Docket Rockers
“We’re indefatigable in our efforts at self-promotion,” says Death By Injection’s David Mitcham, gearing up for his band’s December 5 CD release party at the Fabulous Satellite Lounge. It’s not often been Racket’s experience to meet anybody — much less a musician in a rock band — who can work…
Tired of Turkey?
Bright red and streaked with fat, the large slab of raw meat glistens invitingly. It looks like a quarter-inch-thick slice of raw filet mignon. But it’s toro, the fatty underbelly meat of the bluefin tuna. I bite off as much as I can chew. It tastes kind of like steak,…
Mudhoney
The last thing that you expect to hear on a Mudhoney song is a lone saxophone staggering through the psychedelic mist of hippie-dippy organs, twittering electronica and slow-burn guitar rumble. Yet thar she blows in meandering amplitude on “Baby, Can You Dig the Light?” the extended opening salvo of the…
Glamorous Youth
On that June evening in Paris last year, it seemed the whole world was at the feet of Pure Rubbish. Only a couple of years before, the Houston band was playing small clubs like the Blue Iguana and Instant Karma. Tonight, they were opening for Offspring and their heroes AC/DC…
Mando Saenz
Everyone has to start someplace. Lyle Lovett, for instance, admits that he started out trying to be Willis Alan Ramsey. And whether it’s by coincidence, influence or intent, Mando Saenz sounds and writes like a cross between Ramsey and Lovett in their youth, which isn’t a bad place to begin…
A Slice of Chocolate, Please
Pizza is the last thing you’d expect to find at The Chocolate Bar (1835 West Alabama, 713-520-8599), a store dedicated to those with a serious chocolate addiction. Yet there in the corner is a pile of preprinted pizza cartons that say “Best Pizza in Town.” It’s no lie. Handmade from…
Taking Back Sunday and the Starting Line, with the Reunion Show and Northstar
Hailing from Amityville, New York — a town known for scenes of slaughter and houses with walls that bleed — Taking Back Sunday may lack the special effects to terrify. But its brash live shows have been drawing plenty of screams from emo-punk kids. Lead singer Adam Lazarra’s reputation for…
Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets featuring Sam Myers
Dallas bluesman Anson Funderburgh may not be a household name, but he should be. His debut, Talk to You by Hand, was released in 1981, and no fewer than ten records later, his artistry is like the pitching prowess of Randy Johnson: It just keeps getting better with age. The…
Miss American Pie
Veteran Texas casting director Barbara Brinkley is standing outside the just-opened Ramada Plaza Hotel on Kirby, sucking down a Virginia Slims cigarette and looking agitated. It’s a tough job Barbara’s got on her hands. She’s under orders from Universal Studios to find the hottest, sexiest girl she can to play…
El Vez
The King is dead. Long live El Vez! Yes, Elvis has left the building for good. Lucky El Vez is still with us and sees fit to grace us with a royal audience every holiday season. If you have yet to see the Mexican Elvis, run –don’t walk — to…
Taxing Miss Daisy
Last month, City Council passed an ordinance cracking down on deadbeat taxpayers, and Daisy Stiner, the new head of the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, acted fast. Under the so-called transparency ordinance, no city contract could be awarded to a company if anyone owning at least 5 percent of…
Downfall 2012, with Pimpadelic
Of Houston’s rap-rock bands, this one is easily the most political. Whereas the lyrics of Simpleton and Faceplant are very much in the early Beastie Boys beer-n-bong-n-babes vein, Downfall’s Daniel Gil takes more of a Rage Against the Machine approach, even though songs with titles like “Don’t Fuck with the…
Food Fight Hiccup
Just when you thought the battle for that lucrative City of Houston food and beverage concession at Hobby Airport had been conclusively settled in favor of the homegrown Four Families team, along comes a little security situation. The dominant corporate player on the Four Families consortium, Pappas Restaurants, may have…
Gary Stewart
If you’re looking for someone who’s genetically engineered to provide the perfect sound track for a night of boot-scootin’ and beer-drinkin’, Gary Stewart is your man. Who can forget his classic ’70s cuts “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” and “Drinkin’ Thing”? Tightly restricted country radio playlists and Nashville’s Music…
Couples Therapy
The news that Enron “whistle-blower” Sherron Watkins had quit her job at the disgraced firm was front-page news for the Houston Chronicle November 16. Unfortunately enough for them, it had first been reported the day before, in The New York Times. The Chron didn’t see fit to mention the fact…
