Houston Music Blog

Photos by Chris Gray

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Under the Volcano does not feel like Under the Volcano. The TVs are off, so no more NBA on ESPN. Hayes Carll's Trouble In Mind has come and gone - in its entirety - on the jukebox, taking its bad livers, broken hearts and drunken poet's dreams with it... mostly.

Earlier, a regular - appalled that there were actual music stands in the bar's small performance nook - asked Rocks Off if he should "mess with" the members of the Houston Symphony and other area orchestras setting up for Wednesday evening's "noncert," a bizarre program that will turn out to be half classical recital, half happy-hour mixer.

"That's up to you," we told him, managing to hold our tongue any further. "This isn't exactly three chords and the truth."

Now the musicians are ready to begin, and the evening's MC has an announcement. They understand it's a bar, so they're cool with people talking during the upcoming music, or as cool as they can be for people accustomed to performing in complete silence. But, he adds, "If you're breaking up with your girlfriend on your cell phone, you should probably go outside." Or, ahem, hitting on the blonde at the bar.

There was a moment at the beginning of Dengue Fever's performance Saturday night where the movie the band was scoring, 1925's The Lost World, kind of faded into the background and all we could concentrate on was how their music was filling the space like warm water in a bathtub. We usually complain about the muddy sound at Warehouse Live, and with the exception of Ludo's music seeping through the walls during the film's more somber moments (they were playing in the room next door), this was the best we've ever heard the venue sound.

The band played facing the screen and were almost invisible. The movie itself was very entertaining (in spite of a character in blackface) and some of the most powerful moments of Dengue Fever's performance came during stop-motion animated scenes of dinosaurs fighting, or when a wayward brontosaurus terrorized the streets of London.

Marc Brubaker

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Things could have gone smoother this past weekend on lower Westheimer. No one is denying that. Rocks Off has learned to live with the inevitable scheduling delays and interminable sound checks, as we're sure most Westheimer Block Party regulars have, but performers please take heed: Swapping stage times with each other willy-nilly, and especially not showing up at all, are no ways to win over new fans - or, really, to even keep the ones you've already got.

Marc Brubaker

​Yes, chaos is as much a part of the Block Party's DNA as the Super Happy Fun Land puppet shows and the Dead Roses/Future Blondes crew running around sipping MGD tallboys shrouded in brown paper bags. And we know it's hard as hell to keep your mind on selling T-shirts, serving beer, running sound, etc., after you learn a dear friend has just died. But there's something to be said for keeping the trains running on time (or at least reasonably on time), especially when you're trying to make a good impression on city officials in the hopes of resurrecting the Westheimer Street Festival.

Because even if the Block Party doesn't need any more bands trying to copy Vampire Weekend, Houston needs the Block Party or something very much like it. The event may not make much of an impact on the national or even regional musical radar, but really, who cares?

Block Party is a stark reminder of just how much musical talent we have around here. And as we could tell by the swarms of kids still well short of their 21st birthdays running around, its influence on budding local musicians is incalculable. Rocks Off is willing to bet the farm we'll see a lot of those kids again soon enough - only this time up on the stage.

Craig Hlavaty

Room 101

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Day 2 of the Westheimer Block Party started with slightly cooler temperatures and an hour-long caffeine-fueled session speaking with the 9/11 conspiracy booth in the parking lot at Numbers. Did you know that there were three shooters at Columbine, and bombs planted inside the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995? That's another blog for another time and place, where we're not being followed by corporate spies with guns that shoot ice bullets and rayguns and whatnot to stop Aftermath from giving you the facts.

We finally got to catch Springfield Riots after close to year of milling around not doing it when we had the chance. We have been missing out on some chill keyboard-plinking indie-rock this whole time, and their quick set outside Numbers was perfectly satisfying. Across the way at Mango's, things got started with Room 101, Roburt Reynolds' punk/video project. Playing to recorded drum tracks and playing live guitar, Reynolds plays Gang of Four-like screeds against all manner of political injustices and slights. The clips shown behind him ranged from old-school bomb-test footage to scenes from propaganda films. Any time you get the chance to see Room 101 is an education.

