Too Much Genius
A few weeks ago, VH-1 aired a documentary on the making of some Fleetwood Mac release — either Rumours or Tusk, it hardly matters which. Lindsey Buckingham sat behind a console, fiddling with knobs and dials until he managed to separate out each piece of one particular song: He isolated…
Static
A music council by any other name… In recent years, the Houston Music Council hasn’t gotten a whole lot of respect from local scenesters. Part of the problem is its checkered past — and the fact that every time a musician hears the Music Council’s name, all that mixed history…
Watt’s Engine
Just like James Joyce had his Dublin, Mike Watt has his San Pedro. The port town on the Los Angeles harbor has been the bass player’s stomping ground since he was a kid, and he knows every inch of the place. His dad, a career Navy man, was stationed there…
Old-Time Fun
Musical comedy is a dying art. All those blaring voices, that bug-eyed acting and the inanely reductive themes are, for the most part, too insipid for contemporary audiences, which have become media-savvy, politically aware and existentially lost. A century ago, Nietzsche told us that God is dead, and an open-armed,…
Off the Wagon
Sometimes, the best reason for a reunion is no reason at all. What else can explain the recent reconvening of alt-rock progenitors Jane’s Addiction — other than, of course, greed, which is a charge returning members Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro and Steven Perkins vehemently deny. As they should, seeing as…
Happy Feet
Sitting in a small office in the University of Houston’s Melcher Gymnasium, Robert Henry Johnson looks like a slightly naughty child. He’s positioned himself on the floor next to a metal desk, and as a conversation gets under way he begins pulling at the sweatpants he’s wearing, stretching them down…
Rotation
The Moog Cookbook Plays the Classic Rock Hits Restless If you’re of the opinion that some of the best moments in rock were created in jest, then the latest slab of irreverence from semi-mythic synth-age troopers the Moog Cookbook ought to fall somewhere between brilliant and hilarious in your pop-satire…
Howler
A team of Russia-based international bad guys want to knock off someone at the very top of the U.S. government. Who you gonna call? The Jackal. As personified by Bruce Willis, this assassin di tutti assassins is a tight-lipped psychopath with an alarming collection of multicolored hairpieces. Willis’s trademark tone-deaf…
Rules of the Road
Of the many lessons a struggling rock and roll band must learn, there’s one that sticks out in the mind of Tim Guerinot, vocalist for the Latchkey Kids: “You have got to reconfirm your dates with the clubs — even when you’re already on the road,” Guerinot advises. “Otherwise, they…
For Love and Money
Put brutally, the marvelous The Wings of the Dove is the story of a romantic frame-up that backfires. Thankfully, nothing is put brutally in this smart, lyrical movie. Director Iain Softley and screenwriter Hossein Amini cut to the thick of Henry James’s masterpiece about amorous extortion and moral purification. Helena…
Foolishness, fun and fajitas
Miss Manners would shudder at what passes for acceptable behavior at Fajita Flats. A low-level party rumble underpins both locations of this scruffy, good-times Mexican restaurant and more than occasionally erupts into brief but open spectacle. What with waiters breaking into song or dance in the aisles, there’s not much…
Animal Urges
Documentarian Errol Morris is by far best known for his 1988 feature, The Thin Blue Line, which is often described as the only film that ever got an innocent man off death row. But he got his start with very different sort of material: His first two films, Gates of…
Slow Death
Scientists estimate that the last Ice Age, which lasted roughly two-and-a-half million years, ended about 10,000 years ago. Glaciers covered the Earth, eventually withdrawing northward at a rate of (at most) inches a day, a process requiring millennia. And still it is possible to imagine, on some bright day around…
Big Talker
Willie D is in the house. In fact, Willie D is on the mike. A slow jam starts up behind him. “The say that the apple don’t fall too far from the tree,” he intones over the beat. “There are now more than a million children of imprisoned parents in…
Caution: Consultants Ahead
It was back in April of 1993 when the city’s Public Works and Engineering Department picked Terra Associates to manage its new “Neighborhood Traffic Projects” program. Despite the rather sweeping title, the program primarily called for the engineering firm to work with neighborhoods on designing and building so-called “911 gates,”…
Experience? Credentials? Who Needs ‘Em?
Naresh Dham figured he was an excellent bet for a promotion. An administration manager in the plan review section of the public works department’s Building Inspections Division, Dham had consistently received excellent performance evaluations in his 18 years with the city. Two months ago, Dham’s boss was promoted to a…
The Insider
Black and Brown and Green All Over The biggest factor in Lee P. Brown’s unexpectedly large lead over Rob Mosbacher in the November 4 election was the sizzling turnout in predominantly African-American precincts, where Brown won 90 percent or better of the votes. That result no doubt shocked Brown’s early…
Department of Self-Promotion
The Houston Press was honored this month as the “best non-daily newspaper” in the 1997 Katie Awards, a statewide and regional journalism competition conducted by the Press Club of Dallas. Two Press staff writers were honored individually for their work: Shaila Dewan won the “best arts feature” category in the…
Hello, Columbus
A year has passed since the city of Houston promised $3.4 million in public money to a nonprofit agency fronted by a bankrupt developer to build affordable housing in a poverty-scarred section of the Fourth Ward. As a self-styled philanthropic organization, Houston Renaissance has always had a few credibility problems,…
Letters
Hobart Rowland, Town Gossip This letter is in response to the Static column [October 23] by your so-called “music editor,” Hobart Rowland, regarding the closing of Rockefeller’s. Unlike his “anonymous source,” I am a faithful and loyal patron-turned-employee of Rockefeller’s who obviously got a hell of a lot more out…
Press Picks
thursday november 13 Making the Art Dance! You may never get another chance to see such a performance. Tonight, the paintings from the MFA’s current show, American Images: The SBC Collection of 20th-Century American Art, come to life. The Core Performance Company, the professional company within Several Dancers Core, dances…