Coal Miner’s Brother
The tomatoes were good this year. They came up out of that fine Kentucky soil that blankets the coal mines and connects the hardscrabble towns, bringing Chris Knight back home to the rolling hills of his heart. “It’s pretty good out here,” the singer-songwriter deadpans about his 40-acre spread down…
Doing Time
In 1985, Robert Sutten was standing in horror holding a pistol he’d just fired into the head of the mother of his two children. He’d been up four days in the Third Ward on a roller-coaster ride of quaaludes and speed. Sutten was now frantically waiting for what seemed like…
Drastic Unilateral Action
“Today we are making a major announcement…We [will] significantly reduce our CD prices in the U.S. starting in the fourth quarter. On virtually all top-line CDs, we will lower the wholesale price from $12.02 to $9.09, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $12.98…” And so, with this proclamation from…
Playing by the Rules
At the Gay Softball World Series in Washington, D.C., last month, a Houston team filed a protest with tournament officials alleging that another team wasn’t gay enough. The Houston Force, of the Montrose Softball League, sought to disqualify the Atlanta Power for having two more straight players than the rules…
Drive-By Truckers
On their last effort, the double-disc Southern Rock Opera, the DBTs dropped an expansive magnum opus that addressed Big Themes like youthful ambitions, racism, the tragedy of Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Wallace and — above all — geography and identity, or what they called “the duality of the Southern thang.” While…
Trapped on the Tracks
As a fanfare of recorded trumpets sounded throughout Jones Hall, an automated platform lifted the matinee performers from the orchestra pit to stage level last week. The red plush seats in the cavernous concert venue were all empty, while the audience munched on crunchy lunch salads at tables set up…
Nappy Roots
Defiantly homespun, the 2002 debut of Kentucky’s Nappy Roots, Watermelon, Chicken and Gritz, gathered up the back-porch drawl and bacon-grease funk that had been surfacing on Dirty South albums over the past couple of years, tied them together with a strong dose of populism and became a surprise success by…
Rockets’ Legal Dj Vu
While the local media gushes about the wonders of the just-opened Toyota Center, the downtown home of the Houston Rockets, team owner Les Alexander is in court again before the season even gets started. Minority organizations that sued and then settled a dispute over a 30 percent share of the…
Christopher O’Riley
Christopher O’Riley knows enough to care little: The classical pianist, joining the likes of Luka Bloom (ugh) and Brad Meldhau (hunh) as Those Who’ve Covered Radiohead But Are Not Rock And/Or Roll, dissects the back catalog (all the way back to Pablo Honey’s “Thinking About You”) till all that remains…
Soldiers of Misfortune
Fatima Leiva and Edwin Mancia had forded the Rio Grande into Texas only hours earlier — so recently, Mancia’s wallet was still wet. The two young Salvadorans had paid a coyote $200 for the crossing and a truck ride up State Highway 16, a main artery for undocumented immigrants heading…
Super Furry Animals
Though the Wales-based Super Furry Animals are sometimes known for their off-kilter sense of humor (driving around England in a purple tank, having Paul McCartney guest on their record by making chewing noises instead of singing), the progressive power poppers now find themselves near the top of this year’s hot…
Letters
HISD Stonewalling Muzzle time: I am appalled by the way Terry Abbott muzzles the Houston Independent School District principals and controls the access of the media to HISD administrators [“Speak No Evil,” by Richard Connelly, September 4.]. Abbott’s comments about The New York Times are outrageous. He said the Times…
Al Green
So I’m sitting here at the laptop, listening to Al Green sing “Call Me (Come Back Home)” and “Look What You Done for Me” on the built-in CD player. A family member is behind me cooking up turkey wings and mashed potatoes in the kitchen and chiming in with the…
Sister Laughter
Tina Fey aside, women comics get a pretty raw deal. They’re held to a higher standard than male comedians, get fewer movie deals and have to be skinny to get jobs — where is Will Ferrell’s cushy female counterpart? Grand old man of comedy Jerry Lewis once even said, “I…
Mary Cutrufello
Texas and Mary Cutrufello’s new home state of Minnesota are bizarro mirror images of one another. Minnesotans pay high taxes for lots of services, and we don’t want none o’ that big gummint stuff. It’s cold there, and it’s not here. We both talk real funny, but in completely different…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, September 18 Even highfalutin classical musicians are not immune to the charms of indie rock. Acclaimed pianist Christopher O’Riley found a new obsession the first time he heard the spacy, experimental alt-pop of Radiohead. He turned his professional ear to everything by the band he could get his hands…
The Constantines, with the Weakerthans
Though the Constantines are compared to Fugazi in practically every review ever written, that harsh framing of the band’s loose, percussive yet melodic rants and raves doesn’t do the band justice. Shine a Light, the Canadian band’s new album, takes on a much broader tone than its 2001 self-titled debut,…
What’s in a Name?
