Love-Hate Mail
Mea culpa
We received dozens of calls and emails last week about our satirical Fabricator (“Gangsta Rap Blamed for Elephant Violence”), which isn’t wholly unusual. But this time, indignant readers had a fair point. They weren’t confused that it was real news, as is often the case. They just thought the tragic death of a handler at the Hohenwald Elephant Sanctuary probably wasn’t the best fodder for satire. We were aiming for the way people tend to look for something to blame when tragedy strikes, and how some convenient usual suspects—such as gangsta rap—are inevitable targets. But we failed miserably, and we’re sorry.
Rock ’n’ roll high school
“Never in Nashville” (Aug. 10) made me so happy. You were so on point about so many details and about the movers and shakers of that time. I got my start as a kid promoting punk shows and posting posters in late 1987 while at Hillwood High. People like Bruce, Kath Hansen, Royal Court of China, Shakers, Raging Fire, Steve West and others let me in their community with open arms. Hearing those names and recalling those events made my eyes wet with joy. Would say more, but I’m off for a weekend of fun shows, but thank you.
P.S. Adam Dread’s radio show at WRVU got me hooked from my room in Bellevue in 1985 or ’86.
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LEON JACKSON
ultimo@nextel.blackberry.net (Nashville)
Good ol’ loser days
In 1986, I was a miserable 22-year-old living at home with my mother in Charlotte. I had moved there the previous year from Johnson City when my father died at 52. I left behind my friends, my band, my sense of freedom, and basically all my fun. I was a girlfriendless loser bass player working a pair of part-time jobs, trying to decide what the hell I was supposed to do. But I had my records, and among them were the two albums that never seemed to leave the turntable: Fervor and Lost & Found by Jason & the Scorchers. I can recall driving aimlessly at night, screaming along with “White Lies,” “Hot Nights in Georgia” and “Broken Whiskey Glass.”
On Valentine’s Day, 1986, Jason & the Scorchers were booked to play Kidnappers, a horrid cinder-block, redneck beach bar that would no doubt be the Kenny Chesney ideal today. I bought two tickets—one for a friend from Johnson City and one for me. Heavy snows in East Tennessee and western North Carolina made my friend’s drive impossible, and two inches of snow in Charlotte made me think seriously about bagging the show to stay home. I decided to take a chance and risk the drive.
Thank God I did. The Scorchers turned out a performance for the ages to fans who managed to pack the place. It was 25 degrees outside, but inside we were shirtless and boiling from the white-hot energy that Jason, Warner, Perry and even Jeff pumped out at a deafening volume. I was in front, smashed against the stage, all miseries forgotten. When Jason leapt from the top of the speaker column following the breakdown during “Both Sides of the Line,” and landed precisely on the downbeat as the band crashed back into the verses with a power of a Saturn rocket, I swear you could feel the barometric pressure in the room change. I’m certain that if the proper equipment had been there, you could’ve literally seen the walls on the outside suck in while Jason was in mid-air, then propelled outward as the crowd exploded in a rapture of true belief in the healing power of rock ’n’ roll, delivered by master preachers to a congregation desperate and hungry for the salvation they delivered.
I still carry the spare ticket with me, as I have every day for the past 20-plus years, to remind me that on that frigid, snowy night in Charlotte, my miserable life was redeemed by the passion of Jason & the Nashville Scorchers. Thanks to everyone involved in the ’80s Nashville rock scene for making it happen, and thanks to the Scene for bringing it back to a true believer (“Never in Nashville”).
DREW VANCE
andrew.vance@comcast.net (Madison)
The Fabricator strikes again
“Gansta Rap to Blame for Elephant Violence” (The Fabricator, Aug. 10) was completely tasteless, insensitive and irresponsible. How could you not see that making fun out of a tragedy is wrong? Joanna Burke’s death is nothing to laugh at and neither is joking about Winkie, who is an elephant who has suffered enough because of insensitive humans like the person who wrote this trash. Shame on this publication for printing it.
LISA MCDOWELL
empos1@yahoo.com (New Market, Ala.)
Can’t win for losin’
A high school sophomore must have written your latest Fabricator (“Gangsta Rap Blamed for Elephant Violence,” Aug. 10), with his pimply-faced buddies standing behind him at the computer and snickering. I have no subscription to cancel, but I will no longer be reading the Nashville Scene.
JOHN MCBRYDE
jdmcbryde@bellsouth.net (Franklin)
He’s a Mexican. Does that help?
Our family visited your lovely city last week for the first time. Nice place, but I doubt we’ll be back. While waiting for lunch at the Wildhorse, we read a copy of Scene. The column entitled “Ask a Mexican” was about the most hateful and offensive piece of work I’ve read in a long time. Seems like you folks just love to keep some ethnic or racial group under foot or life just isn’t fun. I guess the Hispanics are the people this time around that everyone loves to hate. The Scene column is something I’ll tell my grandkids about, just like my parents told me about the “whites only” signs by the drinking fountains they can recall.
STEVE WILLIAMS
SteveW4466@aol.com (Clarkston, Mich.)
Customer dissatisfaction
I just came across the article that Daniel Cooper did on a song-poem artist (“You Could Be Rich,” June 29).
Speaking as a former customer of this studio, advertisements were sent out to me promising to pitch my hard work to publishers. I have these advertisements to this day. Tell me something, when you interviewed this song-poem entertainer, did you ask him how many albums he sells on websites? I learned the hard way.
PAMELA ROSE
jessenpam@bak.rr.com (Bakersfield, Calif.)