Metro Pulse/Music/Eye on the Scene

They're Not Skinheads (They Just Play Them On TV)

The Pink Sexies may be Knoxville's most punk rock band. They were recently enlisted by Jupiter Entertainment to play different sorts of punks.

Hamo Bahnam—lead singer for the Sexies and artist extraordinaire—says the band was called to play a neo-Nazi band for the A&E cable show, City Confidential, which is produced by Jupiter.

The award-winning true crime show focuses not just on murders, but the culture of the city where it occurred.

In this instance, the crime was the murder of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw, who was killed in 1988 by Tom "Death" Mieske when his gang, East Side White Pride, attacked Seraw and two friends in Portland, Ore.

Zak Weisfeld, City Confidential's supervising producer (and Metro Pulse movie critic extraordinaire), explains it this way: "An Ethiopian guy gets murdered by this skinhead asshole. The skinhead asshole happened to front a band called Machine, of which we couldn't get any footage."

So Jupiter created some footage of a rock concert. "There was free pizza and beer. All we did really was play our songs," Bahnam says. "People came out and bounced around and sieg heil-ed.... It was more or less us playing ourselves. They did that post-modern shaky film work that obscured our faces."

Bahnam, who is Lebanese, joked that they might have to "airbrush" his Semitic nose out of the footage. "It seemed kind of funny. There were Nazi banners everywhere," he says of the shoot, which happened at the band's practice space off Central Avenue. "But it was more funny ironic than sitting think-tank ironic.... It was kind of our sense of humor to be playing skinheads anyways."

He says most of the band went through a skinhead phase at some point in their lives, but he says it was definitely the non-racist variety. "That Nazi shit was out of control," he says.

Dugan Broadhurst—Banham's former Come On bandmate and former Metro Pulse designer extraordinaire—played a dual role on the show, as a skinhead in the audience and the dead body of Seraw, Banham says.

Death pleaded guilty to the crime, which was notable because it led to the downfall of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR). A civil suit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center—where Valerie Downes, former Metro Pulse designer and photographer extraordinaire, works—against WAR for encouraging violence and hate crimes led to a $5 million judgment against the group and $7 million from Tom and John Metzger, WAR's patriarchs.

This episode of City Confidential—which recently celebrated its 100 episode—is expected to run Saturday, Feb. 21, on A&E.

Double Mountain Jubilee

Starting next month, Mountain Jubilee will be broadcast on both WUOT and WDVX.

The traditional Appalachian music show hosted by Paul Campbell will be part of a five-hour block of programming by Jubilee Community Arts on WDVX from 6 to 11 Sunday evenings. It will also include Campbell's Live at Laurel, Wild Hog in the Woods with Brent Cantrell, the Cumberland Trail with Bob Fulcher, and Last Night's Fun (formerly called Celtic Sunset) by Toby Koosman.

Mountain Jubilee will continue to air on WUOT from 9 to 10 on Saturday evenings, following Prairie Home Companion and Thistle & Shamrock.

Campbell and Cantrell were told last week by WUOT managers that Mountain Jubilee, which is produced free of charge by Jubilee Community Arts, was going to be canceled. Campbell wasn't surprised. He has been producing a traditional Appalachian music show for the UT public radio station for more than 30 years, but says his show has been unwanted there in recent years. An earlier version of it, Live at Laurel, was canceled a few years ago. After several complaints, WUOT created Mountain Jubilee to take its place. This time, WDVX offered to pick up the show.

But WUOT seems to have backed off plans to axe the show. Regina Dean, WUOT executive director, says the double broadcasts marks somewhat of a partnership, with both stations being credited during both broadcasts. "That's something of an experiment because we've never done that before. But we think it's going to be a positive move," Dean says.

Campbell and Cantrell hope that WUOT—as the flagship public station for the largest university in Appalachian—commits itself to promoting Appalachian arts. In the past, WUOT heads have argued that WDVX is meeting that need.

"It's convenient to make that argument," Cantrell says. "But it really doesn't explain why they would want to turn away from local cultural programming. We do recognize that only programming an hour of traditional Appalachian or Southern culture is probably not the way to hold an audience. People just won't have the habit of tuning in. My problem is why aren't they doing more?

"I have nothing against European court traditions—I'm a Mozart fan. But we've always felt that as a land-grant university they need to examine the traditions of the community," Cantrell says.

—Joe Tarr