CATS & KITTENS

ALBUM OF THE WEEK























DE NOVO DAHL: CATS & KITTENS

2005

Cats & Kittens was De Novo Dahl's 2005 debut double album which took the band about a year and a half to record--while living together in the same house in East Nashville. Cats is disc 1 and Kittens is disc 2. Cats alone is packed with a variety of sounds, styles and massive imagination and creativity. Kittens is a sort of stream of consciousness remix of all 16 Cats tracks. The result of Cats & Kittens was positive reviews and a Nashville buzz that spread nationally.

Unfortunately, 3 of the 6 band members left in the middle of their increasing success. They are now 5 members and have recorded a new album that hasn't been released yet. This is probably because the band is apparently in the middle of changing labels (rumors flying). Their first record was released by local indie label, Theory 8 Records. You can listen to a few of the new songs at the band's website.

Also some great live performances are available at WOXY.com.

More info and links to DND music at The Fruit on the Bottom Archive.

CHRISTMAS--THE SEASON OF HATE

He's the Minister of Hate, the Chicken Thrower--he's Maury Davis, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Madison. And he is getting into the Christmas spirit by spewing his hate of Muslims.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has a tradition of placing his own original artwork on his annual Christmas card. This year's painting is titled, "Afghan Girl," and depicts a girl that Bredesen met at a school near Kabul, Afghanistan while on a trip to the Middle East to visit Tennessee troops. The Governor also wished holiday greetings to all Tennesseans via a press release, "wishing them the joy and goodwill that are universal to people of all faiths."

But Maury Davis wants the goodwill for Christians only. He doesn't think a Muslim should be pictured on a Christmas card--no matter how much goodwill is involved. Davis: "We have to understand that we have a problem between our culture, their culture, the religions possibly. And I think Christmas ought a be kept pure at this time."

Davis also attempted to use Martin Luther King Jr. as an example, mistakenly referring to him as, "Martin Luther." He said that if someone used a depiction of a Klansman in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he didn't think "the African-American community would handle that very well."

This is where Davis' truly racist beliefs are revealed. He fails to understand that, while a depiction of a Klansman is a symbol of hate, a painting of a girl from another country with darker skin than Davis' is not a symbol of hate. But Davis sees them as the same. His prejudice against Muslims is so strong that he sees an innocent girl in Afghanistan as comparable to a Klu Klux Klansman.

NEW SOUNDS STADIUM RENDERINGS

New renderings of the Sounds stadium were released today. The proposed development includes the park, a 15 story condo tower (along the first base line), a six-story hotel (behind the left field wall) and a second hotel (along First Avenue at Demonbreun) as well as retail and office space and a greenway.

The development is headed by Struever Brothers, Eccles and Rouse, a well known deveopler responsible for billion dollar neighborhoods in Baltimore including Camden Yards--the trendsetter in retro ballparks.

The renderings are from Hastings Architecture Associates, LLC and HOK Sports.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

album of the week

AUTOVAUGHN: SPACE

2006

On to the exploding Nashville indie rock scene for the next several weeks.

It doesn't sound like it, but Space is a self released album. Autovaughn has the crisp sound of a band with extensive studio experience (which is probably both good and bad). Space is a cleanly produced album built around the would be hit song, "Stay Another Night," which could easily be a chart climbing single in a handful of radio genres. They have a brit-rock sound at times and seem to draw a lot of comparisons to The Killers--another American band who could be mistaken for Brits.

Autovaughn is one of the founding members of Movement Nashville, a conglomeration of several Nashville indie rock groups looking to promote the non-country side of music in Nashville.

They play The Cannery Ballroom on January 13th along with fellow Nashville rockers Bang Bang Bang and headliners The Features.

More info at the Fruit on the Bottom Archive

DRUG BINGE ENDS IN TRUNK OF CAR

David Jerome Booker III, of Donelson, was found locked in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of an Eckerd drugstore. A customer called the police when they heard banging coming from the car. He told police that he had been carjacked, kidnapped, robbed and left locked in the trunk of the car for 3 days.

The police eventually got the truth out of Booker: he locked himself in the trunk and made up the story to conceal from his mother and girlfriend that he had been on a drug binge. He wasn't in the trunk for 3 days--it was more like 3 minutes.

Tyrone Biggums would be proud--"Is this the 5 o'clock free crack giveaway?!"

BUS ONLY LANES COMING TO MURFREESBORO ROAD

Bus only lanes, sidewalk improvements, new bus stations and eventually commuter rail will connect Nashville and Murfreesboro. Its part of a multi-phase development that will cost $200-$500 million.

