South By Southwest
By Scott Faingold My party line is this: I am a ball bearing, and the 2006 South By Southwest Music Conference is a massive pinball machine. Ommmm. This faux-Buddhist stance serves me well in the first hours of my SXSW experience, allowing me to ride out a messy and convoluted…
Page France, with Jason Carmona, Jetpack, Dizzy Pilot and Three Fantastic
Hello, Dear Wind, the new CD by Baltimore’s Page France, amounts to a heroic dose of ragged, Jesus-loving indie pop. Unlike much “Christian rock,” this is refreshingly non-preachy. In fact, main Page Frenchman Michael Nau’s songs are uniformly vulnerable, varied, catchy and wide-eyed – he never soft-pedals his rapturous religious…
Image of the Week
A woman holding on to the wall for support, under a classy neon ladies’-room sign, down a hallway featuring an exposed fire extinguisher if this doesn’t get you psyched for barhopping during spring break, nothing will. Hope she gets back in time for the next round of shots. Click here…
Fresh-Squeezed Fun
Now that spring is in the air, get your juices flowing with the Orange Show Season Opening Party. The all-day celebration in honor of that wacky Houston institution dedicated to visionary art and nutrition-for-all will have a variety of activities that the whole family will find a-peeling (sorry). Participants can…
Polysics, with Alex Atchley, Los Abandoned and the Gaskets
Proposal for master’s thesis (rejected): Rock ‘n’ roll in its rawest, purest form has always been about screwing it up, getting it wrong, the excitement of spontaneity and its attendant mistakes and idiosyncrasies. In 1954, Elvis, Scotty and Bill couldn’t play the country standard “Blue Moon of Kentucky” properly to…
Fat Chance
Duck dishes can taste super-fatty, but not the Muscovy duck breast ($24.50) at Masraff’s (1025 South Post Oak Lane, 713-355-1975). A plump, thickly sliced breast with a crisp skin sits on a bed of spaghetti squash. Accompanying it is a compote of figs, grapes and rhubarb, which adds a welcome…
Wonderful World
What do cowboys, stage moms and Bobby McFerrin have in common? This weekend, ballet. It seems less odd when you learn that Houston Ballet’s three-part show is called “Dance the World Round,” and that it features works by choreographers from Britain, Russia and Australia. Hush, by British dancemaker Christopher Bruce,…
Buddy Mondlock
Songwriter Buddy Mondlock has worked with everybody from Garth Brooks to Nanci Griffith to Peter, Paul and Mary to Art Garfunkel to Janis Ian. He also counts Guy Clark as a member of his booster club. Like many of our finer songwriters, he garners more attention in Europe than in…
Rusty Nail
Needing a place to unwind, I meet a friend at Downing Street Pub and Cigar Bar (2549 Kirby, 713-523-2291) for a nightcap. We make our way around the bar’s giant humidor and take a seat at the bar, amid several curious stares. We’re surrounded by gentlemen smoking cigars and drinking…
Cowboy Clips
There are plenty of cowboy stories at this year’s Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, but for a more cinematic take, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft is offering up three short cowboy films from Houston producer and filmmaker Ramzy Telley. First is Ty Murray: King of the Cowboys, which follows…
Shandy Everybody Wants
It should be too early in the year to expect a good movie, let alone a great one; anything released prior to the Oscars is bound to be forgotten by spring. Yet here it is, the first – dare we use the term that’s all but been stripped of meaning…
Letters to the Editor
School Special YES we can: As the chair of the board of trustees for YES College Preparatory Schools, I was thrilled to read your recent report on Houston’s best public high schools [“These Kids Go to the Best Public High School in Houston,” by Todd Spivak, March 2]. We are…
Get the Picture
Every other year, a tsunami of imagery deluges Houston. For 20 years now, FotoFest has been a highly anticipated event that has citywide impact. It has grown to include more than 100 participating organizations, and according to organizers, it attracts more than 225,000 visitors. The sprawling, infectious FotoFest 2006 has…
Oh, Grow Up
A star who turned into a black hole somewhere between the release of, oh, The Wedding Planner and Sahara (or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Two for the Money – really, where to draw the line), Matthew McConaughey is better known of late for shooting tequila…
Trashy Little Darlings
Don’t be fooled by the sweet title of dos chicas theater commune’s latest play, Media Darlings. The work, in keeping with the edgy dos chicas style, is anything but sugarcoated. “It was the first thing I did that I was afraid to invite my mother to see,” says director Paul…
Feel This Man
R. Kelly wants to stick his key in your ignition, feel on your booty and have sex in the kitchen…by the stove…on the counter…by the buttered rolls. He’s a genre figurehead: an R&B thug, the Pied Piper of R&B and the “R” in R&B who wants to love you like…
Bring It On
Twenty years ago in April, while the Ukrainian capital of Kiev slumbered, the operators of a nearby nuclear power station began a test. They wanted to know how long the plant could cool itself without electricity. Engineers in the control room powered down the reactor, disconnected the emergency cooling system…
Look Away
Anyone who remembers the 1977 Wes Craven film The Hills Have Eyes, which was and remains a piece of Milwaukee-beer shit, remembers it because: a) they had a memorable fuck-or-puke night at the aging neighborhood drive-in; b) Michael Berryman’s uniquely hairless mug, which glared from the video store horror sections…
Say Uncle
Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, the latest stage offering from Infernal Bridegroom Productions, has guns, a murder attempt, betrayal and seduction. The only caveat is that none of the aforementioned action actually happens (on stage). “The thing about Chekhov,” explains director Tamarie Cooper, “is that there may be very little action…
Monsterville on Washington
Perusing the menu at the new wine bar Cova on Washington Avenue, I was shocked to discover a wine called Pahlmeyer Jayson Red Blend that goes for $21 a glass. I had never seen a “highly allocated” wine served by the glass in Texas. Welcome to Washington Avenue, Houston’s culinary…
A Moon Swoon
Our sister paper SF Weekly recently did a story on the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s extravagant attempts to make inroads among black churches by offering preachers such things as free vacations to faraway countries. Dozens of ministers have heeded Moon’s call to throw out their crosses and replace them with…
Free for All
If you plan to see The Libertine, an artful and brooding period piece about a scandalously debauched earl of the English Restoration, a few words of advice before you leave: Take a peek at the sun. Drink in some fresh air. Consider bidding good-bye to the majority of the color…
Matzo Baller
Chances are, if you ran into Matisyahu — a heavily bearded, six-foot-five man who wears traditional Hasidic Jewish clothing — on the street, you wouldn’t peg him as one of the hottest artists to hit it big in the last year. But the singer, formerly known as Matthew Miller, has…
Not in Good Standing
Thirteen years after he was accused of molesting two little girls, Houston priest Joseph Tu Ngoc Nguyen has been suspended by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. The suspension comes seven months after then-archbishop Joseph Fiorenza told parishioners at Holy Rosary Church that the Dominican Order had investigated and cleared Father Tu…
Thugs and Kisses
A gritty portrait of ghetto life in contemporary South Africa, Tsotsi packs an unexpected emotional wallop. Gavin Hood’s film tells a story of violence and redemption that’s even more remarkable when you consider that neither of the lead performers had ever acted in a movie. It’s little wonder that Tsotsi…
Vienna Calling
Vienna has given the world brilliant musicians: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss…Falco. Sadly, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra won’t bust out a 20-violin rendition of Falco’s ’80s classic “Der Kommissar.” But you can expect a program featuring oldies-but-goodies from the masters such as “Haffner,” “Symphony No. 4 in c minor” and “Death and…
Power Plays
This story is a sidebar to this week’s feature, “Bring It On” Aside from nuclear, plenty of other technologies promise low-cost, pollution-free electricity. But can they deliver? Wind power in Texas is cheap, abundant enough to power most of the United States, and already under development: A company called Galveston…
Loitering in Lingerie
Man, I look like a creep. I’ve been stalking the lingerie section of Nordstrom in the Galleria for an hour. Thirty minutes ago, I looked like a dude searching for lingerie in the middle of the afternoon. That’s sketchy enough. Now I look like a dude who likes to stare…
All-Out Delirium
If you’ve ever witnessed the spectacle that is a Cirque du Soleil event, you know the whole thing can easily be described as dizzying. So it’s about time the troupe came up with a title that makes sense: Delirium. The show has perhaps the circus’s most straightforward plot, described as…
Fat Beats
Friends, Houstonians, fellow fatsoes – lend me your ears. A travesty has been visited upon us. After the annual Men’s Fitness poll rightly deemed Houston as America’s fattest city every year from to 2001 to 2003 and then again in 2005, this year we’ve slipped all the way to No…
Hell Above
A band of March twilight sky is tinged a lurid green by the enemy’s flares. We’re in no-man’s-land, that 100-yard patch of broken, scorched earth separating the Allies from the Germans on the western front during World War I in R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End. Acrid smoke blows by in wisps…
A Dip in the Pond
Indie-pop singer-guitarist Matt Pond not only penned an original song for The O.C., he also covered Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova” for the show. His band, Matt Pond PA, has been receiving rave reviews for its sixth release, Several Arrows Later, an album rich with honest melancholy, with piano and strings flourishing…
Stapp Infection
Scott Stapp, former lead singer of post-grunge embarrassment Creed, is music’s most hated man. That’s not harsh: Stapp would admit it himself (given he was drunk enough). It’s a Cape of Suck he’s ever-conscious of wearing. And perhaps it’s because of this fact that he’s become rather adept at the…
Capsule Reviews
Bus Stop In the 1950s theater world, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William Inge did for the Midwest what Tennessee Williams did for the South: He brought it sex. His 1955 comedy Bus Stop is a primer on various facets of love: the getting, the losing and the keeping (although when the…
Sunshine When It’s Gray
Few musicians are so appropriately named as Brit singer-songwriter David Gray. Melancholy even when it’s upbeat, his music evokes visions of rain-smattered fields under a charcoal sky. But that’s not to say his lush melodies and hooks aren’t addictive. Gray harks back to the corduroy-clad balladeers of the ´70s –…
Confessions of a DJ Spinoff Judge
Judge not lest ye be judged: I think it was Buddha or some other religious dude that said something like that one time. Now, I’m not usually superstitious, but I do feel a little leery as I mount the makeshift dais at the swanky Next nightclub (2020 McKinney) to take…
“Girls” Just Want to Have Fun?
