Bring On the Backlash!
“Hype” is probably the nastiest of all four-letter words these days, and no band on earth right now has more of it than the Arctic Monkeys. Over the last seven months, the Sheffield quartet — none of whom is of American drinking age — has been lauded as 2005’s “Best…
The Party’s Bayou
In its early days, Houston thrived from the commerce that bustled along the banks of Buffalo Bayou. In recent times, however, living near one of the city’s reputed bayous has been more of a liability than an asset. Change is nigh, though. Today’s “Blue Bayou,” the grand opening of the…
‘Cue Up
We love a good Sunday barbecue. But if you show up at today’s free Journeys Backyard BBQ, don’t go lookin’ for any brisket. On this menu is a heaping helping of skateboard and extreme sports, with a little live music and activities on the side. Tour promoters promise a “60,000-square-foot…
Scott Faingold Listens to Everything
For reasons best known to him, our outgoing assistant music editor has made a point of randomly listening to every single promo CD sent his way, in its entirety and regardless of genre, source, probable quality or personal interest. He is now insane. Various Artists Unexpected Dreams: Songs from the…
Prine Time
“There’s a big old goofy man / Dancing with a big old goofy girl / Ooh baby / It’s a big old goofy world.” — John Prine, “It’s a Big Ol’ Goofy World” Imagine it — you’re sitting in a Chicago dive bar, having an utterly uneventful evening. A steady…
A Night of Hot Cex
You can’t help but feel the urge to pounce on the 24-year-old Rjyan Kidwell, a.k.a. Cex. He has the looks (blond, tall and slim) to fix your stare, the beats to bait your feet and the music to titillate your ears, with a mix of hard-edged street raps and sensitively…
Spaced Out
Sure, the moonwalk is an ’80s move, but we suggest you bust it today grooving to the extraterrestrial electronic sounds of the Manifesto! party at The Backroom. Guided by DJs Jeffery Mac, Sasha Braverman, Henry Chow and Jessica Partin, the night will be steeped in atmospheric, minimal techno, out-there electro…
Gooooaaaal!
The World Cup kicks off this week, and in an international city like H-town, the many bands are lining up behind as many different nations. Sure, most people are pulling for the USA, but what’s interesting is to find out which foreign countries the bands hope do well. One such…
Joe Ely
During an interview a few years back, Terry Allen, the godfather of the Lubbock Music Mafia, was reminiscing about that wonderful moment in Lubbock when Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely took artistic flight. “What I always loved about Joe from the very beginning is that it didn’t…
Tap that Brass!
The legendary city that brought us zydeco, jazz and Hurricane Katrina proudly presents the brass band renaissance. But this isn’t your typical sousaphones-and-gold-braided-jackets experience. The new sound combines the old school with funkier modern jazz riffs, Indian chants and hip-hop, using traditional brass such as tubas, trumpets and trombones and…
Have an Epiphany
Ladies, break out the headwraps, and fellas, get ready to snap ya fingers for “The Kings and Queens of Spoken Word,” the summer poetry concert featuring established poets and emerging vocalists. This year’s show promises to do it very big, with poetry performances by the infamous Equality, the revolutionary Brother…
Murder Inc.
Take a mental Polaroid of Murder by Death, and what will you see? Pretty-boy metal-heads with black-painted fingernails? Starving rockers with welts under their eyes? You just may be surprised by what develops; namely, three guys in button-up shirts and a girl armed with a cello. The Bloomington, Indiana, quartet…
I See Hawks in L.A.
Perennial L.A. favorites I See Hawks are just beginning to penetrate Texas. Their pre-SXSW Wednesday-night gig at the Continental Club so impressed the staff, they immediately booked the band again for a Friday-night slot. With three strong writers in the band — singer Rob Waller is a creative-writing prof at…
They’ve Got Styles
“It’s just amazing, it’s like a dream come true.” These are the words of a young girl who has lived every young girl’s fantasy: She went to New York and starred in a show. She is local Stephanie Styles, the eloquent, green-eyed 14-year-old who plays Mary Lennox this month in…
A Hell of a Roommate
You ever wonder why, in those horror movies, people who live in haunted houses don’t just get the hell outta there? Why do they sleep in beds that are eventually lifted into the air by an evil spirit? Why would they share a bathroom with a 130-year-old poltergeist? These questions…
We Are Scientists
Brooklyn-based We Are Scientists are not scientists, even though they play the part of the geeky, lab-coat type; their complete lack of self-importance, in fact, makes their dance-punk rise above what their loftier peers churn out. Compare them to the Bravery or the Killers if you want — everyone else…
Double-Decker
On the theory that two desserts are better than one, the folks at Lagniappe Grill (2300 Richton, 713-522-2322) are offering up the all-time classic desserts bananas Foster and bread pudding in one dish ($7). Slices of banana are gently sauted in a butter-sugar mixture until golden-brown, then topped with two…
The Tao of Kinky
Kinky Friedman is waiting to secure a spot on the upcoming Texas gubernatorial ballot. So to pass the time, the multi-careered Kinkster has momentarily slipped back into author mode. His new book, Cowboy Logic: The Wit and Wisdom of Kinky Friedman (and Some of His Friends), is a collection of…
Ready, Break!
