Rotation
Vic Chesnutt About to Choke Capitol It takes a while to dig Vic Chesnutt. There are nagging delays, such as the one inevitably caused by the attempt to figure out just who, or what, that warbling voice coming through the speaker sounds like: Cat Stevens? Folk singer Bill Morrissey? Saturday…
Press Picks
thursday january 2 Phantom The sewer-dwelling brute is out of fashion; the Phantom of this hit musical is from the Beauty and the Beast school of disfigurement. He’s a sensitive artist and scholar with the voice of a world-class tenor (thanks to Richard White’s portrayal) who’s devoted to the betterment…
Peron to Excess
A famous movie composer once told me a joke: Two songwriters are sitting around, and one of them says to the other, “I just saw the most amazing thing. A man fell off the roof of a building, hit a ledge, fell to the street, got winged by a bus…
Lost Keys
When we first see middle-aged Australian David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine, he’s standing in the driving rain and tapping at the window of a wine bar after closing time. Let inside by a sympathetic waitress, he keeps up a nonstop nonsensical patter that makes him sound like a Lewis…
Black & White, By the Numbers
Lots of hearts are in the right place in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi, but none are beating. Scripted by Lewis Colick and based on the true story of how the killer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers was finally brought to justice, the film is a dull and platitudinous…
Two for the Road
We’ve been hurtling down the highway for two hours now, and it’s time for a potty break.mmmmmmmmmmm Our driver turns her plush 50-seat bus into the Conoco Travel Plaza somewhere south of Dallas, and a bevy of nationally known celebrities pours out. Most of them are young women, dressed casually…
Bad Boy In Blue
After Sam Nuchia took over as chief of the Houston Police Department in 1992, he continued the practice established by predecessor Lee Brown of conducting monthly meetings with representatives of the nine organizations representing HPD’s uniformed personnel. Ostensibly, the purpose of those meetings is to give officers input into the…
The Insider
At Home with Julio Builder and developer Julio S. Laguarta is a member of the Houston Planning Commission and a vocal opponent of zoning who chaired the successful campaign to defeat a proposed zoning ordinance back in 1993. But that hasn’t kept him from conducting most of his homebuilding ventures…
No Problem, Man…
An electrical transformer blew out at Texas Southern University the week before Christmas, casting the central administration building into darkness. James Douglas, the first graduate of TSU to become its president, sat in the afternoon gloom of his corner office, a study in brown and black and gray. His closely…
Letters
Sidewalk Beat I truly enjoyed “Where the Sidewalk Ends” [by Jim Simmon, November 21]. It was interesting, funny, well written and to the point. To loosely paraphrase America’s forefathers, let me add that “… people willing to give up a little freedom to gain a little security usually end up…
Sushi Safari
A confession: Over the last decade, while people nationwide were learning about sushi, going gaga over urchin roe and ebi and maguro and awabi, I was lagging behind, wondering how anyone could even consider putting raw fish between their lips. Perhaps it was my dual Boston/Houston background, but it seemed…
Grimm Tale
It’s Saturday night at Emo’s, and the crowd is sectioned off into the typical competing segments. There’s the regular rowdies around the bar; the underage, pasty-white socialites out front in the courtyard; and the 20 to 30 gawking souls huddled around the stage taking in something resembling music, but more…
Same Old Fun
Someday, in the future, when CD reviews no longer specify the label behind a band’s latest release (it’ll all be Sony down the line), Disney will buy a little nowhere town and convert it, Epcot-style, to a musical theme park for unrepentant, if thoroughly assimilated, punk rockers. If we’re lucky,…
Gracious Angel
She does not stick out in the dilapidated lobby of the Farmer’s Daughter Motel on Fairfax, just across the street from Los Angeles’s Farmer’s Market. Her famous long hair — black with road-map streaks of gray running through it — is tucked underneath a plain black baseball cap; she wears…
Static
Grumbling on Washington… A spat’s been brewing between two of the city’s best-known musical neighbors, Rockefeller’s and the Fabulous Satellite Lounge. It appears they’re butting awnings over gig rights — specifically, who’s going to book the larger-drawing acts. Rockefeller’s owner Brannan Huthnance was none too thrilled when, for his December…