Jesse Dayton
You tell ’em, Jesse. Hey Nashvegas! could be subtitled “Listen and Learn.” This is country music as it should be, not the stuff that gets played on the radio (KIKK’s recent love affair with the title track notwithstanding). Unlike with many neotraditionalists, who mistake classic song sentiments for their own…
Grilling Sacred Cows
What’s a disaffected blue-collar white guy supposed to do for a laugh in a world full of gay, handicapped and ethnocentric comedians? Come on down to Jeff Wayne’s right-of-center one-man comedy show, Big Daddy’s Barbeque. “I never say conservative or liberal… because that’s very divisive with people,” says Wayne, whose…
Merry Mayhem Tour
Let’s take a trip back to 1984: Reagan-era conservatism is in full swing; Duran Duran and Culture Club rule MTV; but a large subculture of American teens are still binge drinking, smoking weed and listening to loud rock ‘n’ roll. That year, thousands of these longhaired hedonists poured into the…
Full-Body Homage
Houston has been accused of having more overweight people than any other city. Makes sense. We also have more restaurants per capita than anywhere else. How do we countermand the charge of being an unhealthy fatty-fat-fat? With the Texas Women’s Physique Expo. It may sound like an excuse to have…
Gypsy Caravan II
Any concert that tries to bring the musical world of the gypsies to a single stage is bound to fail. It can’t be done. The gypsies are scattered across too many countries; they have mastered too many disparate strands of what we in America arrogantly lump together as “world” music…
History in the Unmaking
The remaining wards of Houston don’t seem to be included in much publicity from the chamber of commerce or other civic organizations promoting the Diamond Buckle of the Sunbelt. Yet if one wants to explore the city’s past, these four surviving neighborhoods present richer findings than all of the out-of-the-Loop…
Botched Job
After venting his spleen in theater and film for a quarter-century, it seems like David Mamet would be ready to divulge something human about humanity. Sure, his fervid fans may point to his Pulitzer and leap about singing hosannas to frothing hucksters and sexual miscreants, but after all the cock-a-doodle-doo,…
Green Peace
For a shot of Southern comfort that soothes the soul better than booze, head for Frankie B. Mandola’s Steaks and Burgers (5333 Kirby, 713-529-1266). There, you’ll find some of the best fried green tomatoes ($3.99) south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And yes, just about all fried green tomatoes are songs…
Fade to Black
It doesn’t take much probing beneath the thin surface to see Shallow Hal as an apologia of sorts from Bobby and Peter Farrelly. The brothers are known for making movies full of jokes about midgets, retarded people, albinos, the handicapped and so on, but always with the caveat that the…
Odd Couple
Six fried chicken wings encircle the round “Belgian” waffle dusted with powdered sugar. The Breakfast Klub’s chicken is hot and crusty, and so are the waffles. Individually they each taste just fine. I pull the meat off a wing with my front teeth, slice a big wedge of waffle and…
Do the Wrong Thing
Tape, a film by Richard Linklater, isn’t. It’s high time for some cinematic clarification: If a project is shot on celluloid, with light searing images onto emulsion, then it’s a film. If it’s recorded with magnetic frequencies or digital code (as is the case here), then it’s a video. Of…
Walker, Texas Ranger
Brennan’s of Houston serves Texas Creole cuisine, but head chef Carl Walker didn’t grow up in Texas or Louisiana. He was a Missouri farm boy who took an early interest in cooking. After high school, he joined the marines where he became a cook and baker. When he got out…
A New Tune
Natalie Merchant finished recording her third solo album, Motherland, on September 9, so by no means should anyone listen to the disc’s first song, “This House Is On Fire,” and think it has anything to do with hijacked airplanes, collapsed skyscrapers and the thousands buried beneath the rubble. The song…
Don’t Call Her Honey
Beautiful, badass Karen Finley has made a career out of kicking up controversy. The performance artist has been called everything from “the high priestess of pornography” by British tabloids to “a pinup girl for the First Amendment” by The Village Voice. She leaped onto the national stage in 1990, when…
Art Therapy
