Name Game
THU 8/28 “Peach Biscuit Entertainment Presents the Sounds of Pluto” is an odd name for a show. It’s an even odder name for a person, but Peach Biscuit, who usually goes by the name Punkin’ from Pluto, is no stranger to aliases. “A friend of mine said it to me…
DJ Rap
She’s hot, she’s exotic, and when she rolls into town this week, she’s gonna show folks she knows a thing or two about drum ‘n’ bass. This glamorous British decknician (and Twix spokesperson) has been hopping from DJ booth to DJ booth this summer, hyping up her latest release, the…
Pull Your Load
When he’s on stage, Scott Miller’s catchphrase is “Are you with me?” The former V-Roys front man uses that question — which was also the title of his live album — as much to gauge where he’s at as he does to determine the whereabouts of the crowd. Turns out…
Legends of the Oldies Dance Party with Roy Head and Archie Bell
This interesting bill brings two Houston-bred artists, each with a massive national hit, out of semiretirement. Soul man Archie Bell is best known for his 1968 No. 1 hit “Tighten Up.” Made with his band the Drells, friends since their days together at Leo Smith Junior High, “Tighten Up” remains…
Neo Nuthin’
You’d expect that phrases like “washed up” and “over the hill” would apply to every band that’s been at it for 16 albums and more than 25 years. Mostly you’d be right, but not in the case of the Fleshtones. The Queens, New York, band’s new album, Do You Swing?,…
The Odd Couple
Directed by Claude Berri. With Jean-Pierre Bacri, Émilie Dequenne and Jacques Frantz. Not rated.
Band of Easy Virtue
First, there’s the name: the New Pornographers. It sounds like a group put together by Boogie Nights’ Dirk Diggler. All big-hair heavy metal, skin-tight leather pants and testosterone posturing. Or maybe a wink-wink, nudge-nudge band of clever lads more interested in delivering limp sex-joke lyrics than potent music. New Pornographer…
Pekar Head
Harvey Pekar, star of a long-running comic book series he writes and others illustrate, is reminded early in American Splendor that he’s no superhero. It’s Halloween, and the 11-year-old Harvey, played by a bent-over, sneering Daniel Tay, stands on a stoop seeking tricks and treats from a woman who recognizes…
Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
No one man caused more harm to Houston’s music community than Roy Ames, who passed away August 14 of natural causes at age 66 at his home in West University. Johnny Winter left town for the express purpose of getting away from him. Joe “Guitar” Hughes called him “the Texas…
Degrees of Whiteness
The Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery on Blossom Street is located in one of the few remaining non-town-homed, verdant patches located between Memorial Drive and Washington Avenue. On these several blocks, old wooden bungalows hide from the heat under subtropical foliage and the ditches are filled with Louisiana iris. There’s…
Running Mates
The candidates fidgeted at the head table at the University of Houston campus Hilton ballroom and awaited another question from the luncheon crowd of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Former city councilman Orlando Sanchez and state Representative Sylvester Turner shared one mike, while businessman Bill White and Councilman Michael Christian…
The Deathray Davies
Wearing their garage-band title as a kind of attitudinal badge of honor, the Dallas-based Deathray Davies have honed a casual, offhand cool that dovetails nicely with the anti-refinement, retro-rock movement. But Midnight at the Black Nail Polish Factory confirms that the band is most powered by its own momentum. On…
All Aboard the Love Train
It was an all-too-familiar moment in the waning administration of Mayor Lee Brown, a political crisis brought on by Hizzoner’s well-documented reluctance to act decisively. On the morning of the pivotal Metro meeting last week, the mayor still hadn’t signaled to the five city appointees who control the nine-member authority…
Seb Fontaine
The mainstream media’s coverage of youth movements generally demonstrates a staggering degree of ignorance, so it’s no surprise that the press has consistently treated DJ culture like a new phenomenon, when it’s anything but. As proof, consider that Seb Fontaine, among England’s best-known (and just plain best) spinners, is actually…
Blooming Onions
That was one effusive paean to the onion rings at Da Marco that a reader wrote in the August 8 Houston Chronicle: “Incredible! A subtle melding of sea and vineyard flavors in one crunchy bite. But the piece de resistance is the dipping sauce, ‘snail trail’ butter, an onion-and-snail marmalade,…
Eric Hisaw, with Greg Wood