Right now Rocks Off HQ looks more like a MASH unit as we slowly recover from this weekend's Westheimer Block Party. We won't be on the shelf for long - not with the Marleys, Dwight Yoakam, Neko Case and lots more coming up soon - but while we take a day or two to recover, we hope you enjoy these videos shot by intrepid lensmen Marc Brubaker and Craig Hlavaty, who in some cases risked life and limb to get their footage. It's almost like being in the mosh pit all over again.

After the jump (and Little Joe), a spastic dancer at the KTRU Stage, Hula Hoop war, raging pit at Female Demand, prime rump shaking, very dark Benjamin Wesley and more. Boy, do we need a nap.

Brittanie Shey

Dead Roses - that's the ubiquitous Ralf Armin in the hat at left - on the roof of La Strada

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You know how sometimes you'll learn a new word, and in the weeks that follow you'll realize you're hearing that word everywhere, eavesdropping it in conversations and reading it in the newspaper. Call it the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or call it confirmation of bias, but whatever you call it, it was the theme for Aftermath this weekend.

A few weeks ago, we met Ralf Armin while eating lunch at Rudyard's. That same night, we ran into him at the Surfer Blood show at Mango's. This weekend at the Westheimer Block Party, he was everywhere: On the balcony of La Strada Beatles-style with Dead Roses Saturday afternoon; freaking people out inside Mango's during Sunday's brief rain with Future Blondes.

We even ran into him at the Cinema Arts Festival after-party Saturday night in the old Alabama Theater. In the midst of a hectic and entirely too long weekend, knowing we'd be running into Armin wherever we looked was the one thing that gave us a sense of consistency.

Marc Brubaker

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Saturday's Westheimer Block Party began on a wobbly note, as most music festivals do with fans and staff still trying to find their bearings, aided by alcohol or otherwise. The scene on the ground seemed chaotic just an hour into the first day of the event. Organizer and Free Press Houston editor Omar Afra walked from venue making sure everything was going off without a proverbial hitch.

The first thing we saw on Saturday was renaissance rapper Nosaprise on the Helios outdoor stage, doing a solo guitar cover of Gorilla Biscuits' "Start Today." His version was slowed down to half speed, but had all the same working-class fire of the 1989 original.

Nosa's mix of guitar work and drum machine beats has always made him stand out, and now with Fat Tony picking up the habit and B L A C K I E rumored to working with a live band, Houston indie hip-hop should be taking an interesting turn in 2010. All three artists have been bitten by the American Hardcore bug as of late.

Photos by Groovehouse

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We'll get the obligatory platitude out of the way first. If any of you didn't Day 1 of the one-and-only two-day edition of the Westheimer Block Party, then you missed an excellent day of music and community in Houston. As we walked between stages spanning the corner of Westheimer and Taft, we found ourselves amidst a broad cross-section of Houston life and culture out enjoying the fun and festivities.

Nosaprise

​We could give some credit to the City Of Montrose itself for playing host to the diverse array of people, but it didn't hurt that a rollicking portion of the Houston music scene was on display for the people's enjoyment. Toss in the various artisans with wares spread across the Numbers parking lot and you've happened upon a festival that inculcated quite the party mood.

Musically, we found nary a group that missed its mark. Caddywhompus provided some punky indie rock, while Muhammidali offered up its special brand of riotous, gritty hardcore-tinged noise-punk. Nosaprise rocked a rather empty parking lot at Avant Garden early in the day, impressively treating the 20 people present like they were 200.

