Music Notes by Jim Hanas & Mark Jordan The Best of ’97 If I were somehow forced into the old hypothetical dilemma of picking what local release from this year I would most want to keep me company on a desert island, I’d still have to pick two: The Oblivians Play Nine Songs with Mr. Quintron and the debut record from the Clears. The reason for picking both is that they’re so different from each other you could spend 10 lifetimes on a desert island and still never decide between them. As for the Oblivians’ record, the collaboration with Quintron couldn’t have worked out better. Braced by his frantic organ-playing, the trash-rock trio deliver on the promise – apparent on their earlier records – to convert chaos into a seamless and compelling thing of beauty. The Clears, on the other hand, seem to be working it from the other direction, converting the machine-age monotony of New Wave into conceptual chaos, at least, with a sly touch of cleverness and more than a little irony. Both will hit the spot when starvation starts to set in. As for a runner-up – just in case – it would have to be the second double-CD from Loverly, The Singles 1995-1996. There’s a lot on it, so it could get cumbersome, and, admittedly, all of it’s not worth keeping. Best to boil it down to its essentials on a cassette, sure to include, among other tracks, Lorette Velvettes’ “20th Century Boy,” Alex Greene’s “Shakin’ Crazy,” the Satyrs’ “Johnny Rebel,” Snake Hips’ “Hi Guy,” James Eddie Campbell’s “Crack in the World,” and the wacky New Car Smell “Medley.” So much local music, it will pleasantly remind you of home as you bake slowly to death in the sun. – Jim Hanas Favorite new records of the year: A number of local discs stood out this year – the Oblivians, the Clears, Three 6 Mafia, Garrison Starr, Patrick Dodd – but there were three releases from out of Mississippi that bear the laser-beam marks of repeated play in my CD player. Oxonian Neilson Hubbard’s The Slide Project was easily the best power-pop album of the year – maybe the past couple of years – full of great, infectious songs about love found and lost. And while Hubbard’s album explored those themes from the wide-eyed maturing of a young, middle-class white kid, it was wonderfully contrasted by the hard and knowing explorations put out by North blues masters (and Fat Possum label mates) Junior Kimbrough on Most Things Haven’t Worked Out and R.L. Burnside on Mr. Wizard. Favorite reissues of the year: Runner-up in this category has to go to Hightone’s re-releases of recordings originally issued on the University of Memphis’ now-defunct Highwater label. Most of these recordings were made in the late ’70s and early ’80s, featuring then largely obscure regional artists like Jesse Mae Hemphill and the Fieldstones. Since then, those artists have certainly risen in stature, but the Highwater reissues really struck a nerve because they contained some of the earliest recordings of two of the hottest bluesmen around: Burnside and Kimbrough, again. But Highwater comes in second; first has to go to Al Green’s four-CD set Anthology, as comprehensive and grooving a boxed set as has ever been put out, and hopefully the document that will cement Rev. Green’s place among music’s greatest artists. n– Mark Jordan		And the Beat Goes On The music got better as the stakes got higher in the music year that was 1997. by Mark Jordan s in any profession, in journalism you want to be where the action is. Just as a computer programmer wants to be working in Silicon Valley, any political reporter worth his mettle would want to be assigned to Washington, D.C. or a foreign correspondent to London, Moscow, or one of the other hubs of international power. So, while Memphis may not be the hot spot for too many beats (unless you’re covering distribution), take it from me: If you’re a music journalist, Memphis is one of the plum assignments. There are a few cities that produce more, bigger, more relevant music stories – New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, Austin – but not many have experienced as much activity lately and none can really match the soap-opera-meets-Faulkner quality of the personalities involved in the Memphis-music beat. I can only pity the poor sap who must cover the music beat in Des Moines. Nineteen Ninety-seven was a particularly fecund year for Memphis music news. Controversial producer Eli Ball returned to town to resuscitate Crossroads and introduce the successful Bluestock. