Rock No More
Mike Patton has had it with his microphone. After 90 minutes of screwing around with the sound system in the Colorado club where his band Tomahawk is due to play in a few hours, the singer is ready to talk about anything just to get his mind off sound levels…
Jailhouse Shock
People have been upset before with Channel 2’s Cindy Garza — it all comes with being a reporter. So it wasn’t unusual when she got a phone call May 19 from a source who was peeved. The source, a friend of Parking Lot Killer Clara Harris, wasn’t happy. “We promised…
Caged Angels
For every UK-based rock band that has achieved staggering success here in the United States, there are scores who, despite great success in their own territory, have never made the trip across at all. Then there are those that have made the jump only to get swallowed. Manic Street Preachers,…
Letters
The Mayoral Vote The Brown principle: I am sending a copy of this article [“Parting Shots,” by Tim Fleck, May 15] to my son in New York who, upon learning that Brown had been elected mayor, smirked, “Houston will get what it deserves with Out-of-Town Brown.” The Peter Principle states…
Another Man Done Gone
Some musicians transcend their field and become something more. Joe “Guitar” Hughes, who passed away on May 21, was one such. Hughes was a Houston icon, a local treasure, a monument to the Third Ward blues scene that was impoverished mightily the day he died. In a way, he was…
Slim Down in Houston
Note: Amarillo Slim had to have surgery this week, so his visit to Houston has been postponed. His reading in Houston will be rescheduled. We’ll keep you posted. Talk about an extraordinary life. Amarillo Slim, considered the best gambler on earth, won $300,000 off Willie Nelson in a game of…
Buzzcocks
There aren’t many of them, first-generation punk bands that have stuck together and stayed punk. While the Buzzcocks were apart for a while, these Mancunians have their own footnote in punk history: While most punks would have never dreamed of singing about anything mushy, the Buzzcocks laid their hearts bare…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, May 29 Ah, cheating. Without it, the world would be damn boring. In best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey’s The Other Woman, we get the classic switcheroo. A woman finds out her hubby’s getting busy with someone else, and then she ends up banging the other woman’s man. You can…
McCloskey Brothers Band, with Two High String Band
Boulder’s McCloskey Brothers Band crafts a sound that’s apropos of falling leaves, mountain streams and good times at high altitude. Comprising brothers David (banjo) and Todd (mandolin) McCloskey, bassist Steve Roseboom and drummer Dan Menchey, the outfit pushes the boundaries of bluegrass/newgrass, leaning at times toward countrified rock, pop and…
Cho-Zen One
A screwed-up life can be a great resource, as Margaret Cho well knows. The 34-year-old comic has often mined her past — which is fraught with weight, race and sex discrimination, bad relationships and alcohol and drug addictions — for material. But what’s a comedian to do when her life…
Alkaline Trio, with Pretty Girls Make Graves and Pitch Black
The Alkaline Trio is Blink-182 with the Promise Ring’s guilty conscience; they’re the kid next door who leaves flaming shit on your porch but makes mulch in the morning. This band is as good as three chords and a sneer gets these days, when rap-metal’s self-flagellating crunch is making the…
Break Out the Beads
THU 5/29 The organizers of this year’s Houston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival thought and thought about how they could top last year’s appearance by Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson. On opening night, you’ll see Larry Sullivan, Will’s ballet-dancing boyfriend on Will and Grace. Sullivan’s got roles in both The Trip, which…
Think Different
It’s usually right about this time of year that film critics, especially those of advancing years, begin to feel a slow chill of dread creep up their spines. Suppressing that urge, they generally find it quickly replaced by a sudden rush of sneering condescension and smug mock-martyrdom. “Oh, no!” they…
NYPD Black and Blue
FRI 5/30 Police are kin, and their sense of brotherhood crosses state lines. And there’s nothing like a little sibling rivalry, right? In one of the first major events at the new 4,000-seat 610 Arena, the Houston Police Department boxing team will square off in ten fights against cops from…
Safe, Cracked
