Midtown

Sleevenote from CD release 1998

Memphis balances allure and mystique like no other city. Out of the deep, dark crevices of its mystery, great music emerged, and it had the allure of wafting barbecue smoke. Everyone knows the Blues. Everybody and his hound dog knows Elvis. But within the city that's cooked up enough rock'n'roll to feed the entire world, there's the hidden flavor of Midtown. Although, as you may have guessed, the area lies right in the middle of Memphis, it's where left-of-center pop was made. And where history was made, since it's the home of the Big Star supermarket that gave an aspirant pop group food for thought when it came to choosing a name.

It's also the place where the Scruffs, a band that turned angst into pretty poison, was born. Like Big Star, the Scruffs could only have come from Memphis, a place where music was a common expression filtered through various forms; blues and rockabilly and power-pop were blood relatives, just different types. It was all about the balance between soul-searching and the concerns of the flesh, between creating moving music and music that moved your body. Big Star wasn't just the link between those two concerns, they rang a new bell that jingled with guarded English tautness and tingled with US naughtiness. The Scruffs took it even further. As American as apple pie and as Brit- influenced as Apple Records, they fit that bill like George Washington and King George. Thanks to Dave Branyan's attention-deficit-disordered guitars and Stephen Burns' curdled-cream vocals, *Wanna Meet the Scruffs?* was one of the first albums in the world to take the jittery desperation of punk and give it the post-Beatles juice of the Raspberries. But where that band was a troop of harmonizing romantics who just wanted to get laid, the Scruffs laid their body of work in the middle of the road to ruin. Where Eric Carmen, on "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)," wanted to hear his voice on the radio, Burns wanted to stop hearing voices in his head. Forget David Byrne -- Stephen Burns may have been New Wave's first neurotic. "My Mind" cleverly disguised the hard reality of borderline psychosis in a melody softer than a psychiatrist's couch. In the self-reflective "I'm a Failure," Burns does the Velvets one better by being his own mirror -- and he doesn't like what he sees.

This collection shows the Scruffs winding down from being rowdy ahead-of- their-timers who took power-pop all the way from Memphis to the New York limit -- and back again. Some songs are basically solo Burns recordings, with right- by-his-side players. Due to the fact that at the various times he recorded these tracks Burns was using music as an expression, not a commodity, the master tapes have been lost, like a lover in a Scruffs song. Still, the melodies and Burns' tilted frame of mind come through loud and clear, giving a vivid picture, in no small part thanks to Mark Yosida's resuscitative mastering. There are examples of the old Scruffs catchiness, like "When Donna Romances" (previously a single). The song's female subject has a power that clearly overwhelms the singer, who is not only in the palm of her hand but is crushed by his crush. In "Machiavellian Eyes," the object of the singer's affection has a feminine wile that sees right through him, allowing her to penetrate Burns in a way he could never do her. Even while making a splash with his girl near the "Swimming Pool," Burns feels the suffocating anxiety in the cool luxury. Diving into the usual depression, he knows that privilege is not a life jacket that can keep him from drowning in sorrow.

On this collection, you'll hear the ravishing unraveling of of Burns' tightly spooled emotion, a breakdown that plummets depths unchartered by the Titanic and Alex Chilton . Breaking the ice is easy with tunes this good -- just take your pick. It's a song "Cycle" that will draw you into Burns' world, his Memphis, home of nervous wrecks and smashing successes, where falling apart and falling in love come together -- right now. Wanna meet Stephen Burns? You'll find him in *Midtown*.

Jordan Oakes
The Riverfront Times.