W.C. Clark
A mainstay of the Austin blues scene since the mid-’50s, W.C. Clark was hounded by a young Stevie Ray Vaughan to join his fledgling group (the Triple Threat Revue), and he co-wrote SRV’s hit “Cold Shot.” But W.C. Clark — the oft-described godfather of Austin blues — is usually left…
Super Bummer
As its boosters like to promise, when the Super Bowl comes to town it brings with it big money. In January 2004 the golden goose touched down in Houston and there were fortunes to be made. Cindy Kutch was here to grab a piece of it. She’d spent 15 years…
Teresa James and the Rhythm Tramps
Since Austin is crawling with Texas blues divas, Houston native Teresa James looked west for audiences and appreciation. Now based in Los Angeles and a veteran of the West Coast blues scene, James counts folks like Bonnie Raitt and Delbert McClinton among her fans and supporters. Her latest album, The…
DROSS
The Houston Chronicle’s New Monthly Plastic Surgery Advertising Supplement/PaperCity Rip-off:…
The Doves, with Longwave
Manchester’s Doves fall into that rare class of bands whose styles are virtually unclassifiable. Their songs aren’t poppy like stereotypical Britrock, not bombastic like Oasis or the Stones, not post-punk like the Futureheads, and not completely spacey like Spiritualized. Instead, the band takes the best aspects of those styles and…
Salud!
The Association of Food Journalists has announced that Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh received first- and a second-place awards in its recent national competition. Walsh won in the Feature Writing category for “Sex, Death and Oysters.” He placed second in the Restaurant Criticism category for “Sunnyside Sup,” “Baklava Bravissimo”…
Daddy Yankee
As a reggaetón pioneer with three U.S. studio albums (2002’s Changri.com, 2003’s Los Homerun and Barrio Fino) to his credit, Daddy Yankee is the hottest Latin import since Juanes a couple years back. While Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican MCs such as Vico C, El General and Tego Calderon struggled through the…
Chupa Thrills
Your checklist for a freaky Saturday night: blood-sucking vampire goats (chupacabras), a few live rats, some booze and a little jazz piano. Yep, you’re in for quite the party when Theatre Illuminata throws its annual free-for-all fund-raising event, Chupa Cabaret: Primeval Houstonians Emerging from the Slime of Buffalo Bayou. TI…
Love in Gloom
By conservative estimate, Tim Burton stands to rake in half a billion dollars at the box office this year, thanks to a childlike chocolate maker in mauve rubber gloves and, now, to a lively dead girl with marriage on her mind and the timid schlub who falls under her spell…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, September 22 Although it may seem like a real bitch at times, being a one-man band has its perks. You don’t have to share the cash you score at gigs, there’s more room on the tour bus, and the groupies are all yours. Hopefully, Anthony Gonzalez is enjoying the…
Proof Positive
In the tradition of A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting comes Proof, a psychological drama about a math genius and the people who worship, care for and endure him. Based on the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play by David Auburn, Proof is a strong film with intense focus…
Dark Comedy
The photograph’s image was once considered hilarious. Now it’s just plain disturbing: A black man has applied cork to his face to make it blacker still, and ludicrously inflated his lips with white paint. The performer plays the “coon.” The photo of vaudeville-era entertainer Bert Williams (1874-1922) was enough to…
Retro Fits
It would take a critic more churlish than this one to sneer and bare chickenlike talons at Roll Bounce, a formulaic crowd-pleaser that hits familiar marks, but does so well enough that it’s hard to fault anyone involved. The retro-’70s vibe seems kind of obvious, and the irritating Mike Epps,…
Hello, Dalai!
THU 9/22 His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama looks remarkably good for a 70-year-old who’s spent a lifetime in exile working for global peace and against intolerance — lofty tasks. So what in the name of Buddha is he doing in Houston? Rice University’s class of 2003 nominated the Dalai…
Highway to Hell
We’re in Berlin. It’s the end of June 1934. Hungover Max (Steve Bullitt) can’t remember the trick he’s brought back to the apartment he shares with his lover, Rudy (Brady Alland), a dancer at the drag cabaret. He was coked up and drunk when he propositioned his latest anonymous conquest,…
Joystick Jams
SAT 9/24 There comes a time in every man’s life when he finally accepts that his secret dream of making it to the NBA will never come true. This usually happens when he’s sitting on the couch watching a basketball game and realizes that all the players on the screen…
Capsule Reviews
An Empty Plate in the Caf du Grand Boeuf Michael Hollinger’s play, now running at Main Street Theater, is a most unusual comedy. Wildly ambitious, the play invokes some of American literature’s most familiar images, including Ernest Hemingway, a Parisian cafe and existential angst. But revered as they may be,…
Zilla’s a Thrilla
SAT 9/24 V-Zilla has watched the reign of the Geto Boys in the early ’90s, the emergence of the Screwed years and the current rise of Slim Thug, Mike Jones and Paul Wall. Now, the local boy’s itching to join the ranks of the Houston rap and hip-hop acts that…
Breast in Show
The round head of an infant meets the curve of a breast in Francesca Fuchs’s new paintings at Texas Gallery. Called “MOM,” the show presents scenes familiar to many parents, including Fuchs, a mother of two. Sometimes when artists become mothers, they seek to reflect that experience in their work…
Leaps, Leather and Lingerie
THU 9/22 The ballet world doesn’t pass its torches often, so when a young choreographer is featured alongside top-shelf dancemakers — as is the case in Houston Ballet’s “Mentors & Prodigy” — you’d better believe the young’un is good. The “choreographic sampler” features three pieces: Jirí Kylián’s Forgotten Land, Stanton…
Capsule Reviews
“Bill Traylor, William Edmondson and the Modernist Impulse” Bill Traylor and William Edmondson are two African-American artists whose work came to the attention of the art world and the broader public in the late 1930s because of its modern aesthetic. This Menil exhibition explores the modernist aspects of their work…
Guitar-Shredding on the High Seas
Built to Spill, the Decemberists, Sons and Daughters, and Mike Johnson appear Friday, September 23, at the Engine Room, 1515 Pease. For more information, call 713-654-7846.
