Letters
iFestering A sit-on protest: After reading your open letter to the International Festival folks and Mr. Mitchell’s response, I have to agree with both of you [Racket, by John Nova Lomax, April 21 and 28 ]. Almost nothing you said was wrong, but I’m really glad that Rick responded as…
The Raveonettes
On 2003’s The Chain Gang of Love, the Raveonettes more or less re-created the Jesus and Mary Chain’s discography for people who weren’t aware Rhino had already released a JAMC best-of, 21 Singles, a year earlier. William and Jim Reid could have sued the Raveonettes for royalties and the case…
Sammy’s Way
Sammy Relford is killing the stage! His face, slick with sweat, is permanently locked in a passionate scowl as he scans the enthusiastic audience for approval. The stage gel lights change from red to blue to green — each color bouncing off his wet head in turn. Eyes open wildly,…
Black Atcha
This bouquet of blackened roses was delivered to the Houston Press offices just in time for Mother’s Day. Addressed to reviewer Brian McManus, the card said thanks from the “owners, staff and customers of Montrose Diner.” McManus had dissed the diner in his May 5 review, “There’s No Place Like…
Little Barrie
The inevitable indie-funk wave has crashed on American shores, and its salty foam is getting critics all moist and breathless. We Are Little Barrie is a sly, hopelessly hip introduction to the trend: a tightly wound amalgam of Meters-like funk and Donovan-esque Northern soul psychedelics that’s as authentically British as…
Three’s Not a Crowd
There’s just one problem with the lobster ravioli appetizer ($9) at the Brownstone (2736 Virginia, 713-520-5666): There are only three of them. So if you have a party of four, someone’s gonna be disappointed. Three large triangles of pasta, so thin they’re almost translucent, are filled with a mixture of…
The King and I
Picture yourself at the end of a long working day. You’re standing on the light rail platform at the Downtown Transit Center, more or less brain-dead. Suddenly there’s a very well dressed fiftysomething black guy at your elbow. “Excuse me, sah,” he says in an accent that could be African…
Liviya Compean
Liviya Compean’s music is all about sweaty things that go bump in the night. On her latest release, Hormonal Injustice, the Houston singer has let the world into one of her therapy sessions, where she slings around plenty of vitriol and bodily fluids, not giving a shit about who gets…
Path to Nowhere?
Kirk Farris has been mixing it up on the bayou for years. As he wheels his pickup over the green banks and under the overpasses around the eastern stretch of Buffalo Bayou, a tangled, neglected frontier on the edge of downtown, he thrusts an arm out the window. That heap…
Pinback
People on the Net have been comparing Pinback to Steely Dan, and the parallels are there: The sound on the Pinback CDs is fastidiously clean, not to say airless; they are a two-man studio band who augment themselves with extra musicians for touring purposes; and the deception of their music’s…
Got a Light?
The Velvet Melvin was practically empty when Todd Line bellied up to the bar on a Monday afternoon. His round face had grown long from a hard day at the mortgage company, and all this 28-year-old wanted was a little conversation, a couple of beers and a few smokes. He…
Junior Boys, with Caribou and the Russian Futurists
Go ahead and brand Junior Boys IDM (rank shorthand for “intelligent dance music”). Just know that doing so would be a waste of time and precious consonants. Because what the Boys want to be are pop stars, and on their spectacular debut they manage to compress all that is right…
The Latino Dave
As everybody and their mamas pray that Dave Chappelle will finally unload a new season of Chappelle’s Show, Comedy Central has yet another comic provocateur ready to push buttons, envelopes or whatever the hell else there is to push these days. Latino stand-up vet Carlos Mencia will be translating his…
Moot Davis, with Pete Anderson
Moot Davis’s birth certificate states that he hails from Trenton, New Jersey, but if you listen to his purebred honky-tonk music, you wouldn’t guess that he was raised in the land of Bon Jovi and Bruuuuce. And, in a sense, he wasn’t. Davis inherited a love of Hank Sr. from…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, May 12 This weekend, thousands of motorheads from around town and even the country will descend on Allen Parkway for the annual Art Car Parade. But those in the know are well aware that parade events start today with CARnavel – the 2005 Art Car Ball at the Meridian…
Nile, with King Diamond and Behemoth
Like ancient embalmers, Nile can yank brains out of earholes. This musically and intellectually intimidating outfit combines death-metal riffs with amateur Egyptologist Karl Sanders’s meticulously researched lyrics. Annihilation of the Wicked, its forthcoming fifth record, combines cerebral content and cathartic noise. Its inhumanly swift concerts conjure the ghost of John…
W.C. Clark
Quite simply, guys like guitarist-singer W.C. Clark exemplify Texas music. In Clark’s case, it’s hard-charging, mesquite-smoked soul, blues, jazz, R&B, country and rock, sometimes in pure forms and other times all jumbled up joyously. The “Godfather of the Austin Blues Scene” backed up soul man Joe Tex for a time…
Wack Wheels