Photos by Marco Torres

​7:54 p.m.: The show is sold out, so we were hoping to have left for it already. However, there is a major crisis in our home right now: Boy B is certain he caught a glimpse of the Cucuy. (The Cucuy is the boogeyman for Mexicans and he is fucking terrifying.) To compound the situation, he has also convinced Boy A of this as well. There is a dark spot on one of the planks of our hardwood floor that Boy B noticed earlier today. He believes this serves as indisputable proof that, not only does the Cucuy exist, but that he patrols the darkest shadows of our home looking for small children to maul.

As far our sons are concerned, fathers are good for three things: giving high-speed piggyback rides up the stairs, absorbing the brunt of Mama's scorn when she finds the three of us wrestling on the master bed and hunting the Cucuy. So we stalk around the house with the two of them at our heels, ripping open toy box lids and doors to closets looking for that hellish bastard. This continues for the next 22 minutes until their little brains are at ease, and we are entirely okay with that.

8:45 p.m.: Yowser. It's packed with women in here. And there was no picket line outside either. Is it possible that none of these people heard what happened?

Photos by Marc Brubaker

Dethklok

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If you were to tell any random music fan on the street that a tour with the four bands on the "Adult Swim Presents" would be happening, they would say "Oh sure, fuck it. Why not? It's all loud." But that's sort of where the tour planners alternately went wrong and right.

These four bands - Dethklok, Mastodon, Converge and High on Fire - represent four distinct strains of metal, which in turn also come with four groups of disparate fans. If there were open-minded people in the crowd who could dig all four - maybe not equally, but at least respectively on their own merits - Aftermath wants to hug and kiss you.

​To give full disclosure, Aftermath completely loves High On Fire, Converge and Mastodon. He never really understood if fictional death-metal band Dethklok, the night's closer, was a legitimate project or some sort of piss-take on a very volatile genre. It just took him last night to fully get what they have been doing, albeit almost three years after their first appearance on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup.

Most Houston fans were caught off guard that Thursday's gig at Verizon actually began at 6:30 p.m. and not the city-wide standard of an hour or more later. People who showed up late missed mighty veterans High On Fire from Oakland, Calif. Since stoner legends Sleep disbanded, HOF has been lead singer and guitarist Matt Pike's main project. A HOF set is like standing inside the engine of a jetliner.

Photos by Jody Perry

​"This bed is on fire with passionate love..." Aftermath has always loved James' "Laid." It's one of our absolute favorite '90s songs, and there couldn't be a better one to preface Regina Spektor's impending appearance at Verizon. The crowd is young, mixed (but mostly white), well-to-do, filling up the floor of the theater save a few scattered empty seats in the back where we're camped out.

It's obviously date night. We see a few girls' night out parties, but mostly it's couple city. We may be the only single man in the room. They think they're so pretty. A lot of them are, and they're probably getting laid later on. Most of them.

Aftermath has heard Regina Spektor's music (a little), we know she's talented (more than a little), but honestly, we're here mostly because it's something to do. And because this ever-hungry blog needs content, and because reviews are a quick and easy way to do that. Well, maybe not always quick. Or easy.

We wonder who these people are around us - what their jobs are, what kind of cars they drive, where they eat and drink, how they got their tickets. We're in the block of seats where somebody obviously knows somebody. Even though we're a reporter, or can be, we don't especially care to ask them. They're having fun; we're working. That line just won't be crossed, no matter what.

She's on.

Photos by Marco Torres

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7:15 p.m. Ack. Parking on Washington Avenue at night is just about the worst. It's such an uneasy feeling. If we had to choose between parking on Washington or juggling knives with no pants on, it'd end up being something we actually had to think about. We mean, we're just saying we'd consider the alternative. We'd eventually pick the parking. C'mon, it's knives. We're not entirely retarded.

7:25 p.m. We finally settle on a dark, anonymous lot a block or so over from the venue. You know you're in a bad parking spot when you ask yourself, "I wonder how many people have been raped here?" and then get out of your car and sprint towards street lights.

