Arco
Arco’s debut album, Coming to Terms, is a whispered confession, a catalog of private fears and insecurities. This slo-fi sound, heartbreaking in its sensitivity, hasn’t changed much since the band’s 1998 UK EPs Longsighted and Ending Up. Arco shares a kinship with the slow moves of Low and Red House…
HISD’s $2 Million Man
At a lunchtime workshop early this year on the Houston school district’s controversial food service contract with vendor Aramark, HISD business chief Cathy Mincberg faced tough questioning. Why, board member Karla Cisneros wanted to know, was the quality of the breakfasts and lunches for the district’s children deteriorating while revenue…
Dave Douglas
Is A Thousand Evenings jazz? Hmmm. Not according to traditional definitions. There’s not a drummer in sight. There’s a written score, though additional improvisation by the quartet is allowed. Nontraditional instruments such as accordion and violin are heavily featured alongside mainstays like trumpet and double bass. One expects the colors…
Rush to Judges
The Republican balance in the U.S. Senate depends on the uncertain heartbeats of aging South Carolinian Strom Thurmond, so the George W. Bush administration is hurrying to get its judicial ducks lined up while there’s still a one-vote majority for confirmations. Last week Bush nominated 11 appellate judges — including…
Lucky Boyd
Jorge Luis Borges once recalled his father giving him this advice: “Read a lot, write a lot, don’t rush into print.” For musicians, the corollary to these three prudent injunctions would be “Listen a lot, play a lot, don’t rush into the studio.” Lucky Boyd, a leading light of the…
Starry, Starry Night
If you don’t have any plans for Friday, May 18, you do now. Even if you do have plans, change them. Drop everything and fork over $3,000 for a table to the Downtown Houston Association’s annual Heart of the City gala that night. Sure, the event — named Sounds of…
The Chemical Brothers
Few dance acts have been as successful as the Chemical Brothers. Their third album, Surrender, topped the charts, won awards and culled the talents of fellow Mancunians Noel Gallagher, Bernard Sumner, Bobby Gillespie as well as Americans Hope Sandoval and Jonathan Donohue. Following the sold-out Surrender world tour, the EP…
In Cold Blood
There are not many stories left buried in James Ellroy’s past. In 1996, at the age of 48, he penned his memoirs, in which he paired his life story with that of his dead mother, Jean Ellroy, a nurse found strangled and beaten in the bushes of suburban Los Angeles…
Roni Size & Reprazent
Remember all those magazine spreads declaring techno the official music of the new millennium? Now look at the American techno scene. If you just asked yourself, “What techno scene?” you have hit it on the nose. Even worse, the only way some of these artists survive is by becoming dupes…
Letters
Hysteric Preservation Wrong numbers: You might not guess it by reading “Bulldozers at the Gate” [by Brian Wallstin, May 3], but we agree that historic neighborhoods ought to be preserved. Let us make this clear: We would not and have never destroyed a historic home. The lot we’re building on…
Mouse Bait
Kids might well be amused by the frenetic pace of Shrek, the latest computer-animated film from DreamWorks, which moves so quickly it’s nearly a blur, though they need not get the jokes to enjoy frolicking in the muck (and the maggots) with a green, snaggle-toothed ogre who wants only to…
Call of the Wild
Joe Rogan loves Houston, and not just because of the abundance of strip joints — although that does contribute to his affection. “More strip clubs than gas stations, that’s my line,” the comedian says. Closer to his heart are some of the city’s late, great outlaw comics, folks like Sam…
Golden Room with No View
Like nearly all Merchant Ivory productions, The Golden Bowl, their latest book-to-film adaptation, is a feast for the eyes, with choice real estate, exquisite interior design and dazzling costumes all bathed in a golden light that not only enriches the colors but also helps to give the settings a sense…
Dogging Ellroy
James Ellroy is the rare author who can straddle mass popularity and critical acclaim. His novels of noir (most famously L.A. Confidential) are densely plotted, brutal and downright dark. He’s even big in France. But for his new opus, the self-described “demon dog of American crime literature” tackles a familiar…
Clipped Wings
Chances are you don’t know a whole lot about Angel Eyes other than it’s the brand-new Jennifer Lopez movie. Maybe you also know that it co-stars Jim Caviezel. It’s been described in some articles as a supernatural romance, and Caviezel himself has said that he can’t tell what the movie…
Bread Winner
The panini, like pizza, is an Italian import; and like we did with those mozzarella pies, Americans have found many different ways to approach this sandwich. Fusion is the name of the game at Café Botticelli [306 West Gray, (713)533-1140], where they serve up the deceptively simple turkey club panini…
The Caged Birds Sing
Less than ten years ago Nicky Silver was selling clothes at hoity-toity Barney’s. Everything changed in 1993 when a New York production of Pterodactyls wowed the critics, turning him into the hottest satirist to scorch the American stage since Christopher Durang. Silver’s hysterical commentary on overbearing mothers, guilty sex and…
Soul Heavy
The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things — bread and circuses. — Juvenal in Satires X New Orleans is the only city in America specifically associated with drunkenness. It is the New Year’s Eve…
Reptomania
NASCAR legend Richard Petty and Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, sadly and forever to the detriment of artistic culture, never collaborated on a project. But at least the Austin Lounge Lizards have put the raging “what if?” question to rest in the tune “The Illusion Travels by Stock Car,” which…