Papa Mali and the Instagators, with Hi Ficus and Brother Luck
The bastard son of a one-night stand between Dr. John and Tony Joe White who was wet-nursed by the Meters (forget what you learned in sex ed, just go with the comparison), Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welbourne has become a regional blues/funk festival favorite with his otherworldly jams and stage persona…
Wake-Up Call
Only 2 percent of fifth-grade students who take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills science test in Spanish will pass it. Ninety-eight percent will fail. There’s better news in third-grade reading in English. Seventy-seven percent would pass there. Still, 23 percent would fail, and if they don’t pass on…
Vivian Green
Vivian Green has a soft voice, but it often builds into boisterous crescendos. It wouldn’t be surprising to see grown men weeping at the sound of it, or women gritting their teeth with envy. Her songs can wrap around you like a cozy blanket and then wring the inhibitions right…
Klan Comedy
Klan Comedy Sheet music: I am an African-American at the age of 53 who, as a black child growing up in the South, saw firsthand the crosses burned in my small town [“Fueling the Ire,” by Craig Malisow, November 14]. This is the first time I saw humor in the…
Sorrow’s Child
Being of the minority who did not worship Schindler’s List (vital message, tedious movie), it’s easy to feel skeptical of the preachy delivery of Ararat, which concerns not the Jewish holocaust but the Armenian one, its genocidal forebear of 1915-1918. Armenian-Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan (The Adjuster, The Sweet Hereafter) has…
Flying Solo
Native Houstonian Rob Nash was perhaps the only openly gay student in Strake Jesuit College Preparatory’s class of ’85. He didn’t mean to come out, but he’s not good at keeping secrets. “When the rumors circulated about me,” says Nash, “no one knew how to be evil to a real,…
What Was Going On
The tragedy is that even those who should have known better didn’t know at all; how could they? The names they sought weren’t listed, their contributions weren’t cited, their influences weren’t credited, so even those who spent hours and days and forevers wearing out the grooves in search of holy-mother-of-God…
Saving Beauty
In March 2001, the Taliban demolished two of Afghanistan’s treasures: the Bamiyan Buddhas, believed to be built in the third century. Towering at 50 and 36 meters in height and reflecting both European and Asian artistic styles, the Buddhas were a reminder of the country’s rich past. But the Taliban…
Ocean’s Ill Heaven
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film at all, but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Nonetheless, the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone attempted to make…
Too Young to Drink
A little over half a century ago, wine makers in the Beaujolais region of France came up with a great sales pitch: Rush a young wine to market and advertise it as a once-a year-treat. Lo, the Beaujolais Nouveau was born. Barely fermented and aged before it’s bottled, the Nouveau…
Manet, Monet, Money
It’s hard not to view the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s latest marketing campaign, “A Season of Impressionism,” with a skeptical eye. A common complaint among art cranks is that the impressionists are the only painters able to entice the general public away from their TVs and into a museum,…
Pitfall Punks
Don’t tell anyone, but Mike Davenport, bassist-vocalist for the Ataris, once had a backroom fling with a seductive game system that was not the recipient of his public devotion. “I was very heavily into Intellivision for a while. They had the better sports games by far,” he says. “Plus, they…
Richter’s Scale
Andy Richter, the man who for seven years proved himself the rare late-night television sidekick worthy of being labeled equal partner, is not given to saying nasty things about people who sign his paychecks, a rarity in a business where people are more than happy to bite, then bite off,…
Rockin’ Drama Mama
Look around a New York City subway train on a Saturday evening and it might seem that you’re stuck inside a shaky, clickety-clackety green room carrying extras to the set of a Fellini flick. But when Mary McBride observes the kaleidoscopic slice of humanity, she thinks up the next line…
A Dark and Stormy Night
The night was rainy and the streets of downtown were nearly deserted. I parked my heap at Old Market Square and ambled across to Warren’s Inn (307 Travis, 713-247-9207) in search of some trouble. The place always reminds me of a saloon out of the Old West — swinging doors…