Crossing

Is Gonerfest the creative intersection of networks and place?

The Conversation Has (Long) Begun

In their series of articles about Memphis music, Smart City Memphis stated that we need "a new conversation about our music future".

How's this for a conversation? Or the conversation, What (if anything) can local government do to improve the local arts scene?, which included these words from Col Bat Guano:

First of all, and more important than anything, make sure there's good music and art instruction in the public schools.

The city should make it attractive for artists to live here. It's already cheap to live here, mostly because no one wants to live here. This is usually good for artist types, who tend to be either very poor or very rich. The fashionable way for governments to encourage businesses to locate in a city is tax breaks. If you want to encourage musicians to live here, why not waive sales tax on musical instruments bought within the city limits? As part of their downtown revitalization project, Knoxville renovated an old building and made very cheap studio space available. Why not do something similar here, and include band practice space, too? Didn't there used to be a concert series in Court Square? Bring that back, and make sure it pays the bands. Have weekly shows in the Overton Park Shell and other parks around town. And we should have three times as many local acts at the Beale Street Music Festival. None of this sounds very expensive to me, in the big picture of city funding.

Since the problem cited in the study on Smart City Memphis study was that we had practically no music industry, the city should offer the same kinds of economic incentives they would offer, say, the worst professional basketball team in the Western Hemisphere. Since the music industry is currently pretty broken, I don't really know how to do that and make it work. But my guess is that labels will be smaller and cater to more and more specific niches. And, of course, promote themselves on the internet. This also has the advantage of promoting entrepreneurship and all that other free market claptrap that opens the public purse like a prostitute's pubis. Maybe FedEx could be convinced, with the help of city, to offer free or greatly-discounted shipping to record labels and distributors. It would actually be pretty good PR for FedEx if hip young people got FedEx packages full of music.

And decriminalize marijuana.

A good example of the Goner message boards' honest quality. The intelligence, irreverence and give and take are the equal of Slashdot, as good as it gets, imho.

Folk Multimedia in Memphis

This thread on the always educational Goner Records Message Board reminds me: Memphis has had some the weirdest and therefore best local media in the WORLD. Between Sivad, studio wrestling and locally-produced commercials, we seem to keep producing very weird and personally conceived commercial media. The Mo' Money¹ commercials are just another feather in our hair.

The commercials are great because they appear to be brainchildren of non-professionals (at least as we think of professionals), or very special professionals. I could be dead wrong, but you think they might be conceived by the entrepeneurs themselves.

My all time favorite: a Bailey's Furniture and Appliance² commercial, advertising satellite dishes. The commercial featured 2 satellite dishes; in the middle of the dishes were the disembodied heads of Mr. Bailey, the store owner, and local rockabilly legend Eddie Bond. They were like singing flowers, except they weren't singing, they were pitching, and they weren't flowers, they were satellite dishes. Bonds and Bailey's talking heads take turns making their pitch. Finished, their heads start spinning, their voices go "ooooohhhhhhhhh!", and their spinning heads shoot off into outer space.

And then there was Brother Hal of Jolly Royal Furniture. Brother Hal was strictly voiceover. He was supposed to be folksy, but it was a Binghamton barfly folksy. I'm not sure if he really said "if you miss this sale, it'll be the worst thing since Hitler", but I definitely heard him say "if you miss this sale, I'll switch your legs."

If someone were to produce a DVD (with a good straightforward commentary track) containing the many, many weird commercials that came from Memphis, it could make a good deal of mo' money for some local charity. It could be national. But no stinkin' Memphis nostalgia. The commercials will be straight up weird and the commentary just the straight facts of the conception, production and distribution.

¹My liking the commercials doesn't mean I like, or dislike, the products. In Mo' Money's case, Wendi C. Thomas' recent story questions the harm of their product. Caveat emptor! Caveat lector!

²Since I can't find any info on this, I'm remembering that it was Bailey Furniture and Appliance. Pretty sure, but not positive.