Fun and the Fire Marshal

It isn't fun until someone gets arrested.

The Dec. 19 bash to say good-bye to the A-1 Art Space (until it can find a new home) was a kind of dadaist free-for-all. It felt like anything could happen at the 128 S. Gay St. gallery. And something did: the cops shut it down, and everyone went home.

Before then, there were whole chickens (fresh from the supermarket) loaded with fireworks. Teen-agers drove each other around in a rusty metal wheelbarrow. A large stuffed monkey was stabbed, and every last bit of his stuffing pounded out onto the ground, laying there like a light dusting of snow. The music was a cacophony of digital feedback, and it kept getting louder.

In the center (around a keg), sat a pile of old computers, blenders, CD players, 45 rpm records—offerings from spectators. At the end of the act by Mr. Livedog and the Redneck Aesthetic all of this was ceremoniously pounded into chips of plastic and metal.

The police and fire marshall showed up then. Touring the balcony, the fire marshall was overheard saying, "Well, they've got all kinds of electrical violations."

That's when 31-year-old Michael Sonnie walked to the keg in the center of the room below and pulled down his pants—it's uncertain exactly what he was trying to do. "There it is," the cop said from the balcony above. An instant later, he was grabbing Sonnie from behind, slapping handcuffs around one wrist and reaching for the other.

"I didn't know you guys were here," he said, struggling to pull his jeans up. "Oh, that makes it all right?" the cop barked back.

The music stopped, and everyone was sent home. Sonnie was charged with indecent exposure and resisting arrest. He did not want to comment on the charges. The arresting officers—R. Flores and R. White—could not be reached for comment.

Show organizer Wolfgang Coleman wonders whether a performance of the musical Hair—which includes nudity—violates any laws. And Coleman questioned whether an arrest was called for.

"[The policeman] could have just told him to put his friggin' pants on. [Sonnie] shouldn't have done it, but it's hardly an act of anti-social behavior deserving of incarceration.

"If a cop can think of an easy, safe way to make something stop, he should do that. But arresting someone is neither. It nearly started a riot."

Thus the A-1 was declared dead. For that night, anyway.

New Year's Resolution #1: I Won't Write About the V-Roys So Much

Are the V-Roys actually the greatest rock 'n' roll band on the planet? Well, maybe not. But they sure seemed like it at Moose's on New Year's Eve, giving their best-ever year-end show to their biggest-ever year-end crowd. Some 600 or so people turned up to watch the besuited boys tear through all the favorites. In a word, they wuz cookin', playing with a looseness unseen since the inebriation of their "Sensible Dinners" show early last year. The incontestable highlight of the evening was the midnight hour itself; after a countdown led by the Disc Exchange's Shane Tymon (in Father Time guise), the band and assorted guests ripped into a full-throttle rendition of "Livin' After Midnight," making the V-Roys undoubtedly the only band ever to cover both Judas Priest and Hank Williams in the same set (not to mention the La's and the Replacements). Also on hand was Steve Earle, spending his second straight New Year's in Knoxville and looking considerably more trim and hale than he has in ages. He joined the 'Roys for a brace of tunes, including a new one that he said won't be released for a couple of years (his next album, an acoustic bluegrass outing, is due in February). The V-Roys' New Year's shows have become one of Knoxville's finest annual traditions. But what will they do for the millennium?

In Case You Were Losing Sleep

Local band Enter Self is not breaking up and has a new drummer, one Greg Frye, who is "working out quite nicely," according to band member Tym Walker. Walker also let Zippy know that "many great things" have happened to the band since they announced that their debut CD would not be released this spring by the L'n'L Music Group, which we reported in Dec. 3, 1998's "Eye." Details of the "great things" are allegedly forthcoming once hypothetical pen has been put to hypothetical paper. So, now you know and can go back to blissful nights full of dreams.

—Zippy "Pass My Pillow" McDuff