Most Popular
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Barack Obama and Me
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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Mescaline on the Mexican Border
Texas is the only state in the country where peyote is sold legally. Really.
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Little Bitty Burger Barn
"It's okay to be little bitty in the big city" is an apt slogan for this new burger joint, where sliders rule
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Ghost Town CFS: Carriage House Cafe
Step back in time — to a spooky old carriage barn with a monster chicken-fried steak
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Barack Obama and Me (246)
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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Save Lobo: A Siberian Husky Mix is Sentenced to Die (28)
Why? Because he's big and intimidating and because one family complained about him over and over again
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita (13)
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Rotten to the Corps: A Question of Justice at Texas A&M (140)
Thanks to A& M and a district attorney, two cadets escape punishment for beating in a student's face
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge? (6)
All This Useless Beauty
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge?
All This Useless Beauty
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Tired of the Hype, But That's All There Is
Next month, Houston gets to be a cool kid. But only for a week.
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The improbable redemption of Ashlee Simpson
"La La" Love You
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Rap's Rapidly Vanishing Female MC
The Why Chromosome
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A New Official State Song for Texas?
A case for a new — or different, anyway — state song
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Miss Pop Rocks Loves Some Whole Foods Boys
06:06AM 03/10/08 -
Weekend Music: Help Save the Houston Music Scene
03:54PM 03/07/08 -
To Do: Hockey and Roller Derby
04:12PM 03/07/08 -
Sausage Fest: Bangers and Mash at Red Lion Pub
11:40AM 03/08/08
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Recent Articles By Chris Gray
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Suspicious Minds
commercial tie-ins
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Against Me!
New Wave
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Skyblue 72
concert preview
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Exile on Main Street
Racket and the new guy take the annual Houston Press Music Awards Showcase plunge
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They Fought the Law
In Rap, You're Nothing Without a Sheet
National Features
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SF Weekly
The Candidate
Our columnist knows Ralph Nader's running mate all too well.
By Matt Smith -
The Pitch
How Not To Be a Rap Star
First of all, lay off the Ecstasy.
By Nadia Pflaum -
Village Voice
Project Runaway
What becomes a gossip columnist most?
By Michael Musto
Hard to believe it's been more than a decade since the Gourds crawled out of a squalid rehearsal shack in North Austin dubbed the Steamy Bowl, "a crooked little hothouse where music and words germinate and flower into song — or wilt, crumple and dissolve back into the Earth," wrote the Austin Chronicle's Christopher Hess in 2000. Bassist Jimmy Smith, who splits songwriting and singing duties with guitarist Kevin Russell, eventually fixed up the Steamy Bowl for his new family, but little else about the Gourds has changed. They may be about to make their Austin City Limits debut this November, but the quintet's true home remains about five miles south: onstage at neighborhood cantina Jovita's, serenading a packed Saturday-night house with a dizzying array of covers — "If I Should Fall from Grace With God," "The Weight," a "Gin & Juice" approved by Snoop Dogg himself — that only accentuate the uniqueness of Smith and Russell's originals. Latest album Noble Creatures, their ninth in ten years, finds the pair reckoning with the onset of middle age and augmenting their rootsy cornucopia with horns for an aura of ragged Southern soul. Houston's own Fried Ice Cream guest at this CD release show.
