Think you can rock someone’s world with a few sexy phrases? Well, break out your pen and paper and record your poetic fantasies.
This Sunday, April 9th, Memphis Live! Entertainment is holding auditions for “Risqué,” an evening of passionate and tastefully erotic poetry to be held at The Complex on April 28th.
Auditions begin at 4 p.m. at the Complex. Hmmmm…what to wear?
Creative Class I just read John Branston’s attack on Memphis’ new strategy of embracing the “creative class” (City Beat, March 30th issue). Talk about missing the point. The creative class is not about age. It just happens that most people who qualify are within a certain age bracket. It includes a staggering number of fields, […]
A planned tribute album to Memphis underground-rock pioneers Big Star that was first slated to be released in 1999 will finally hit the racks this spring. Due May 23rd, on Koch Records, the album, titled Big Star, Small World, will feature covers of Big Star songs from several alt-rock notables, including Whiskeytown, the Afghan Whigs, and Teenage Fanclub. What we can’t wait to hear: Wilco’s take on the classic adolescent ballad “Thirteen.” Big Star will next grace a local stage Friday, May 5th at the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival. Read more about it here.
On Thursday, April 6th, the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University is holding an opening reception for its first post-Katrina show. The exhibition, “Capturing Southern Bohemia,” is a collection of photographs of New Orleans taken in the 1950s by the late Memphian Jack Robinson. “Capturing Southern Bohemia,” curated by Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, debuted at the Jack Robinson Gallery the weekend before Hurricane Katrina hit. For more information on the show, go to the Tulane Web site here.
On Tuesday, April 4th, the anniversary of the Martin Luther King assassination, the National Civil Rights Museum is holding its 2006 Conference on Freedom. The focus of this year’s conference is healthcare and will cover such topics as patient rights and right-to-die issues. The event is being held at Rhodes College Bryan Campus Life Center from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the cost is $20. For more information or to register, go to the Civil Rights Museum Web site here.
Farewell, Wendi Chris Davis’ parting shot (Fly on the Wall, March 16th issue) to departing Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi Thomas was a little harsh. Maybe Thomas went a little overboard with her “everyday sin tax” ideas, but her heart was always in the right place. Thomas’ columns were about getting people to think and to […]
thursday March 30 Great Conversations University of Memphis Holiday Inn, 5:30 p.m., $75 Fifth annual fund-raising dinner put on by the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis. Designed to introduce the public to the brainpower at U of M, you’ll get to break bread with one of 30 experts who have […]
Destroyer’s Rubies Destroyer (Merge Records) New Porn wordsmith outdoes himself on a career-best solo album. There are modern singer-songwriters, and then there is Dan Bejar (aka Destroyer). It’s a bold statement for sure, but the new Destroyer’s Rubies offers more considerable evidence of the greatness of this sometime New Pornographer. Bejar’s previous Your Blues was, […]
The times they are a-changing at Overton Square. According to a recent article in the Daily News, the entertainment and commercial district that which enjoyed a heyday in the 1970s and ’80 is “trying to generate new interest with some fresh tenants.” That means Jeanice Blancett’s Square Foods Natural Market will be moving to a smaller but decidedly hipper hotspot — Cooper-Young.
A year’s delay while eBay pondered whether selling the old flophouse bathtub where James Earl Ray stood when he shot Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cost Memphis judge D’Army Bailey almost $145,000.
In 2004, Bailey – one of the founders of the National Civil Rights Museum — put the battered tub up for auction on eBay, with proceeds going to benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs of Memphis. Bidding reached $152,000 before eBay stopped the auction, while it pondered its policy about selling “offensive” items on the online auction. Ebay finally decided the tub was a “historical artifact,” though too late to sell it to the original bidders.
Last week, Bailey listed the tub again, and this time the final bid was only $7,600. The winner was an online auction called the Golden Palace Casino, which has purchased other unusual “historical” items, such as a group of four toilets supposedly used by Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia.
It’s not clear how the casino plans to make use of its latest purchase, but Bailey has told reporters he is confident the new owners will treat the tub “with sensitivity for its historic significance.” We’re not sure how they treated Jerry’s toilets.
City Councilman Rickey Peete raised upwards of $75,000 at a fund-raiser on Beale Street this week but says he isn’t planning on running for anything besides City Council.
Peete, head of the Beale Street Merchants Association, welcomed hundreds of supporters to a $250-per-person party at Alfred’s.
“You run like you’re scared,” said Peete, who represents one of the superdistricts which stretches from Frayser to the Mississipppi state line to Hickory Hill and includes 128 precincts. The election is in 2007 and at this early date Peete has no opponents.
The district includes such hot growth areas as Uptown and South End as well as FedExForum and Beale Street.
Dramatic indie-rock cult songwriter Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) let a lot of Memphians down earlier this year when she suddenly cancelled a concert at the Gibson Lounge that was meant to debut her “Memphis Rhythm Band,” an amalgamation of local musicians (including veterans of Al Green’s ’70s backing band, Hi Rhythm) with whom Marshall recorded her new album The Greatest. Marshall’s publicist cited “health reasons,” but no-one who’d ever seen the emotional tightrope act of a Cat Power solo show – moving or crushingly dull, depending on your perspective – was at all surprised. Well, apparently Marshall has gotten it together enough to re-launch her tour along with Bluff City backing band. No local show scheduled so far, but Marshall and the Memphis Rhythm Band are on the bill for Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music Festival June 16th. In the meantime, you can catch up with all the drama with the Flyer’s before and after coverage of the aborted Memphis concert.
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