Piano Men
Keane appears
Capsule Reviews
A Class Act A Class Act, now running at Theater LaB, is a wonderfully tender homage to the late Edward Kleban, award-winning lyricist for A Chorus Line. Put together by Linda Kline and Lonnie Price, the musical is built around several of Kleban’s previously unproduced songs, telling the songwriter’s own…
Letters
Pickup Time Panty raid: Last Wednesday evening, on my way to the bus stop, I stopped at Lamar and Smith streets to pick up the latest Houston Press. I opened the distribution-box door and — gasp — discovered the box almost completely empty, totally gutted of all contents except for…
The Return of the Last DJ
If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that this writer is of the (widely shared) opinion that Houston radio sucks. But, brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you today that the commercial dial could soon get a little less sucky. David Sadof — formerly the host…
Scary Ordinary
Todd Hido has lurked in banal suburban neighborhoods photographing ranch-style houses at night. He has recorded the interiors of featureless motels. He has wandered the rooms of foreclosed homes, photographing the vestiges of previous occupants. Hido’s images never contain anything out of the ordinary, which is precisely why they’re so…
S’mores
Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh has been named a finalist in two separate categories of this year’s national Association of Food Journalists competition for work done in 2004. Competing in the “Under 150,000 Circulation” division, Walsh is a finalist in the Food Feature Writing category for “Sex, Death &…
Swan Balls
Few figures in pop music are as divisive as Björk, that pint-sized Icelandic pixie princess with the Grand Canyon-size voice. Her fans border on obsessive. Her detractors are, quite frankly, freaked the fuck out by her. There simply is no fence-sitting about the tiny fairy-dust-sprinkled soprano/baritone/ bass…what can’t her voice…
Capsule Reviews
“Angel Rodriguez-Diaz/Carter Ernst” Angel Rodriguez-Diaz’s hyperreal, kitsch-infused paintings depict luchadores, the masked stars of Mexican wrestling. But Rodriguez-Diaz isn’t presenting his subjects in the ring. Instead, he paints intimate portraits with elaborate, lacy backgrounds. In these lushly colored paintings, Rodriguez-Diaz imparts incongruous psychological undertones to his subjects. One image, for…
Digging It
Tempers flaring and dark exhaust steaming, life on Houston highways is no easy road. Cars and cargo lunge about as the orange-cone crews struggle to clear wrecks and shield construction debris. It’s a headache for both those lost in the mix and those living on the sidelines. While thousands each…
Maxmo Park
There are those among us who long for the poetic license of Morrissey to be crammed into the keyboard-tinted riffs of the Cars. Leave it to the limeys to satisfy the demand. Maxïmo Park already has received panting advance praise, and A Certain Trigger bears out much of that premature…
Swinging Sardinians
The simple clam soup called sa fregula at Arcodoro Ristorante Italiano in the Galleria area says a lot about Sardinian cuisine. The Mediterranean-style broth of tender baby clams is flavored with a heady dose of saffron, a spice originally cultivated in ancient Greece, and lusciously thickened with fregola, barley-sized Sardinian…
David vs. Goliath
There are few things more heartwarming than a giant corporation going after the little guy, especially when that giant corporation normally puts on a warm and fuzzy public face. And so the eyes of the world, or at least that portion of the world that loves overpriced coffee with twee…
Various Artists
While Lollapalooza, Ozzfest and the Vans Warped Tour sometimes struggle to make their festivals work, Bonnaroo is a stone-cold success story. As a sonic document of the 2004 Bonnaroo Festival, the CD falls a little short, as it must — it’s impossible to boil down the fest’s 80 acts over…
Out of the Park
Call it the Aaron Treviño mystique. Any given Saturday, at the Little League ball fields in the East End, little pitchers and catchers and outfielders set their sights on something newly attainable: hitting, throwing and being like Aaron Treviño. “When he throws the ball when he’s pitching, he kicks his…
Career Opportunities
In early April, the Houston school district announced Sharpstown High would be hosting a “life lessons for boys” program, where fifth-graders would meet student athletes, Junior ROTC cadets and Precinct 6 Constable Victor Trevino. “A similar program” for girls was scheduled for May, HISD said. We asked — and it…
Fantmas
Suspended Animation is a concept record that conjures “30 miniature holidays in 43 minutes.” The album was inspired by artist Yoshitomo Nara, who gave Fantômas ringleader Mike Patton 30 artworks that Patton felt compelled to showcase somehow. Eventually he settled on the idea of an album based around a very…
Great Moves
On the road to here and now, Felix Fanaselle, the starting shortstop for the Lamar Redskins, moved to nine different homes in four different school zones. In the process, he duped the bureaucrats at the Houston Independent School District Athletic Department, and he rebuffed one of the most venerable coaches…