Parachute Keith Richards into Austin in the middle of the night, deprive him of his bank accounts and credit cards, his flunkies and huge studio budget, and chances are he’d crank out a record very much like Eric Hisaw’s Never Could Walk the Line. Certainly Richards is just the sort…
Blindsided
Barbara Schindler enters with her erect posture and close-cropped, curly hair streaked with gray. She’s wearing a plain, high-buttoned dress and showing the strong bearing gained from all she ever wanted to be in life: an old-fashioned schoolmarm. With no kids in the room, her disciplined demeanor relaxes into broad…
Spymob, with N.E.R.D., the Roots and Kelis
John Ostby, lead singer of the band Spymob, must be a Cancer. Three of the 12 tracks (all Ostby-penned) on the group’s debut, Sitting Around Keeping Score, belie the mommy issues of those born under a crab sun. On “Thinking of Someone Else,” Ostby laments a broken toe while wishing…
In Line for Arena Pie
When Houston minority organizations banded together to sue the Rockets for a promised share of lucrative food and beverage concessions at the downtown arena, their proclaimed purpose was to guarantee that 30 percent of the goodies went to their constituents. If the five investor nominees submitted to the Rockets by…
Mariah Carey
Years and years ago, I wrote a double review of Mariah Carey’s Butterfly and Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope. My point then was that Carey and Jackson weren’t all that different from each other, but after the review came out, a few people wanted to burn me in effigy. They…
Letters
Sting Zings Preying on the poor: Long before reading “Tempting Teens” [by Craig Malisow, August 14], I believed that poor kids from low-income families don’t really commit more crimes than rich kids, they just get arrested more. Now I know it’s true. This article simply reaffirmed my most cynical suspicions…
Type O Negative
The best thing about New York goth-metallurgists Type O Negative is that despite adhering closely to the genre in its writing and stage show, the band has never taken itself too seriously. What else can you say about a gang of men in black who have come up with song…
Trailer Treasure
Art aficionados know what to expect from a gallery show: white walls, intense air conditioning, expensive lighting and, on opening night, free cheese. But it’s harder to know what to expect from an art-and-culture show in a trailer home down the road from Gilley’s in Deer Park. “This isn’t meant…
Can I Get a Witnes?
WED 9/23 Late Nite Snax is the newest late-night hip-hop show on that public-radio love-in known as KPFT, but you may have to guzzle some Folgers and take a few No-Doz just to catch an episode. The show, which airs at 3 a.m. every other Thursday right after Damage Control…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, August 28 On Elimidate, four people pursue one person. And those four always seem to have desperate crushes on the fool being held up as a prize. They never say, “You know what? He’s not my type.” But that’s okay, because Elimidate is a game — a competition to…
Sand and Sweat
SUN 8/31 Beach volleyball was once considered a pastime for bored surfers. But California being California, pro beach volleyball leagues were eventually established there, and cable sports networks followed. Pinup bikini hottie Gabriella Reese garnered fans with her, um, uniform, and soon thereafter the sport attracted beer company sponsors –…
Big Balls
Let’s get one thing out of the way: The cremaster is a tiny muscle that raises and lowers the testicles according to temperature, fear and sexual arousal, okay? Okay. “The CREMASTER Cycle,” on the other hand, is an ambitious series of five films that took eight years to complete. Its…
Fishing Trip
Why bother with the glorified lobster tanks at the Aquarium mega-restaurant downtown? Flee the concrete heat and take the kids down to Surfside to see some real sea life. Sea Center Texas boasts some exceptional aquariums, with marine animals from all over the Gulf of Mexico, including sharks, red drums,…
Only 200 Served
You like hamburgers?” plumber Bill Beatty asks me conspiratorially as we stand in line at Guy’s Meat Market on Old Spanish Trail. It’s not yet 11:30 a.m. and the line already stretches most of the way out the front door. “Yeah, I love hamburgers,” I reply. I had asked Beatty’s…
Vodka Venue
THU 8/28 If you don’t know Lenin from Lennon, you’re in luck. Red Star Night Club and Martini Lounge, the Russian-themed Midtown joint named for the familiar Russian symbol, will give you a sense of world history that 12 years of grade school never could. Or, at least, allow you…
Afternoon Delight
Was it owner Bob Cobb or his chef at the Brown Derby who peered into the icebox late one night in 1926 and put together that now-famous American classic, the chopped cobb salad? Doesn’t matter, because it was Texan Tony Vallone (or his chef) who put the Italian into the…