Making Wookie
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… the brave Jedi master Yoda had his flesh viciously torn asunder. Well, okay, it actually happened at the corner of Bissonnet and Main Street, in the Museum of Fine Arts’ official “Star Wars: The Magic of Myth” gift shop. “See…
George’s Jungle
“Writing about sex is always a lot more fun than writing about rap records.” This is how 43-year-old Nelson George explains his leap from music and cultural criticism to romance novelist. Since publishing his first novel, Urban Romance, in 1993, George has found fictionalizing the erotic-neurotic exploits of black folk…
Playbill
Debbie Davies’s big break came when Albert Collins told her, quite literally, to get on the bus. Davies had known Collins in L.A. for some time, had attended a few of his barbecues, had jammed with him a little, but on the night she attended that fateful show she had…
Texas Gothic
Along the main thoroughfare of the city of Orange rises the great dome of the 1908 Lutcher Memorial Presbyterian Church. Even God, it seems, got a grant from the Lutcher-Stark empire to make this place of worship one of the first air-conditioned buildings in the nation. Just down Green Avenue…
Remembrance of Eggs Past
The eggs over easy at Lankford Grocery and Market are cooked slowly so they stay tender; the yolks are perfect, not too runny and not a bit hard. The patty-style sausage is a little spicy and a touch sweet. I cut the brown edges and crisp corners of the home…
Playbill
Mention Seattle to the proverbial man in the street, and his associations will likely run along the lines of Starbucks, grunge, Microsoft and the Space Needle. “With-it” stuff comes to mind, those aspects of Seattle that made it America’s It City from roughly 1990 to 1995. Since then fortune’s wheel…
The Art of Getting Broken
She was an American girl… She says it’s all about making the connection, and that’s easy enough to imagine, even if this weren’t a rock and roll story, even if rock and roll stories weren’t always about connecting, about someone making music that stomps off a stage and into some…
Stirred and Shaken
The handle on the front door of The Davenport [2115 Richmond Avenue, (713)520-1140] is shaped like a martini glass. It’s an apt greeting to one of the city’s serious centers of mixology. Tier upon tier of backlit bottles — in all shapes, sizes and potencies — shine with promise behind…
Hayseed Dixie
Let’s get one thing out of the way immediately: This four-man bluegrass band can pick like hell. At the same time, let’s address the central question posed by Hayseed Dixie’s very existence: Can a long-term career be etched out of metal hillbilly shtick? Quite possibly, if the anonymous musicians follow…
Air Sic
Tens of thousands of years ago, when people traveled from Asia to North America via the land bridge, their dogs traveled along with them. People still travel with animals — every day (small) dogs and cats curl in under-seat carriers for domestic flights. A bureaucratic web of industry and government…
Play Ball!
“Let us consider the sports bar. This is a cultural institution of rather recent vintage.” Thus begins a Web site put up by a group that organizes sports bar trade shows. Let us consider, indeed. It is a truth universally acknowledged that sports bars are a modification of another type…
Ervin Charles, featuring Richard Earl
A Texas blues guitarist whose early-1950s performances directly inspired guys such as Lonnie Brooks, Long John Hunter and Phillip Walker, Ervin Charles was just beginning to earn wider recognition when he died last year in Beaumont. Unlike his nationally established friends, Charles had pretty much stuck to playing humble joints…
Curses! Foiled Again
Last week convicted killer and confidence man Michael Lee Davis returned to his Texas prison cell with 59 years remaining on his 60-year sentence. Thanks to a chance call to the Houston Press, it was not what Davis had planned. It’s been almost exactly a year since a judge hit…
Talking Turkey
Speaking off the toque: Tony Vallone, restaurateur and owner of Tony’s [1801 Post Oak Boulevard, (713)622-6778], Vallone’s [2811 Kirby Drive, (713)526-2811], Anthony’s [4007 Westheimer, (713)961-0552], Grotto [3920 Westheimer, (713)622-3663 and 6401 Woodway, (713)782-3663] and La Griglia [2002 West Gray, (713)526-4700]. Q. For special occasions and holidays at home, most Americans…
Felix Baloy
The Afro-Cuban All Stars’ first album, A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, came out in this country at the same time as the original Buena Vista Social Club. Producer Juan de Marcos Gonzalez links the two projects. He recruited many of the Buena Vista musicians, arranged the charts and even played…
Very Appealing
Last week’s revelation that the FBI withheld evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing prosecutions touched off widespread media speculation about its potential impact on the case of condemned killer Timothy McVeigh. But the guy in the best position to benefit from the agency’s latest gaffe isn’t McVeigh at all –…
Slim
Rush, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience prove you can get fat sounds from a slim lineup, which is also what you have here with the appropriately monikered Slim. Formed in 1996 by ex-Skrew bandmates Robb Lampman (guitar/vocals) and Chadwick Davis (bass) along with buddy Randall James Wassermann, the trio…
A Time to Remember
Nobody believes Sandi Wisenberg when she says she’s from Texas. She is a liberal, a writer and — perhaps most relevant — a Jew. New York, they guess. New York would make sense: the Promised Land of gefilte fish and kreplach, where half the population seems to have curly hair…