Amplified

We$theimer $treet Fe$t?

No, the Fuzzgun Records/Houston Press/ Mausoleum stage at the Westheimer Street Festival last week was not for sale, contrary to popular rumor.

The fiction and friction all revolves around four players: the bands Dune, TX and the Fondue Monks as well as Sixtone Records and stage sponsor Fuzzgun. These are the facts around which the rumor swirls: Dune, TX and the Fondue Monks were scheduled to play the Fuzzgun/ Press/Mauz stage. Dune, TX didn’t. The Fondue Monks did. The Fondue Monks’ record label, Sixtone, had paid Fuzzgun Records $300 to co-sponsor the stage. Dune, TX had paid Fuzzgun nothing.

These are the fictions: that the Fondue Monks paid to play. And that when Dune, TX front man Chris Sacco asked Mark Reed of Fuzzgun for an explanation as to why Dune, TX was pulled, he was told that the band, unlike the Fondue Monks, hadn’t coughed up any cash. Reportedly disgusted, Sacco sat out the gig.

But these are the facts to clear out the fiction: Reed says the Fondue Monks was one of the first bands scheduled. Reed says Dune, TX was scheduled but didn’t like its playing time, 1 p.m. That is the reason, and the only reason, why Dune, TX didn’t perform, Reed says. The band wanted either 2 p.m. or nothing; Sacco confirms this but adds, “we had already printed up flyers saying, ‘2 p.m. at [the main stage].’ I mean, it cost me 60, 70 dollars to print 300 postcards.We didn’t want [the 1 p.m. slot],” which was the first performance time of the day.

When asked why he couldn’t rearrange the schedule to accommodate Sacco’s 2 p.m. request, Reed says: “I can’t tell one of my sponsors [Sixtones/Monks] they have to switch times because one of my friends [Sacco] wants their time slot.”

And that’s a point Reed emphasizes. He says Sixtones paid him merely to co-sponsor the stage, which meant Sixtones paid to hang Monk banners by the stage and push Monk merchandise at the Fuzzgun tent, located beside the stage. The label didn’t, according to Reed, “pay to play.”

“I’ve always done that,” says Reed, of finding co-sponsors. Reed has been organizing Westheimer Street Festival stages for the past six years. “Stages can usually cost $2,500 to put up,” he says, noting that the main sponsors — in this case Fuzzgun, the Press and the Mausoleum — usually foot the bill themselves. Co-sponsors help defray overall cost.

Plus, Reed says, Sacco expressed an interest in playing the stage only “about a week before” the event, though Sacco believes contact was made earlier.

“[Sacco] is one of the few people I consider a friend in this business,” says Reed, who adds that he has yet to reach Sacco. In kind, Sacco says he also considers Reed a friend.

But could the lineup have been rearranged to accommodate Dune, TX had Sacco opened up his checkbook? Reed says no, and that he never told Sacco he could pay to play. “The only thing near that,” Reed says, “is if I might have said, ‘If you had paid to sponsor the stage, I could’ve done something.’ “

Says Sacco: “I think he said something like that, but I knew he was kidding. And the money thing, that doesn’t really bother me. It’s his stage, he can do whatever he wants. It’s just that 15 to 20 people came up to me [during the festival], and they were asking us why we canceled. I said, ‘We didn’t cancel, we were bumped.’ “

In the band’s six years of playing, Sacco says, it has never canceled a show. “We’ve done two-man gigs before.”

Horrorble Houston

Everybody knows how difficult it is to make a good pop album. But what about a good pop musical (which requires not only good songs but good visuals and a good story line, too)? And while no one is saying The Rocky Horror Picture Show is high art, we can say that as a piece of popular music it is as good if not better than every album every Rolling Stone critic has ever tongue-bathed, including but not limited to Exile on Main Street, Sgt. Pepper and Nevermind. (Yawn!) Taken purely as pop, Rocky Horror is a commercial, critical and comedic gem.

With songs like the raucous, New York Dolls-inspired “Sweet Transvestite” (by Dr. Frank-N-Furter), the aphrodisiaclike “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me” (by Janet) and the de facto theme song “Time Warp” (by cast), Rocky Horror does what most pop records cannot. It rocks.

Just in time for Halloween, the River Oaks Theatre will be showing the picture on Friday, October 29, at midnight, in addition to its usual weekly Saturday midnight time slot. Crowd participation is encouraged. While you might not know all the dialogue, you can at least throw rice (as newlyweds Brad and Janet walk out of church), shoot your squirt gun (as Brad and Janet walk in the rain) or throw toast (as Frank-N-Furter proposes a “toast” to dead friend Eddie, who is played memorably by current Fight Club co-star Meat Loaf). And don’t be worried about not knowing the Time Warp. It’s not the Macarena.

New Dumb Bastards

Our fave, the Poor Dumb Bastards, will celebrate the release of its new CD, Valley of the Dogs, on October 23, at Emo’s, 2700 Albany. Call (713)523-8503 for more information.

E-mail Anthony Mariani at anthony_mariani@ houstonpress.com.