In South Central Los Angeles, there stands a place of great beauty: one of the largest community-tended gardens in the world. The garden, located at 41st and Alameda, has been tended to and cared for by the people of the South Central Los Angeles community since 1992. However, the garden’s longevity has recently been threatened by potential sale of the land on which it resides.
The land on which this garden sits is zoned for commercial use and has recently been offered up for sale to Wal-Mart for use as a distribution center. The property has been embroiled in a bitter land dispute between the farmers and the land owner and the land owner is pressing to sell the land to Wal-Mart which, inevitably, will turn South Central Los Angeles into a distribution hub for Wal-Mart. However, there is a way to protect and preserve the garden and keep it open to the residents: to purchase the land.
As of this email, $11,000,000.00+ has been raised, $5M of that in the last week, to purchase the land and keep the garden from being wrestled away by Wal-Mart and their developers. The fundraising has been spearheaded by Julia Butterfly, a well-known environmental activist, and is supported by an impressive list of public donors including Darryl Hannah, Ben Harper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Morello, and Ron Kovic. They are only around $5M short of their goal of $16M, an amount that the developer has agreed to accept for sale of the land.
If you or anyone you know would be willing to make a donation to preserve this precious natural resource of the South Central Los Angeles community, please have them go to the website or contact me via email discuss matching contributions of any amount. The company I work for, Sarathan Records, has made a substantial donation towards the purchase price of the land. If you can help, please do.
If you’d like more information on the South Central Farmers Feeding Families, the website is at http://www.southcentralfarmers.org
I know I’ve been hinting around some big changes, and now I can safely make this announcement to my friends and fellow readers. As of Tuesday, I will be employed full-time as the Internet/New Media Consultant for Sarathan Records. Sarathan is an independent label based in Seattle with a small but powerful roster of current and new releases forthcoming, including DVDs from the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players and the Heavenly States, a feature-length documentary about Lamont Dozier (of the famed Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team), and CDs from Shane Bartell, Two Loons For Tea, the Airpushers (two members of Black Eyed Peas band), and others. I am proud to have been invited to work with this up-and-coming label and look forward to seeing where things lead for us both.
Come check out Sarathan Records on MySpace and keep your eyes peeled for changes as they come about.
My friend George has just returned from nearly 1.5 years in Japan. I’d like to write something about how he’s doing great and how he’s at the top of his game, but I just can’t. He definitely has a story to tell, but I am worried that he will be too lazy to actually take the time to write about it — having a Japanese gangster girlfriend, running nightclubs for Ethiopians, getting his jaw split in three places by a psycopathic Yakuza after getting caught in the middle of a loan dispute — and all before reaching the age of 23. While his jaw is wired shut recovering from maxillary surgery for the next six weeks, I hope he looks at this post about once a day and remembers to sit down and start writing about how a nice kid of above-average intelligence from a good home in Memphis can wake up to find himself halfway around the world caught in the underbelly of Japanese nightlife and culture. If he won’t write about it, someone probably should. I’m glad you’re home, G.
Now write the book.
Regardless to anything you may have heard to the contrary, I’m not hiding, I’m fine and I think most of you know that. However, a number of you have called and emailed wondering why I haven’t exactly been hanging out trying to be “Johnny on the spot” the last few weeks, and an explanation is certainly due.
My life happened, and it’s a damn good thing it did.
First of all, to anyone who I haven’t intentionally blown off, I apologize. To anyone I have, I don’t. To everyone else, the answer is forthcoming and I think you’ll be as pleased with the answer as I was shocked to receive the news. I can say that feel extremely fortunate to be both taken seriously and to be paid what I’m actually worth to do something that I am experienced in doing. That’s as far as I can go with the big announcement until next week, but it means big changes and opportunities for several of the folks in my life.
Stay tuned and I’ll fill you in. I guarantee you’ll hear it here first.
After reading this article about the Memphis music scene from the Hollywood Reporter, I began to realize that my thoughts on the nature of the suspicion that people have about the industry within our music scene stems from a glowing failure on the part of our colleges.
Memphis, you deserve a college radio station that plays something other than jazz.
Back in the 1970′s and 1980′s, you see, there was this station called WLYX-FM at then-named Southwestern (now Rhodes College). It was the hub of the college music scene in Memphis during that era, and every band that managed to make it through the city to play at the Antenna Club (Memphis’ only real “college rock” venue), Poet’s Corner (is that the right name?) or Solomon Alfred’s (which is now the site of the French Quarter Suites) also managed to make it thru WLYX in one way or another. R.E.M., Henry Rollins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of the great Athens bands all were featured on the station. It was also a time when WEVL broadcast at a much lower wattage and had many fewer annual subscribers. I remember the first time I went to WEVL to find out about doing a show, I was 14 years old and WEVL was (if memory serves) situated somewhere above either Zinnie’s East or, possibly, the Zinnie’s building itself. I later went on to have a Tuesday afternoon show on the station, and I learned so much from the people at WLYX about what was up-and-coming it’s almost hard to believe it’s gone, even so many years after the university shut its doors for good (hopefully Chris Davis will poke around this post and provide accurate details as to why).
But regardless of whether or not the University thought it was a nuisance, it was the voice of the college generations that lived in this town. It was a place where local artists, even and especially up-and-coming artists, could be heard by the people in their own age bracket. There were no commercials, there was no programming per se (other than required programs to have an FCC license), and there were few rules. It wasn’t as if people simply got on the air and created chaos — the chaos represented the disillusionment of these collegiates and their friends because that was the music of the time. There was an outlet to represent their interests.