Photos by Groovehouse / Click here for a slideshow

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As we enter the second-to-last month of what was been an alternately amazing and confounding year for music, Aftermath has been thinking a lot about recurring themes we have encountered over the past twelve months. Seeing a rock and roll show every other night isn't always some sort magical boozical tour, because the sad part of it is that you start getting complacent - or worse, you become super-hard to impress.

You also pick up vibes from crowd to crowd that most folks don't get to chart. Remember our Kings of Leon review a few weeks back?

Aftermath has seen Memphis' Lucero at least four times this year, including two nights ago at Fun Fun Fun Fest and the brief layover in the sweatbox that was Walter's back in June. Onstage, the band had always been less a musical force than an excellent backdrop for lead singer and guitarist Ben Nichols' cinematic storytelling. With the addition of a three-piece horn section, both live and on new album 1372 Overton Park, the music has finally caught up with Nichols' widescreen lyrics. Also, seeing the band reasonably sober (at least to Aftermath's standards) helped our reasoning and comprehension of what we were seeing.

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for slideshows from Day 1 and Day 2

Times New Viking

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If there's anything that Aftermath truly loves about music (outside of watching talented people create outstanding art), it's the innate propensity the medium possesses to bring people together. There is something so idealistically communal about watching a show with five, twenty, one hundred, or five hundred of your friends (some new, some old) and knowing that you're sharing a very special experience.

The founders and curators of Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest, now in its fourth year of existence, have an innate understanding of this feeling and actively seek to propagate the familiar nature of good music in all that they do. Four stages and two days of punk, metal, indie, hip-hop, and comedy acts, along with local Austin food, beverage and clothing providers, gather into Waterloo Park to celebrate great music. It's a magical sort of event where genres are left at the door (mostly) so that neon-and-feather bedecked hipsters can stand alongside old-school punk rockers in their tattoos and patch-laden denim and geek out to the Jesus Lizard together.

What follows is a rundown of the best performances we saw all weekend long, presented in alphabetical order.

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for a slideshow

Nice to see you too, Metallagher.

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Day two of Fun Fun Fun Fest began with a slow and steady rain shower that turned into an all-day headliner. As we walked the ground and felt the rain soak into our clothes we started getting ACL flashbacks. Before we knew it we were walking through acres of mud and muck, albeit clean muck, free of reconstituted fecal matter. That's always high on our list of priorities.

Metallagher on the small Yellow stage on the south side of the venue pretty much made up for the rain in our eyes. The band is a Metallica and Gallagher cover band, donning wigs playing covers of some of Hetfield and company's best tracks. Their lead singer wields a sledgehammer and lays waste to large round fruits just like the real Gallagher, in between sporadic bouts of "comedy" with sample topics including "Ehh-rabs," women and bathroom difficulties.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

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While we go to festivals such as Fun Fun Fun Fest because we enjoy great music, we are also fans of the sorts of people who attend these events. We're people-watchers at heart, so we frequently engage in a bit of amateur sociological research in between sets. At South by Southwest, there are as many PR flacks clicking away on their BlackBerries as there are folks there actually for the music, while at Austin City Limits Festival, you have to contend with the teeming throngs of chair people and their innumerable flags.

​But with this two-day event, we have the opportunity to see indie rock hipsters and punk rockers in their natural habitat - sure, there might be a few bros around (it is Austin, after all), but we'll be damned if these two crowds don't love to get dressed up before they head out for the music.

For starters, since Where the Wild Things Are has been such a big hit with critics, nerds, and geeks for the past few weeks, we expected to see a few crowns (for Max). But we were astonished to see how many kids were sporting various caps, hats, and beanies with different animals and/or ears. We get it - you're nostalgic, you liked the movie, you think Maurice Sendak wrote a timeless children's classic (and we do too) - but is it really necessary to dress up (ironically?) like a 10-year-old in an elementary school play just to impress someone with how cool you might think you are?

