Downtown H-town Throwdown
On stage at the Copa Cabana, the Linus Pauling Quartet’s Ramon Medina is in a frenzy. His eyes are tightly shut, he’s white-knuckling the mike in his hands. He’s growling unintelligible, guttural gibberish — the only words that can be made out among the band’s twin-guitar acid-metal din are the…
Bull Rider
In a theatrical summer full of feel-good family fun, Hotel Pasiphae stands out as a renegade production of the most rarefied order. Written by local poet John Harvey and staged by the vagabond avant-garde company Mildred’s Umbrella, the play takes on the Greek myth of Pasiphae (pronounced “pass-if-fey”) and her…
Breakdown Lane
Many music-minded viewers of the MLB All-Star Game earlier this month were shocked, astonished and disillusioned at the newest truck commercial Chevrolet unveiled. I know I was when I saw it a week or so later — there were the standard shots of Chevy trucks sending up billowing clouds of…
Hop on POP
Populence is a great word, a combination of “pop” and “opulence.” Coined by a music video producer named Sharon Oreck, it originally referred to the “increasing confluence of accessibility and luxury.” But David Pagel, art critic for the Los Angeles Times and a professor at Claremont Graduate University, uses the…
Everybody Is a Starr
Three men in matching pink V-necks and loose black ties begin their set by singing jovially in unison, “We’re the Gaze, checkin’ you out!” It’s uproariously funny. No, it’s better than funny. It’s amazing! It’s genius! It’s the best thing to happen in Houston music since Frank Beard introduced himself…
Capsule Reviews
“From Myth to Life: Images of Women from the Classical World” The West has long lionized Greek civilization, but most Greek women probably wouldn’t have agreed with the way their society has been idealized and romanticized over the centuries. Completely excluded from public life, Greek women rarely were allowed to…
Annie
You’ve heard the story: Girl (Annie) meets boy (Tore), and they produce a word-of-mouth hit single and fall in love. Boy passes away because of a heart defect at 23; girl freaks out for a few years and then produces a highly anticipated full-length. A lesser album would probably require…
A Piece of the Pie
It was the summer after what was supposed to have been my last semester of college, but I had flipped out and signed on for the next, telling everyone I really needed a triple major to get into grad school, all the while knowing, way down, that I just wasn’t…
Bob Mould
Didn’t Hüsker Dü rock real fucking hard? And pardon me if I’m mistaken, but wasn’t Bob Mould part of that seminal Midwestern outfit? Yes? That’s what I thought. See, here’s my dilemma: I loved Hüsker Dü, but I just heard the new CD from Bob Mould, and it’s terrible –…
Capsule Reviews
The Phantom of the Opera This British import has been savaged, accused of contributing to the demise of Broadway with its empty spectacle and phenomenal success. But the touring rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1988 Tony Award-winning superproduction should put that canard to rest once and for all. In fact,…
Letters
Chasing Ambulances Gold star: Great article and journalism [“A Gap in Coverage,” by Josh Harkinson, July 14]. As a 30-year medic and 22-year RN, I’ve seen many of the things occurring at GoldStar happen elsewhere with distressing frequency. Until emergency medical services are considered as equal with fire and law…
Jesse Dayton
To make a long story short, Banjo & Sullivan is a fictional band — the faded hillbilly hayseed duo that ominously disappears from the Kahiki Palms Motel in Rob Zombie’s latest full-length horror feature, The Devil’s Rejects. Played by Houstonian Lew Temple and Geoffrey Lewis (Clint Eastwood’s sidekick in Every…
No Cracker Required
When you consider the amount of effort it takes to consume boiled crawfish, it’s a wonder anyone still eats them. Getting your mudbug fix is much easier when someone does the work for you. The crawfish étouffée ($7.95) at the Zydeco Louisiana Diner (1119 Pease, 713-759-2001) is a colorful dish…
One Dead Guinea Pig
Vladimir Yuri Zhirakarov first appeared on the streets of Houston around 1997, when he joined the faceless ranks of the city’s burgeoning homeless population. He fell in quickly with the Impact Church of Christ just north of downtown near White Oak Bayou. He took irregular showers at the shelter. He…
Pop Songwriter Night, with Arthur Yoria, Tody Castillo and Lanky
Houston is a songwriter’s city. The folks who came out of the late-’60s, early-’70s Old Quarter are well known to anyone who reads this publication with any regularity, and well they should be. Those songwriters are the foundation upon which many of the current generation of America’s alt-country artists have…
Squid Kids
Three sautéed jumbo shrimp arrived in a pool of a creamy lemon-garlic emulsion that looked like mayonnaise. They were gently cooked so they stayed juicy, and the sauce was so good, three of us fought over it with our bread. At Nick’s Pasta Place on Bellaire, the appetizers come with…
Staying Safe