SAT 5/14 Don’t worry: The bender you’re on isn’t that bad. In fact, the giant bug, the motorized couch and the dinosaur made of confiscated airline spoons you see zooming up the street aren’t figments of your debauched, crazed imagination after all. No, they’re art cars — also known as…
The Will to Win
Kicking & Screaming might be the most predictable movie of the year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think about it: How many times have you gone to a movie and gotten far less than you were expecting? Here, that’s not a concern — you may not get more…
Beer Run
SAT 5/14 Like the annual MS 150, the Shiner B.A.S.H. is a famous, annual charity bike ride. But unlike the 150, this race is for a good cause and a good buzz. At the B.A.S.H.’s finish line, you get to tour the venerable Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas, and score…
Deaf, Not Dumb
The mockumentary is a tricky thing and not to be attempted by amateurs, many of whom treat the form like a joke without need of a punch line; damn the filmmaker who thinks it clever and ironic enough to “interview” “real people” “talking” about other “real people” who, of course,…
Yiddish Rock
SAT 5/14 The Beastie Boys have always been Jewish, but it wasn’t until last year’s “Right Right Now Now” that they finally rapped about it: “I’m a funky-ass Jew and I’m on my way.” If they showed up at the L’Chaim (Hebrew for “To Life”) party this weekend at the…
Club Life
It won’t ruin anyone’s experience of 3-Iron, the new film by Korean writer-director Kim Ki-duk, to reveal that it closes with a single epigraph: “It’s hard to tell that the world we live in is either reality or a dream.” Presumably, the correct translation would replace “that” with “whether”; even…
Flight of Fancy
FRI 5/13 As far as anyone knew, Henry Darger was just a reclusive, aged janitor. But when he died at age 80, his landlord cleaned out his apartment and found paintings, drawings and more than 15,000 pages of text. Contained within was the cartoonish fantasy world of the Vivian Girls,…
Right Movie, Wong Time
You’ve got to have balls to use a pickup line like “You’ll see me tonight in your dreams” and get away with it. But in Days of Being Wild, York, affectionately known as Yuddy (Leslie Cheung), has the looks and the confidence to pull it off when he buys a…
Wurst-Case Scenario
Alfredo’s European Grill on Montrose near Westheimer is a BYOB restaurant. So the four of us have brought a six-pack of Spaten. We were advised to bring enough to offer one to the owner. Alfredo Taurisano gladly accepts the brew but talks nonstop the whole time we’re there. At first,…
Going Mental
If you’re expecting a psychological thriller out of Mindhunters, and you buy a ticket for the movie, you will almost indubitably feel cheated. But break down the film’s title to its most literal sense — hunting for a mind, presumably because those involved were out of theirs — and you’ll…
Capsule Reviews
Driving Miss Daisy Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is like a fine cameo brooch — in miniature and with deft strokes, a whole lot is made of very little. This play is a series of impressionistic, short scenes that say the most when it seems they’re not saying anything. The…
System Overload
Supersystem appears
What Ever Happened to Lady Jane?
Directed by Robert Luketic. With Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Vartan and Wanda Sykes. Rated PG-13.
Brave New Art
The creepy Orwellian technology of “radio frequency identification” may be coming soon to a body near you. In 2004, the FDA approved subdermal RFID chips for humans. The tags work with readers and databases to track and identify products, objects and animals. Many of the goals for this technology, such…
Freshen Up, Freshen Up
Talk about dedicated devotees — one dormant Houston band has not one but two regularly updated fan sites, even though they haven’t played a note together publicly in their original lineup since about 1986. That band would be the Judy’s, the wildly (if only regionally) popular dork-pop trio that was…
Color Bland
There is nothing about Sky Blue that hasn’t been done before, yet it all looks like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s a wondrous sight, this hybrid of computer-generated animation, conventional two-D cell animation and filmed sequences. But it’s ponderous to contemplate once you get over the thrill of witnessing its…
Capsule Reviews
“Evidence” Tracking trends in contemporary painting is as futile as clutching smoke. You can’t be sure until years later that what you’re promoting is going to catch fire, heat up your audience and interest them enough so they’ll spend their cash to collect it. Inman Gallery has mounted another of…
Bizzy Bone, Phone Home
Remember Bone Thugs-N-Harmony? Back in ’95, they were one of the freshest things to come along in mainstream rap for years. Eazy-E’s Cleveland-bred protgs offered a whiff of Jamaican dancehall flair, strong melodies and even more powerful and rare harmonies to a rap scene dominated at the time by West…
Fresh Falstaff
If you can ignore the inexplicable trapdoor center-stage, around which the singers must maneuver so as not to fall into the bowels of the Wortham, then Houston Grand Opera’s staging of Verdi’s final operatic masterpiece, Falstaff, is its most satisfying this season. It’s a fitting capstone to David Gockley’s 33-year…
