8STOPS7
Time was, one could write some rock material, perform it well on a stage as written and that was enough. No need for market-driven subgenre pigeonholes on the creative side, or technological assistance on the performance side. Some bands try to do this today. Many of them come off sounding…
Taking Aim
Jaime Barrica thought he left the turmoil of protest and demonstrations behind in 1979, during the turbulent finale to the Ferdinand Marcos reign in the Philippines. His family sold what they could and left their small town for the stability of faraway Texas. By last March, the wisdom of that…
Bedeviled Hams
As the old notion goes, for every overzealous female fan — whom you may know in technical terms as a “groupie” — there is an envious male fan or critic, deafened (or should we say blinded) to a band’s music by those ladies down in front of the stage. The…
Bowled Over
A few years ago Mo Mong [1201 Westheimer, (713)524-5664] led the initial charge for upscale Vietnamese eateries. On most fronts, the restaurant has since been usurped by even more opulent pan-Asian noodle houses, but Mo Mong still clings to power by dint of its grilled pork vermicelli bowl ($6.95). Tucked…
Union Joan
No one’s quite sure why Briton Joan Armatrading would visit this part of the planet and perform for us ungrateful bastards. The woman has played before royalty, dignitaries and world leaders. Her albums are highly regarded by Europeans as vital, important works of the female aesthetic in popular music the…
Radio Gaga
Like a bloated blimp on the horizon, the Band Soon to Be Formerly Known as KISS wafts its way back over the Plains states, extracting with the force of gravity Midwesterners’ hard-earned dough from their pockets — because once wasn’t enough. The dirigible imaginably emblazoned with the faces of four…
Taking Clubbing Too Far
Located in the bail bonds and pawnshop section of downtown, not too far from north downtown and its glitz, Hyperia is an underground warehouse club that, with its glossy industrial sheen, thinks of itself as the alternative nightspot for overheated night owls. “The niche I like to fill is underground…
Living in a Scream
Is there a more bankrupt genre than the parody movie? So many flicks nowadays are so painfully self-aware and referential anyway that there often isn’t much left to make fun of, which is especially the case for Kevin Williamson-penned films like Scream and its clones, clichéd teen slasher movies that…
Through Being Cool
Most famous for reportedly blowing an advance from its record label to buy drugs, then having the gall to ask for more money, Royal Trux — now reportedly clean and sober — has kept the loud and senseless aesthetic alive, even better than its offshoots such as Pussy Galore, the…
Death Row Show
Clouds hover, but rain has not yet begun to fall on a recent Wednesday. It is 6:18 p.m., and Larry Fitzgerald has just finished the job he has done more than a hundred times before: witnessing a Texas inmate being put to death. This time, it is a 44-year-old man…
This Sand is Your Sand
We have the third-longest coastline in the continental United States. Our beaches represent an $11.5 billion industry, employ directly and indirectly approximately 200,000 people, and Texas, because of our historic 1959 Open Beaches Act, is the only state in the union that does not have private beaches. The people of…
Blaming the Barn Door
The mysterious 1990 death of thoroughbred legend Alydar has become the JFK assassination of the horse-racing world. It may be one step closer to being solved. Alydar gained fame with a thrilling 1978 duel with Affirmed; he finished second to Affirmed in all three of that year’s Triple Crown races,…
Killing Us Softly
The Alley Theatre opens its Summer Chills 2000, the series designed to put some breezy mystery into our otherwise oppressively predictable season, with Arsenic & Old Lace, a 1941 warhorse that has all the kick of a lame mule. Joseph Kesselring’s rickety comedy about two tenderhearted, misguided old ladies may…
Sand in Your Craw?