Another week, another remake — summer, that season of air-conditioned originality, must be upon us. Only unlike The In-Laws, which creaked into theaters last week, this latest update of a decades-old action-comedy has two things going for it: Its forebear is a veddy British caper film little-seen in the United…
A Cool, Dark Place
Houston kids know the appeal of air-conditioning during the summer; that’s why they watch a lot of movies. And Cinemark Theatres may have just the remedy to the “Ma, I’m bored!” syndrome with its Summer Movie Clubhouse. At both Tinseltown theater locations, kids can see second runs of G/PG flicks…
Undersea No Evil
If grown-ups were meant to watch Walt Disney cartoons, God would have kept us all in the third grade for two or three decades. Still, somebody has to drive the SUV every time the Disneyfolk decide to lure the little ones down to the multiplex, and as long as the…
The War with Chirac
The coarse-ground pork pâté looks like meat loaf studded with walnuts. We eat chunks of it on hot crisp bread that’s fresh out of the pizza oven, each bite daubed with a little Dijon mustard. And we wash it down with a sturdy Delas Côtes du Rhône. The hearty pâté,…
Ghost Stories
Like all good ghost tales, this one begins on a dark and stormy night. A spirited wild wind whistles through the door each time one of the locals makes his way into the lonely Irish pub at the center of this story and settles onto his stool. Here, in the…
Kissed by a Cajun
Be careful what you ask for at The Acadian Bakers (604 West Alabama, 713-520-1484). A request for a Creole kiss (95 cents) might be met with pursed lips and a smack on the cheek from owner and chief baker Sandy Jean Bubbert. Originally from New Iberia, Louisiana, Bubbert discovered the…
Yin and Yang
Two exhibits, “In Houston: A Site-Based Performance and Installation” at DiverseWorks and “Temporal Mood” at Barbara Davis Gallery, bring together work by three Chinese artists: New York-based Zhang Huan and Zhang Jian-Jun, and Houston’s own Weihong. As the titles suggest, some of these works are specific to Houston, and they…
Full-Fledged Frolics
It’s unusual for a Houston Ballet opening night, one with a local Paul Taylor premiere, to have so many empty seats. But it’s also unusual for a new Taylor piece to be the weakest in the Spring Repertory Program. Don’t get the idea that modern master Taylor’s new work for…
Dem Blues
You’ve been warned: This is a column about politics wherein a popular-culture critic (dunno what that is either, but says so on my tax returns) interviews a former rock journalist-turned-publicist-turned-band-manager-turned-record-label-executive about how the Democratic Party alienated everyone under the age of death. You may take this with a grain of…
Blunt Force
THU 5/29 The guys behind the weekly downtown party known as “Blunted Thursdays” are initiating an intriguing experiment. Their hypothesis: Dancehall and drum ‘n’ bass music can mix. “The whole reason is to, like, kinda cross over people that are into drum ‘n’ bass into reggae more,” says decknician BMC,…
Film Buff
Amid the mind-numbing music and intoxicants spilling throughout the trendy artist’s home, party guests mingled in the best, brash, anything-goes style dominating Houston in 1970. The lanky hostess eyed a couple of strangers and wondered aloud if they were narcs. In her rapid-fire fashion, she was soon promoting her husband’s…
Swing Sets
FRI 5/30 It looks like Lou Bega will never release “Mambo No. 6,” but the neo-swing revival has a little life yet. Faithful boppers will turn out in their cat clothes this weekend at a clash between the classy and the brassy, as the Houston Symphony teams up with Big…
Glass Houses
Midway through an early-afternoon press conference last week called by the Michael Berry for Mayor campaign on short notice, one of a handful of people gathered outside the Harris County Administration Building slipped up to The Insider and gently nudged him in the ribs. “Is this the lamest political event…
Over Their Heads
Prince Paul is damn near ecstatic. “Thank you!” he shouts into the phone. “Thank you for getting it!” The voice on the other end of the phone just gave Paul his take on Politics of the Business, Prince Paul’s latest CD: It’s not a Prince Paul rap album, but rather…
Bad Blood at Precinct 2
New Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Sylvia Garcia and aide Sharon Adams have been like two peas in a small pod since 1997, when Adams joined the then-chief municipal judge’s successful upstart challenge to controller Lloyd Kelley. The pair often seemed more like best friends than boss and employee, with…