Blogs

What with all the talk of being tool in the comments to this post, it’s kind of fitting that we just got an email announcing that Tool, the band, is coming to the Toyota Center on Friday, November 16. Tickets go on sale next Friday. If you make it out to the show, be sure to get one of those bumper stickers for your car, since we always get a kick out of driving behind folks who’ve labeled themselves as such. – Keith Plocek

According to this Chronicle report, Galveston Mardi Gras has decided to ax live music from the official festivities. Organizers say the bands cost too much money and created too much of bacchanalian atmosphere that jarred with the family vibe they want to create.

I’m not gonna argue the first point too much. Galveston Mardi Gras has been losing money for years, and I guess cutting the budget to the marrow is one way to turn that around.

And while I am down with the concept of a family Mardi Gras, I don’t think it will work in Galveston. All-ages Mardi Gras works very well in rural south Louisiana, but that’s because the families who participate in it are usually locals who see Mardi Gras as a way of life, not a money-making tourist attraction.

Sound Exchange honcho Kurt Brennan (right) purchases Sean McManus’s fabled record collection and funds his move to the Big Apple with this giant check for a gazillion dollars. McManus’s stash is now on the racks at Sound Ex. – John Nova Lomax

Has something ever happened in your life that just made you wanna ball your fists up and punch a wall like the Hulk? Have you ever been so angry and desperate for an outlet for your primitive frustrations that you bit your own steering wheel in half? If you have experienced either of these two emotions in life, I’m with you.

This morning I found out that EMF is reconvening for a reunion show. Yeah, those guys. And get this kids, this isn’t their first reunion run. They’ve done this at least three times. Christ on a crutch! Excuse me while I do a Schubert Dip into a vat of muriatic acid.

-- Craig Hlavaty

Some cities are famous for their unique cultural contributions: Philly and cheesesteak. New Orleans and jazz. Arlington and…the blues. Yup, developers in Arlington want to turn some vacant land by the Rangers ballpark into a $300 million paean to Texas blues.

The complex, which right now is just a a sketch and a figment of developers’ imaginations, would feature high-price condos – you know, the kind of luxury pads where Lightnin’ Hopkins and Blind Lemon Jefferson lived and learned the meaning of the blues.

Drenched in Blog has officially turned 50 posts old. If it were a white male, it would be buying a Camaro with its kids’ college fund and getting hair plugs to impress Texans cheerleaders. Basically it would be American Beauty’s Lester Burnham.

Over these past two months, I have tried to bring you the dredges of the music world: the sex tapes and banal beasts stalking the pop charts, with a heaping helping of creamy snark. I would like to thank everyone who gets the jokes and even the people who didn’t understand that I actually love Led Zeppelin. You even kept reading after I posted drunken photos of myself drinking whiskey. Who’s the sick one here?

The Houston 100 continues. Follow the links for numbers 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, 81-90 and 91-100. And be sure to check out "The H-Town 20.”

30. “Okie Dokie Stomp,” Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, 1954. Blistering big band jump blues with Gatemouth’s trademark Texas swing…Some have declared that this instrumental should be the Texas National Anthem. Gatemouth was one of the very finest electric guitarists from the 1950s on, and here he dips and dodges between punches from a huge horn section like Barry Sanders jitterbugging through linebackers. Brown re-wrote the T-Bone Walker book on Texas blues and rock guitar.

29. “The Road Goes On Forever,” Robert Earl Keen, 1989. More Texans between 30 and 40 probably know all the words to this song than any other cut in the past 25 years. It’s the “Livin’ on a Prayer” of Texas.

28. “Telephone Road,” Rodney Crowell, 2000. Out of at least five songs about the eponymous East End boulevard of broken dreams, Crowell’s is the best. The centerpiece of his autobiographical album The Houston Kid evokes Houston with a vividness that has seldom been matched.

27. “Hit the Road, Jack,” Ray Charles, 1961. Brother Ray’s second number one single was penned by Houstonian Percy Mayfield (and recorded around the time that Charles was living here) and remains a favorite with fans of all ages. The song is also used to taunt opposing players at major sporting events, and Suzi Quatro, Buster Poindexter, the Residents and Basement Jaxx have all covered it.

26. “Release Me,” Esther Phillips, 1962. A transcendent cover of a classic country chestnut, Phillips’s version transforms even the most drab of surroundings into a glitterball-lit dancehall where two lovers share their last dance. Her anguished yet resigned voice seems to drift above the lavish arrangement like a cloud of smoke. A must.

25. “She’s About a Mover,” Sir Douglas Quintet, 1965. Yes, the ultimate Texas rock song was recorded in Houston. It would certainly rank in the top three Houston songs ever if it didn’t sound so quintessentially San Antonio.

The Houston 100 continues. Follow the links for numbers 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, 81-90 and 91-100.

40. “Smile,” Scarface, feat. 2Pac, 1997. This 1997 duet off of The Untouchable with 2Pac, the late James Dean of rap, was ‘Face’s biggest chart hit, his only gold single.