Remember jamming yourself into the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston this past winter and being engulfed by good music, legendary art and thousands of Houston’s hottest partygoers? Things get sizzling again, summer-style, with today’s Starbucks Mixed Media Music Series. On view: lots of people showing skin (it’s June!), the art…
Shellac
“This is the first time we will have ever played in Texas,” enthuses Shellac vocalist and guitarist Steve Albini over the phone from Electrical Audio studios in Chicago. “We’ve always wanted to play there, we’ve just never been able to organize it in a way that made sense.” For Shellac,…
The Long Good-bye
Like the Grand Ole Opry plopped into a fragrant barn at the county fair, Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion befits its roots in frosty Minnesota soil through its worldview, Buddhist by way of Scandinavia: Life is about suffering. The wind chill is below zero and so is your spouse;…
Humane Roller Derby?
For the superwomen of roller derby, injuries like black eyes (pow!), bruised tailbones (bam!) and broken legs (zowie!) are just part of playing hard. But like all supers, these tough ladies have a real weakness, too: puppies and kitties. It’s true. Today’s Houston Roller Derby Bout No. 4 is not…
Starburst
I chuckle every time I pass by the Velvet Melvin Pub (3303 Richmond, 713-522-6798), because the name strikes me as something high school seniors do to incoming freshmen, à la Dazed and Confused: “All right, you little twerps, it’s time for a Velvet Melvin!!!” It turns out the bar used…
Junkyard Love
Jim Love’s sculptures first emerged after a trip to a Waco junkyard, where he found “huge mounds of junk 20 to 25 feet tall.” According to Love, “Within a few minutes, I thought I had discovered heaven.” From that point on, he began collecting bits and pieces of metal. He…
Fahrenheit 2050
With ice caps melting, sea levels rising and Poseidon sinking fast, this is no environment for any disaster movie — particularly a real one — to take our interest for granted. Thus An Inconvenient Truth, named for the superbad news of global climate change, isn’t just another lefty doc for…
She’s Bringing the Battalion
Danielle Brazell’s Battalion: Acts of Resistance is like The Vagina Monologues on steroids. Performance artist Brazell has spent her career producing feminist work, but Battalion doesn’t stop at a proclamation of girl power. Rather, it explores resistance in all its incarnations — emotional, physical, political and social — through brazen…
Capsule Reviews
“Bringing Shadows to Light: Contemporary Argentine Photography” Addressing subjects as diverse as war, the tango and the country’s current economic crisis, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a good small survey of contemporary Argentine photography. There are pictures of a man’s crude drawings recording the torture he witnessed during…
Kickin’ the Tires
Cars, the latest vehicle to roll off a Pixar assembly line that has thus far yielded nothing but spit-shined classics, answers that age-old question: What would Doc Hollywood have been like had it been populated entirely by, ya know, cars? If the promise of that particular premise — in which…
The ‘Ism of Rhythm
Long before JD Arnold rocked the wheels of steel at South Beach, he was turning folks on to house music at “Hedonism,” his legendary dance night at Rich’s. (It was purportedly one of the first places in Houston to play house music.) Today at Clark’s, the once-popular night will return,…
Is Masturbation-Induced Blindness Just a Mexican Fear?
Dear Mexican, I was 13 years old, and I was jacking off, not knowing I left the bathroom door ajar. Just as I blasted onto the shower curtain, my mom walked in. Aghast, she shouted, “Cochino, te vas hacer siego y se te va enchocar el pito!” (“You pig! You’re…
Slam Dunk
Originally, Ward Serrill set out to make a documentary — and a short one at that — about Bill Resler, an avuncular tax professor at the University of Washington who thought he knew enough about basketball to coach the girls’ team at Roosevelt High School in Seattle. Never mind that…
(Man) Love and War
Given the Iraqi quagmire that he’s entrenched in, would Donald Rumsfeld ever consider “emergency homosexuality” as a way to bolster the troops? We’re guessing nay, but that’s the question Greek military leaders are faced with in Unhinged Productions’ new comedy, (Loosely) Lysistrata. Local ophthalmologist Stewart Zuckerbrod — who moonlights as…
Golazo!
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: All
Price: Varies
ESRB Rating: E (for Everyone)
Score: 8.5 (out of 10)
The Devil and His 30-Foot Member
The beach balls are flying right at our heads. We catch them and hurl them back at two skinny guys, who are running around and screaming like electrocuted cats. They’re banging on instruments placed strategically on the stage. Seth Paynter, tall and thin with a shaved head, turns his back…
On the Marc
Listen to Marc Broussard’s summer-ific single “Where You Are,” with lyrics such as “Your touch is sweet as candy / kisses they taste so fine,” and it’d be easy to peg the dude as another John Mayer ripoff. (The lyrics do smack of Mayer’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland”). But…
Ford Tough
The John Wayne/John Ford Film Collection (Warner Bros.) Featuring the most epic pairing of director and actor in Hollywood history, this ten-disc box spews machismo all over. Wayne and Ford defined not only the western and war-movie genres, but also our culture’s image of rugged manhood. Among the highlights is…
The Have-Nothings
America is turning into a land of the have-lots and the have-nothings. The middle class is shrinking, and minimum wage has stayed at $5.15 an hour since 1997. Getting by in this country has turned into a real struggle for many hardworking folks, with some holding down two and three…
Droning On
Band names, as a rule, are a case study in “huh?” It’s refreshing, then, that Mellowdrone does exactly what it advertises — and damn well at that. The psychedelic rock band’s latest album, Box, mixes semi-energetic synth-pop riffs with lingering melodies that fill space where awkward conversation demands it, without…
Our top DVD picks for the week of June 6.
