Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Film $5 Cover Amplified: Takeaways
Posted by Chris Herrington on Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:07 PM
$5 Cover Amplified, a series of companion documentaries on the local musicians featured in $5 Cover premiered at Studio on the Square Tuesday night.
I'd only seen a preview reel of the docs, which were produced by a team led by Alan Spearman and also including Andria Lisle, John Hubbell, and Eileen Meyer. So this premiere was my first look at the films, which are unusually personal and thoughtful portraits of these artists. These films will be available via FiveDollarCover.com and other sites starting Friday.
I don't have it in me to write long about them at this point, so for now I'll just give a series of one-liners on what I remembered most about each film. But first, let me issue an apology to Alicja Trout and her band the River City Tanlines for an oversight in this week's print edition: I accidentally left her and her band out of a sidebar to our main $5 Cover story that listed and commented on each of the featured musicians. Hopefully, I didn't forget anyone here:
Takeaways:
The eloquent, rhyming thoughts of Brad Postlethwaite and Alicja Trout on the tension between artistic pursuit and family connection/obligation.
Paul Taylor finding God in the sound in any manner of places.
Jack Oblivian not wanting a day job that requires him to deal with people but that lets him think. (Oh, and his cat.)
Valerie June's homecoming — and voice.
Cody Dickinson having a washboard duet with Jimmy Crosthwaite.
Kate Crowder presiding over her fourth-grade charges as they demonstrate a burst of teacher-fostered creativity that reminded me of Sally Hawkins' Polly in Happy-Go-Lucky.
Jason Freeman lighting voodoo candles in the snow.
Muck Sticky wrapping his arms around his family.
Al Kapone gifting his son AJ a fallback skill.
Amy LaVere shooting a big-ass gun.
Harlan T. Bobo's creative dissent (and totally awesome Prince reference).
Ben Nichols smoking a cigarette and looking out the window of that amazing/dilapidated Cleveland and Overton apartment. (And, unlike his semi-fictional self, wearing a helmet on his motorcycle — whew.)
Showing 1-4 of 4
Beautiful, haunting, funny, intense pieces of work. Magnificent job by Spearman, Lisle (great cameo in the Harlan segment!), Hubbel, and Meyer.
I'm very excited for the publicity that $5 Cover will garner for Memphis. But extremely disappointed in the lack of coverage for the Flipside Memphis (created by locals "Live From Memphis"), the $5 Cover companion mini-documentaries which premiered this past Monday.
While $5 Cover showcases Memphis artists as fictionalized versions of themselves, Flipside Memphis digs deeper into the rich community of creatives and grassroots organizations that make these various artists like family.
Ordinarily, I'm very pleased with the Flyer's coverage of local events, but I think you really missed the boat on Flipside.
that will come. the only reason I wrote about the Amplified docs and not the Flipside here is because I was able to make the Amplified screening but had a conflict that kept me from the Flipside screening.
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