The Pulse 10.18 » May 2-8, 2013

ARTS

Blackballing Gun Violence New AVA exhibit comments on political hot button

By Janis Hashe

F

ew subjects stir up more passionate debate, especially in the gun-loving South, than guns and gun control. That’s why you can expect very little fence sitting about “Michael Murphy: Damage,” the new exhibit opening at AVA Gallery on May 3.

Multi-media artist Murphy, currently living and working in Milledgeville, Georgia, has installed a piece described by AVA in this way: “Composed of hundreds of suspended black spheres, it creates a dark wave that consumes nearly the entire front gallery...As viewers move through the space, the lyrical arrangement of parts appears to shift and move. As viewers migrate to the front of the gallery, the wave appears to transform into a graphic illusion of an AR-15 assault rifle, similar to the one used

by James Holmes in the 2012 Aurora shooting.”

“I’d like for people to talk about guns and the culture of gun violence. I’m not trying to push my own agenda,” said Murphy, speaking from his

“

“Black balls” are historically used in secret ballots to signify opposition, as in “someone black balled me.” The number of black balls in “Damage” represents the number of Americans murdered by assault rifles in the United States

As viewers migrate to the front of the gallery, the wave appears to transform into a graphic illusion of an AR-15 assault rifle, similar to the one used

by James Holmes in the 2012 Aurora shooting. studio. “My father carried a gun everywhere he went. But to me, this only created an illusion of safety. I’m interested in the culture of fear we are conditioned to live under.” He notes that the recent failure of the background check bill in Congress highlights the timeliness of the exhibit.

in 2012. Yet, said Murphy in his notes on the piece, “While assault rifles are a part of the problem with violence in the US, last year they accounted for only one of every 23 gun murders. Assault weapons are not the problem.”

Many of Murphy’s pieces, such as “The People’s Memo-

rial to Martin Luther King,” (2010) and his most famous piece, “Sculptural Portrait of Barack Obama” (2012), reflect politics. Asked about this, he said, “I see my work partly as a critical foil to popular culture, which I feel needs to be scrutinized more closely. Art is a vehicle for communication… to some degree, my work does reflect some of my own opinions.”

The large, eight-foot tall portrait of the president, which was featured in the iPad edition of Time magazine when Barack Obama was named “Person of the Year,” came about, he says, because as early as 2007 he began working on a portrait of then-Sen. Obama.

He was featured in an article in Time as one of the first artists capturing the persona of someone who then went on to become president.

When “Damage” closes at AVA on June 29, it will go on to Murphy’s gallery in Soho, New York City, he said. “It will actually have more of a life online,” he said, noting that his website, http://mmike.com, gets many hits from people who never have a chance to see the work in person. “People will come to their own conclusions about it,” he said. “But I know it will have an audience.”

“Michael Murphy: Damage” Artist’s lecture: 5:30 p.m., May 2, GPS Opening reception: 5:30-8 p.m. May 3, AVA Gallery, 30 Frazier Ave. avarts.org

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nightfallat 25 | playing good for free A quarter-century of music has played a major role in downtown’s renewal.

2013 opening night is Friday, y’all

By Richard Winham Starting a month earlier than usual, with 18 shows scheduled between this Friday and the end of August, the Nightfall series, as always, will have some people scratching their heads in response to the many unfamiliar names on the lineup. But if past years are any indication, you may find yourself one day telling your friends that you saw some of these bands for free in a park in downtown Chattanooga before anyone knew them.

The acts this year—Nightfall’s 25th anniversary—are, like the series’ audience itself, multi-generational, with oldschool veterans rubbing shoulders with young bands, some still in their teens. The guiding force behind the series is Carla Prichard, who has booked Nightfall’s performances for the past 22 years. The first show on Friday, May 3, reflects her penchant for beginning the series with Southern roots music—which is to say, the root of all American music. It features two seasoned performers one whose name may not be familiar, but whose music is instantly familiar vintage Southern soul,

while the other is one of Chattanooga’s heritage performers.

