Quite a Trip
Morbid curiosity might rivet our gaze to accidents, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express is the sort of train wreck no one should ever be forced to look upon. Here’s the setup: An unseen nine-year-old boy plays with trains until his unseen mother sends him to bed. There the boy…
Rock Around the Cock
When Christian Livingston gazes into the mirror, he sure doesn’t see the reflection of a guitar-slinging rock savior. The industry does, though; right now it’s turning its spotlight on his hip-hugger band, the Datsuns, and others of its ilk — from the Vines to the Strokes and Hellacopters — that…
The Center of the Universe
To move to New York or not to move to New York — that is the eternal question for artists. But while New York remains the epicenter of the art world, it is also becoming more and more feasible for Houston artists to pursue their careers at home and still…
Fitz’s Flick
The young man is seated on a wooden deck in a lawn chair in broad daylight. He is unshaven, bleary-eyed and wearing a grease-stained wife-beater. Next to him on a small table is a fat sack of weed, spilling its green buds. On the other side of him, in another…
Bond Bombshell
Ronnie Sheridan, a 37-year-old mechanic from Magnolia, needed a laugh on March 3. On the one hand, he was in line with a bunch of other folks who were finally being freed on bond after their arrests in Montgomery County. On the other hand, getting arrested yet again — this…
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fever to Tell Interscope Records
The Cauldron Bubbles Over
On the evening of April 21, about 150 well-dressed students and faculty members gathered at the University of St. Thomas for the first Student Leadership Banquet, the brainchild of newly hired director of student activities Kristie Gerber. The group at the Crooker Center enjoyed an elegant buffet and a chorus…
F.Co
If press kits could kill, F.Co (pronounced “EF-koh”) would have Pat Green’s bank account. If public relations and calculated marketing skills were quality songs, F.Co would be rollin’ in mailbox money as Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney shamelessly mud-wrestle Faith Hill and Shania Twain to tie up their songs for…
Lineup Change
In the year since he took over as editor of the Houston Chronicle, Jeff Cohen has made most of his changes behind the scenes, as far as the general reader was concerned. Now he’s made a big splash that even casual consumers will notice. Rick Casey, the well-regarded longtime columnist…
The Star Spangles, with the Datsuns
There’s one thing to remember when surveying the “new rock” movement, especially with regard to a certain overly hyped group from New York City: Richard Hell did not go to prep school. And neither did any of the four Star Spangles, who are crossing America opening for the Datsuns. Playing…
Letters
Chew on This Look at the truths: I have never written a fan letter in my life, and if someone had told me my first would be to comment on an article about the history of barbecue [“Barbecue in Black and White,” by Robb Walsh, May 1], I probably would…
Dat Politics
You can just sense that the blip-hop backlash is almost upon us, and none too soon. Honestly, how long can an entire electronic music genre exist that sounds like nothing so much as some wasted dudes with a laptop constructing songs that sound like old video and computer game soundtracks?…
Whip Team
Elizabeth Ann remembers when her social circle disbanded. They were a group of women into bondage, domination and sadomasochism, but the politics of running a sex club ruined the fun. After all, why apply mainstream identifiers like job titles and bylaws to kinky sex practices? Elizabeth’s new social club, the…
The Hunger
Fans who packed Galveston’s Whiskey Blues May 3 to see the Hunger got the first look at the group’s new drummer. Yup, we said new drummer. Right now, band co-founder Max Schuldberg is no longer behind the kit for the high-profile Houston act. The new guy is Giovanni Capela (ex-Prison…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, May 22 We’d imagine that lots of strip-clubgoers feel the urge, now and then, to take off their own clothes. La Bare holds monthly Pajama Jams, when the ladies are encouraged to show up in their jammies. The term is a little deceptive, though — you’re not likely to…
30footFALL Tenth Anniversary, with Middlefinger and Janitor
“We don’t play punk rock shows, we play Houston shows.” So says 30footFALL front man Butch Davis, and while you can debate that claim all night, the following statement is unequivocal: Anyone who has ever heard or seen 30footFALL instantly falls in love with ’em. The band plays fast rock…
Con Man
Houston doesn’t have many avenues for orc slayers to meet each other. For some reason, cities like San Antonio and Austin host monstrous science- fiction gaming conventions, while we get the shaft. That’s why John Simons, the owner of Midnight Comics, is stepping in to fill the void by hosting…
Doggy Style
SUN 5/25 You are cordially invited to witness the nuptials of two loving, caring…dogs. This Sunday at the Special Pals Animal Shelter, a poodle that goes by the name Crepe Suzette (Suzy, for short) will finally get her longtime boyfriend, rottweiler Maximum S. Bishop (better known as Max), down the…
Not Counting Sheep
Shepherd’s pie was originally made with lamb or mutton; it was invented as a way to use leftovers from the Sunday roast. When the dish is made with beef, it’s actually called cottage pie, but we’ll just have to make some allowances for the sirloin shepherd’s pie ($9.95) at Brian…
Surf-fering
FRI 5/23 An undertow. A Portuguese man-of-war. A slippery jetty. They’re all reasons why lifeguards are our friends. You can cheer on those protectors of human life at the 2003 Night Swim in Galveston, where lifeguards will flaunt their Hasselhoffian skills. They’ll perform feats of physical prowess that sound just…
Adorable Dora
WED 5/28 Since the debut of Dora the Explorer on Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr., the program has become the No. 1 television show among preschool kids. In every episode, Dora goes on adventures with her buddies, teaching the audience basic Spanish words along the way. “It’s a great way to introduce…
Kung Fu Fighting
FRI 5/23 His name is Catfish — just Catfish — and he loves Asian action cinema. Catfish gathered his 400-strong collection of hard-to-find films by picking through video stores, searching the Internet and attending conventions. His arsenal includes such titles as Mantis Fist, a kung fu horror mystery in which…
Poetic License
The budding teenage poet in Karen Moncrieff’s Blue Car writes melancholy verse about autumn leaves falling off trees and fathers abandoning their daughters. Predictably, the girl’s floundering mother is too harried and too strapped for cash to pay much attention to her, and her troubled little sister is endlessly needy…
My Way
SAT 5/24 There aren’t too many musicians out there who would turn down a record deal to perform on the street. But then, Grammy-nominated guitarist Stanley Jordan has always done things his way. As a kid, he played the piano, but when his family moved into a smaller apartment, there…
Power Play
A lot of moviegoers see hyperactive Jim Carrey as the second coming of Jerry Lewis, but no one’s ever mistaken him for God. Clearly, he’d like to change that — at least for now, at least at the box office. Hey, you’d feel the same way if your last movie…
East Is East and West Is West
Indian-American DJ Navdeep’s CD Yaathra (Punjabi for “journey”) is like fine travel literature set to music, Paul Theroux with a bhangra/hip-hop beat. It begins with a recording the DJ made in a Punjabi village market, which segues quickly into a rap about his Sikh brothers back in India — “red…
The In-(F)laws
Occasionally I can be convinced it’s the singer, not the song. I have no love for Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time” but can’t get enough of Brit band Travis’s laconic redo of said iconic single, which squeezes out the then-teen temptress’s toxic sugar till it’s just a bittersweet lament…
Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow
Buzz. Some bands have it, most bands don’t. There are bands that have played Houston for a decade or more and still cross our minds only as mere names in cold print, eliciting the same sort of yawn with which one might greet another hot and humid August morning. But…