Angry Young Men
Robert Turner is apologizing profusely. The soft-spoken singer-bassist for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is admittedly “scatterbrained” at the moment. It’s the night before the trio — which also includes singer-guitarist Peter Hayes and drummer Nick Jago — is set to embark on an all-important U.S. tour in support of its…
School Play
School isn’t Christa Forster’s thing — which is odd, considering that she happily taught high school English, first at Jesse H. Jones High School and then at St. John’s School, during most of the past decade. “I love learning, I love reading, I love writing, I love literature, I love…
The South’s Done It Again
Well the Dickinson boys are cookin down in Mississip’ / And the Garza boys are making Texans shake their hips / People down in Bama get their jams / When the Drive By Truckers pick down in Birmingham / Holy Roller Novocaine is druggin’ Tennessee / And My Morning Jacket’s…
Trainspotting
The plan was, if not perfect, pretty damn well thought out. Build yourself a little rail line through the picturesque parts of Hermann Park and downtown. Get it up and running. Then, when it comes time to go to the voters for permission to build a real light rail system,…
Air
City Reading: Tre Storie Western Record Makers/Astralwerks
Return of the Boogie Man
On the Friday before Labor Day, Houston City Councilwoman Carol Alvarado and state Representative Rick Noriega had just sat down to enjoy a holiday kickoff drink when Alvarado’s cell phone buzzed. On the line was state Senator John Whitmire, one of the 11 runaway Democrats who fled to New Mexico…
Client
Client Toast Hawaii/Mute
Sexed Up
Thomas Brooks says in retrospect that he should have seen the trouble developing back in 2001. As chief technician in the histopathology lab at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, he had told the lab manager about continuing problems with an employee hired the previous February. She’d been described as volatile and…
The Neptunes
Clones Star Trak/Arista
Letters
Blue Berry Caring couple: I am disappointed after reading your article about Michael and Nandy Berry [“Running Mates,” by Tim Fleck, August 28]. I think you have totally misled your readers about them. Are they ambitious? Yes. They’re a young, energetic couple, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Are they…
David Brake and That Damn Band
Every now and then you get a very good local record that totally takes you by surprise. This is one of those albums, a well-written and performed, well-packaged 11-song country-rock effort by an obscure guy worthy of much wider tradition. Brake was formerly one of the dueling piano players at…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thusday, September 11 Some theorists hold that FDR knew about the planned 1944 attack on Pearl Harbor and allowed it to occur so the United States would be drawn into World War II. If the September 11 terrorist attacks brought to mind a similar theory, then syndicated talk show host…
The Epoxies, with the Briefs and the Shocks
While it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment in history when ultra-fashion-conscious new wave music formally emerged, we can be certain that its arrival altered the face of popular music forever and influenced more of what’s now heard on the airwaves than a few would care to admit. Though a…
Close Collaboration
What makes up a face? From a distance, we recognize people by shape and basic forms, trying to focus the blurry edges. As the person gets closer, details emerge: shadows, wrinkles, whiskers. Chuck Close is well aware of the “order” of perception, and he’s used it to fuel his distinctive…
Smokin’ Joe’s Roadhouse Live Broadcast Anniversary Show
KPFT/90.1 FM has long been admired by local blues fans for its eclectic and numerous weekend blues programs, including Joe’s Roadhouse (Saturdays, 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.). For the past year, the Roadhouse has also presented something unique for Houston: regular monthly live broadcasts. Originating from the Rhythm Room, the…
Art Partners
FRI 9/12 Behold Houston’s latest artistic couple: Microcinema International and Infernal Bridegroom Productions. “When Fire Station [No. 3] decided to close, we wanted to continue working in Houston,” says Microcinema curator Patrick Kwiatkowski. “Our goal was to find an underground or independent art venue that wasn’t catering to the film…
Jeff Black
We were lunching at the L&J in old El Paso, a family cafe that serves the best hot sauce and steak tacos this side of the border and which is situated by the old Concordia graveyard where John Wesley Hardin is buried in the sand, and on the wall was…
As Good As It Gets?