The pressure. Jhumpa Lahiri’s first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. To say that expectations for her next offering are sky-high would be an understatement. “I just tried really hard to not let that interfere with my writing,” says Lahiri, who’s…
Flaco Jimenez
The problem with Flaco Jimenez’s recent career is that he has often sounded like a guest star on his own albums. For years, every rock and country artist who wanted a steaming, hand-patted corn tortilla slapped on one of their tunes has rung up Flaco, and his 2000 release, Sleepytown…
Modern Art 101
SUN 9/21 The prints of these modern art masterpieces are everywhere. Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, with its swirling stellar landscape, hangs in dorm rooms across the country. Claude Monet’s Water Lilies can be found in any shopping mall, on everything from coffee mugs to toilet seat covers. The…
Grumpy Old Men
Secondhand Lions is cornier than the cornfields spread out in front of the dilapidated rural Texas manse inhabited by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, playing grumpy old brothers with mismatched accents. (Caine, in fact, has accent enough for three actors — one English, another maybe Texan, another perhaps Australian.) There…
Long Shot Against Longhorns
SAT 9/20 In September 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice Stadium and asked, “Why does Rice play Texas?” Not the main thrust of his speech (the president was famously setting forth his goal of getting to the moon by 1970), the question turns an eye to history. The…
Give Fighting a Chance
Tidy little Montecarlo, Georgia, which is the setting for Jonathan Lynn’s The Fighting Temptations, is a perfect movie fantasy town. At the picturesque train station, the ticket agent will call you a taxi or serve you a plate of Southern fried chicken. The house band at the local nightclub is…
Wet World
SAT 9/20 Is your kid a Jacques Cousteau wannabe? This weekend, take her to explore the Gulf of Mexico. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is sponsoring an exploratory session that will provide a first-hand glimpse into the bustling universe of critters that inhabit the gulf’s shallow surf. Kids will…
Theater at Its Best
Just try to pinpoint the central story in John Harvey’s Things Being at the Worst. We dare you. Oedipus, Sherlock Holmes and a dark-haired duchess from an obscure 17th-century melodrama all figure in the strange narrative in one way or another. Then there’s the necrophilia-loving wedding planner, a director who…
Festivus Maximus
Houstonians may scoff at Austin’s claim to be the “Live Music Capital of the World.” Almost any big city could make the same claim; even Branson, Missouri, uses the slogan as a tourist come-on. But twice a year, at least, you can believe the hype: during South By Southwest and…
The Good, the Bad and the Humidity
Humidity. It’s one of the defining aspects of life in Houston. It’s always there to greet you on your return to the Bayou City. Walk out of baggage claim and leave the airport’s air-conditioned biosphere — it feels like a flight attendant wielding giant tongs has draped an extra-large hot…
Friends FLY Free
Ballet and hip-hop will share the stage at Miller Outdoor Theatre –if only for one night. At Saturday’s “Enchanted Evening” performance, the Sandra Organ Dance Company will hook up with former FLY Dance Company member Mario Jamarill for a tango number. Sandra Organ, a master choreographer known for her elegant…
Up for a Spin
Close your eyes in Spindletop’s circular dining room and you can barely feel the motion. It’s like a slow, “clutch in” drift backward during rush-hour traffic. Or, perhaps, the crawling pace of an AstroWorld kiddie boat. The gentle, deliberate pull registers with your body’s motion sensors only if you actively…
Gilding the Lily
Even using the most liberal meaning of the word “sensitive,” it would be hard to see the Dandy Warhols as a warm and fuzzy band. Until now, that is. But even as a more mature Dandy Warhols emerges, a kinder, gentler version of the band is not without its problems…
Raw Deal
Long before recall elections, eating raw was all the rage in La-La Land. But it’s actually got nothing on the Japanese, who were serving up uncooked delicacies even before Madonna’s first transformation. Fish (309 West Gray, 713-526-5294) has been in the sushi, sashimi and tartare biz since its inception as…