Nashville's first commuter rail line began earlier this year, providing service between Lebanon and Nashville. Nashville has an ambitious transit system planned for the future. How much of it actually comes to be is still very much in question. The Lebanon rail was built as a, "bare bones," operation, sharing tracks with freight lines and using cars bought from Chicago.

Its good to see some money being put into mass transit. Nashville also has a new downtown transit center in the works as well.

PENDULUM SWINGERS

INDIGO GIRLS: DESPITE OUR DIFFERENCES

2006

For some reason, I think of this is as a good winter album--for those winter days when its warm, even sunny outside, but there is something still depressing about the mood of the Earth. The angle of the sun light perhaps? The way the sun seems to start setting as soon as it has risen? Maybe I just hate winter.

Despite Our Differences is introspective, political, bittersweet, uplifting, always soulful.

From "Three County Highway" (written byAmy Ray) :

It's been a warm winter and a cold spring,
everywhere I've been has felt wrong to me.
Everything I kept, what I never should of thrown away,
I wanted you for all those yesterdays.

I was wishing for you one Sunday
morning, walking down the road of some debtors' town.
From every church a hymn came blending in
and everyone of them wanting to be found.

From "Pendulum Swinger" (written by Emily Saliers) :

I dream like a mad one
Brutal fantasies I catch as catch can
I'm a psychic and a laywoman
I see love and I like to make it happen
What we get from your war walk
Ticker of the nation breaking down like a bad clock
I want the pendulum to swing again
So that all your mighty mandate was just spitting in the wind

FRUIT ON THE BOTTOM ARCHIVE

VANDY FOOTBALL PLAYER WIELDING KNIFE THREATENED TO KILL HIS TEAMMATE

Vanderbilt sports has experienced an eerily high amount of strange incidents over the past few years. They vary anywhere from miraculous to bitterly tragic.

The most recent one involves Kyle Keown and his Vandy football teammate Richard Kovalcheck. Apparently Keown was hitting his girlfriend when Kovalcheck, backup quarterback this past season and also Keown's roommate, tried to intervene. After a scuffle, Keown came into Kovalcheck's bedroom, "holding a large knife above his head. The victim stated that the defendant told him that he was going to kill him."

Kovalcheck and the girlfriend did manage to escape safely so its okay to laugh at this bizarre story. And to be honest it sounds like 'roid rage or something, but who knows--the guy in question (Keown) was just a back up punter for the Dores.

Then there was the football player who feel 100 feet down an elevator shaft in his dorm and was lucky just to survive. He was trying to escape an elevator car that broke down in between floors when he fell down the shaft.

Last March, Davis Nwankwo collapsed during basketball practice from a cardiac arrest. His life was saved by team trainer Mike Meyer who used an automated external defribrillator (AED) to revive Nwankwo. Nwankwo has an enlarged heart, but never knew it. Now EKG's are required before any athlete can play sports at Vanderbilt and AED's are placed at various venues across campus.

Last fall Vandy wide receiver George Smith was shot in the arm at a dorm party on campus. See pictures of the crime in action here. Smith only suffered minor injuries from the gunshot.

The most tragic of all the incidents involving Vanderbilt sports players involved running back Kwane Doster. Kwane was killed while in 2004 while on Christmas break, at home in Tampa, Florida. He was with friends, having left a club when someone in another car shot at the the car he was in. Earlier this month the man charged with his death was released due to a lack of evidence. His younger brother, Jermaine, has recently committed to play football at Vanderbilt, following in his late brother's footsteps.

DESPERATE CRAFTON ASKS FOR DEFERRAL

The Metro Council deferred Eric Crafton's English-only bill last night. Crafton asked the council to defer the bill becuase he says the community needs more time to discuss it. The truth is he didn't have enough votes to get it passed so he asked the council to defer until February.

Councilman Mike Jameson then re-presented four questions to Crafton that he says he has asked of Crafton numerous time and never had answered. They were, according to The City Paper:

"what immigrant and refugee advocacy organizations support the ordinance
(Jameson cited an earlier statement by Crafton that the legislation would,
ultimately, be healthy for Nashville immigrants); what evidence shows immigrants are not trying to learn English; what evidence shows that eliminating bilingual government services facilitates the learning of English; what evidence shows that government spending on bilingual services is disproportionately spent on illegal rather than legal immigrants."

Crafton, again last night, did not respond to these questions during or after the council meeting.

Crafton has repeatedly insisted that his constituents are heavily in favor of his bill. However, according to The City Paper, opponents of the bill, "appeared en masse last night, supporters of the measure — if they were there — were mum." In addition Coucilman Jim Shulman spoke about an email he got from a man in support of the bill because a majority of the residents in his district support it. He then revealed that the emailer later admitted to actually being from Texas.