Neil Diamond; Bobby Bare
Ah, yes, the old reinvention album. Recent years have seen Dolly, Cash, Solomon Burke and Loretta Lynn utterly rebrand themselves, with or without outside producers — as often as not Rick Rubin, who’s such a master at this he’s hereby earned the coining of his own verb — leading the…
Pungent Pizza
In a world where pizza is consistently associated with Italy, the Moroccan pizza ($6.95) at Cava Bistro (300 Main, 713-223-4068) might come as a surprise. But pizza is hardly uncommon in Morocco, since all the Mediterranean, Italy included, is a culinary mélange. This pizza’s golden-brown crust is almost as soft…
Various Artists
Forty years ago, the Beatles escaped the boy-band ghetto of their bubblegum early years with Rubber Soul, the first in their string of classic middle- and late-’60s albums. To commemorate, Razor and Tie has compiled this rarest of things: a tribute album to another album. The set is composed almost…
Piece of Ass
Lost off I-10 West, I stumble upon a bar. It’s small, dark and hidden behind a strip club, and the weathered plywood sign reads The Red Hog Saloon (10312 Hempstead Road, 713-290-1666). I park and go inside, where I ask the bartender what the house specialty is. “Oh,” she says,…
The Linus Pauling Quartet
If you listen to any one thing I say as a critic in these pages, then listen to this: Songs of the Cretaceous, by Houston’s finest psych dorks, the Linus Pauling Quartet, is 2005’s best local release, bar none. Released as a very limited MP3 CDR, it contains everything they’ve…
Beat Cowboys, with Eric Hisaw
Roots music wasn’t exactly in style back in the ’80s, when future Beat Cowboys singer-songwriter-guitar-slinger Rick Eakens relocated to H-town with his Las Cruces, New Mexico-formed band, the Footnotes. Beat Cowboys opening act Eric Hisaw, another Las Cruces musical vet now living in Austin, gives a desert-dry, in-a-nutshell version of…
Fear Factory
One of metal’s most versatile acts, Fear Factory maintains its die-hard cult base by throwing in a little something for fans of all the music’s various crunchy subgenres. Vocalist Burton C. Bell and bandmates Christian Olde Wolbers (guitar), Byron Stroud (bass) and Raymond Herrera (drums) can slip in and out…
A Very Long Run
Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (Columbia Home Video) The centerpiece of this three-disc boxed set isn’t the classic 1975 album, but the two DVDs that come with it. On one, shot in London in 1975, Bruce and the band tear through most of Born to Run and its…
Ben Folds and His Band
In a guitar-centric rock universe, Ben Folds maintains his place as Iconic Nerd Rock God in the grand tradition of those other piano men, Elton John and Billy Joel. Though he hasn’t gotten as much radio play as his forebears, Folds does have the helpful benefit of a cult following…
Our top DVD picks for the week of November 15
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Wellspring) The Ed Sullivan Show Rock & Roll Classics Boxed Set (Sofa Entertainment) Fantasy Island: The Complete First Season (Columbia/Tristar) Friends: The Complete Tenth Season (Warner Bros.) Friends: Collector’s Box (Warner Bros.) Greg Behrendt Is Uncool (WEA) Guided by Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion (Plexifilm)…
Paul McCartney
Sometimes even royalty needs a kick in the ass. That’s what Sir Paul McCartney got for himself by pegging Beck/Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich to helm his recent Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Godrich is a man not afraid to tell a living legend when he’s wanking out the silly…
Family Ties
In late September, a group of middle-aged and young adults walked into Reliant Center to minister to Hurricane Katrina evacuees. They were part of an organization called The Family International, which, in the 1980s, advocated sex between adults and children. The evacuees didn’t know it. The Red Cross didn’t know…
Fire Flies
The part with the dragon is really cool. Might as well cut to the chase, right? It’s not as though you need anybody to tell you the basic premise of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; if you somehow missed the last three, this won’t likely be the one…
Bedtime Stories
This is a sidebar to this week’s feature, “Family Ties” Sara Kelley was Ricky Rodriguez’s nanny and wrote the letters that ultimately were compiled into the 762-page Story of Davidito, intended as a child-rearing guide for the Family. Kelley’s last known address is a Family home in southwest Houston. Also…
