Piano Man
When the name David Helfgott comes up in the conversation, Leif Ove Andsnes pauses. Granted, hearing the pause isn’t easy; the Norwegian piano virtuoso talks so softly that at times it sounds like he’s left the room even when he’s right there with you. But nonetheless, Helfgott’s name makes an…
Soul Survivor
The rain and the cold don’t stop Solomon Burke. He’s an hour late for a rendezvous in the parking lot of a red-ribboned church in Los Angeles, and he hastily apologizes for his tardiness. But Solomon Burke has been out doing God’s work, and God doesn’t work on a journalist’s…
Static
A man and his guitar… Something special was afoot when Hollisters guitarist Eric “Eddie Dale” Danheim strapped on a water-tower-green, sticker-encrusted Fender Stratocaster mid-set at the Fabulous Satellite Lounge earlier this month. I could feel it when Danheim laid into the first solo on “Pike County,” a Creedence-inspired barnburner from…
Rotation
Nanci Griffith Blue Roses from the Moons Elektra In many ways, this is the finest album that Nanci Griffith has ever released. Recorded live in the studio, Blue Roses from the Moons captures the soft-voiced singer’s long-time band, the Blue Moon Orchestra, laying down some of its most beautiful and…
Sherwood’s Rules
Sherwood Cryer turned left off of Spencer Highway and bounced over the tall weeds growing through the cracks. He stopped his old pickup, got out and stood gazing upon a vast concrete pasture. It was eight years, two weeks and a day after the largest honky-tonk in the western world…
A Touch of the Familiar
If there is any generic setting for short plays, writes the editor of a recent volume of such works, it’s a restaurant. The built-in pauses that come with being seated, ordering and eating offer writers a clean structure in the often scary world of narrative. And the defined sense of…
Time to Kill
Claude Chabrol, one of the original lights of the French New Wave, makes thrillers that would simply never be produced anywhere near a Hollywood studio. His movies, even the most entertaining, depend on the slow build; while many of his 40-some features are accessible detective or crime stories with a…
Pop, Pop, Fizz, Fizz
Gummy with heartfelt folderol and overbearingly chummy, Fathers’ Day comes across like a feature-length expansion of its sniffle-and-giggle trailer. Prior to this teaming, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal had never been in a movie together — though, along with Whoopi Goldberg, they appear together annually on the televised Comic Relief…
One Angry Man
Sidney Lumet has had enough ups and downs in his long, prolific career that it’s never safe to count him out … even after two disappointing films in a row, A Stranger Among Us (1992) and Guilty as Sin (1993). Even the greatest directors can falter in their seventies, so…
Expect the Unexpected.
Mr. Expect the Unexpected was still trying to get his mind around that short, unbylined story in the May 5 Chronicle, “Man, woman, serpent killed in fiery collision,” when the realization dawned: Yes, Houston is a diverse, cosmopolitan and international city, where you never know what might be heading your…
The Insider
Bird’s-eye View Thanks to a fortuitous breach in Chronicle security last week, The Insider was at last able to make a long-anticipated unholy pilgrimage to the paper’s tenth floor chapel of darkness, otherwise known as the executive conference room. Once inside, we stood weak-kneed before Operation Falcon, the artwork commissioned…
Letters
Contrite as a Kite It would have been better had I been drunk at the University of Houston’s art auction, then I would have an excuse for my gaffe about Jan Becker and for klutzing off of the platform on my duff [The Insider, “Higher than a Kite?,” April 10]…
Press Picks
thursday may 15 Erik Estrada Yes, CHiPs fans, Ponch is back. He’s traded in his Kawasaki and police baton for the suave silken bathrobes of the Mexican telenovela Dos Mujeres, Un Camino. And to celebrate his return to the fringes of celebrity, he’s written a tell-all, My Road from Harlem…
To the Tapas
So far, much of the talk about the renaissance of downtown has been a lot more talk than renaissance, but in one area, at least — food — there’s no denying that central Houston has become a much more pleasant place in recent months. Joining with stalwarts such as Treebeard’s,…
Bass Boss
There have been plenty of bass-playing stars in pop music history — all you have to do is think of Paul McCartney and his upside-down Hofner, Brian Wilson, Jack Bruce, John Entwhistle — but none of them has had quite the influence on his bass-playing peers that Stanley Clarke has…
Nails in the Coffin
Once, I was puttering through some mediocre bass guitar at a party with a drummer who claimed to have spent time with Jodie Foster’s Army. It was a fun if uninspired racket, until we were joined by a genial, silvering baby boomer in a blazer and cuff links. He strapped…