Tallahassee The Mountain Goats (4AD) The second-most quotable album of 2002, after the Streets’ Original Pirate Material, comes from what would seem, outwardly, like a diametrically opposed source. Rather than a brash, beat-driven geezer, John Darnielle is a ‘zine writer (Last Plane to Jakarta, now available on the Web with a .com after its title), […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
January is the quietest time of year for national acts coming through town, and this week is no exception. But the local club scene does get a reprieve from the winter doldrums in the form of the International Blues Challenge (see Local Beat, facing page), an annual blues battle of the bands sponsored by the […]
Posted inWe Recommend, We Recommend
wednesday, 29
Tonight’s Brooks Museum of Art First Wednesdays at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art features a gallery tour, a Brushmark Restaurant dinner, a champagne tasting, a presentation of video works by Memphis College of Art professor Kim Beck, and music by the Don O’Barr trio. And last but certainly not least, the ever-wonderful, ever-beautiful, ever-sweet, […]
Posted inNews, The Fly-By
COME ON!
First returns on the new Super Bowl commercials unveiled during Sunday s Tampa Bay-Oakland game are that they are an unusually tacky, uninventive bunch although there is a certain undeniable charm in watching two members of the Osbourne family morph into Donnie and Marie Osmond. (Now what was that product?) Meanwhile, what can be done […]
Posted inWe Recommend, We Recommend
tuesday, 28
Tonight’s Starving Artist Dinner and Auction at Melange is a fund-raiser for Playhouse on the Square’s educational and outreach theater programs and features a six-course dinner, wine, and an auction. And back at the Blue Monkey it’s < b >Fred, Bobby, and Hunky Rusty .
Posted inWe Recommend, We Recommend
monday, 27
Here come the Memphis Grizzlies again, playing tonight against Houston. Arkansas-based journalist and author Mara Leveritt will be signing copies of her new controversial book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three. And while I’ve never heard them, any band that calls itself The Drunk Stuntmen should be worth checking out; they’re […]
Posted inWe Recommend, We Recommend
sunday, 26
It is Super Bowl Sunday, of course, so many of you will be chugalugging beer and eating bean dip either at your favorite bar or at home. Alternatives: m.o.e. is at the New Daisy tonight; and there’s the Memphis Symphony Orchestra: 50th Anniversary Concert at the new Cannon Center for the Performing Arts.
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
p>Though they aren’t quite what most would envision from the term, upstate New York rockers moe. get saddled with the “jam band” label, though “saddled” has a negative connotation and these guys probably wouldn’t see it like that. Nevertheless, it seems more accurate to say that moe.’s a band that gets most of its inspiration […]
Posted inOpinion, Viewpoint
Last Dream
It’s become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.” But the last three years of his life are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole. What TV viewers see is a closed […]
Posted inFilm Features, Film/TV
On the Make
To I have an original thought in my head?” “My life is a cliché. I need to turn my life around.” “I have no understanding of anything outside my own panic and self-loathing.” These are the words of Charlie Kaufman in the throes of writer’s block, waddling around his apartment in wrinkled flannel and sweatpants, […]
Posted inMusic, Record Reviews
Short Cuts
Failer Kathleen Edwards (Zoë/Rounder) On this debut album, the 24-year-old Ottawa-based singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards sounds eerily, even suspiciously, like Lucinda Williams. According to her press kit, she’s a diplomat’s daughter who switched from classical violin to alt-country after discovering Whiskeytown, but it’s not former Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams who has inspired this familiar-sounding marble-mouthed drawl, […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
New York-based punk-rock band Crimson Sweet return to Memphis this week, this time in support of their debut full-length Livin’ in Strut. With femme-fronted punk bands from sea to shining sea (think Cali’s Distillers or NYC’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs) gaining a modicum of buzz, Crimson Sweet has a sound strong and sure enough to join […]