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for a slideshow

Death, reborn

​This year's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin was the exact thing Aftermath needed in the midst of his fall concert schedule, even though the last day was marred by mud and constant rain. But after last month's dillo-dirtied Austin City Limits Festival, a little slop on the boots is nothing to cry over anymore. At least this time around we only dealt with one day of grit and wet, rather than two days of comic pratfalls and soaked clothes.

The thing that made us almost instant fans of FFFF right when we walked in the gate was the lack of hippies. At a festival like ACL, it's a given that you will see dozens walking past, dreadlocked and grinny. Instead, at FFFF you can expect spiky-haired teen punks with scowls and nicotine-stained fingers flipping you off. Aftermath is more scared of hippies, seeing that he grew up around liberty spikes and leather jackets. FFFF feels more like home than anything else, and with four stages we were amply pacified.

We hadn't been to a FFFF before, but we were struck by how well the organizers set everything up, from the amenities at Waterloo Park right down to the line-up, which seemed to fold back upon itself; the younger bands playing during the day harkened back to the established and influential headliners. In nerdier terms, that means that one could see a band in the afternoon and see their direct influence just hours later.

Marc Brubaker

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This weekend Rocks Off also brought along our littlest member, our Flip camera, to Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin. It proved to be indispensable in tight places where a regular still camera may not be as useful. Here's a smattering of what we captured through it's tiny lense. We are sure you will be seeing ol' girl at this weekends Westheimer Block Party as well.

Enjoy the videos after the jump, with much more Fun Fun Fun coverage to come.

Photos by Daniel Kramer

Yes, you've seen these photos before - hey, it's not our fault. Trust us, the band pretty much looks the same.

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Aftermath suspected AC/DC's return to Toyota Center might be a little similar to the ageless Aussies' December 2008 Black Ice tour stop here because, well, we cheated and looked up set lists from the band's Oklahoma City, Dallas and Austin stops last week on setlist.fm. Lo and behold, we were right.

Sunday night, we saw the same songs (save two), the same borderline pornographic cartoon introduction, the same wrecked-locomotive stage set (and same train-straddling inflatable stripper) and the same eye-popping pyro. The band was even wearing the same stage clothes. We thought maybe guitarist Angus Young might have been wearing a maroon schoolboy outfit last year, but nope - we went back and checked, and it was blue.

Most of all, though, we saw the same rock and roll train that ran over everything in its path. But with an additional 11 months of touring underneath their belts, AC/DC was looser, tighter and even more devastating. We thought about just writing the same review as last year, but instead here's a song-by-song account of what was going through our minds as AC/DC thunderstruck the nearly full arena.

Photos by Eric Sauseda/ Click here for a slideshow

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Kenny Rogers is now 71 years old. And, as of a few years ago anyway, his boys can still swim.

Aftermath knows this because we were treated to a slideshow of Rogers' twin five-year-old sons - even some shots from the delivery room - as he sang the ballad "To Me" with the Houston Symphony at Jones Hall Thursday night. Cute kids and all, but it made for about five of the most squirm-filled minutes we've experienced at a concert, well, ever.

It was like being trapped in line at the DPS. All you want to do is renew your driver's license (or, in this case, hear "The Gambler"), but the guy in front of you insists on whipping out his wallet and thumbing through umpteen family photos. Thank God the Roaster didn't have any pictures of his pets, or we would have been so out of there.

Luckily, this was about as sappy and maudlin as the evening got - and we're talking about a show that also included "Through the Years," "Lady" and lesser-known but no less sentimental heartstring bullseyes like "The Greatest" and "Buy Me a Rose."

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

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One can sit around all day and wax faux intelligent about where a band gleams their influences from. It's armchair quarterbacking for the kind of folks who wake up in the middle of Sunday afternoon and could give a good goddamn about 100 yards and monied monoliths of bro. For some people the best part of listening to music is trying to reverse-engineer each piece of band that comes through, and sadly finding greasy defective second-hand parts or amazing finding keen mechanisms built by the very hand of God. It's just how us music nerds survive.

