our songs are written in practice. One of us will bring in something, and everyone else will just work on top of that,” Ives says. “Tommy is responsible for most of the songs on Songs by Solutions. He’d just bring in a riff, and Justice would lay some guitar on top. Things would go from there.”

When asked about how pop and catchiness play into it all, Ives explains, “I have to have a hook. I can’t stand it when a singer is yelling at me.” Songs by Solutions is undoubtedly hummable in its frantic fury.

Fans of incendiary, unpredictable performances and bands who deliver without taking themselves too seriously are encouraged to witness just how far the Final Solutions have come.

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Music Record Reviews

Porter Wagoner: another successful country comeback.

Porter Wagoner got old early and he stayed that way, thank goodness.

At 30, the craggy-faced, painfully thin hillbilly looked and sounded like a man twice his age. His trembling, overly emotive baritone brought authenticity to a morose catalog of hard-luck ballads about asylum doors, barroom floors, and every kind of gut-wrenching, tear-shedding heartache a man could ever know. With hits like “Sorrow on the Rocks” and “Cold Hard Facts of Life,” he repeatedly chronicled the short, treacherous journey from innocent disbelief to resigned disaffection. Even the glass-raising, break-out-the-bottle revelry of “Misery Loves Company” was framed as the hollow ritual of a man who has finally become comfortable with his numbness.

Although he’s now 79 and sporting grayer hair and deeper wrinkles, Wagoner looks pretty much the same as he always has, and it’s no overstatement to say that he sounds as good or better than ever. The only thing standing between Wagonmaster, his newest CD on the increasingly vital Anti- label, and total Wagonerian perfection, is the absence of a duet with his original singing partner, the fabulous, and largely forgotten, Norma Jean.

Although Wagoner covers a Johnny Cash song here, nobody should pick up Wagonmaster expecting cool, Cash-style covers of popular modern-rock songs. By the mid-1960s, Wagoner was already too old and set in his ways to learn new tricks. At a time when artists such as Ray Price, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens were harmonizing with the rock-and-roll revolution and infusing traditional country music with urban grit and bluesy sophistication, Wagoner was running as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

He crucified himself on a cross of gospel-inspired melodies, mid-tempo waltzes, and impossible sorrow, and for these unforgivable transgressions against modernity and the march of progress he was rewarded with 81 hit singles and a long-running television show.

Forever out of step with the times, he wore a gravity-defying pompadour 20 years after they’d gone out of style. He refused to abandon the spectacular rhinestone-encrusted Nudie suits that Willie, Waylon, and the rest of country’s Outlaws turned into a symbol of everything that was ridiculous and wrong with Nashville pop. Wagoner’s brand of honky-tonk was excessively maudlin and precariously balanced between heartfelt emotion and outlandish camp. And in purely visual terms, that line was fully breached every time the gangly singer stepped in front of a camera to sing “Someone I Used To Know” alongside his cartoonishly voluptuous, joyously trashy, and much younger duet partner, Dolly Parton.

Wagoner’s ear for a soap-worthy storyline is still impeccable. His husky take on Cash’s “Committed to Parkview” may be Wagonmaster‘s guiltiest (and gothiest) pleasure, though it’s certainly no more deranged than “Be a Little Quieter,” which finds a sleepless narrator politely telling his noisy memories to “keep it down.” From the nostalgic rush of “11-Cent Cotton” to the impressionistic prose of “My Many Hurried Southern Trips,” each of Wagonmaster‘s 17 tracks is stuffed with imagery as spare and searing as a Raymond Carver short story.

In recent years, the California-based Anti- label has become a refuge for fussy master craftsmen such as Tom Waits and a safe haven for seasoned artists such as Merle Haggard who want to make music the way they know how without some wet-behind-the-ears industry honcho telling them how to hip up. Marty Stuart, Wagonmaster‘s inestimably talented producer, has assembled a top-notch group of musicians who have wisely done nothing to bring Wagoner’s sound into the 21st century. It’s hard to imagine that that particular mission could have been accomplished at any other label.

Every fan of golden-age honky-tonk should hope and pray that George Jones got an advanced copy of his old friend’s latest joint and that the old Possum knows how to take a not-so-subtle hint. It wouldn’t hurt Ray Price to take a listen either. — Chris Davis

Grade: A

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Music Music Features

Healthy Metal

Old-school heavy metal is brand-new again: Just listen to the double bass drums, screaming guitars, pulsing bass, and guttural vocals on “Jackball,” one of the six tracks that comprise Shards, Rabid Villain‘s new EP. The band’s churning sound is a far cry from the overly muscular nü-metal style that’s gained popularity in recent years — think ’70s-era Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer, and Metallica instead of, say, Saliva or Egypt Central.