The word “girl” has regained currency – in certain contexts – as a term for grown women. “Girls’ Night Out” at the Blaffer Gallery presents works by women that explore the concept of “girl.” Group shows are notoriously uneven, and this one is no exception. But while individual works succeed…
Duck It Out
Wednesday nights at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck have long been home to loose-limbed Irish jam sessions, but today early birds will get to mix politics, music, poetry and stand-up comedy at Duke at the Duck. For two hours, Duke Jones will play Gulf Coast-style traditional blues (on the birthday of Lightnin’…
I See Hawks in LA
Try as you might to avoid the heinous hippie-clich “cosmic” when describing the music of I See Hawks in LA, when the melodies, lyrics, harmonies and licks take over, you’ll find yourself lost in some greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts moment. The Hawks’ new disc, California Country, would make an appropriate score for Thomas…
Capsule Reviews
“Alex Katz” Alex Katz made his name with hard-edged, flattened portraits. But just shy of 80, the painter has loosened up considerably. He’s still interested in flat color and abstracted form, but his work has gotten looser and brushier. His show at Texas Gallery features a lovely collection of small…
Cat in Da House
It’s been two years since Chicago-born DJ and producer Felix Stallings Jr. — a.k.a. Felix Da Housecat — released his last album, the somewhat clichéd and overtly retro throwback new-wave album Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever. But the big grinning fellow is a legend on the house and electro…
The Strokes, with the Eagles of Death Metal
Remember when the Strokes were the next big thing? On the strength of their hit single “Last Nite” from their Top 40 debut album, Is This It, the shaggy New York quintet, led by sleepy-eyed vocalist Julian Casablancas, went on to commandeer the cover of pretty much every music rag…
Ghouls on the Go
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Nintendo DS
Price: $34.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 8 (out of 10)
Crazy ´Bout Alan
The world of country music is evolving, and for the most part, it’s for the better. (You gotta love the diversity that Big & Rich bring with their multilingual rapping.) But there’s something to be said about a tried-and-true country crooner. And for that, we tip our hats to Alan…
Mates of State, with Sound Team, Spain Coloured Orange
As one might expect from a happily married young couple playing music together, there’s oodles of cutesy goodness in Mates of State. Drummer Jason Hammel and his wife, organist Kori Gardner, share equal time on the mike, sounding youthful and innocent – the age you were the first time you…
This Dogg’s Got Bite
The Tenants (Sony) Fifteen seconds into the video for “Nuthin but a G Thang,” it was obvious that Snoop Dog had charisma to spare. More than a decade later, with his performance as ’70s-era radical author Willie Spearmint, it’s official: The man can act. Snoop’s shambling, searing performance is just…
Boys to Men
When Boys and Girls Club DJs Damon, Bobby and Fredster began their weekly Wednesday-night residency at Union two years ago, it was just a small get-together of hipsters who fancied danceable indie hits. After changing venues to 1415 last year, the night really blossomed into the place to be, as…
The Cult
On hiatus since the shamefully overlooked release of 2001’s Beyond Good and Evil, the Cult is back on the radar and on tour for the first time since soulful singer Ian Astbury lent his Lizard King impersonation to a revamped version of the Doors (or, as the lawyers insist, the…
Our top DVD picks for the week of March 7
The Best of the Best of The Electric Company (Shout Factory) Breaking News (Palm) Buster Keaton: 65th-Anniversary Collection (Sony) The Californians (Hart Sharp) Curse Death & Spirit (Asia Vision) The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ to Town (Warner Bros.) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros.) The House on…
Walk It Out
As part of his ongoing efforts to morph into baby mama Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt has been involved in international AIDS awareness campaigns. Good news: Now you can make like the gorgeous couple by participating in the 3.1-mile, noncompetitive AIDS Walk Houston. If you manage to rack up $125 in…