-
-
Cover Story
Lee Ann Womack’s latest album, There’s More Where That Came From, announces itself with three double-stop fiddle notes that descend into the title song and the slightly embarrassed confession that “in that motel room all my senses came to life.” The song’s narrator has just spent the afternoon in the room with someone who wasn’t her husband, and the tingle still lingers in her voice. By the fourth line, our narrator realizes she’s in over her head and she should stop before it’s too late.
-
-
Cover Story
For the Scene’s annual country music poll, we asked more than 100 critics from all over North America, from big-city newspapers and glossy magazines, from alternative newsweeklies and self-published fanzines, to vote on the best country acts and records of 2005.
-
-
Features
The seven-page document reads like the screenplay for Scarface, had it been written by a Justice Department attorney instead of Oliver Stone. U.S. Drug Enforcement agents in Bogotá, Colombia, help local drug lords traffic narcotics.
-
-
Letters
Letters from readers.
-
-
The Fabricator
Carl Jessen, the Murfreesboro business executive who persuaded that city a few years ago to provide drive-through drop-offs for unwanted dogs, cats and prom babies, says he’s starting a new airline to fly Middle Tennesseans beyond the reach of extradition.
-
-
Helter Shelter
Cats just might be smarter than people. I say this because cats cover up only the things that need to be covered up.
-
Fuck Britney Spears. Christina Aguilera, eat your heart out. Gwen Stefani, doubt this. When it comes to costume-changing, mic-rocking, ass-shaking divas, none of them holds a candle to Leslie Hall, at least as far as we’re concerned.
-
-
Features
“The whole world’s got a false perception of my city,” rapper/filmmaker Quanie Cash says on the commentary track to Loyalty & Respect, a full-length feature about the pitfalls of drug dealing and street hustling. “They think it’s country down here. But ain’t no guitars or country music where I’m from.”
-
-
Features
Alt-country often cultivates an unworldliness that does an injustice to the complexity of the music’s roots. While it’s true that country, blues and bluegrass have their spiritual side, alt-country can trade lyrical and musical specificity for vague representations of a world that never existed, except on old records.
-
-
Dining
They emerge almost as soon as the calendar page flips from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1. From my perch on the StairMaster, they are easy to spot, walking apprehensively about the large Wellness Room of the Green Hills YMCA.
-
-
Dining
Were Benjamin Franklin still alive, he’d be 300 this month and probably having trouble with the new Medicare prescription drug plan—all the more reason for the man who is famously quoted as saying, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” to drink more beer.
-
-
Reviews
So there’s this guy—the hero—and he’s strapped to a chair in a dungeon, with a chain saw-wielding masked villain moving slowly toward him. What am I hoping for here?
-
-
Reviews
Three weeks into 2006, Albert Brooks’ Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is already a strong candidate for the year’s most misunderstood movie.
-
-
Books
Donald Davie, who retired from a 10-year stint on Vanderbilt’s faculty in 1988 and passed away in 1995, had a distinguished career as a literary critic and theorist, but is better known as a poet of remarkable nuance and technical skill.
-
-
Books
Rotting corpses. Bloody fingerprints. Exploding cars. These are the gory building blocks of America’s favorite police shows, but also the very real aftermaths of actual crimes, often crimes so heinous and grotesque that merely thinking about them gives most people the willies.
-
Continuing its critical role as Nashville’s chief purveyor of contemporary dance, Vanderbilt University’s Great Performances series inaugurates the new year by bringing this cutting-edge British troupe into Langford Auditorium on Jan. 24.
-
-
Health, Beauty and Fitness
Ah, the colon: the magical place where chyme becomes feces. It's a supremely important part of the body's correct functioning, but most Americans would rather discuss politics and religion than any aspect of the final stages of digestion.
-
-
Health, Beauty and Fitness
I love food. I’m the kind of person who needs a play-by-play after a friend goes out to a special meal. I don’t want to know whether he held her hand—I’m asking about the texture of the yellowtail sashimi or the depth of flavor on the chicken’s cinnamon glaze.
-
-
Health, Beauty and Fitness
Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, but Scene writers would argue it’s also in the colon and the ear. For that reason, the 2006 Health, Beauty and Fitness issue goes way beyond skin-deep, to say the least.
-
-
Health, Beauty and Fitness
There comes a time in everyone’s career when their boss asks them to stick candles in their ears and light them on fire. So when the Scene’s special projects editor approached me with a story assignment about ear candling, I met her with only a mildly horrified look.
-
-
Health, Beauty and Fitness
“That’s just what I need: to have a few pints at Red Door East and then have someone hand me a sword.” Such was the response I received when I suggested to a friend that he should take up fencing for exercise at the Nashville Fencing Academy in East Nashville.
-
-
SceneCast
Your beloved Scenecast and ever-faithful host, Collin Wade Monk,
piles it high this week with sounds from the Country Music Critics Poll.
Shooter Jennings, Bobby Bare, Lee Ann Womack, Robbie Fulks and others along with Amy LaVere, Charlie Degenhart and Mr. Monk's poll pick. Spread the love.
-
-
Columns: Stories
Hey famous Nashvillians! Come by the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre for your spiritual awakening gift basket. Only nobodies compete with the poor and dispossessed for religious counsel.
-
-
Columns: What I'm Driving At
Look no further than the hot-rodder for proof that evolution is dominated by mankind’s determination never to leave well enough alone.
-
-
Editorial
Imagine the Nashville Symphony without its string section, the Titans without their offensive line, the city’s meat-and-threes without the meat. The visual arts landscape of Nashville is facing a parallel prospect.
-
-
Columns: Sports
Before explaining why we need mandatory, random drug testing for all NFL referees, some forewarning is in order: even a half-baked background check would conclude it is improbable that I could be objective about this matter.
-
-
Columns: First Person
Four years ago, we went to see Earl at The Holiday Barbershop (“with vacuum clippers!”) for my son Will’s first haircut.
-
-
Political Notes
Variously described as “40 jealous whores” or “the largest zoning variance board east of the Mississippi,” the Metro Council, in action, runs the gamut from maddeningly mundane to infuriatingly inane.
