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.
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It hardly matters that it’s not true, but its a funny phrase nonetheless. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be able to utter that phrase, but I think it’s got some heat. Phrases like:
- Oscar-Winners Triple 6 Mafia
- Academy-Award Winner Frayzer Boy
Did you ever think these phrases would be uttered? I am still sitting here beside myself, mostly because i’m still sick as a dog and I’m only barely fighting it.
Let’s talk about my trip to The Church Health Center. If you’re poor and you’re sick, you have only one option: The Church Health Center on Peabody and Bellevue. The clinic opens at 7am for appointment setting, but if you’re not in line by 6:45, you can expect not to be seen. The clinic is only open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. If you’re indigent, jobless, or without health insurance, you can be seen at the clinic and receive all of your medications for a total cost of $30 payable upon rendering of services — check or cash only, no exception.
I was second in a very lengthy Monday morning line. I was checked in and seen by a doctor before 8am. No bloodwork was done, and though I described my symptoms in depth to the good Doctor (including the fact I had been taking OTC remedies to mask the symptoms), the best she would do is to give me some Flonase and Allegra for my allergies and send me on my way. I was livid. I explained that I had a history of Tonsilitis, that at one time my doctor had put me on a steroid-pak to keep me from having to have them removed. She “disagreed” and then, as I waited for my meds, suspiciously discovered they had no Allegra on hand. Meanwhile, I’m watching patients walk out with handfuls of medications to deal with problems. I’m sitting there (as I am right now) suffering from chills, nausea, random sweats, swelled-up tonsils and body aches, the doctor is going to argue with me.
Beggars can’t be choosers, but I smell a might of discrimination. Apparently, I need to be poorer and less enfranchised than I currently am (meaning out in the street pushing a metal cart full of Ding Dongs and umbrellas up Madison singing “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”) in order to benefit from the Church Health Center’s program. Next time, I’ll wait until I’ve been sent to the emergency room to call on them — by that point, maybe they’ll alter their prognosis.
If you were one of the lucky ones who caught Undertow Orchestra tonight, you know the power that this group yielded on that stage. The Brad P. Family Players opened the show to a silent and friendly crowd, putting on an outstanding performance. Not to be outdone, Vic Chesnutt, Mark Eitzel, David Bazan, Will Johnson, and Scott Danbom took the stage and put in a two-hour performance that left people blissful throughout. Each artist performed songs they or their respective bands have made popular to a near-capacity crowd at the World Famous Hi-Tone. The seemingly unlikely casting of David Bazan as drummer and Vic Chesnutt on bass could not have been more special. David, unbeknownst to me, apparently played drums on each of the Pedro The Lion albums except for one of their EP’s. Vic confided to me that he never played bass before this tour. When I left, Mark Eitzel was holding down the bar with Marcus Battle (of Half-Acre Gunroom) having a friendly debate over philosophy that I really didn’t want to tear myself away from.
Memphis, I am proud to call you my home and I want to personally thank you for supporting all the great music that has been coming through the last few weeks. Now I have to sleep, I will be at work at 8am. How is this possible….
Ending off an amazing weekend at The Hi-Tone was a first for Memphis: an appearance by Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters. I should have known something was going to go down when there was a line outside the Hi-Tone by 9pm, and by 9:30 people had taken it upon themselves to completely re-arrange the chairs and tables inside the venue — primarily pushing chairs right up to the edge of the stage to sit down and watch. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that move before at the ‘Tone, but whatever. For the majority of the night, it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop in the place last night. At $10 at the door, I almost feel guilty for not paying more.
After an opening set of blues-influenced roots music from Walter Gently, Kozelek took the stage and tore through a wide swath of his work. Starting with the Red House Painters song “Summer Dress” and easing into a Sun Kil Moon version of “Never Ending Math Equation” by Modest Mouse, the rest of the night turned into a furious blur of heartbreaks and lost highways. I managed to actually hold it together during most of the show, but when he launched into “Grace Cathedral Park”, I finally broke down and bawled my eyes out. Once he got to “Cassius Clay” in his encore, I finally recovered myself.
Kozelek, for his part, had some difficulty getting the audience to snap out of their hypnosis. Several times in-between songs, he would be tuning and ask the audience, “So….what’s up?” which brought on uncomfortable laughter. “Usually I’m really funny at these things and I have stuff to say but tonight I’m just…I dunno,” he told the crowd. After several attempts at getting people to talk, he finally looked over at me, sitting on the speaker stage left, and said something that sounded like, “Can you get these guys to talk to me?” So I asked him if it was his first time in Memphis. That seemed to break the ice, because he launched into an explanation about how he had never been here before, how much he liked it, and how overpriced the tour of Graceland is. We suggested a visit to Graceland Too, and when we told him it was open all night he was like, “Hey, let’s get out of here and go!”
Sometimes shows come to town that are pretty cool or kinda interesting or sorta fun. Unlike some of those kinds of shows, this show was far too good to be limited by that kind of lingo. Words like “memorable” and “unforgettable” come to mind. If you weren’t there, I am so sorry you missed out.
Last night, I attended a mini-premiere of sorts for local 2005 Indie Memphis Film Festival award winner Act One. I’m an enormous skeptic about new films, and I’m even more critical when people I’ve met or been acquainted with are doing those films. I went into the theater last night with high hopes and low expectations. Everything I had heard about the film from others was overwhelmingly positive. But then again, sometimes you just have to find out for yourself.
I can now safely report to you that Act One is a delightful coming-of-age romantic comedy that eschews all the rules of filmmaking by using the process of a screenwriter struggling to write his screenplay in order to tell its story. Kevin Hansen, the film’s erstwhile protagonist, has become enormously successful as a screenwriter and, some might say, equally as successful at “playing the field” in the dating game. But with Kevin’s meteoric success also comes a failure of epic proportions, one so dire as to potentially end his short-but-financially-successful career as a screenwriter. In an attempt to get out of the rut and prove his skill, Kevin begins working on a screenplay that is affected almost entirely by the events unfolding in his personal life.
The process by which Kevin eventually finishes his screenplay is filled with rocky precipices, life-changing moments, fleeting joys, and a lot of imagination. But will Kevin ever find the success that he wants, find true love, and inevitably grow up to find the personal successes that his new-found financial wherewithal cannot buy him? Without giving much of the plot away, that’s the setup for what is quite a remarkable accomplishment.
The movie’s undertone, though somewhat misogynstic, is merely part of Kevin’s development and transferrance from his childish ways to accepting the responsibilities that come with success. Allen Gardner is extremely likeable as Kevin, and one can easily chart the progression of his character/narrator from youthful indiscretion to the complexities of adult realities. Bettina Adger also does an exceptional job as the friend who changes Kevin’s life forever. The film is incredibly well-lit, the production design exceeds that of many of the independently-financed films I’ve seen, and the editing could not have been better. The music, courtesy of Will Deshazo and Landon Moore, adds texture and punctuation to the films many laughs. I don’t think I really stopped laughing for more than a few minutes at any given point in time.
As a jumping off point for a group of friends who have been making independent films in Memphis for nine years now, Act One is a breath of fresh air in the coming wave of cinema for which Memphis seems destined to be the heir apparent. The movie is only running for a week at Malco’s Studio On The Square. I suggest you take your friends or your significant other to check it out. You will not be disappointed.
