Blogs

Mike Ness and Jesse Dayton
The Meridian
May 6, 2008

Better Than: The Social Distortion episode of MTV Unplugged that never happened, thank God.

Download: Jimmie Rodgers's "In the Jailhouse Now," one of the few prison-related songs Ness didn't sing

Photo by Chris Henderson

Mike Ness

Performers, especially those who mine their material from the proverbial other side of the tracks, walk a precarious line between the deeds they recount in their songs and the situations they sometimes stumble into offstage. