Playbill
Before there were the quirky, kind of snotty (but in a good way) stylings of Japanic, there was de Schmog, Houston’s avatars of boy-girl weirdo pop for Inner Loop scenesters. Coming close to having a residency at Rudyard’s (even before there was an upstairs space, band and fans used to…
Sassy Celebration
When Dianne Reeves attended a Cannonball Adderley tribute concert in 1975, the young singer experienced a surreal moment like only a 19-year-old can, a moment seemingly ripped from the pages of a bad novel. Reeves was hanging out backstage — the kind of perk you got when your cousin is…
The Bored Patrol
The agent casts a bleary eye over the Rio Grande toward the sallow glow of downtown Matamoros. It’s after 1 a.m. on this balmy May night. Sitting in his SUV on a bluff beside Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, the fleshy Hispanic fellow wears the dull expression of a convenience…
Playbill
Baseball fans thrill to stories about phenoms. You know the drill: Some teenage kid from the sticks is unveiled at training camp, standing six feet, six inches of all muscle. He can throw a fastball 95 mph or run like a wildebeest or blast laser beams 100 feet out of…
Racket
Between November 23 and November 27, 1936, blues icon Robert Johnson recorded the bulk of his sum total of work at an impromptu session in a rented room in San Antonio’s Gunter Hotel. Last month, the hotel, now part of the Sheraton chain, unveiled a plaque of Johnson in the…
Unstable Ground
Harold McVey seems quite pleased with himself. The 75-year-old president of Wharton County’s Concerned Citizens Against Pollution, who has a penchant for wearing his pants just under his chest and his ball cap well above his forehead, has rallied 700 people to the Wharton community center where they’re giving the…
Truckadelic
Like North Carolinas Southern Culture on the Skids and fellow Georgians Drive-By Truckers, Atlantas Truckadelic celebrates all thangs redneck. Big rigs, likker, Jesus, bad teeth, and muscle cars all collide in the beer-soaked bands double-wide Xanadu. The cover of its last album, Yall Watch This, encapsulates the bands philosophy in…
Beyond Benihana
That’s eatertainment: Second of a two-part series A young man in chef’s whites and an apron arrived at our teppanyaki table carrying a tray of beef, shrimp and vegetables. “Are you our chef?” I asked. “No, I just like to dress funny,” he said, imitating Don Rickles. And so the…
Bargain Basement
With the new $100 million County Criminal Justice Center shorted out by the flood for what may be months, some defense attorneys worry that their clients will be stuck in overcrowded jails without the benefit of timely court proceedings. But others say that speed is precisely the problem; that defendants…
Tom Landa and the Paperboys
Like other Celtic bands, Tom Landa and the Paperboys is a guitar/fiddle/flute/accordion/drum-based ensemble that combines rock and traditional Irish music. Unlike other Celtic bands, Landa throws Spanish lyrics and flamenco guitar into the mix. On his latest CD, Postcards (Red House), Landa travels roads all over North America, from Montreal…
Holy Smoke
Mark’s American Cuisine (1658 Westheimer, 713-523-3800) occupies a former church, which is an altogether appropriate space for a dish so divinely inspired. Once you’ve tasted Mark’s fire-roasted breast of chicken ($10.95) for lunch, you’ll certainly want to sing its praises. The small half-hen is rubbed with fresh garlic, paprika, salt,…
Shady Deal
It was a real massacre, say the folks at Stages Repertory Theatre, made all the worse because they had thought the granddaddy of an oak on the corner of D’Amico and Waugh was going to survive. The felling occurred last summer, just one day after a construction crew had flattened…
Eddie From Ohio
If youre a sucker for four-part harmonies, Eddie From Ohio delivers heavenly versions. The bands material is delightfully contrary. An Eddie signature tune is The Best of Me, about loving couples whose lives read like a Hallmark card, while the rest of us can barely stumble through our dysfunctional relationships…
Does Not Compute
In these modern times, it seems most people need a Palm Pilot to schedule their next trip to the bathroom. So it’s hard to imagine that our fine Texas legislators would shun computers. Especially when it comes to tracking the contributors who bankroll their campaigns. But according to Texans for…
Do Little Indeed
Having recently stolen Shrek as a talking donkey, Eddie Murphy is back in the multiplexes again, this time as a man who can, presumably, talk to donkeys. In the course of Dr. Dolittle 2, in which he plays a veterinarian who can talk to the animals, Murphy yaks it up…
The Perfect Political Storm
For the majority of Houstonians, the instant disaster that poured down on Harris County at the witching hour June 9 was a strange sort of selective emergency. The air conditioner kept running in most homes, as did the fridge, the TV, even the notoriously finicky cable service that used to…
In Fast Company
If internal combustion ever becomes obsolete — that is, if the auto industry ever allows internal combustion to become obsolete — whatever will movies do for heart-stopping drama? Hoofbeats are dramatic and the chug of a steam engine is suspenseful, but the roar of a gasoline- powered vehicle stirs the…
Brown’s Name Game
