Playbill
The Muddy Waters run deep in this package show featuring the son and two former band members of the legendary Chicago guitarist/singer (real name: McKinley Morganfield). Performing a mixture of blues standards, Waters classics and the band’s own original material, the Rolling Fork Revue promises to be a nostalgic affair,…
Amplified
Something unusual will happen this weekend. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of music lovers will hear the music of a local Latino rock band. This is unusual because the music of Latino rock bands, especially local ones, is rarely heard by so many people at once. Not on the radio…
Rotation
Boozoo Chavis and the Magic Sounds Who Stole My Monkey? Rounder Keith Frank & the Soileau Zydeco Band Live at Slim’s Y-Ki-Ki Shanachie In Robert Mugge’s 1994 documentary The Kingdom of Zydeco, accordionists Boozoo Chavis and Beau Jocque vie for the zydeco music crown left vacant by the 1987 death…
News Hostage
You’re a liberal national organization that needs to abandon all its free-speech principles and shut down a historic radio station you own in California. Who you gonna call to do the dirty work? Your local hatchet man in Houston, of course. The Pacifica Foundation apparently grew tired in July of…
Bard’s Bargain
Maybe it’s some sort of psychic leftover energy from El Niño — whatever the reason, the muses of Thespis seem to be feeling particularly bountiful this season. The local theater scene has been ripe with terrific and inexpensive shows ranging from the silly to the sublime. And leave it to…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories According to a July announcement by police in York Haven, Pennsylvania, at least 17 kids aged seven to 16 created a club over the last two years to teach each other sex, and then practice on their own, with no adult participation. Three days after that, The Washington…
Undeserving Heir
One of our leading men’s fashion magazines runs a column every month titled “What Were We Thinking?” to present a ludicrous photograph of a famous person dressed in what the magazine had earlier decreed to be a style that every hip cat would soon be wearing. In a few short…
Hot Plate
In a world filled with trendy chocolate mousse cakes, chocolate towers, chocolate bombes, molten chocolate tortes and God only knows what else, sometimes it’s nice to revisit a forgotten friend: old-fashioned chocolate fudge cake. DaCapo’s [1141 East 11th Street, (713)869-9141] restores this all-American favorite to its rightful place of honor…
Hysterical Heroes
In the highly competitive, dog-eat-dog world of the modern-day superhero, the members of the group that eventually becomes known as the Mystery Men — they don’t really have a name through most of the movie — start out with a couple of strikes against them. First off, there’s the little…
Senseless
It’s always amusing when the movie industry discovers its spiritual side. Profoundly secular institution that it is, Hollywood promotes, at its peril, the notion that teenagers spewing pea soup in Georgetown can be purged of their demons by Catholic priests, that angels from heaven intercede in the lives of ballplayers…
Iron Beauty
First published under the title The Iron Man in Great Britain in 1968, The Iron Giant is a minor classic of 20th-century children’s literature. The slim volume by the English poet laureate Ted Hughes is a pacifist parable in the guise of a sci-fi hero fantasy. Hughes spun his yarn…
You Gotta Want It
After the practices came the reward. The boys on the pitcher’s mound clustered around the coach, who was digging into a box. In the box were the jerseys, which were dark green with “Sharpstown All-Stars” printed across the front and the boys’ names on the back. Scott Gaskamp held up…
Dubious Deal
If developer Greg Baxter never gets a dime of the $10 million in public money he needs to carry out his City Park project along White Oak Bayou, it won’t be because city officials didn’t try. Last December, City Council agreed to commit future property tax revenues from Baxter’s planned…
Living Doll
The first thing you need to know about Tammy is she’s not a doll in the traditional sort of way. Not in the cutesy-poopsy “dress me up all pretty for a date with Ken” kind of way. Or the “what if I get my precious Malibu hairdo wet when I…
Culture Scouts
If there is a focus point in Beth Madison’s wooded one-story home, it is the dining room, where an oil painting of a voluptuous Gauguin-like woman welcomes you. On her head is a large bowl overflowing with food of scumbled fall colors that glow with gentle invitation. Madison, a single…
Hey, Bubba: Give Peace a Chance
Littleton. Then, last week, Atlanta. If recent shooting rampages are any indication, Americans live in a culture of violence. And a Houston researcher has the survey to support that conclusion. Dr. Alfred McAlister, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health, headed research that found that Americans…
Flames of Discontent
Houston’s head arson investigator, Roy Paul, feels burned. Somewhere between the definition of cop and firefighter is his arson investigation unit. Members of that group say they were burned because when the new contracts for both departments were conceived, they were left out of the process. They pack heat, interview…
Hot Sauce
It’s a Thursday night barbecue at the Dope House. Oh, yes. Nestled in the backstreets of downtown Houston, (interestingly enough, just a stone’s throw away from the Municipal Courts-HPD downtown complex) is The House that Dope Built. And there’s a party going on — a modest, discreet one, if you…
Elvis-American
Henry Newinn leans back on an Elvis pillow, takes a sip of soda from a crystal Elvis glass and says, “We go to Graceland twice a year. The whole family.” His wife, perched on an Elvis chair, nods solemnly. His son fiddles with the family’s sound system until swirling colored…
Houston Honker
When folks in the know speak of “the Texas tenors,” they don’t mean some trio of opera singers. They’re talking about a proud African-American circle of “honkers” with a fat blues saxophone sound. The list includes Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, King Curtis, Don Wilkerson, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, David “Fathead” Newman…
Mean Mencia
Carlos Mencia claims to be a compassionate comedian. “If somebody trips in front of me, my immediate reaction is, ‘Hey, man, are you okay?’ ” he says. “But if that person says, ‘I’m fine,’ that’s when I start laughing my ass off, at how funny it looked when the guy…
Gentleman of Jazz
Long before 1968, when Billboard Magazine coined the term “jazz-fusion,” Ramsey Lewis was playing the stuff. Since his debut, 1956’s Gentlemen of Swing, Lewis has been mixing gospel, jazz, R&B, pop and even classical music in an artistic and commercially viable fashion. No, he never approached the high volume and…
The Meat of the Matter
Steak & Chophouse on the Boulevard is a steak house that tries to be a fine restaurant but fails to make it even as a halfway decent steak house. Traditionally, a steak house is a manly, manful, masculine kind of place. The kind of restaurant where the masters of the…