Dr. Isaac Montoya sits on a sagging couch in ripped blue jeans and a sport shirt. His professional dress — the tie and jacket, the pressed white shirt — is confined to the closet today on doctor’s orders. Montoya has left the shelter of the broad executive desk and towering…
Strhess Tour, with Darkest Hour, Bleeding Through, Misery Signals, Zao and Fight Paris
The Warped Tour is fine, but it has a little filler. The Strhess Tour, on the other hand, boasts only five headliner-quality acts, and they’re all hard and heavy. Topping the bill is Darkest Hour, the Victory Records metalcore band that has pretty much dropped any hardcore trappings on its…
Innocent Lost
On a recent visit to Willowridge High School, her alma mater, poet-actress-playwright Melanie Wilson was approached by a bold student. “She asked to use my cell phone,” Wilson recalls. “I said, ‘For what?’ and she said, ‘I need to find some weed.’ ” This incident, among others, served as the…
DJ Big E’s “Rock It Baby, Rock It” Show
Back in 2001, Edgar “DJ Big E” Salazar turned 30 and decided to throw a big rockabilly bash to celebrate. Though he’d hosted many a show over the years, he was worried about his first “Rock It Baby, Rock It” show. After all, this one was going to be held…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, July 28 The next time a beaming Girl Scout comes knocking at your door, show some compassion and buy a crapload of Thin Mints. That cute little Scout may be supporting her mama in the slammer. We’re not kidding. The new documentary Troop 1500 tells the story of the…
Pelican, with Big Business, Breather Resist and Defend the Ghetto
“It wasn’t a totally conscious decision to be this instrumental band,” says Pelican bass player Bryan Herweg. “It just so happened that none of us sang or even really wanted to sing. But now we all agree that we would never, ever want to have, like, a front man.” Begun…
Gloomy Toon
“Hey, I’m just about to kill someone; can I call you right back?” a chipper Steven Foster asks. “Seriously, she’s on her dying breath, so it shouldn’t take two minutes.” Two minutes pass. On cue, the phone rings. “Okay, done,” Foster chirps. “Where were we?” Another character has bitten the…
Lucero, with the Honorary Title and the Glass
There’s a darkness on the edge of Lucero’s town. The foursome comes from Memphis, which feels a million miles away from the golden smile of Nashville — at least based on a defiantly titled new album, Nobody’s Darlings. On the disc, Lucero works solidly in the Uncle Tupelo tradition, dancing…
Knitting Factory
SAT 7/30 Crochet, at long last, has been liberated from its stodgy, pot-holding reputation. That’s right, yarny loops are hip again, and local sculptor Tina Kotrla is joining the fray with her show “My Own Sweet Time,” which opens this weekend at Gallery 1724. Kotrla, who calls crocheting a link…
Puppy Love
Must Love Dogs, it should be clearly stated, is not the greatest romantic comedy ever made about a quirky couple who meet at a dog park. That honor goes to Dog Park, the oddball 1998 flick starring Luke Wilson and Natasha Henstridge, written and directed by former Kids in the…
Fly Ballas
SAT 7/30 Would you pay to watch a bunch of fat, outta-shape dudes play softball? You know who we’re talking about: the guys who litter community fields every weekend, sliding into base unnecessarily, yelling at refs for no reason and scratching their packages purely for effect. We didn’t think so…
Special Ed
Remember the scene in X2 where Wolverine grabs a Dr Pepper and enlists the aid of Iceman to make it cold? Take the tone of that scene and stretch it out to feature length and you get Sky High, a less angsty, more kid-friendly movie about teenagers attending a school…
He’s So Klute
THU 7/28 Tom Withers, a.k.a. Klute, has been quite busy pushing the drum ‘n’ bass scene. The UK-based DJ — who has put out scores of singles and five full-lengths since his debut in 1993 — has hit Australia, Hungary, Canada and New Zealand this year alone. This week, he’s…
A Tale of Two Bastards
Toward the end of Saraband, the uneven new film from legendary director Ingmar Bergman, a character sits down with his daughter, a taut girl who obviously is undergoing emotional distress. “I have the feeling that some sort of discussion is coming on,” he says. Indeed it is — as it…
Ripe for Rock
SAT 7/30 “She’s a goddess.” “She’s my hero.” “You know, her band influenced Kurt Cobain.” When told about this snippet of overheard audience conversation at one of her recent Austin concerts, all semi- legendary musico Kathy McCarty could think to say was “Hell, yeah, I did!” A textbook example of…
Hello from Kazakhstan
One attraction of foreign films is the glimpse they provide of exotic lands. But after viewing a startling coming-of-age drama called Schizo, you probably won’t call the travel agent to book ten days in Kazakhstan. Or ten minutes. As revealed by first-time director Guka Omarova and cinematographer Khasanbek Kydyraliyev, this…
Bombs and Bikinis
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots and an overload of explosive, mostly digital derring-do. Here is Top Gun revised and updated, complete with a new array of enemies: swarthy…