In the weeks since the terrorist attacks, many critics have proclaimed the abilities of art to remind us of the optimism of the human spirit, to show what beauty we can create, and to heal the wounds of the psyche. They have proclaimed, in a sense, art as therapy. And…
A Tasty Top Spin Treat
Mattress Mac may be able to save you money. But in saving us money, he has made quite a bit for himself, which is as it should be. It seems that the skinny guy shoving dollar bills into the television camera on his ubiquitous late-night commercials is also James McIngvale,…
Sick Kids
The names of all adolescents in this story have been changed. With a state-issued razor blade Becky scraped the skin off her knuckles, shaved strips of flesh from inside her arms and carved the names of girlfriends onto her thighs. She buried staples so deeply into her skin that they…
Walla Confusion
If you’ve got the time and/or the money and/or the sanity to keep close tabs on America’s indie-rock underground, you no doubt know that quite a few of the scruffy slouches who run things down there are double-dipping in an increasingly shallow artistic gene pool. Simply put, stagnation’s stinking up…
Protective Wrapping
When administrators discuss early- intervention and prevention programs, they talk about families. The idea is to focus on what a family does well, build on its strengths and treat everyone — not just the kid. If a teen is given counseling after being arrested then is sent back to the…
Se Habla Ska
You expect a band as well traveled as the Voodoo Glow Skulls to have its share of bad-luck road stories. You just don’t expect them all to come from the same tour. On the phone from somewhere between Edmonton and Winnipeg in an area he refers to as no-man’s-land, Skulls…
Burning Grief
Duke Jahnke did not expect the death of his fire captain nephew to turn into political hay — at least not on the very day of Jay P. Jahnke’s funeral. During the October 17 service, the firefighter’s widow told more than 5,000 mourners in unequivocal terms that insufficient staffing had…
Streamlining the Hit-Making Process
When most people think of payola, they think of a grizzled disc jockey (imagine WKRP’s Dr. Johnny Fever) getting bribed to play a tune with the gift of a stripper and/or a vial of cocaine. But WKRP has been bought up by a media group, and Johnny Fever’s day is…
Backing Off
After continual criticism that the Houston Independent School District’s contract with Community Education Partners is unfair, changes are finally under way. The once rock-hard $17.9 million agreement — staunchly defended by both HISD and CEP — was amended late last month and slashed by more than $2 million. Community Education…
Playas on Parade
All the playas came…from far and wide / Wearin’ afros and braids, kickin’ them gangsta rides. — OutKast, “Player’s Ball” People who spend most of their days buttoned-down and power-suited had the opportunity to go to two events over Halloween weekend where they could dress up like the ghettodelic icons…
Ballot Hits and Bloopers
The first round of municipal elections may have been totally overshadowed by the events of September 11 and after, but the races have been as zany as any in recent memory. For the first time in Houston history, former spouses faced off while the mayor and two city councilmembers fought…
The Pernice Brothers
You’d be hard-pressed to find a songwriter today who makes existential angst sound prettier than Joe Pernice. On The World Won’t End, the second effort from this latest Pernice incarnation (after Scud Mountain Boys, Chappaquiddick Skyline and his Big Tobacco “group”), the Massachusetts native treads his usual lyrical ground, serving…
Up In Flames
For a long time, things have been tense in the newsroom at KRIV, the Fox station in Houston. Now, TV-news types across the country are getting a look at just how bad things are. The Web site www.fuckedtelevision.com has, in the space of a few short months, developed into a…
Rick Bain and the Genius Position
There are at least a dozen bands in every town larger than a courthouse-square county seat that try and fail to capture the ’70s FM rock sound. Rick Bain and the Genius Position is one of the few that succeed. This is lava lamp, black light poster, ‘ludes-n-beer music of…
Letters, Week of November 8
Down on the Matt Jock bonding: This is one of the most unbelievable things I have ever read [“Full Court Press,” by Richard Connelly, October 25]. I am a former Houston Baptist University basketball player with a whole lot more talent than Matt Wohlfahrt ever had. Although I never played…