Black Hawk Down: Extended Cut (Sony) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Fox) Charmed: The Complete Fifth Season (Paramount) Dumbo: Big Top Edition (Disney) Entourage: The Complete Second Season (HBO) The Fast and the Furious: Franchise Collection (Universal) Firewall (Warner Bros.) Garfield: The Movie — The…
Capsule Reviews
All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go There’s a play buried somewhere inside Catherine Filloux’s comedy/drama about transvestites vs. the Amish (yes, you read that correctly), but you’d be hard-pressed to find a coherent one in this messy production, now stumbling all over itself at Theatre Suburbia. Come to think…
Lines of Coke
They don’t call themselves Coke Heads for obvious reasons. These hard-core aficionados of the once-cocaine-filled, über-caffeinated cola invented in 1886 by Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton search far and wide to snap up everything bearing the beverage’s famous logo. At the Coca-Cola Collectors Show, fans can buy, sell and trade all…
Feel My Pain
The pills came while I was out sick. Sixty-one tablets of generic Vicodin, a prescription painkiller, came to the Houston Press office from a Florida pharmacy. It was my first successful buy in several weeks of investigating the online drug market. To see how easy it would be for prescription…
Gelato Grotto
“White or wheat?” asked the perky order-taker at the Black Walnut Cafe, the counter-service restaurant on Morningside. I’d ordered the black-bean-and-cheese “Tex-Mex omelet” for breakfast, and it came with a side of toast. “I’ll have flour tortillas,” I replied. “We don’t do that,” she said. The Black Walnut Cafe has…
Pasties Party
Man, you gotta love cabaret. Men and women of every persuasion can ogle beautiful women clad in pasties and stilettos shaking it — without feeling creepy, and without losing a wad of ones and fives. H-town has a lovely little troupe of its own, Concrete Rose Cabaret, which just happens…
Getting Rogered
Not since Lloyd Dobler held a boombox over his head in Say Anything has there been a more pathetic case of a needy loser chasing desperately after some object of adoration. We’re talking, of course, about Astros fans, and the way Roger Clemens cruelly toys with their affections on a…
Care to Dance, Dino?
The event that packed ’em in by the thousands last year, Mixers, Elixirs and IMAX, has returned. Each week this summer, single folks will convene to check out a new live band and meet friends (okay, dates) for snacks, drinks and dancing under the watchful eye socket of the Tyrannosaurus…
Akiyama and the Ax
The Land of the Rising Sun is home to some of the most progressive musicians on the planet. Its capital, Tokyo, has been a breeding ground for a whole new batch of avant-garde musicians, including improv guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, who’ll play two sets today at the Live Oak Friends Meeting…
Letters to the Editor
Derf’s Up The poorest of taste: I’m not sure which is more despicable, the comic itself [The City, May 25], the timing (did you not know it was Memorial Day weekend, or did you just not give a shit?), or the fact that the Houston Press chose to run it…
The Plane Truth
On a Saturday afternoon in January 2005, a short Indian minister stormed into Gallery Furniture and demanded to speak to owner Jim “Mattress Mac” McIngvale. There are few places as crowded as Gallery Furniture on a Saturday, but the man, surrounded by his entourage, was insistent. A staff member summoned…
War Through Crayons
That the conflict in Darfur could strip the innocence even from children’s crayon drawings seems almost unthinkable. But the effect is clear to anyone who sees “Smallest Witnesses: The Crisis in Darfur through Children’s Eyes” at the Holocaust Museum Houston. Human Rights Watch researchers gave crayons and paper to children…
Image of the Week
Smile don’t ever miss a chance to network! That’s probably not what Hillary Clinton is thinking, but it kinda looks like it as she waves hello to a fellow mourner at former Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen’s memorial service May 30. Click here to enlarge…
Really Good Sax
Saxman Branford Marsalis has worked with such jazz greats as Miles Davis and Art Blakey, and he’s played with acts including Sting and the Grateful Dead. You may also remember his versatile genre-jumping as Jay Leno’s Tonight Show bandleader in the ´90s. Most recently, Marsalis has been helping victims of…
Seeking Asylum
If you tell FrenetiCore that dance is supposed to be pretty, odds are they’ll take your opinion, fling it to the ground and stomp on it with spike heels. For FrenetiCore, dance is the opposite of gauzy pink tutus and a graceful leap into a lover’s arms: It’s a means…