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A wet & wild way to open Memphis in May
from: commercialappeal.com
by Bob Mehr
Festival counts on youth to lead the way on event's opening day
The rains came, but the Beale Street Music Festival can always count on an army of festivalgoers to battle the grim weather.
The event has long been a success, primarily by booking bedrock blues, roots and Memphis-connected acts, but the fragmentation of the pop world at large makes the organizers' task increasingly difficult with each passing year.
Clearly, a strategic need was what was driving most of Friday's early bookings, a selection of youth-oriented acts -- including mall punk and emo bands such as Flyleaf and Drive By and kitsch hip-hoppers Lord T. & Eloise -- geared toward getting teens and twentysomethings to Tom Lee Park early.
There were exceptions, exemplified by the more mature -- musically speaking -- roots songstress Amy LaVere. A fast-rising local talent with a unique voice, LaVere has been tagged a sultrier Norah Jones. LaVere plucked away at her standup bass, while being backed by a tight-knit two-piece, drummer Paul Taylor and guitarist Steve Selvidge, performing a soothing, yet charming set for a late arriving crowd.
The real highlight of Friday's early action came with an appearance by punk-pop icon JOAN JETT and her band The BLACKHEARTS. After a brief delay brought on by a sudden cold shower that quickly abated, Jett strode on stage to the strains of The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Pop" before letting loose with a completely professional yet no less profound shot of rock and roll.
Jett came out throwing haymakers from the start, delivering hit after hit -- a snarling version of "Cherrybomb," a buzzsaw romp through "Bad Reputation." Jett's greatest gift as a performer is that she instinctively understands her audience. Playing to an expectant festival crowd, she kibitzed, she mugged, she led rousing sing-a-longs, hamming it up perfectly, without diminishing her music.
While Jett was busy on the Sam's Town Stage, further down the park at the Budweiser Stage, Memphis rapper Project Pat and his retinue -- which included Lil' Whyte, Yung D and Computer -- were playing to a wildly enthusiastic, if small, crowd.
Both Pat and Lil' Whyte noted repeatedly that their Three 6 Mafia colleagues were "out doing a show on the West Coast, but they'll be back." Such proclamations aside, it seems clear that Three 6's absence from this year music festival was clearly a public relations concession to last year's media controversy surrounding the rap group's "controversial" lyrical content.
Though the tone and tenor of Project Pat and company's set was literally no different -- there was an ample supply of obscenity and graphic imagery -- the performance didn't generate the heat or fire of last year's Three 6 appearance, resulting in a fraction of the audience. Though plagued by poor sound and wandering focus, when the various MCs, led by Pat and Whyte, did hit their marks -- as on "I Got Dat Candy" -- there was more than enough engaging sound to make up for the lack of fury.
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