Race and Media Forum Tuesday Night

The first forum, Race and Politics, was great. Attend if you can (I'm going to the Peabody Family Art Night, so I probably can't).

While you're at the library, you can also view and vote on the Shelby Farms Park designs.

Memphis Music Turned On

Sometime in the past week, the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission website came back on line. It's new and very simple: a great new logo that links to their myspace presence.

Very simple is very good -- it will probably be easier to maintain and to have dynamic and inclusive content using myspace than by building a massive website upfront. Later they can move to a more completely branded site (which they can probably start doing now in myspace). In the meantime, their present setup gives them the power to easily communicate the breadth of Memphis Music stories without overwhelming them in geekery and costing them much/anything.

They'll still need content, but honoring King Content should be much easier now.

As for the old site, I'm still not sure why it was down -- perhaps it was due to the parting of the Commission and the Memphis Music Foundation.

Moving forward, it's a good yet simple step from the original site. And much, much better than dead air.

Someone turn on Memphis Music!

The web presence for the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission and Memphis Music Foundation has been down for over a week. A week!

I called them a week ago to tell them it was down. There was nobody there No one answered, so I left a message.

Big friggin' deal, you say. I say, yes, big friggin' deal.

Do a web search for "Memphis music".

• If you search Google, the first hit you get is that website (the second is Live from Memphis).
• If you search Yahoo, it's the third hit (behind 2 pages of the CVB).

If organizations that have financial support from the City, the County and Memphis Tomorrow can't keep a simple website running, all the press releases and fundraising and branding and marketing in the world will not make them even a local player in a digital, connected world. And they make Memphis laughable if we ordain them leaders.

Often missed as we dash between the brother poles of press release hype and disfunked reality -- Memphis' creativity.

Update: Slight correction. When I called the Foundation/Commission, I got their voice mail. They may have been there. I don't know.

The Eyesalve of Crosstown

Tossed in with the very good news that Andy Cates has an option to purchase Sears Crosstown is CA reporter Amos Maki's second reference to the building as an "eyesore".

The 1.4 million-square-foot Crosstown building has been a Midtown eyesore since it closed in 1993.

And here's the first reference.

Mr. Maki isn't alone. Michael Finger in the Memphis Flyer article "Eyesores" included not only Sears Crosstown, but the Chisca Hotel, the Rhodes Jennings Building, and the Sterick Building in the list. Devin Greaney echoes Finger, calling the Rhodes Jennings Building an "eyesore" in the June issue of Downtowner Magazine.

They're using a pejorative, loaded term to dis-scribe historic but empty buildings. Buildings whose power and energy and beauty shines through their present state of use and, sometimes, maintenance.

If we believe Sears Crosstown is an eyesore, how can we begin to describe the butt-ugly banality that is the Holiday Inn - University of Memphis? The eyesearing surface parking lots that pockmark our urban landscape? The clear cut lots that deface Memphis' majestic arbor?

No, Mr. Maki is wrong -- Sears Crosstown soothes the eyes. Whether you're standing before its magnificent mass on Watkins, or viewing it from the Auction Street Bridge, or the top of the Peabody, or from the ferris wheel at the Mid-South Fair (through 2008!), it is a salve for the black eyes we get every day from the bottom-fed abominations that destroy Memphis natural, historic and man-made beauty.

When a good writer of our paper of note can offhandedly dis-scribe that beautiful building as an "eyesore", is it any wonder that we have gangs of yahoos cruising Memphis on top of bulldozers?

Sam Phillips Center for Independent Music: Where?

I don't know how far they have gotten with the Sam Phillips Center for Independent Music, but my hope is that they will put it in a storefront in a busy and diverse part of Memphis. The website mentions that the Center will be in partnership with the University of Memphis, which is great, as long as they don't bury it on the campus somewhere.

The Highland Strip would be good. It's near the campus but still part of the greater community with lots of foot traffic. If Newby's hadn't expanded into it, the neighborhood movie house would have been an excellent location, since converted neighborhood movie houses have a great history in Memphis music. But certainly there's a place that the Center could use very well on the Strip.

The talented children of Memphis should see the Center, so they can dream. And they should walk in, so they can begin the dream.

It shouldn't be an institution that exists to fundraise and issue press releases. It should be a Center of creation.

Update: cannot establish a connection to Memphis Music! As fearlessvk comments, the links above, which point to the Memphis Music Foundation/Music Commission's website http://www.memphismusic.org, are unavailable. Their website has been unreachable for 2 days. I called them yesterday to let them know, if they didn't already know, and got an an answering machine. Left a message "uh, your website is down".

A day and a half later it still is. 'Til it becomes available, here's the Google cached copy of the page.

How Much Do You Hate The Gates of Memphis? A Lot? A Fair Amount? Just a Little?

The Memphis Business Journal ran an online survey asking their readers how much they read blogs, then posted the results in "Business Pulse results: Memphians hardly care for blogs". The brief story began:

The majority of an online survey participants don't bother to read blogs.

Memphis Business Journal asked its online readers last week if they liked blogging. Of the 106 respondents, 41 percent said they don't waste their time reading blogs. 34 percent said they only read blogs on occasion.

However, 10 percent enjoy reading others' blogs and 6 percent have their own blogs and post often. A surprising 9 percent don't even know what a blog is.

2 things:

1. were "do you bother to read blogs?" and "do you waste your time reading blogs?" survey questions? Maybe they were, but I can't find the actual survey.
   
2. if a majority doesn't bother to read blogs, what's the percentage that does? 34 percent on occasion, plus 10 percent who enjoy reading other blogs, plus 6 percent who have their own blogs and post often equals ... 50%. 50% -- well that's definitely not a majority. But doesn't that also mean that the percentage that doesn't bother to read is also 50% -- definitely not a majority either! So the opening line "the majority of an online survey participants don't bother to read blogs" is incorrect. Readership is split down the middle. Avid readership is pretty low but they didn't say "bother to read regularly", they said "bother to read."

Why such a slant?

Perhaps a clear defeat of a pale young pajama-wearing whippersnapper upstart reads more entertaining than a split decision. I appreciate this explanation because I don't want my avid-to-occasional readers falling asleep in their Wheaties either.

But could it be something else?

This is absolutely not a story unique to Memphis, but the continuous, public, no-barriers-to-entry conversations and debates created and nurtured by this and this and this and this and this and all of these are with few precedents in Memphis' history.

50%, 10%, 1% -- all improvements over silence.

Update/Apology: I had copied and pasted the text above from the MBJ article. Little did I know I also copied their HTML, which included a reference to an ad (I must have that adblocked on my other computer). It's gone now.

As a consequence of this mistake, I've changed the title of the post. You win this time, Memphis Business Journal!

Update Again/Apology Again: Although I read the Memphis Business Journal, I didn't see the article until Mediaverse:Memphis posted about it. The Field Guide to Memphis also comments on the article.

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.