Rabid Villain actually began as a trio in 2000. The group cut a debut album, The Villainous Group, soon after, although its members ultimately decided to put the project on ice a few years later.

“We’re all big Pantera and Black Sabbath fans, and we like newer bands like Lamb of God and Mastodon,” says bassist Blake Rhea, who replaced Grayson Grant after sessions for the Shards EP had already begun.

Eagle-eyed scenesters might recognize Rhea from the funk-infused Gamble Brothers Band, know guitarist Elliott Ives‘ work with Lord T. & Eloise, or spot drummer Jeff Burch, who frequently pounds the skins on Beale Street. The trio first coalesced nearly a decade ago with Midtown collective CYC; last year, they joined forces with vocalist Burl Caine to form a new and improved Rabid Villain. (Check out MySpace.com/RabidVillainMemphis.)

To anyone who might think the band is the basis for a Spinal Tap-type outing, Rhea argues that “to play this kind of music, you have to be serious. It’s hard to play this fast and with this much endurance,” he says. “We take it very seriously. We’ve all liked metal for a long time. We’ve just never gone full-force into it.

“The people who know me, who are friends with me, know I like metal. They’re not surprised [by the group]. We’ve all been gigging in Memphis forever, but the metal scene is new to us. We’re learning it as we go, finding out where to play and who to play with. We’ve done shows at Murphy’s, and, last month, we did a gig at the Memphis Drum Shop. We’ve been checking out the metal bands who play at the Buccaneer and the Rally Point, and this Friday, we’re playing a showcase at the New Daisy.”

The Memphis Metal Showcase, which is sponsored by the Memphis Musician’s Advisory Council, an offshoot of the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission, also features local groups Evil Army, Cremains, Detriment, Serapis, and Legion of Divine Punishment.

“Our goal this summer is to provide a certain educational component and performance opportunity for local musicians,” says harmonica master Billy Gibson, who, with House of Blues producer Ralph Sutton, organized the metal show. They have plans for future events showcasing the local gospel and DJ scenes.

Gibson explains, “We’re offering a free live sound seminar with Will Floyd, the house engineer at the New Daisy, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., then the show starts at 7:30 p.m. 93X is making it the official opening concert for their Locals Only summer music series.”

Talking metal with the harmonica player, renowned on the international blues scene, is initially unsettling, but his enthusiasm for the genre comes through loud and clear.

“I’m a huge Rob Evil fan. His band Evil Army has so much energy,” Gibson says. “I caught a show they did with Cremains at the Bucc. They’re so young, and they come at it with such fire. This time next year, they could be on the road with Mastodon. They just need to get in front of the right kind of people.

“There’s a really kicking metal scene that’s coming together in Memphis,” Gibson adds. “Rabid Villain are way schooled on it. They have that Stax-type groove, which comes out even when they play metal. It gives them an edge, but I really think that any of the bands playing Friday night could have presence [nationally].”

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Music Record Reviews

Timbaland Presents: Shock Value-Timbaland

The most important music-maker of the past decade might be a hip-hop/R&B producer, Timbaland, who has gifted us with Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?” and Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On.” And yet none of the five albums Timbaland’s released under his own name are must-owns. Timbaland may be the James Brown of his era, but he’ll need his own Star Time-style box set to make a definitive case. Timbaland’s musical genius needs the force of personality and vocal/conceptual content that a compelling frontperson can bring, which is why he’s made his strongest records with Missy Elliott, Justin Timberlake, Aaliyah, and Bubba Sparxxx. Elliott and Timberlake make appearances on this guest-star-laden long-player but on tracks that would be filler on their own best albums. (“Give It to Me,” “Throw It on Me”) — Chris Herrington

Grade: B

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Music Record Reviews

Emotionalism-The Avett Brothers

The Avett Brothers must have done some-thing really wrong. The North Carolina trio’s fifth studio album, Emotionalism, is full of lyrics about shame, paranoia, regret, and self-loathing. It would be unbearably grim if the brothers-plus-one didn’t express it all with their typical good humor and graceful bluegrass-based arrangements. The opening “Die Die Die” makes a sing-along chorus out of its title, making merry with its intimations of mortality, while “Shame” marries dark thoughts to a lilting melody delivered in the Brothers’ typically intuitive harmonies. As always, their sound is hard to pin down, combining country instrumentation, jazz chops, punk vitality, and jam-band looseness into a distinctive whole that’s nothing to be ashamed of at all. (“Shame,” “Will You Return?”)

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: B+