june-2010

athroom has been repurposed to showcase new releases
by Memphis and North Mississippi bands (a paper sign
cautions against trying to use the sink), and the walls are
plastered with posters of recently lost local heroes (producer
Jim Dickinson, Big Star’s Alex Chilton) and bits
of pop-culture ephemera (a life-size “Archie Bunker for
President” poster).
Shangri-La is quirky—I pick up an issue of Rolling
Stone and notice it’s dated September 2005—but wellstocked,
and by the time I meet up with garage historian
Ron Hall, author of Playing for a Piece of the Door: A History
of Garage and Frat Bands in Memphis 1960-1975 (the
definitive book on Memphis’ early garage-rock scene)
and his editor Sherman Willmott, who opened Shangri-
La in 1989 (he sold his shares to a partner in 2003), my
arms are overloaded with music and my smile is toothy
and dazed. I emerge with a stack of 45s by Memphis legends
Al Green, the Staple Singers and Junior Parker, an
old Booker T. and the M.G.’s LP, and a few compilation
CDs put together by Hall and Willmott, one of which was
designed to accompany Hall’s book.
We wander across the street to Huey’s, a popular
hamburger joint once operated by the late Thomas
Boggs, who played drums for a bit in the famed 1960s
garage band the Box Tops. (In 1967, the Box Tops’ single
“The Letter” hit No. 1—and stayed there for four weeks—
on the Billboard chart.) Shangri-La and Huey’s are part
of the city’s burgeoning Midtown district, a diverse area
that is beloved by locals, many of whom have slapped a
“Midtown is Memphis” bumper sticker on their cars, distancing
themselves from the city’s most popular tourist
draws. Midtown houses a slew of small live-music clubs,
bars and cafés, including the Hi-Tone Café, Buccaneer
Lounge, Minglewood Hall, Young Avenue Deli and
Lamplighter Lounge. Most weekend nights, you can find
a local garage band (maybe Magic Kids, Dirty Streets, the
Tearjerkers or Mouse Rocket) jamming onstage in front
of a crowd of regulars.
By definition, garage rock is scrappy, loud and
incredibly unrepentant, but that doesn’t preclude melody
or mean that you can’t dance to it all night long. Its ethos
is rooted in punk; it celebrates—out of necessity—a
do-it-yourself attitude, and a little clumsiness with your
instrument is expected. But it also demands tunefulness.
These are scuzzed-up bubblegum songs performed by
hormone-hopped adolescents, but they’re often as magical
as they are messy.
FOLLOWING THE ADVENT AND EMBRACE OF
rock ‘n’ roll and the considerable success of soul labels
like Stax and Hi Records (both founded in 1957), Memphis
became an industry hotspot. The city helped launch
the careers of such superstars as Al Green and Otis Redding,
but also supported local kids eager to record a song
or two to impress their pals. “The difference between
Memphis and other places is that we had recording
studios all over town,” Willmott explains. “And if they
BEYOND
THE BLUES
Check out the top
places in Memphis to
experience the
rippin’ sounds of
garage rock.
HI-TONE CAFÉ
1913 Poplar Ave;
901-278-8663;
hitonememphis.com
Midtown’s premiere
indie-rock venue, the
Hi-Tone pulls in its share
of national touring bands
and local acts.
BUCCANEER LOUNGE
1368 Monroe Ave;
901-278-0909;
myspace.com/
buccaneer_memphis
Local bands favor this tiny,
nautical-themed dive bar
located in a ramshackle
house on Monroe Avenue.
MINGLEWOOD HALL
1555 Madison Ave;
901-312-6058;
minglewoodhall.com
Recently voted the “Best
Place to See Live Music”
by the Memphis Flyer,
this venue is named after
“Minglewood Blues,” an
old blues cut first recorded
by Cannons Jug Stompers
in 1928.
YOUNG
AVENUE DELI
2119 Young Ave;
901-278-0034;
youngavenuedeli.com
This warehouse-style
space has pool tables,
arcade games and a
massive beer bar—and
serves a killer basket of
french fries.
LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
1702 Madison Ave;
901-726-1101
One of the finest jukeboxes
in all of Memphis
is found at this beer-andburgers
dive.
weren’t busy, and you had $100 or $200
from a gig, you could record two songs for
a 45. Then you’d take it to the radio stations
and the DJs would actually open the door
and play it.” Like the Box Tops, a few local
bands (the Gentrys, Sam the Sham and the
Pharaohs) managed to land national hits,
but their success always felt more like an
anomaly than a precedent.
That enterprising spirit still lingers, and
while the contemporary garage scene hasn’t
made national headlines—or christened
any millionaires—it hardly desires to. “[The
scene] is very vibrant here,” Willmott says.
“But there’s a certain cap on how many
records garage-rock bands can sell. There
are very good bands, but it’s a question of
whether they can catch a break [or] get
on a tour.” For Willmott, those limitations
are also part of how he defines the music:
“It’s playing a bar instead of an arena, and
not aspiring to [play arenas]. It’s not trying
to make it. It’s jamming in your garage
with your friends, and then on the weekends,
maybe getting a gig in Nashville or
Little Rock.”
“I didn’t start a band to make money. I
started a band to meet girls and look cool,”
jokes Hall, who played his first—and last—
show in Memphis in October 1969.
Still, Hall and Willmott are staunchly
optimistic about the city’s present-day
musical output, and they credit part of the
scene’s vibrancy to Midtown’s resurgence as
a cultural center, despite a brief period of
blight in the 1980s and early 1990s. “Midtown
has come back,” Willmott says. “In the
1970s, Midtown was legendary; from here to
Overton Square and over to Overton Park,
there were major bands playing. It was really
wild. But there was nothing left here when
we started [Shangri-La].”
That’s definitely changed. Tonight at
the Hi-Tone, a garage band from California
called the Willowz plays a set of fuzzed-out
rock ‘n’ roll that borrows heavily from classic
Memphis soul and blues. Tomorrow
night, Magic Kids, a local five-piece, will
open for the Strange Boys, another garage
band, filling Midtown with the sounds of
raw, squealing electric guitars, applause and
appreciative hollers. In other words: the
sounds of Memphis.
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JUNE 2010 GO MAGAZINE
071