Lee Fields is a venerable soul shouter with a great band, The Expressions, made up of a guitarist, bassist, and drummer, and an organist playing what looks like an old Hammond B3, along with a twoman sax and trumpet horn section. Fields’ voice mixes James Brown’s granular rasp with Solomon Burke’s melodicism. “I’m a true soul singer, probably one of the few that’s left,” he said in an interview on his website. Although he’s been singing since the ’60s, he’s quick to acknowledge the contributions of his young band in up-

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dating the classic funk-soul of his youth, which is so revered by young listeners who know it only from records. “Although our music has the feeling of that era, it sounds fresh and brand new because we’re not actually imitating,” he said. “We’re taking on the new continuation of soul.”

Opening for Fields is Drew Sterchi and his newly formed band, Blues Tribe.

Like Fields, Sterchi has been making music since the late 1960s. But while Fields channeled James Brown, Otis Redding and Solomon Burke, Sterchi took his cue from Michael Bloomfield, one of the first generation of young white musicians who set out to capture the fierce fire of the blues as it was played in the clubs of Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s and early 1960s. After listening to the incendiary guitar playing of Magic Sam, Buddy Guy and Hubert Sumlin, the elemental players who fired Bloomfield’s imagination, Sterchi formed his first band with his brother, David, in the early 1970s.

They became a successful touring band, opening for Sea Level, Johnny Winter and Dr. John, among others. But after a while life on the road began to pall, and within a year Drew and his brother moved back home and started the construction company they still own.

He didn’t stop playing and writing, but it was only recently that he decided to put a band together and play gigs again. He released an album a few months ago and played a couple of shows at Rhythm & Brews and The Honest Pint with a band composed of old friends. Since then he’s assembled band of young musicians who inspire him in the same way The Expressions have reenergized Lee Fields.

The first show of Nightfall’s 25th season will be what people have come to expect from the popular series. Since its inception in the late 1980s, Nightfall has been a showcase for stellar musicians playing at their peak. It grew out of a desire to bring people back to downtown Chattanooga

Lee Fields

after work. As anyone around in those days can attest, downtown Chattanooga was a ghost town after 6 p.m. Many people worked in the office buildings on Broad and Chestnut, but few stayed for fun after work.

Downtown was dying and very few people seemed to care. But a small group of visionaries decided to do something to revive it.

It began with the architect Stroud Watson, who suggested a park in the center of the city at the intersection of Market and MLK. The Lyndhurst and Benwood Foundations furnished the funds to create Miller Park.

When it was finished, the foundations gave it to the city.

Having done so, those same foundations then bought up the property on the opposite corner and built Miller Plaza. This time, rather than giving it to the city, they retained ownership and set up the Center City Corporation to run it. The idea was to create a dynamic center that would begin the process of re-animating downtown. Somebody suggested staging a series of free concerts, and in the summer of 1988, Brian McMasters organized a series of four shows featuring Taj Mahal, Karla Bonoff, Dave Mason, and local jazz keyboardist Butch Cornell in Miller Plaza. Nightfall was born.

McMasters left town after that first year, leaving his assistant Carlotta Cooper to take over and create the first summer-long series. Realizing that she needed help, she asked local musician John Rawlston to put together a committee of music-loving kindred spirits to help choose the acts for the series. Cooper left a year later, and Carla Pritchard was hired to coordinate the series and other downtown events for the newly created Chattanooga Downtown Partner-

ship. As Rawlston put it, “The baby had been birthed, but Carla was the one who raised it.”

Pritchard retained the committee, and Nightfall continues to be a collective enterprise. Many other cities have had free concert series, but as far as anybody knows there isn’t another series that has lasted anywhere near as long as Nightfall.

From the beginning Pritchard was given a free hand to develop it as she saw fit. She answers only to the audience— and the sponsors who have provided at least 50 percent of the funding. She is open to suggestions, not only from the programming committee, but from anyone in the community.

