Out-of-towners from northern metropolises like Chicago and New York like to scoff at the idea of Houston as a "real city." Their claim — which is sadly not without some justification — is that ours is a city of endless concrete, infinite strip mall-sprawl, insipid suburbs, and choked freeways. They claim we lack the public spaces that make great cities great. Those people have not been to Discovery Green, especially not on a Thursday night in the summertime. There, while seated on a blanket in the very shadow of the skyscrapers — some of them still being built, a testimony to Houston's global recession-defying dynamism — you can take in some of the city's and the region's most sizzling sounds. As you take in the indigenous H-Town sounds — often blues, country and zydeco — you'll feel strongly in the presence of the very soul of a city that is alleged by some not to have one at all.