Kathy McCarty
It’s been more than ten years since the release of Austin music scene vet Kathy McCarty’s first solo disc. That CD, Dead Dog’s Eyeball, consisted entirely of clever, heartfelt, shiny arrangements of songs written by legendary oddball Austin popsmith Daniel Johnston. The record did quite a bit to raise Johnston’s…
Wonder Woman
— Julie Seabaugh
Cowboy Troy
The most impressive thing about Cowboy Troy’s major-label debut is what it took to make a black country-rapper feasible. Hip-hop, the great assimilationist art, had to become the dominant musical form. A long line of experiments, from Charlie Daniels’s spoken-word songs to Timbaland’s hoedowns with Bubba Sparxxx, had to lay…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, June 16 Today, bars and clubs will be full of eager singles looking to hook up for the weekend or — gasp! — even longer. But if you’re growing tired of asking for digits (or handing out fake ones) and you’re horrible at speed-seduction, make reservations tonight for the…
Regina Spektor, with Keane
While taking a break from their efforts to emancipate Extraordinary Machine from Epic, Free-Fiona protesters might try Regina Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch. Much as a caffeine addict in need of a fix will set aside Coke-or-Pepsi preferences, so connoisseurs of dramatic piano-plinking songwriters should consume this smashing substitute without sweating its…
Austin Collins
Houston native Austin Collins has followed his country music jones up the road to the state capital, where his debut, Something Better, has quickly established his credentials as a Texas country up-and-comer. Collins has a gift for intelligent lyrical hooks that make his brand of country far superior to the…
Free to Jam
SAT 6/18 As a place of musical importance to Houston, it’s tough to beat the Eldorado Ballroom. Originally open from 1939 to 1973, its stage hosted musical legends from Count Basie and Duke Ellington to T-Bone Walker and Clifton Chenier. So of course the reopened Eldorado in the heart of…
Bobby Bare Jr., with the Old 97s
Even folks who love “Detroit City” and other hits by Bobby Bare Sr. would be thoroughly bored by Bobby Jr. if he were interested only in aping his famous father. Fortunately, the younger Bare is no country-outlaw manqué. Rather, he’s a musical synthesist who mixes rock and roots music with…
Another Ball Game
THU 6/16 Baseball purveyors and enthusiasts would have you look away from the sport’s current state and instead focus on the glory years. Look at Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, they say, and at a time when the game wasn’t marred by steroids, strikes and the perils of guaranteed contracts…
Dubtex
At long last comes a full-length CD from Houston’s socially conscious dancehall/ hip-hop/drum ‘n’ bass collective Dubtex. Sort of. The band is calling Bayou Bush Burners an EP on its Web site, but the record clocks in at a meaty 67 minutes. It’s billed as an EP because only four…
Who’s Your Diddy?
Besides running Bad Boy Records, P. Diddy has helped launch the careers of Jodeci, Mary J. Blige and Boyz N da Hood. He’s also created quite the empire for himself from the ashes of slain friend and collaborator Notorious B.I.G. And don’t forget his Sean John clothing line and show…
Bat Cave-In
DC Comics has kept its superheroes locked in a fortress of solitude for almost a decade, forcing the likes of Superman and Batman to warm the bench while longtime rival Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man and the Hulk and the X-Men and Blade galloped up and down the playing field. Not counting…
He’s Bill, Beeyotch!
Though the future of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show may be as bleak as the leadership tenure of black KKK member Clayton Bigsby, token white cast-dude Bill Burr is doing just fine on his own, thanks. For starters, the Boston native and 13-year stand-up vet has checked Stern, Letterman and Conan…
Chinese Box
You’re a talented young resident at a New York hospital, first-generation Chinese, and you happen to be gay. In fact, you’re dating a new and exciting woman, a dancer with the city ballet, and she wants you to share the relationship with the world — and your family. But can…
That’s Hot
A meal of pulpo con camarones ($9.50) at Ostioneria 7 Mares (4602 Irvington, 713-692-7776) is an incendiary experience. Eight large butterflied shrimp are cooked with pieces of finely diced octopus in what appears to be straight Tabasco sauce. Raise the first forkful of the bright orange-red dish to your mouth,…
The Wiz
For all their exceptionality, there is also a numbing sameness to the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, the revered animator who has bewitched Japanese audiences since the late ’70s and bewildered American ones since 1999, when Princess Mononoke was among the first of his movies to receive significant stateside release. There…
Royal Betrayal
It’s an age-old story: Boy meets girl, boy woos girl, boy wins girl — and then his fiancée shows up to prove him a lying, cheating cad. Girl dies, literally, of a broken heart. There’s one reason why the name Albrecht doesn’t have the same connotations as the name Don…