Hello, He’s Not Johnny Cash
It seems like so much nitpicking, but why is the Johnny Cash biopic called Walk the Line when a far better name would have been Ring of Fire? Surely James Mangold, co-writer and director, would insist he chose the former because of its lyrics dealing with the temptations that crop…
Letters to the Editor
No Sense or Sensibility Ascent of the stupid: This story [“The A Student,” by Todd Spivak, November 3] again epitomizes the total lack of sensibility and common sense of the institutions that teach our children. It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly stupid the individuals are who ascend to…
Spell It Out
Richard Gere? That’s the first thought that came to mind upon learning that Mr. Salt-and-Pepper-Sexy-Buddhist-WASP had been cast as Saul Naumann in Bee Season, the film version of Myla Goldberg’s best-selling novel. In the book, Saul is an oppressive and learned Jewish patriarch, a cantor and student of mysticism whose…
Awards Time
The Dallas Press Club has announced that Houston Press staff writer Craig Malisow has won a Katie Award in the Major Market Business Feature category for “Exposed Nerve.” Malisow wrote about the expansion plans of a company that manufactures pacemakers used to control epileptic seizures. Staff writer Josh Harkinson was…
“Round” Here
As former Press staff writer Shaila Dewan noted in these pages eight years ago, installations at Project Row Houses are tough to critique. Founder Rick Lowe has said he’s more concerned with what art does than what it is, and PRH’s curators don’t seem to care much about blowing the…
Dave to the Rescue!
It’s chaos in front of the Houston Improv after the first show in a Dave Chappelle double-header. Hundreds spill out of the club and into the parking lot. As they lean on complete strangers’ cars, they high-five each other, bellow into their cell phones and point to the marquee that…
Capsule Reviews
“John Hartley and Ernesto Marenco” John Hartley takes tiny figurines — of soldiers, sailors, nurses, bakers, Batman, Aunt Jemima, the Boy Wonder — and paints large oil portraits of them. His models are made from plastic, tin or ceramic and are in various states of decay. A soldier’s paint-chipped face…
A Beat of One’s Own
at .
Capsule Reviews
Envy the Cockroach If you just can’t get enough of “chicks behind bars” exploitation dramas — like those cheesy Roger Corman movies Caged Heat and The Big Doll House — then Bob Morgan’s Envy the Cockroach, presented by dos chicas theater commune, should satisfy every lustful desire. The work starts…
Hidden Treasures
To make a record these days, all you need is Pro Tools, a CD burner and a pulse. And judging by some of the dead-in-the-water discs that cross our desks on a weekly basis, that last requirement is optional. Like noisy widgets, more albums than ever are being cranked out…
A Lost Soul
Putting together a sequel to a hit videogame is tricky business. Play it safe and give people more of the same, and it ends up feeling stale. But try to innovate too much, and you dilute what made the game great to begin with. Soul Calibur III somehow manages to…
On Da Lingo, Part II
A little more than a year ago, we discussed the meanings and origins of three ubiquitous hip-hop terms and their connections to Houston (“On Da Lingo”). Certainly by now (and arguably by then), all three of those words — “crunk,” “bling-bling” and “bootylicious” — are played out, as all such…
Man Man
Based on 2004’s The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face CD, it’s hard to be sure if the insanity of Man Man is entirely organic, but the wackiness here is of a fairly high grade regardless. The band presents an entertainingly mixed bag of seeming randomness, veering from…
True Blue Confessions
“Leave a confession,” Madonna purrs. “And remember, by leaving your confession, you’re agreeing to allow your message to be released in any form, at any time, until the end of time. So think twice, if you’ve been naughty.” Oh, we’ve been plenty naughty, which is why we called Madge’s new…
No Nobu
They serve sautéed snapper at Red Onion Seafood y Mas, the Latin fusion restaurant on the Northwest Freeway. And I’m happy to report that they leave some of the skin on so you can tell that it’s really Gulf red snapper. The fish I got was properly cooked so the…