Cut to 2006. WEVL is much larger now, has an incredible subscriber base, but has never veered from it’s programming policy. Perhaps an hour or two a week, local artists have a chance to be heard by those who have shows. The University of Memphis station, WUMR, is still what it has been for so many years — a jazz station. It is tightly controlled by the department that administers it, and there is no chance in hell (even if you’re in a jazz band) that your band will ever be heard on this radio station. The students at the University, ostensibly, allocate some portion of their tuition dollars to the station’s operations cost. But if you’re not one of “the jazz lovers”, you’re screwed.
Why? Because students, even students in the College of Communication and Fine Art department, have no say-so in the programming or operation of the station.
What’s going on in our city right now, in terms of music, is represented only through the Memphis Flyer, the Locals Only show on 93X (our rock station), satellite radio (which still hasn’t quite caught on yet), internet sites, relatively poor attendance at nightclub shows, and word-of-mouth. These are mostly heavily controlled and programmed outlets. So long as there is no college radio, anything that our next generation of musicians is bound to produce will remain, at best, a local secret never to be uttered outside the city, it seems.
But it really doesn’t have to be that way, does it?
Every other major college town in the United States has a college radio station that is programmed by students. For that matter, every college town in the area surrounding Memphis has a college radio station that is programmed by students. Think about it: Little Rock, Oxford, Jackson, Louisville, Nashville, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Atlanta, Fayetteville, St. Louis, Birmingham, Athens — all of these cities have a college radio station.
Memphis, for all intents and purpose, does not.
What will it take to make the universities here recognize the great disservice they are doing to our local college-aged students by purposefully misguided attempts to maintain control of this major component to moving forward creatively? What exactly is the Board of Regents afraid of? Moreover, where are the students who are paying money to attend university and to have some voice in what goes on with their radio station? Shouldn’t the students be up in arms?
Someone needs to get angry about this and damn fast. We have so much local talent and so few outlets for the work, it’s demeaning to the quality of the entertainment and disheartening to the creators. It doesn’t have to be like this, and it is my hope that college students and incoming freshmen to the university will read this and get very, very angry. You are having your airwaves extorted from you semester after semester, and nobody ever says anything.
As much as I respect WEVL, their outstanding programming and the service they provide as free public radio, hopefully even they would recognize and admit that it’s not enough of an outlet for the collegiate living in Memphis. There is an entire world of music going on that is completely unrepresented on the radio dial here — and it isn’t because it’s not popular music.
Bottom line: if Memphis is to ever become part of the world community, the students attending university here must actively demand control of their airwaves to give up-and-coming local, national, and international artists greater reason to perform here. It will increase the traffic to local clubs, give a voice to local musicians, and create a heart of a community that is sorely lacking. When you bitch that the good shows never make it here, when you complain that you never hear local artists on the radio, always remember the jazz.
Now, just to clarify, I’m not hating on jazz music. I love it. I’m a jazz music fan, I respect and appreciate the heritage of the music and it’s importance as a cultural icon. But for pete’s sake, people — it’s not college music. It just flatly, and straight to the point, is not. You can’t prove to me through any methodology that a college in a city the size of Memphis needs a jazz station to represent the student body. College students listen to so many different types of music now — hip hop, indie rock, electronic music — and it’s insulting and presumptuous to assume that students will just get their music from some other source and fend for themselves. It’s suffocating.
The next time Chris Morris comes to Memphis, I want him to be able to look around and see change in the air. But if you’re a student at a university and you’re not getting pissed off and picketing, emailing, writing, or calling someone, you’re denying yourself.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Memphis is a city that likes keeping everything under wraps and hidden away from the rest of the world. But I’m pretty sure there are some musicians who are starving and working their asses off every day, suffering in relative obscurity, who would completely disagree.
First off I’d like to take time to thank Katherine Sage, Courtney Boulding and especialy John Hornyak for putting this event together. It’s a testament to the foresight of our local Grammy chapter that they were able to pull together such an amazing group of people. I’d like to thank all of my fellow panelists on the Taking The Digital Plunge panel – Rachel Hurley from Scenestars & The Commercial Appeal, tobi from XM Satellite Radio’s XMU, Lindsey Collins from CDBaby, Rick Reed from eMusic, Neeta Ragoowansi from SoundExchange, Harold Whaley from Urban Network, Steve Mack from LUX Media, and Matt Temple from Visible School for the insights they provided to me and to those in attendance.
This type of workshop and panel opportunity doesn’t come around very often here in Memphis. Those who came and took advantage of the chance to meet with and learn from industry professionals and leaders did themselves a huge favor. Nancy Prager, an entertainment and intellectual property rights attorney based in D.C. but originally from Memphis, sent out a clear message to those in attendance to the “IP: The Real Money Maker” panel that should resonate with everyone reading: “You have to remember that this is a business. If you want to be taken seriously, there are certain things you have to consider.”
The showcase following the panels, held at The Warehouse, showcased some of Memphis’ truly amazing talent — of particular note were Mr. White, Secret Service, Men-Nefer, Chess Club, Black Sunday, and Brad Postlethwaite + Friends. The feeling of Memphis being a city on the move was a common topic of discussion by those of us watching and listening. Believe me — people are watching and listening and they are enthusiastic about what they see and hear. Congratulations to all of the performers for making their impact felt during the showcase.
After a long day of panels and showcases, we ended up at Bluefin attending a private party thrown by Ray Flemings, head of the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission. We were also graced with an appearance by Justin Timberlake and his friends Chase & Kim. It was a great way to end off an exciting day of entertainment and education for both me and for all of the out-of-town visitors.
THIS SUNDAY, MAY 21 | 2 pm