So for the past week, every time Aftermath would find himself at the crossroads of trying to describe Florida's Surfer Blood, he kept reaching dead ends. Whether this means he needs to spend more time in the Internet woodshed listening to krautrock, Nuggets, or outlaw country remains to be seen. [Ed. Note: We're pretty sure we've got outlaw country covered.] But in the past seven days, everyone around him has either been likening his beloved Surfer Blood to a closeted jam band, a Weezer-ish barn burner, Vampire Weekend for poor kids or, as we ourselves put it just yesterday on Twitter, the "My Morning Beach Boys".

Marco Torres

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One of the true architects of hip-hop, Rakim stopped by House of Blues' Bronze Peacock Room Tuesday night to conduct a clinic in peerless lyricism. Rocks Off's lensman Marco Torres was there. Did you know Rakim is the nephew of R&B trailblazer Ruth Brown? We didn't either.

Click here for a slideshow.

Photos by Jody Perry/ Click here for a slideshow

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It's been a long time since Aftermath has been to the kind of high-energy, high-theatrics rock and roll show that makes us totally forget ourselves, even if just for an hour. Monday night at House of Blues, Peaches gave us exactly that kind of show, a relentless assault on good taste, fashion, preconceived notions and musical genres.

We thought we had Peaches pegged. Shock-rocker. Gender-bender. We were hoping she'd come through and meet our expectations without being too corny or pedantic. We didn't expect a kind of show on the level of a low-scale Cirque du Soleil. Needless to say, she totally blew us away.

It's a shame MEN couldn't meet those expectations. Peaches' opening band features the glass-voiced Le Tigre alumna JD Samson on vocals and synth with Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Michael O'Neill on guitars. Their sound is techno-pop, and the boyish Samson's voice is the perfect compliment to the heavily electronic music behind her.

At times, like with the song "Simultaneously," MEN seemed to channel post-punk bands like The Cure and Siouxsie & the Banshees. At other times, though, they sounded like every generic night at a Montrose disco. At one point, O'Neill even put down his guitar to play a drill whistle.

Any drummer jokes, say the one about Ginger Baker and coffee both sucking without Cream, pretty much have to go out the window when you enter an expansive warehouse that includes over 100 boys and girls, and men and women, pounding on their respective kits. Sometimes in tandem, and other times to the same beat. Jesus, we didn't think this blog was going to be so rife with double entendres.

On Sunday afternoon, Rocks Off ventured to a hangar near Bush Intercontinental Airport, and the 2009 Texas Big Beat. This event helps raise money for the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation and Cherish Our Children. Both charities aim to bring music to underprivileged children in schools, giving them another outlet besides the drugs and the street life they may see at home or in their communities. Wow, drummers are good for something besides delivering pizza and scaring away hot chicks.

Photos by Jay Lee

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It took Aftermath most of Friday to figure out why we were in such an awful blue funk after Thursday's Pogues show, especially after the band delivered a more brilliant set than even this 20-year fan thought they were capable of. But after leaving work early and relaxing for a while at home in the fetal position, we knew.

Some shows - particularly ones we've waited more than half a lifetime to see - we'd rather just be a face in the crowd, soaking up the music and the booze like everyone else instead of having to worry about arranging guest lists and photo passes, not to mention not getting so blasted we can't piece together a review the next day.

Well, sometimes the musical gods are as kind as they are crazy, because that's exactly what we got almost exactly 24 hours later in the very same space. Like the Pogues, Aftermath is so familiar with the Drive-By Truckers' catalog all we really need to do is write down the song titles; unlike the Pogues, we have seen nearly every DBT date in Houston or Austin for a solid decade, so at this point seeing them live is like keeping a standing date once or (if we're lucky) twice a year with an old, dear friend.