“In my mind,” she said, “that’s what makes it a community effort, a community event, and a community gathering place where everyone is welcome.”

For more than 20 years, the series continued as a nonprofit community service provided by the River City Company, the parent company of the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership. But the River City Company is a real estate de-

velopment company, and three years ago it decided to get out of the events business.

Pritchard could have stayed with River City, but opted to leave and form her own forprofit company, Chattanooga Presents!

Chattanooga Presents! now produces Nightfall. River City (which owns Miller Plaza) gives Pritchard’s company the use of the space in return for a percentage of the profits. “Frankly, I enjoy the complete freedom we have to make it the program we feel it needs to be,” said Pritchard in an interview. “Over the years we’ve discovered what works. If I don’t feel (an act) is a good fit for us, I guess that’s where my experience is helpful because I do know what works on that stage in that kind of outdoor setting with our broad audience of all ages …You just develop a feel for what’s right.”

Of course with that freedom came the responsibility for making it pay. Back when it was a nonprofit enterprise, Nightfall only had to cover its costs. As it does with every start-up venture it underwrites, Lyndhurst funded Nightfall on a sliding scale for the first three years. After that, Nightfall was on its own. For the next 17 years, sponsorships, T-shirts, and wine, beer and food sales paid the bills, but for the past three years Pritchard has shouldered all of the risks alone.

You might think that the bottom-line pressures Prichard faces would lead to her making concessions to the marketplace.

But everyone interviewed for this story insisted that nothing has changed in her approach to the series. “Why would we change it when it seems to be working so well?” asked Prichard. “It really is a tradition for our city.”

Pritchard has established a remarkable bond with Nightfall’s audience, which, over the years has grown from a few hundred to a few thousand. Fans anxiously await the series and attend nearly all of the shows even though they’ve often never heard of Drew Sterchi the performers.

Pritchard insists the success of the series is largely due to her democratic approach to choosing the acts; but according to Ann Ball, one of the two people working full-time with Pritchard

at Chattanooga Presents!, that’s not really true. “There’s a joke around the office that we have a music committee and everybody gets one vote except Carla, she gets as many votes as she wants,” she said, chuckling.

“The committee is where she gets a lot of ideas,” Ball said of Pritchard. “No one person is going to like every kind of music…It’s great to get a range of opinions, listening lists and so on from the committee.”

But in the end, it’s Pritchard’s booking talents that have brought acts like Nickel Creek to Miller Plaza just as their reputation was exploding. “That’s one of the scariest shows I’ve been to,” said Rawlston, who has been the stage manager at Nightfall since its beginning. “They were blowing up big between the time we booked them and the time they played the show. It was almost like Beatlemania. The crowd of young people literally rushed to the front of the stage, and I was worried that we might not be able to protect the band.”

There are numerous other examples of bands who had outgrown the series by the time they played, but who nevertheless honored their contracts. Alison Krauss was awarded her first Grammy between the time she signed the contract and performed at Nightfall. Bela Fleck & The Flecktones played their first show there as relative unknowns, but then agreed to come back to play a second show for the same fee despite the fact that their fame had exploded and their asking price had quadrupled by their second performance. Like many other acts who’ve played at Nightfall over the years, according to Rawlston, they loved the venue and the enthusiastic welcome they received.

So now another season is beginning. Another list of largely unfamiliar name. But both Rawlston and Pritchard are excited about seeing one of the bands, in particular, in this season’s lineup, scheduled to play at the end of June.

Called Lake Street Dive, it’s a quartet composed of drummer Mike Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, vocalist Rachael Price, and trumpet-wielding guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson. According to their bio, when they first formed they “intended to play country music in an improvised, avantgarde style—like Loretta Lynn meets Ornette Coleman. It sounded terrible! But the combination of people and personalities actually made a lot of sense and we had a great time being around each other and making music together.”