The June 8 memo to Houston Parks and Recreation director Oliver Spellman from Mayor Lee P. Brown’s communications director was unusually blunt. “Mayor Brown has instructed me to insure that all city publications reflect the Mayor’s Office in some way,” Jim Young wrote. “If not a picture, at least the…
Deep Inside the Actors’ Studio
Now here’s a tricky one. Start with a busload of familiar and appealing stars, shacked up together for a couple of weeks in a house in the Hollywood Hills. Assign them their mission: to emulate themselves — sort of — while dutifully reminding us that human relationships can be complicated…
Cumming Up
Alan Cumming is, in no particular order, the following: an actor, a pop icon, a Renaissance man, a sex symbol, a bon viveur and the boy next door. “I am a combination of all those things,” insists the 36-year-old Scot, who punctuates every other sentence with a sly giggle that…
Untouchable
Sexy Beast, the debut feature from British director Jonathan Glazer, is a riveting, scary and often funny foray into a traditional American genre: the gangster film. Like the western, the gangster film has always been predominantly American turf, but — unlike with the western — every decade or so the…
Letters
Scaling Green Mountain Aw, shucks: Have read and enjoyed the Press for eons now, consider you the finest paper on the planet, and have a serious addiction to your intelligent and penetrating reportage. Now that I’ve said that, here comes the hammer. So Green Mountain has made a high-profile commitment…
Meet the Press
Tom Stoppard, who first gained a reputation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, became most famous for doing what no English professor could when he turned the Bard into a pop-culture icon with Shakespeare in Love. But in the late ’50s, before all the award-winning plays and films, Stoppard was…
The Family Values Jive
On the surface the idea of finding the similarities between people of different faiths and backgrounds might seem a little quaint, perhaps even trite. Then again, dance isn’t really the form to turn to if you’re looking to elucidate Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Dance is best when it’s kept…
Wide-Open Spaces
Whenever you walk into an art space and find yourself thinking, what the hell, take that as a good sign. It usually means you’re being challenged. Take, for example, what greets you when you enter the main space at DiverseWorks: On your right, there are three large, pot-bellied paintings (sculptures?),…
Downtown’s Waterloo
Now that we’ve all gotten through The Great Texas Record Flood Disaster Chainsaw Massacre of 2001, the hip people can get back to their regular routine of putting on the tightest, most expensive leather outfits and heading out for another fun-filled night in that epicenter of contemporary chicness: downtown Houston…
No Clowning Around
runs
R.E.M.
It’s hard to imagine one wishing for the breakup of a favorite band, but after repeated listenings — that’s part of the bargain with R.E.M., isn’t it? — to 1998’s Up, you can’t escape the obvious conclusion: The effort sounds as patchy as on first hearing. After the departure of…
America’s Volume Dealer
Joseph Stalin, a canny political operator, once observed something to the effect that “people who vote do not decide elections. The people who count the votes decide elections.” Uncle Joe spoke a South Ossetian-accented Russian, so an exact translation of the statement may be worded a bit differently. The spirit…
Calvin Owens
When listening to Calvin Owens’s latest CD, Stop Lying in My Face, one thing quickly becomes apparent: Owens is not afraid to take chances, and never shirks a challenge. On this, his fifth album on the Sawdust Alley label he owns and runs, he gambles so much that you must…
Stirred and Shaken
It’s a downtown evening so desolate that even the panhandlers are elsewhere. We walk along Main Street surveying the flood damage. A lurid green light on an odd half-timbered, Tudor-style building suggests some kind of life. Once inside the structure, we find ourselves in a postmodern fantasy of a bar…
Teresa Kolo
The songs on Teresa Kolo’s album sound like they were written in a small, hot, cramped room. They’re chock-full of wandering thoughts, fragmented images, close friends and family who occupy a lot of time and a tight inner space. Kolo’s raspy, staccato vocals, sung to acoustic guitar rhythms, are the…
Hookers and Blow
Here’s a little advice for Houston’s snow angels who think they’ll be doing something unique by offering members of Buckcherry some Colombian marching powder before or after the band’s upcoming show: Don’t. You are way behind the curve. Since the release of its breakthrough hit “Lit Up” from the group’s…
Playbill
To have your songs covered by the likes of Joan Baez, Del McCoury and the Eagles might be enough of a reward for some artists. And certainly if you had written the near-signature tune for one legitimate country hero (Waylon Jennings’ “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean”) and a hit for another…
The Coffeehouse Kid
If you were to meet Adam Carroll at a bookstore or coffeehouse, the sort of place where he hangs out when not playing gigs, you probably wouldn’t surmise that he’s one of the most esteemed new Texas singer-songwriters to emerge in some time. A squat, shy and quirky young fellow…