Cover story by John Branston and Mary Cashiola Additional reporting by Simone Barden and Bianca Phillips At the Ducks Unlimited Great Outdoors Festival this weekend, an estimated 100,000 people will jam a noisy corner of Shelby Farms to shoot firearms and bows and arrows, roar around on four-wheelers and SUVs, scramble up climbing walls, paddle […]
Posted inMusic, Record Reviews
Short Cuts
Downhome Sophisticate Corey Harris (Rounder) Corey Harris has long been hailed as one of contemporary blues’ most promising young performers, but maybe it’s finally time to put that label to rest. After all, contemporary blues is a relatively conservative and tight-knit scene, and Harris is one remarkably expansive musician. In reality, Harris’ relationship to the […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
Though rarely celebrated today by a city whose musical nostalgia is more focused on the mid-century blues and rockabilly that made Memphis famous, jug bands and small jazz “orchestras” were the prime music on Beale Street during the city’s first great music explosion, and that’s the legacy The Bluff City Backsliders pay homage to. With […]
Posted inSports, Sports Feature
City Sports
Grizzlies’ prospects look to make the grade in the big leagues; a change needed in C-USA.
Posted inOpinion, Viewpoint
Turnaround Time
Memphis City Schools superintendent Johnnie Watson is on the right track in pledging to reconstitute those schools still on the state’s low-performing list in 2004. Under an approach based on high standards and accountability, reconstituting schools should be viewed as the final sanction for schools that are not achieving. The first step is regular assessments, […]
Posted inNews, The Fly-By
NOT CARBON DATED, BUT…
Although there are those who claim knowledge of Works before and since the Elizabethan/Jacobean age in England, the bold conclusion of this sign would tend to restrict the Author to a somewhat limited time and space, more or less contemporary with Shakespeare. One wonders: was there collaboration? Did they get along? Is this what Nietzsche […]
Posted inWe Recommend, We Recommend
monday, 27
Today s Memorial Day, and The Mud Island River Park Memorial Day Celebration features canoe, kayak, and bike rentals, as well as balloon artists, face painters, magicians, and more.
Posted inMusic, Record Reviews
Short Cuts
Plastic Fang The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (Matador Records) Blues, punk, hip hop what’s the difference? All three genres have been around long enough for their rules to be codified if not ossified, though discerning critics have pointed out that the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s particular brand of postmodern genre-mixing often blurred the lines between […]
Posted inMusic, Record Reviews
Short Cuts
18 Moby (V2) In the three years since Play was released and slowly took over the sonic universe, Moby has emerged as arguably the definitive pop musician of the era. He s the Prince of the electronica age a diminutive, eccentric, Christian dance-music hero, a multithreat talent and bedroom/home-studio sound scientist obsessively and single-handedly realizing […]
Posted inMusic, Music Features
Sound Advice
Back during the mid- 90s indie-rock boom there were plenty of bands hipper and more fawned-over than North Carolina s Archers of Loaf, but I can only think of one or two that were better. The likes of Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and so many others may have courted more admiration […]
Posted inSports, Sports Feature
City Sports
Is there any defense for the “Sport of Kings”? And Who cares about AFL2?
Posted inMusic, Music Features
sound advice
The latest indie buzz band to emerge from Teenbeat Records, the same D.C.-based label that made Unrest and Versus college-radio staples in the mid-’90s, Aden make music as cerebral and drowsy as you might expect, sort of like a more folky version of Versus. The band’s latest album, Topsiders, is a solid set of smart, […]