After procrastinating repeatedly, I finally made it out (thanks to Mark & Katie) to the beautifully-renovated Levitt Shell on Sunday night for a terrific performance from Samarabalouf (pronounced sah-MAH-rah-bah-LOOF), a Gypsy swing trio from France who energized the crowd in attendance. Seeing this show made me enthusiastic about the future of the arts in Memphis. This isn’t the old Overton Park Shell — it is transformed, ultimately, into something much more grand and beautiful than I could have imagined. More info and a video after the jump.

Samarabalouf Live at Levitt Shell, Memphis from E.J. Friedman on Vimeo.

I got a little teary eyed watching the sunset, surrounded by other Memphians clapping along or dancing, parents coming with their children (who did plenty of their own dancing) and enjoying this incredible free show. For a minute, I felt like I was almost in another city. This is something so special, you owe it to yourself to take advantage of the last few shows of the 2008 Levitt Shell season. After this weekend, shows will be on hiatus until May of 2009 — so, make a picnic, bring a blanket, and come on down. You’ll be very glad you did.

Thursday, October 2 – 7pm
John Jorgenson

Friday, October 3 – 7pm
The Bo-Keys w/ William Bell*

*Makin’ Music Muscles
This artist is offering a special children’s workshop at 5 pm.
Bring your children to this free, fun, and educational musical workshop.

Saturday, October 4 – 5pm
Kenneth Jackson

Saturday, October 4 – 7:30pm
Incendio

Sunday, October 5 – 7pm
Brave Combo

I just haven’t had the time this week to properly mention and promote this wonderful show. You need, and I do mean need to be at the Levitt Shell @ Overton Park tonight for COMO NOW. This press release is culled directly from a press release, but the music speaks quite for itself. Enjoy & I hope to see you tonight.

COMO NOW: The Voices of Panola Co., MS, the latest release from Daptone Records (and first that moves away from the Brooklyn funk and soul) continues to get rave reviews from critics all over. Says Grant Alden from No Depression:

“It is a relief once again to fall in love with an album — an entire album — to become enraptured by the music of artists who are unknown to me. To discover something of such great and glorious sounds that it is worth moving from the truck to the house stereo and back, to find music so rewarding to listen to that I have not opened the mail for a week, because this is enough. This is plenty…this is — by far — the best album I’ve heard this year.”

You can check the mini-documentary Daptone made about the album here, or, if you’re lucky enough to be in the Memphis area, the entire group of singers will be performing a very special show at the Levitt Shell next Friday, September 26 at 7pm.

You can also watch a special performance by the Como Mamas, one of the groups included on the compilation, on YouTube’s music homepage, or below.

World’s Fair News » COMO NOW in No Depression Now, and in Memphis Next Week.

Como Mamas featuring Mary Moore – Trouble In My Way

Clay Aiken, though?

The cover story from people might as well have had a picture of Chris Rock holding a baby and said “YES, I’M BLACK.”

Anyways, I’m glad he figured it out. I guess.

Clay Aiken Comes Out Of The Closet: Nation’s Craft Stores Prepare For Lower Aiken-Related Revenues.

This is really disheartening news. If you’re reading this, you must stand up and speak up if you want internet radio to survive. Dozens of webcasters, from WOXY to Soma.FM and on and on will collapse under the weight of the Copyright Royalty Board’s royalty rate hikes.

Your silence now will lead to even more silence when net radio disappears into extinction. Please read the following and take action.

IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED FOR THURSDAY, JULY 12TH

Greetings,

Time and options are running out for Internet Radio. Late this afternoon, the court DENIED the emergency stay sought on behalf of webcasters, millions of listeners and the artists and music they support.

UNLESS CONGRESS ACTS BY JULY 15th, the new ruinous royalty rates will be going into effect on Sunday, threatening the future of all internet radio.

We are appealing to the millions of Internet radio listeners out there, the webcasters they support and the artists and labels we treasure to rise up and make your voices heard again before this vibrant medium is silenced. Even if you have already called, we need you to call again.

The situation is grave, but that makes the message all the simpler and more serious.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES RIGHT AWAY and urge them to support the Internet Equality Act. Go to http://www.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/alert_9738601.html to find the phone numbers of your Senators and Representative.

If they’ve already co-sponsored, thank them and tell them to fight to bring the bill to the floor for an immediate vote. If the line is busy, please call back. Call until you know your voice has been heard.

Your voices are what have gotten us this far – Congress has listened. Now, they are our only hope.

We are outmatched by lobbying power and money but we are NOT outmatched by facts and passion and the power of our voices.

Again, please go to http://www.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/alert_9738601.html to find the necessary phone numbers and make the call today.

Thank you,

The SaveNetRadio Campaign

City officials are restructuring the flyer ordinance, which prohibits the posting of flyers, signs, posters, handbills, stickers, or other forms of advertisements on publically owned property. Flyers can currently be taken down by law enforcement or city officials and the owner of the sign must pay $50 if they want it back. Under the existing ordinance, police officers must catch a person posting a flyer on city property in order to prosecute them.

The proposed change in the ordinance will allow police officers to track down the artist, musician, or bar owner (or possibly all three) and prosecute them based solely on the information on the flyer. The proposed new fine for violating the new flyer amendment will be $1,000.00 for each violation. With the proposed fine for smoking in a bar being only $50.00, jail time is not out of the question for local artists and musicians struggling to make a living in Oxford.

“First of all, how will they know someone else didn’t take my flyer and stick it up just to get me in trouble?” said local musician Joe Nettles, lead singer and guitarist of Goodmorning Powerheart. “I take pride in my flyers. They are works of art.”

The exact wording of the proposed amendment of the ordinance is unknown to the public as the City of Oxford has posted no information on its website, nor has it posted the minutes from any Board of Alderman meeting since May of 2006 (unlike the smoking amendment, which can be downloaded on www.oxfordms.net). In fact, it is only because of the controversial smoking ammendment and the shear number of locals who attended the last City Council meeting that any information regarding the proposed flyer amendment has come to light.

According to locals who attended the October 3, 2006 City Council meeting, Mike Martin, assistant chief in the Oxford Police Department, spoke on behalf of the proposed flyer amendment and was quoted as saying band flyers were “litter” and “make Oxford look bad.”

“That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Joe Nettles. “Apparently, we need to litter this town with cigarette butts to show them what real litter is. We’ve got more and more rich people coming in here to die and the people who live and work here can’t afford it anymore. Oxford is turning into a fascist state. They call this the ‘cultural Mecca of Mississippi?’ What a bunch of sh*t!”

According to local musicians, there has been a “flyer war” going on the streets of Oxford for several years.

“There already isn’t enough space for everyone who has a flyer to post a flyer on the three bulletin boards on the Square,” said Gentry Webb, artist and guitarist of The Cooters. “Many cities across the country provide fairly large kiosks for their citizens to post flyers. If they are going to tinker with the law they need to provide alternatives instead of criminalizing an artform and free speech.”

The third and final reading of the proposed amendment will occur on October 17, 2006 at 6 PM and the City of Oxford’s Board of Aldermen can then vote to approve or deny it.

Head over to Loudersoft to read a little blurb on TIG and hear their EP, Shapes And Numbers which you can purchase at the show.

NOTE: This show has been postponed due to a booking conflict.

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.

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.