Photos by Adam P. Newton

The Factory Party

​In Aftermath's opinion, there are few things more enjoyable than spending an evening together with friends at the beloved haunt that is the Mink. We're able to toss back a drink or four, catch up on each other's lives, and hopefully hear some really great music. So Friday night, we gladly made our way out to the corner of Main and Alabama to hear Springfield Riots, Ringo Deathstarr, and The Factory Party, along with the hopes that we would get to hear some new stories from the venue's lively door guys.

As we had never partaken of the sounds of The Factory Party, we were pleased to finally experience this band's brand kinetic of post-punk. Yes, there might be plenty of groups out there today borrowing from Joy Division and New Order (much less Interpol), but we didn't locate too many chinks in this Houston-based quartet's musical armor.

All of the core elements were present: the deep, thrumming bass lines; the chiming, echo-laden guitar riffs; strident, pained vocals; and the sort of relentless, syncopated drumming that forced us to dance no matter how hard we resisted.

Photos by Brittanie Shey

FYI, the sign says "Enjoy the show." Assuming you could get in...

​Aftermath was really looking forward to R. Kelly. When we were asked to cover the event we were a little hesitant, since modern R&B is entirely outside of our scope of musical knowledge, if not slightly outside our personal musical taste. But after mulling over it a little we began to see it as an educational opportunity, a chance to broaden our musical horizons.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

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It seems every time Aftermath encounters Justin Townes Earle live, the guy has peeled another layer off himself revealing another astounding bit of his promise. Barely three years into his career, Earle is seemingly moving at an accelerated rate, even if the casual listener or viewer can't quite discern what it is that's shaping up.

Opening for the Pogues Thursday night at the House Of Blues, Earle came out flying solo. His sideman Cory Younts left a few weeks back to take on other endeavors, leaving Earle all by his lonesome onstage. Younts' trademark harmonicas and mandolin were missed, but Earle filled in the blanks with his own manic-skiffle guitar lines. Being out front by himself gives Earle's songs, especially ones like "What I Mean To You" and "Poor Fool," a sweetly sad twinge. Most of Earle's songs are about walking the world alone, giving his solitary appearance all the more creedence.

Photos by Daniel Kramer

This is about how we feel this morning.

​Attention budding music writers, assuming there are still a few of you left who think getting into shows for free is a fair trade for your health, well-being, a decent paycheck and reasonably normal social life: It's not. It's pretty much the opposite. If you choose to go down that road, like we have, the payoffs get smaller as the physical, mental and social price of this life (and lifestyle) gets steeper.

Once you reach your mid-30s, every show you see will be like one of those '50s alarm clocks tick-tick-ticking away the remainder of your mortality. And not only that, it's like a joy-buzzer hardwired to your brain, poking and prodding you and asking you time and again, "Is this really how you want to spend the rest of your life?"

No. It's not. But this life is all we've known since we were 19, and damned if we know what else we're even qualified to do.

www.houstontheaterdistrict.org

John Gibbons

​Can you actually use the word "shazam" in a review? Because that's what Aftermath was thinking at one juncture Tuesday night while watching John Gibbons and Eliot Fisk perform adapted Baroque pieces for the harpsichord and classical guitar. And yes, we did just say harpsichord.

The concert was held in the main entrance gallery of the Menil Collection, as part of Houston-based Da Camera's "The Romantic Spirit" 2009-2010 season. The setting, which was designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano was a perfect aesthetic complement to the works of Bach, Vivaldi, Albeniz and others which flowed over the audience.

The duo, Gibbons on harpsichord and Fisk on guitar, were stationed in front of Walter De Maria's vast yellow canvas, "The Color Men Choose When They Attack the Earth," and played an unamplified set to a full room of around 250 patrons. Some were there as Da Camera loyalists, some to experience the novelty of an unusual instrument, and some to pay homage to Fisk, who was the last direct pupil of Andres Segovia, the undisputed master of Spanish classical guitar who is to that genre what Rudolf Nureyev is to ballet.