“It’s kinda funky, it’s kind of acoustic, it’s got some soul, it’s got some spunk…It’s just good music, it can’t be pigeonholed,” said Rawlston. The same could be said of almost any of the bands on this or any year’s Nightfall schedule. And that, in the end, may well be why it’s been such a success.

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Screen

JOHN DEVORE

TV’s New Golden Age . . . Maybe

Streaming sites give niche shows, personal choice room to grow There is no argument that television audiences aren’t as unified as they once were. The long battle between network and cable ultimately has been decided in the favor of niche audiences and interests. Granted, recently there has been a move back towards the center, especially as cable television has become more and more mainstream, and popular, cheap reality shows have become standard operating procedure.

At the moment, most cable television gives the illusion of choice while repackaging the same types of shows and personalities, all to enthusiastic audiences with a particular interest.

There are exceptions, of course.

Channels like FX and AMC continue to develop shows like “Louie” or “Breaking Bad,” while the premium channels of HBO and Showtime consistently produce high-quality material. These channels, however, may soon be overtaken by a new challenger.

While still in its infancy, streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime are testing the waters with original shows. The accessibility and relative low price point of these services may be poised to make a serious dent in cable subscriptions and change the way television is watched. But the quality will have to improve first.

Netflix began its content production with “Lilyhammer,“ a Mafia comedy/drama starring Steven Van Zant in 2012. Even

thought it was generally well received, the show quickly slipped under the water. Netflix’s more recent ventures, “House of Cards” and “Hemlock Grove,” show both the possibilities and pitfalls of the streaming model.

“House of Cards” is a tentative success, owing most of its acclaim to the presence of stars like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. The material is certainly decent. Based on a British series of the same name, with undertones of “Richard III” and “Macbeth,” “House of Cards” tells the story of a spurned Southern congressman seeking revenge and power. It’s a cynical “West Wing” for a country trapped in gridlock. When it works, the show is very, very good. But there are still occasional missteps, from ambiguous plot points to distracting character interactions. Without the powerful performances

by Spacey and Wright, the show would fizzle rather than shine. But it’s an important step in a new content delivery system. The ability to

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watch an entire season at leisure, without commercials or weekly waits, is a strong advantage for the streaming site, but it also might be a drawback. Part of what makes a show popular is word-of-mouth buzz. It’s something that grows from week to week—anticipation is part of what makes momentum.

Releasing entire seasons at once negates the crowd appeal, making the experience more individual.

If “House of Cards” is an example of the potential of streaming episodic content, “Hemlock Grove” shows how it might fail.

It isn’t that the premise is flawed.

On the contrary, there are a lot of good things about the show; its supernatural premise isn’t necessarily original but it isn’t worn out either. Producer Eli Roth, who directed the first episode, does a good job creating an entertaining mythos for the show to explore.

However, it also suffers from stilted dialogue and dull characters.

It is seems to have been created due to the popularity of franchises like “Twilight” and “True Blood,” combined into a mixture of bored melodrama, without the charm that made HBO’s vamp soap opera moderately endearing. Of course, this is preliminary and the show has more than enough room to grow in its second season—assuming it gets enough viewers.

Interestingly, the streaming

model allows for a more democratic process in deciding which shows to keep and which ones to cut. Netflix can track views in real time, without the ambiguity and occasional bias of Nielson ratings. Amazon Prime takes this one step further, releasing ten pilots and allowing users to vote on which ones are made into a full series. This puts the content directly into the hands of consumers, which is good. It also creates a place for popular cult shows that don’t have a wide enough appeal at the time to make a comeback, shows like “Arrested Development,” which is set to debut a new season in May. However, this

process might also stifle creativity and experimentation, forcing showrunners and producers into catering to set content generation generated by clicks. The model also may not have a large enough budget for certain fantasy/sci-fi shows like “Game of Thrones,” even though those genres would likely be immensely popular across this medium. Time will tell.

Regardless, the advent of streaming television is worth attention. Now is the time to watch, when the model is being tested and the ideas are the freshest. We may be due for a new golden age of television.