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and Memphis chapter director Jon Hornyak brought the Grammy Showcase to town (giving the nationwide event one of its three finalists in Saliva) and introduced the Grammy Urban Showcase, giving the city’s contemporary R&B scene some much-needed exposure. Howard Stovall, whose family owns the plantation where Muddy Waters’ house used to stand, moved to Memphis to take charge of the Blues Foundation. Hard Rock Cafe and Elvis Presley Enterprises opened up clubs on Beale Street. And new Memphis In May director Wes Brustad no sooner moved into his office than he caused a stink by breaking with the organization’s Beale Street Music Festival partner, Mid-South Concerts, in favor of hiring independent contractors to help stage the event – a move which has prompted Mid-South to begin planning its own spring festival in Shelby Farms. As far as sheer numbers go, the biggest music-related events of the year were undoubtedly the Beale Street music festival, with an attendance of more that 110,000 and knockout performances by Bob Dylan and his son Jakob of the Wallflowers, and the 20th anniversary commemoration of the death of Elvis Presley – Death Week 20 – which drew an estimated 50-75,000 people over nine days of events, including more than 30,000 for the vigil alone. Also this year, thankfully still very much with us (unlike, despite some reports, the King), Memphian and blues singer Bobby “Blue” Bland received a Lifetime Achievement Award from NARAS, and his friend, occasional collaborator, and onetime chauffeur B.B. King was given the same honor from the Blues Foundation. And the city began a long-overdue return to national music-industry relevance with high-profile releases from the Grifters and Garrison Starr, and the continuing rise of Memphis rap, headed by Three 6 Mafia, who became the first local group since Wendy Moten to chart nationally. And on a smaller, local level, there was even more great music being made, as proven by independent releases from such artists as Alicia Merritt, the Oblivians, the Clears, Patrick Dodd, Seven Four Slide, Reba Russell, Another Society, Saliva, Blue Mountain, and Marlon Branch. Much (too much) of the news this year was sad, as the world lost a number of Memphis-related music figures: blues guitarist Luther Allison, a favorite of the Memphis-based Handy Awards who frequently recorded here; New York singer/guitarist Jeff Buckley, who drowned in the Memphis Harbor while in town to record his next album for Columbia records; George Paul Eldridge, the onetime owner of Blues City Cafe and at his death the marketing director for the King Biscuit Blues Festival; Ollie Hoskins, better known as Ollie Nightingale, who recorded for Stax and had recently resurrected his career at Ecko Records; jazz flautist Edwin Hubbard, who suffered a heart attack onstage while auditioning for the Germantown Symphony’s conductor position; saxophonist and music writer Robert Palmer, who not only chronicled the region and its music in books like Deep Blues, but who also subtly and profoundly affected it as well; Col. Tom Parker, the oft-reviled manager of Elvis; and James Ural Rhodes, longtime tuba player for the famous Post Office Letter Carriers Band and baritone at First Baptist Church-Lauderdale, whose voice inspired “Ol’ Man River” James Hyter, among others. Other losses in 1997 were less tragic, but still deeply felt. The recording studio at 315 Beale was forced out of its home to make way for the Hard Rock Cafe and has yet to find a new location. And toward the end of the year, the city’s best-known juke joint, Green’s Lounge, was lost in a fire. But that’s enough of the past. A more important question is: What can we look forward to in 1998? Well, if my opinion means anything, plenty. Expect ground to finally be broken on the long-delayed Gibson guitar plant. Expect new albums from Big Ass Truck, Todd Snider, and Three 6 Mafia. Expect B.B. King and his namesake club to make nice and B.B. to make his return to performing there early in the year. Expect Buddy Guy’s Legends to move in on Beale sometime in the year. And expect more delays on the proposed Grammy museum. But probably the biggest story of 1998 will come as more and more event organizers and music promoters duke it out for a share of the seemingly ceilingless entertainment business. Some possible match-ups to look out for: Overton Square vs. Beale Street. Mid-South Concerts vs. Memphis In May. Beale Street vs. Memphis In May. Beale vs. Crossroads. The Grammy Showcases vs. Crossroads and Bluestock. Hard Rock vs. Beale. Everybody vs. Beale. Plus, as a finale, about a half-dozen independent promoters slugging it out in losers-leave-town cage match. Whew. I’m going to need this little Christmas vacation we’ve got coming up to rest; it’s going to be a long year. n