39. “Ain’t That a Bitch,” Johnny “Guitar” Watson, 1976. Just one of dozens of mid-‘70s funk classics from the pimp-a-riffic former bluesman Watson, one of the most widely-respected and underappreciated American musicians of the last 40 years.

38. “Lookin’ For Love,” Johnny Lee, 1980. Johnny Lee is relegated to the background in Urban Cowboy; the fiddle and steel players in his band get close-ups in the 1980 film, but not him. Luckily, the Texas City native's "Lookin' for Love" wasn't just the double-album soundtrack's breakout hit – three weeks at No. 1 on the country chart and peaking at No. 5 on the Hot 100 – it was basically the entire movie in a three-minute ballad. In the Pasadena fairy-tale romance of Bud (John Travolta) and Sissy (Debra Winger), it's not their get-acquainted dance – that's quicker two-step "Cherokee Fiddle." "Lookin' for Love" happens later, when Gilley's is practically empty. They're dancing much closer, Sissy's arms encircle Bud's neck, and he strips off her hat and his shirt before sealing their budding union with a deep soul kiss. It's that True Love moment when the audience knows that even though she will soon stray to an bullriding parolee and he to an uptown socialite, "Lookin' for Love" will allow them to find each other in the end. And sure enough, guess which song plays as Bud places the "Sissy" license plate back in the rear window of his pickup and the credits start to roll? – Chris Gray

37. “Coward of the County,” Kenny Rogers, 1980. With this one and number 36 below, Big Kenny was pretty much ubiquitous around the end of the redneck renaissance that accompanied the Carter Regime, that era of Smokey and the Bandit and Walking Tall, trucker lingo, Urban Cowboy, Farrah Fawcett, and not least, these two songs, both of which were world-sweeping affairs. Who can forget the chorus from “The Gambler?” As for “Coward of the County,” it spawned a stateside TV movie and went to #1 in the U.K., wangling to the top of the charts between records by The Special A.K.A. and Blondie.

The Houston 100 continues. Follow the links for numbers 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, 81-90 and 91-100.

50. “South Coast of Texas,” Guy Clark, 1981. Though this song hasn’t been recorded as much as others in Clark’s stash, it makes it on here due to both geography and the fact that it is a very great song, an ode to shrimpers, the bars they drink in, their patois, and the ragged shoreline they all call home.

49. “I’m Going to Miss Show Business,” Jimmy “T-99” Nelson, 2000. Nelson, who passed away earlier this year, got plenty of props in his lifetime as a singer. He didn’t get anything close to his just due as a songwriter, however, until Elvis Costello adopted this tune as his official tour anthem in 2003. (Elvis didn’t play it in his set, but he did have it played over the loudspeakers as the lights went up after every show.) Nelson’s genius still awaits widespread discovery.

48. “Purple Stuff,” Big Moe, 2002. Sumptuously funky, this ode to the joys of lean (codeine cough syrup) rode Moe’s hybrid of singing and rapping and a Willy Wonka-inspired video to the national charts.

47. “Southside,” Lil’ Keke, 1998. A devastating piano figure propels this anthemic rap hit from Screwed Up Click MC Lil’ Keke. Years later, the song was hilariously parodied by Chingo Bling as “Outside.”

The Houston 100 continues. Follow the links for numbers 61-70, 71-80, 81-90 and 91-100.

60. “The Rains Came,” Sir Douglas Quintet, 1965. The follow-up single to “She’s About a Mover,” this Huey Meaux mainstay of a lament would likewise rank higher were the sound not so indelibly San Antone.

59. “Driftin’ Blues,” Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, featuring Charles Brown, 1946. Sedate, laid-back cocktail blues like this, pioneered by Texas City-bred Brown, was utterly inhaled by the young Ray Charles, whose early recordings are blatant copies.

58. “Black Snake Blues,” Victoria Spivey, 1926. Spivey got her start playing in her dad’s string band in the Houston of 1918, and double-entendre lyrics and Spivey’s hard, nasal tone helped launch her long career with this single on the Okeh label. Four years later she would land a starring role in Hallelujah!, a musical by King Vidor and one of the first major films with an all-black cast.

57. “Skinny Legs and All,” Joe Tex, 1967. This all-time great party record from Baytown’s Tex went on to inspire psychedelic novelist Tom Robbins to pen a novel of the same name. Tex himself went on to convert to Islam, change his name to Yusuf Hazziez, enjoy a few more hits, and return to Texas (where he was a rabid Oilers fan), before dying in Navasota in 1982.

The Houston 100 continues. Follow the links for numbers 71-80, 81-90 and 91-100.

70. “Pledging My Love,” Johnny Ace, 1955. This was a posthumous hit for Ace, whose life was terminated weeks before after an infamous backstage drunken gunplay incident at City Auditorium here on Christmas Eve. Would rank higher were its Houston connections a little greater – even more so than labelmate Bobby “Blue” Bland, Ace was a Memphis artist.

