Memphis

In 1991, right about the time that Pavement, Superchunk, and Sebadoh were readying themselves for increased exposure and the Nirvana/Mudhoney variety of underground rock was giving way to the mainstream grunge movement, a lesser-known but highly influential indie-rock band was calling it quits: Louisville's Slint.

Among their many followers was the Pittsburgh-based instrumental quartet Don Caballero. Formed in 1991 and named for the SCTV character "Guy Caballero," the four-piece's no-vocal route was common among the subgenre that some music journalists called "math rock." Rightfully shunned by Don Caballero, math rock was as relevant as most terms underneath the indie-rock umbrella, meaning hardly at all. Allegedly, it signified the complex song structures favored by bands on the loud and discordant end of the indie spectrum.

There's been plenty of controversy in recent years about the centrality of blues music on Beale Street, but all that takes a hiatus this week as hundreds (do I hear thousands?) of blues lovers descend on Memphis for the 25th annual International Blues Challenge, an amateur blues contest and talent search conducted each February by the Memphis-based Blues Foundation.

Starting Thursday, February 5th, nearly 200 blues acts from across the U.S. and around the globe will compete in clubs up and down Beale Street, culminating in finals on Saturday at The Orpheum.

Two months out, the Memphis Music Foundation is gearing up for a big local presence at Austin's annual South by Southwest Music Festival, which takes place March 18th-22nd. Last week, the foundation announced the stellar lineup for its official Memphis Music showcase, a mix of local rock and rap leading up to a closing set from Stax legends The Bar-Kays.

The showcase, which will take place on March 19th, will pair rockers Lucero, Jack O & the Tearjerkers, and River City Tanlines with rap/hip-hop acts Eightball & MJG, Al Kapone, and Free Sol. The foundation is still finalizing the line-up for its SXSW day party, according the director of development and communications Pat Mitchell Worley.

Midtown institution Shangri-La Records throws down at the Hi-Tone Café this weekend for its annual Christmas party. Headlining the show on Saturday, December 13th, will be Mouserocket, the local indie-rock group that pairs ace individual record-makers Alicja Trout (River City Tanlines) and Robby Grant (Vending Machine). Mouserocket's Pretty Loud is one of the year's very best local albums, so if you haven't heard gems like "Never Stand a Chance" and "On the Way Downtown" live, this would be a good time to check it out.

Rounding out the three-band bill are a couple of attractions you don't get a chance to see often. Trout will join Lori McStay in their terrific but rarely seen cover band, The Ultracats. Trout and McStay normally perform as a duo but will round out the lineup with Grant and McStay's husband, Shangri-La owner Jared McStay.

Finally, Impala and Papa Top's West Coast Turnaround guitarist John Stivers will present Stiverspace, where he'll be joined by the McStays and bassist Tripp Lamkins (Grifters, Dragoon). Between sets, Shangri-La in-house DJs The Hook-Up and Buck Wilders will keep the music flowing.

Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $5 with a food donation to the Memphis Food Bank

The Memphis area is a region of musical families. The (Sam) Phillipses, the (Rufus) Thomases, and the (Jim) Dickinsons are just the leading names in a long list of multigeneration music clans that help give the local music scene such a tight-knit personality. Another royal name in Mid-South music is Burnside. The late R.L. Burnside rivaled Junior Kimbrough as the chief purveyor of north Mississippi hill-country blues when both men were making the scene at Kimbrough's Holly Springs juke joint and winning converts across the globe via albums for Mississippi indie label Fat Possum.

R.L. Burnside may be gone, having passed away in 2005, but he's left a living legacy, most prominently in the form of sons Garry and DuWayne and grandson Cedric.

Cedric, who started playing drums behind his grandfather when he was barely in his teens, has backed up Kenny Brown and played alongside his uncle Garry in the Burnside Exploration since his "Big Daddy" passed away, but of late he's stepping into the blues limelight even more as one half of the "juke joint duo" alongside singer-guitarist Steve "Lightnin'" Malcolm.

After a self-released debut album, Burnside & Malcolm are making their real-deal debut this fall with 2 Man Wrecking Crew, a terrific update on the hill-country tradition released by blues label Delta Groove.

For the most part, Burnside plays drums and Malcolm guitar, but the duo trades instruments on three of the album's 14 songs and they share writing and singing duties, with Burnside taking a slight lead. Vocally, they provide a nice contrast, with Malcolm's rough bellow something of a blue-eyed Howlin' Wolf while Burnside has a sweeter, lighter, more musical voice that edges into soul on standout tracks like "My Sweetheart" and "That's My Girl."

At the Hi-Tone Café this week, a couple of notable names in local music make a return with record-release shows on back-to-back nights.

On Thursday, December 4th, the band Good Luck Dark Star celebrates the release of their album You'll Need It. The band, named after the John Carpenter film Dark Star, is led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Bret Krock, who fronted energetic local faves Eighty Katie at the beginning of the decade and, more recently, was seen alongside several of the city's most prolific musicians in the bar band The Lights.

According to Krock, You'll Need It evolved out of an aborted Lights album project.

"That band dissolved over the course of a year while I was writing new songs to round out the album," Krock says. "I was ready to start recording, and they were losing interest."

The album was abandoned for a while and then restarted as a solo project, with Krock adding new songs to a few leftovers from the Lights repertoire. The final product is a departure from the energetic, more retro rock sound of Krock's last recorded incarnation, Eighty Katie, where everything seemed like an encore from Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan. The new music is slower, more melodic, and more textured though still very much in a classic-sounding rock vein.

"I guess I felt that if you weren't playing big rock songs you would lose people's attention," Krock says of the change. "It took me awhile to get out of that mindset. I got a piano and started writing on it. I really loved being in Eighty Katie, but I wanted to do something different. My tastes have also changed as I've gotten older. I'm not as scared of non-guitar songs. Basically, I went from writing a song I wanted to play live to something I wanted to record."

Nevertheless, Krock did get the itch to play live again, which led to recruiting a new batch of musicians to translate You'll Need It to the stage, including Preston Todd on drums, Johnny Guttery on guitar, and Dirk Kitterlin on bass.

"I've always been uncomfortable with putting my name on it," Krock says on converting what was essentially a solo project into a full-fledged band. "I like being in a band. It's much more fun. I like writing with other people and the camaraderie."

Good Luck Dark Star plays the Hi-Tone Thursday, December 4th. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $5.

Though he never reached quite the stature of first-tier soul stars like Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, Overton Vertis "O.V." Wright is recognized as one of the great semilegendary voices in classic soul music.

Wright, who passed away in Memphis on November 16, 1980, is remembered for classic deep-soul recordings such as "That's How Strong My Love Is" (later covered by Redding and the Rolling Stones), "A Nickel and a Nail," and "Motherless Child" (sampled, to great effect, by Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah), all products of a long career that started with local indie Back Beat Records before Wright began working with producer Willie Mitchell's Hi Records in the '70s.

A retail-ready compact disc, like so many worthwhile products and ideas, starts out as a small and simple thing: a polycarbonate pellet no larger than a BB from a toy gun. But from those humble beginnings something truly special can develop, given the right circumstances. The same can be said of AudioGraphic Masterworks, a local CD and DVD manufacturing business that has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade or so.

Founded by partners Mark Yoshida and Brandon Seavers in 1997, AudioGraphic Masterworks started out as an audio-mastering and graphic-design studio in a tiny space on Summer Avenue. But growth was always a part of Yoshida and Seavers' plan.

"When we started, we knew we wanted to get into packaging eventually," Seavers says. "So when we moved to a larger place across the street in 1999, we added that capability."