Room on Fire The Strokes (RCA) Rarely has a band been greeted with such adulation and then suffered such an immediate backlash as the Strokes. Their debut, Is This It, revealed a competent band with catchy songwriting and a full-blown sound evolved from the Velvets, Television, and the great New York bands of the late […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
The Bo-Keys have quite the resume. When you listen to Rufus Thomas’ “Do the Funky Chicken,” that’s Bo-Keys keyboardist Ronnie Williams playing the piano. When you listen to Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, that’s Bo-Keys drummer Willie Hall laying down the beats. Sax player Jim Spake has backed everyone from Ike Turner and Al Green […]
Posted inNews, The Fly-By
MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING
Memphis city councilman Ricky Peete has an ingenious plan for bringing more high-paying jobs to Memphis. There are certain high-end jobs for which Peete believes there should be a predetermined minimum wage. You have to admit, the plan is beautiful in its simplicity, but has anyone informed our raise-obsessed councilman that Memphis has only one […]
Posted inFilm Features, Film/TV
What’s What
Bubba Ho-Tep, an uneven bit of insta-camp from director Don Coscarelli (of Beastmaster and Phantasm fame), has its moments thanks in no small part to a generally clever script and an uncharacteristically subtle performance by cult-horror icon Bruce Campbell, who, campy prerequisites aside, may be the best celluloid Elvis impersonator since, well, Elvis. That’s right, […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
Clearly, there’s one show that dominates the concert calendar in Memphis this week, and you can read about it over on page 41. But if garage-rock isn’t your thing, you couldn’t ask for better counter-programming than what Young Avenue Deli is serving up Halloween night. When the Digable Planets emerged in 1993 with their debut, […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
I admit it. I don’t get Widespread Panic. I’ve seen them live. I’ve listened to their records. I struggle to stay awake. I don’t think they’re bad at all. I just think they’re boring. But I’m in the minority. The long-running Atlanta-based roots-rock and jam band might be about the most popular touring act to […]
Posted inNews, The Fly-By
F.E.P.D.
According to The Wall Street Journal, FedEx has come up with a novel way to battle terrorist threats and other crimes. FedEx plans to create its own 10-man police force with the power to arrest and to request search and seizure warrants. So what s next, the U.P.S. standing militia?
Posted inBook Features, Books
Show Biz
The Devil in the White City By Erik Larson Crown, 432 pp., $25.95 Civic leaders fretted that their city had a reputation as America’s distribution center but it wasn’t in the same league as other cities across the U.S. What it needed was some symbol to make the country stand up and take notice. Sound […]
Posted inFilm Features, Film/TV
In the Blood
Directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential), based on a bestseller by ace mystery writer Dennis Lehane, starring such respected, actorly heavyweights as Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River has as unimpeachable a pedigree as any American studio film in recent memory. And though it may […]
Posted inMusic, Record Reviews
Short Cuts
Identity Crisis Shelby Lynne (Island) Identity Crisis is perhaps the most fitting album title of the year. After toiling in the Nashville music industry for almost a decade, Shelby Lynne reintroduced herself on 2000’s career-making I Am Shelby Lynne, which won her a Grammy for, inexplicably, Best New Artist. Her quick, slick follow-up, Love, Shelby, […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
What the hell are The Cuts doing? I can’t make heads or tales of this motley band of long-haired youngsters that sound like the Cure and the Cars teaming up for a tribute to Mitch Easter. The band’s sound is gloriously eclectic guitar- and piano-driven rock-and-roll that stinks of the ’70s without ever really sounding […]
Posted inBook Features, Books
Objects of Affection
Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us from Seeing By Darian Leader Counterpoint, 187 pp., $26 In 1911, an Italian house painter exited one of the side doors of the Louvre with a lady known for her enigmatic smile. Vincenzo Peruggia had taken Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa off the wall, slipped it out […]