69. “Juana La Cubana,” Fito Olivares, 1982. After moving to Houston from his native Mexican state of Tamaulipas, original Mexican cumbia king Olivares formed Fito Olivares y su Grupo La Pura Sabrosura (Group of Pure Flavor) and cut this single, which has since become a standard. It gave rise to a movie of the same title south of the border and graced the soundtrack of John Sayles’s classic Lone Star to the north.

68. “Galveston,” Glen Campbell, 1969. Who among us can take a trip down to our very own city by the bay and not break into a few bars of this Jimmy Webb-penned pop-country smash? I bet if you could monitor the interior of all the cars crossing the causeway, about ten percent of them would have people in them singing about “sea waves crashing” and “cannons flashing.”

67. “Bloody Mary Morning,” Willie Nelson, 1974. This minor country hit for Willie Nelson mentions Houston and also does a good job of capturing the tension and existentialism of commercial flight.

Interpol
Verizon Wireless Theater
September 25, 2007

Better than: Sex. Or so I’ve heard.

Download: Something from 2004’s Antics, as it seemed to be the least-represented of Interpol’s three albums Tuesday.

It’s probably going to take another year before I learn all the song titles from Interpol’s Our Love to Admire, and it’s a shoo-in for a spot on my Top 10 this year. Maybe even top five. But in their case, titles don’t matter nearly as much as moods, and the mood the New York quartet (with a hired hand on keyboards) cast over the nearly sold-out Verizon Tuesday night was spellbinding.

Interpol’s music unfolds like a plush tapestry, enveloping the listener with Dan Kessler’s spidery guitar, as on Tuesday’s opener “Pioneer to the Falls.” Just when an unearthly calm descends, previously undetectable bassist Carlos D. and drummer Sam Fogarino lock into a hypnotic, sinister groove, and Interpol bare their teeth with an ear-stabbing number like Turn on the Bright Lights’ “Obstacle 1” or Antics’ “Narc.” Lit in lush shades of red, blue, purple and orange, the dark-suited band unspooled their downtown mating rituals with cold-blooded assurance, periodically letting the audience up for air only to submerge them even deeper immediately afterward.

The Houston 100 continues. Follow the links for numbers 81-90 and 91-100.

80. “Please Come Home for Christmas,” Charles Brown, 1960. A minor hit for Texas City’s Brown, the song has endured for decades to become the second of his Yuletide staples. Think you’re miserable at Christmas? Try these lyrics on for size: "Bells will be ringing / The glad, glad news / Oh, what a Christmas / To have the blues / My baby's gone / I have no friends / To wish me greetings / Once again."

79. “Texas Cookin’,” Guy Clark, 1976. If a better, more thorough song about our homegrown cuisine has ever been put to paper, we’ve yet to hear it. Simultaneously makes you hungry and compels you to sing along. (George Strait cut the tune last year.)

78. “Boot Heel Drag,” Bob Wills, circa 1948. Featuring Herb Remington One of Wills's jauntiest intstrumentals, led by the incomparable Houstonian Herb Remington on virtuoso steel guitar.

77. “Deep in the West,” Shake Russell, 1978. Another of Shake’s regional hits from Songs on the Radio; this one was later cut by no less a hoss than Ol’ Waylon himself.

The Houston 100 continues. Click here for numbers 91 to 100.

90. “Jole Blon,” Harry Choates, 1946. The unofficial Cajun national anthem was first recorded in Houston, by Choates, a Port Arthur-raised hellraiser who would die in a fit of delirium tremens in the Austin jail at 29 five years later.

89. “Spin on a Red Brick Floor,” Nanci Griffith, 1988. A song about local folk mother church Anderson Fair, recorded live at Anderson Fair. Doesn’t get much more Houston than that. As much fun as a trip to the Fair’s famous back porch.

88. “Telephone Road,” Steve Earle, 1997. Earle’s musical remembrance of Telephone is seen through the eyes of an eager transplant to Houston from Lafayette who can’t wait to indulge in the dozens of jukebox-blasting, beer bottle-ringing sin-dens on the street, reasoning that “this ain’t Louisiana and mama won’t know – everybody’s rockin’ down on Telephone Road.” Gospel group The Fairfield Four does a star turn harmonizing the chorus.

87. “Legs,” ZZ Top, 1984. The video -- long on hot rods, gimmicky guitars and plenty of jiggling cheesecake -- helped usher the bluesy trio from the classic rock epoch to the brief MTV era. Jeana Keough, widely considered the sexiest of the Top girls at the time (well, at least with the 14-year-old boy demographic at my house), went on to a Playboy centerfold, marriage to former Oakland Athletic Matt Keough, and a star turn on The Real Housewives of Orange County.

86. “14 Carat Mind,” Gene Watson, 1981. The biggest in a long string of hits from this nonpareil stone-cold honky-tonker from Pasadena.