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DAILY HELMSMAN Tuesday 2.4.14
The
Vol. 81 No. 065
Independent Student Newspaper of the University of Memphis
WUMR jazzes up the airwaves
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More States Grant In-State Tuition to Immigrants
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Men and 7 Women’s Tennis
By Patrick Lantrip
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see RADIO on page 5
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SGA plans path over train tracks
By Jonathan A. Capriel Nearly every shelf in Melvin Massey Jr.’s office is filled with stacks of jazz albums. There are four piles on his desk that stack like towers — 50 cases high. He gets about 80 new albums mailed to him every week from record companies and independent producers. Over the last 20 years, Massey has worked as the general manager at 91.7 WUMR, the University of Memphis’ noncommercial jazz radio station. “I’ve never given up the job of music director since I started working here,” Massey said while laughing. “I go through albums as they come in. I listen to them for content and about five to seven percent actually makes it onto the air.” Located on the basement level of the Theater Building, the station is ran mostly by an all-volunteerstudent staff that does everything from read the morning news to give play-by-plays of the Tiger basketball games. However, Massey has the ultimate say about what does and doesn’t make it to the air. Massey started attending the U of M in 1975 after serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. When he came back to the U.S., he started to play saxophone for a jazz group and later became the choir director of Georgia Avenue Baptist Church. While attending the U of M, he actively worked at the station. After graduating, he became the general manger. While years have past and technology has altered many facets of the radio industry, Massey said the broadcasting done at WUMR is completely “old school.” While many commercial radio stations will repeat the same preprogramed and scripted content that is picked out at a head office, WUMR uses CD
Who Chooses What’s Above the Scroll?
photo By harrISoN LINGo | Staff
Film and video production sophomore Mac McCullar races to beat the train that cuts between the Southern parking lot and and the University Center.
Beringia was the name given to the land bridge connecting North America to Asia during the last Ice Age that allowed the first humans to migrate to the New World. Nearly 10,000 years later, the University of Memphis is looking to build a land bridge connecting the Southern Avenue parking lot to the Alumni Mall, allowing students to avoid the railroad tracks. The proposed project passed its initial run though the Student Senate in early January and was recently approved by the Student Services Committee. It is now pending a final approval from the Student Senate and the Tennessee Board of Regents. The final vote in the Senate will be held on Thursday, and the final word from the Tennessee Board of Regents is expected by June. The project was inspired by a nursing student who ended up failing a class by exceeding the maximum number of allowed tardies after being repeatedly caught by the train en route to her class from her clinicals. “If we had a large bridge going
see SGA on page 4
Gimp Teeth wipes out crowds with raw energy By Samuel Prager
news@dailyhelmsman.com Loud and fast, Gimp Teeth is an aggressive surf-punk band that has been playing shows around the Memphis area for the past few months. The distortion-deemed band is made up of vocalist Cole Wheeler, guitarist Alexander Swilley, drummer Taylor Loftin and bassist Conner Booth. “A.J. and me talked a lot about starting a band, so we eventually asked our friend Taylor, who we went to school with, if he wanted to play drums, ” Wheeler, a recent Memphis College of Art graduate, said. Taylor Loftin, who has expe-
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rience playing guitar, had never sat behind a drum set prior to being asked to join the band. “I bought a drum set for $60 and started playing for the first time at the first Gimp Teeth practice. I just try to play as loud and as fast as possible,” Loftin, a junior at MCA, said. “It’s different every time, but it’s probably the best way to learn for me. “ With only a vocalist, guitarist and drummer, the trio felt something was missing from the music. With hopes to fill the void, the group asked local bassist Booth to join the band. “Cole and A.J. came up to me and asked me if I wanted to be in the band, I didn’t really know how to play that style, but I went
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to a practice and it just happened, it worked out,” Booth, sophomore anthropology major at the University of Memphis, said. By October 2013, the band had a full lineup, songs and a name — Gimp Teeth. “I made up the name while I was at a bar,” Wheeler said. “I was writing down things that popped into my head, then I texted a list of names to dudes in the band and we all happened to settle on the name and that was it.” Gimp Teeth then began to book and play in living rooms and bars in and around the Midtown area, eventually playing in nearby cities like Little Tiger Babble Opinion
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Rock, Ark. “I’ve never played in a band with musicians who had actively been in hardcore bands,” Booth, 20, said. “We have kind of a doomy-sound, we tune a whole step down, which makes the music scary, and we try to play as loud as possible.” Fully engulfed in screams and distortion — Gimp Teeth’s loud, fast and dark nature is a hybrid between surf-punk and hardcore, according to Booth. “The music is somewhere in between punk and hardcore. It’s not a purified form of either, nor is it bastardization,” Booth said. “It has its own unique sound and
see BAND on page 5 7