The Top 10s

The 10—OK, 13—stories in our first issue, June 29, 1989

1. “Tennessee GOP: Party in Search of a Future,” by Phil Ashford

2. “Local Amnesty International Chapter Helps Free Kenyan,” by Tom Wood

3. “Songwriter Sings for China,” by Bernie Sheahan

4. “An American in Nashville,” by Addison DeWitt (nom de plume for Clark Parsons)

5. “Queasy Scene,” by Susan Quick

6. “Desperately Seeking the News,” by Bruce Dobie

7. “On the Cutting Edge,” by Billy Frist, M.D.

8. “Kids/Birthday Parties and Cakes Without Tears,” by Diane Willard

9. “Keeping Up,” by John Bridges

10. “Music/Janis Ian Adjusts to Nashville,” by Brian Mansfield

11. “Film/Return of the Dark Knight,” by David Way

12. “Food/Hopping the Broadway Dinner Train,” by Mike Pigott

13. “Books/Tolstoy (and Reviewer) Get Welsh,” by Marc K. Stengel

10 Words and Phrases the "Scene" Made Common

1. SoBro

2. Bizpig

3. Charrette

4. Flack

5. Progressive goo-goos

6. Save Jack!

7. SWM

8. Mr. Wonderful

9. The children’s father

10. “Tennessean editor Frank Sutherland declined comment.”

10 “You Are So Nashville” Contest Winners

1. 1989: “You think our Parthenon is better because the other one fell apart.” —Susan Fenton

2. 1990: “Your mayor is married and engaged at the same time.”—Maralee Self

3. 1991: “You say to the person behind the counter at the Hot Stop, ‘We really kicked y’all’s ass in that Desert Storm.’ ” —Willie D. Sweet Jr.

4. 1992: “You go to a Hank Williams Jr. concert at Starwood and pass out before Hank does.”—Ted W. Davis III

5. 1993: “Your church congregation is referred to as ‘the studio audience.’ ”—Sharon Kasserman

6. 1994: “You think that the H.O.V. lane is for people with AIDS.”—Paul Allen

7. 1995: no winner

8. 1996: “You never meant to stay here this long.”—Robert Jetton

9. 1997: “You’ve checked your flower bed for Janet March.”—Terry Robertson

10. 1998: “You’re the only one who doesn’t know you’re gay.”—Diana Hecht

10 "Nashville Scene" Quests That Failed

1. Despite near-constant coverage in our pages, John Jay Hooker got nowhere in his court fights and political struggles over the issue of campaign finance reform.

2. Three cover stories later, Route 840, a road to nowhere, is still being built.

3. Film writer Jim Ridley plugged films at the Watkins Belcourt non-stop, but in its last incarnation as a film house it was averaging a dozen folks a show.

4. Hope—and the Nashville Scene—sprang eternal every year with Vandy football, which always flopped.

5. Food writer Kay West, despite constant lobbying, never got her French bistro, leaving her still looking for a stylish bar at which she could lounge, looking very much like a love-lost Lauren Bacall.

6. No thanks to Scene music writers Michael McCall and Bill Friskics-Warren, country radio still sucks.

7. The Nashville Scene was the first news outlet in town to seriously address the issue of urban sprawl. There is a lot more acreage to cover.

8. Jack wasn’t saved. Jack was sacked.

9. Outright begging by Scene music writers has still not produced a community radio station.

10. The Tennessean is still a so-so newspaper.

10 Literary Moments

1. The deaths of Peter Taylor, and Vanderbilt alumni James Dickey, Andrew Lytle, and Robert Penn Warren. Ave atque vale.

2. The Southern Festival of Books metamorphoses into one of the largest and most comprehensive literary events in the country. You could even watch it on C-Span.

3. John Egerton publishes three monumental works of non-fiction—Southern Food, Shades of Gray, and Speak Now Against the Day—that strengthen his reputation as a cultural historian who ranks with Taylor Branch and Shelby Foote. Speak Now wins the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

4. Jay McInerney moves to town, and an embarassingly provincial spate of genuflections from the local media soon follows. Yet in The Last of the Savages,his first “Southern” novel, he gets the manners and amores of the deeper South down cold, not to mention its racial schizophrenia and mellifluous oddities of speech. (While lauded elsewhere, his next volume, Model Behavior, is panned by supermodel Naomi Campbell in The New York Times Sunday magazine for misrepresenting aspects of her profession. Everyone’s a critic.)

5. Madison Jones, a "writer's writer" praised by admirers as diverse as Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews, is awarded the T.S. Eliot Award by the Ingersoll Foundation. Announcement of the prize, given for lifetime achievement in fiction, ushers in a new wave of popular attention to Jones, whose nine novels include Nashville, 1864.

6. Vanderbilt professor Mark Jarman wins the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets for his collection Questions for Ecclesiastes.

The highly prestigious prize includes a $20,000 check—which, in the poetry

world, makes you Donald Trump.

7. Steven Womack wins an Edgar for Dead Folks’ Blues, and is nominated for another this year after the publication of Murder Manual.

8. Proving once again that authors get little respect in Hollywood, Ann Patchett dons a pregnancy suit for a bit part in The Patron Saint of Liars, the TV movie based on her acclaimed first novel—then gets cut from the final version.