New releases available this week
Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season (Buena Vista) ABC’s juggernaut drama is made up mostly of elements that have trickled down from HBO: black humor, self-awareness, the radical notion that women over 30 can arouse the national libido. The bonus deleted scenes don’t add much to the story, and behind-the-scenes…
Scared Straight
Alkaline Trio’s latest album, Crimson, sounds crystalline, from its minor-key piano introduction to its nuanced closing ballad. The band’s recent live sets have exhibited unprecedented energy, its newly animated stage presence punctuating the pop-punk hooks. To some longtime listeners, who have weathered cloudy recordings and spotty shows, these are welcome…
The Houston Press‘s top DVD picks for the week of September 20
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (Buena Vista) Anthrax Anthrology: No Hit Wonders (Sanctuary) The Batman: Season 1, Volume 2 (Warner Bros.) Battlestar Galactica: Season One (Universal) Born Into Brothels (ThinkFilm) Brothers (Universal) Cowards Bend the Knee (Zeitgeist) Divan (Zeitgeist) Inside Deep Throat (Universal) It’s All Gone Pete…
Million Dollar Smile
It’s true. Just like he says, Paul Wall really is, as the title of his major-label official debut has it, The People’s Champ. That much is obvious at his CD signing on a steamy Tuesday afternoon at a Best Buy in a bedraggled, seen-better-days block of South Gessner in Sharpstown…
Cre Cuts
A mid-July teleconference with Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe provided plenty of answers to the question “Why does mainstream rock journalism suck so hard?” Granted, the chat’s organizers tried to limit inquiries to the most predictable, least entertaining subjects: the band’s Live 8 performance in…
Cabbieville
On the other side of a barbed-wire fence, a war wages over a Sanyo flat-screen television. A Nigerian man flips to the Discovery Channel, where archaeologists sift for artifacts in a jungle. The voice of a wonky narrator throbs into the small room, nearly sending a young African-American man in…
Letters
Dangerous Drug Contempt for Mirapex and the FDA: The Houston Press, and Todd Spivak in particular, are to be commended on the recent story on the havoc wreaked upon an unsuspecting, already-troubled segment of our population — Parkinson’s disease patients — by the makers of a dopamine agonist called Mirapex…
Jet
For this Aussie quartet the reviews have been mostly positive, although plenty of scribes have griped that their breakthrough hit, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?,” nicks Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life.” (Guitarist/vocalist Cameron Muncey denies this charge, sort of: “It really sounds like a Motown song,” he insists.) Profit-wise,…
No Help Wanted
All Grant Holt wanted to do was report a suspicious backpack. All he got was months of hassle. Holt noticed an abandoned backpack on the street near the downtown Foley’s while returning from lunch May 20. It was still there when he took a smoke break a couple of hours…
Un-French Frites
A pile of creamy white mussels in shiny black shells sits in a big steaming pot in the middle of our table at Cafe Montrose. The tender mussels have been scalded in white wine and decorated with scads of well-cooked onion slices. My dinnermate and I dip chunk after chunk…
Allman Brothers Band
Contemporaries Lynyrd Skynyrd have gotten much more attention lately, but their rote replays of redneck rock come off like a tribute band’s set compared to the still-evolving and compelling musical journey of the Allman Brothers Band. After years of so-so studio efforts, 2003’s Hittin’ the Note proved a surprisingly powerful…
Between Is and Was
A satellite map claims that our corner of the Ninth Ward, back by the naval base 200 feet from the Mississippi River, is, somehow, dry. Four of five friends who remained — and say they’ll fight to stay — concur. Our house survived: our huge, gorgeous, rented house. We own…
Satisfaction Guaranteed
According to www.chocolate.org, 50 percent of women prefer chocolate to sex. They’re sure to find the 24-layer chocolate cake ($14) from the Strip House (1200 McKinney, 713-659-6000) arousing indeed. Yes, there are 24 layers to this potent seducer — thin, dark layers of extremely moist chocolate cake interspersed with dense…