The scrappy horde of reporters who hang out at Minute Maaid Park’s press row during Astros games can agree on one thing: Jeff Bagwell is their go-to guy. While second baseman Jeff Kent usually broods in front of his locker after games, turned away from the media scum, Bagwell always…
Split Lip Rayfield, with the Meat Purveyors
After a one-year absence (were they in prison, were they high in the Himalayas studying some form of trance-inducing meditation, were they just hanging out in flat Kansas getting high?), the arse-rippin’ bluegrass kamikaze deathray band Split Lip Rayfield is back out on the nation’s highways. Somebody call Tom Ridge…
A Grizzly Show
THU 9/11 According to popular conception, bears excel at just two things: preventing forest fires and mauling humans to death. But Bear, the seven-foot star of his own Disney TV series, can show you how to dance a sassy cha-cha-cha. In the live-action stage show Bear in the Big Blue…
Con Heir
When Nicolas Cage plays still and sullen — a man possessed by self-loathing and melancholy in Adaptation, say, or the landlocked angel in City of Angels — he comes off as drowsy. He disappears into those roles like a head plopped in a fluffy pillow, and it doesn’t quite suit…
The Celtics
FRI 9/12 New Celtic rock bands trying to crack the U.S. market have had as many ups and downs as the kilt of a drunken Scotsman. But if any band can make it here, it’s Great Big Sea, a four-piece group from Newfoundland. In its 12-year career in Canada, Great…
Johnny’s Show
God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack. Introduced right up front in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he’s first seen dressed like Prince in purple glasses and…
Feel the Steel
SAT 9/13 Wanda J. Laborde, producer of the third annual Pan Jam Festival, swears that the steel drum was the only musical instrument created during the 20th century. Whether or not that’s so, it certainly has plenty of fans. “We attract Trinidadians, college students, Parrot Heads and people who like…
Damned Strange
It’s official. Theater LaB has cornered the Houston market when it comes to the sort of campy high jinks that happen in shows like Michael Ogborn’s Box Office of the Damned. No one but Theater LaB could pull off the shenanigans that make up Ogborn’s wacky two-hour-long love-to-hate-you ode to…
Bordering on Bennigan’s
At Morgan’s on Montrose, the restaurant that has replaced the Redwood Grill, the Asian tuna salad comes on a pale green rectangular plate. The slices of ahi tuna are decoratively lined along the edge overlapping the mixed greens. Crispy fried Chinese noodles and pickled ginger are piled on the side…
A Rippin’ Rep
In the beginning Stanton Welch created a dance program and saw that it was good. Houston Ballet’s young new artistic director pulls off a minor miracle with the season’s opener: He melds new and old dancers into one cohesive company, and brings three choreographers into one consistent program. And this…
2 Filthy, 2 Furious
Johnny Rotten doesn’t converse, he spews. Epigrams fly from his lips like spittle from a baby’s bottle. Even by phone, the words burst the dam of his thin little lips like a river in an impassioned form of rhetoric that might easily be mistaken, by those who can’t think straight,…
Blunt About High Fashion
For Texas corporations looking to up the hip quotient in their logo hats and shirts, the time is now. Four-twenty, to be exact. A Canadian company called Hemptown — headquartered in Vancouver, a.k.a. “VanAmsterdam” for its lenient views toward mood-altering substances — is invading the Texas market with its clothing…
Bangkok on Everything
In his 1975 travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux wrote, “Bangkok smells of sex, but this sexual aroma is mingled with the sharper whiffs of death and money.” Terry Allen, already a renowned artist in several mediums, spent six weeks in Bangkok in 1984 composing the score for Amerasia,…
Bun Fun
That trendy spot upstairs in the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts is Artista (800 Bagby, 713-278-4782), best known for its airy novelle cuisine served in little square dishes. So it comes as a surprise that one of the two sandwiches on Michael Cordúa’s menu is a meat lover’s feast…