Ellis Pickett wants to be clear: Neither he nor the Surfrider Foundation acts out of bloodlust to see private property owners hurt. But the Open Beaches Act says what it says, and when the conflict comes down to private property interests vs. the long-held public rights of every Texas citizen,…
Blueprint in Blood
So who are these celebrated Coen brothers anyway, and what’s their point? These days, it’s pretty easy to switch over to critical autopilot, to gush about funny-looking friends shoved into wood chippers or hula hoops being designed, you know, for the kids. But where does the slender path of the…
Getting Sauza-ed
The Rules On June 30, Jody Hughes won a Sauza “Stay Pure” Award in the “Performing Arts” category. Jody is a tall, gawky guy with hair that looks as though he dyed it with black shoe polish. His performances involve dressing in tight costumes and flailing around with a microphone…
Whistlin’ Trixie
Murphy and Pryor. Skywalker and Kenobi. Amos and Zeppelin. Regardless of the creative universe, the maverick apprentice tends to stride off into territory beyond the edges of the master’s map. So it is with Alan Rudolph, whose career blossomed after serving as assistant director to Robert Altman on Nashville in…
Midnight Fire
Garrett Samples read all three Harry Potter books in one night. And on last Friday evening, the 13-year-old gets primed to pull another all-nighter as he sits at the Bookstop, eagerly awaiting the midnight release of the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Like millions of kids…
Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work They Go
Call it the second-oldest profession in the world. It’s certainly one of the most quintessentially American: Few professions combine sex, capitalism, violence and self-gratification in quite the way that pimping does. It’s like perpetual adolescence, allowing those who practice the profession well to surround themselves with beautiful and willing ladies,…
Win, Lose, or Draw
Bryan Singer did not read comic books as a young boy, because he couldn’t read them. As a kid, he was slightly dyslexic and, therefore, unable to follow the dialogue as it bubbled across panels and pages; quite simply, Singer says now, comic books confused him, so the Jersey boy…
Dead or Alive
We really don’t want to beat a dead horse, but — well, when it comes to Houston media, just about any topic could follow, but for now let’s focus on the Houston Chronicle’s farcical attempt to convince people that our allegedly beloved Rockets could move any day now to Louisville,…
An Inventive Mind at Work
Let’s face it. Most people would just as soon maneuver across the road construction downtown with bad shock absorbers as learn the physics behind what makes the magic box in their living room work. But every weekday morning and afternoon for 12 years now, Dr. John H. Lienhard has been…
Letters 07-13-2000
Self-Determination vs. SocialitesThanks for writing such a great article about Jim Harithas and the Art Car Museum [“Revolution in Chrome,” by Lisa Gray, July 6]. I can’t say how refreshing it is to have a museum that is 100 percent directed by its own private vision, as opposed to being…
The Art of Massage
As anyone who has ever been kneaded beneath the honed fingers of a masseuse will attest, there’s an art to giving a good massage. You must know the layout of the muscles, the proper oils and the appropriate pressure points. Your technique must be firm but never painful, sensual without…
The Food Chain
Perhaps all those groups that rail against the influence of the modern cinema on the pulpy, gray tissues of the skull are onto something. After viewing one of the current IMAX films at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, we swung the personal transporter device right at Montrose Boulevard and…
Veg Out
Sev potato puri comes in a little red and white paper boat, the kind ballpark nachos are served in. With the chips underneath and the cilantro leaves on top, it kind of looks like a plate of nachos, too. But the chips are actually lentil crisps, and you eat them…
Wake-up Call
The LSU pennants and the employee T-shirts emblazoned with giant crawfish and the slogan “Just Suck It” make it clear that you have crossed the Sabine River, at least in spirit, when you enter the new Ragin Cajun [3600 Westheimer, (832)251-7171] in the Woodlake Square shopping center. This location has…
Houston Press Music Awards 2000
As if last year’s 50 bands weren’t enough, this year’s installation of the Houston Press Music Awards offers up 60 bands for the same price: five bones. That’s all it takes to show up on Sunday, July 16, trot from venue to venue down around Bayou Place and see some…
Dwight Yoakam
Touring behind Dwightyoakamacoustic.net, his 14th album in as many years, Dwight Yoakam has gone lo-fi. His current show, titled “Tomorrow’s Sounds Today,” includes a substantial acoustic set inspired by the surprising response to his stripped-down encores on the 1999 tour. And the album features 25 tracks that hearken all the…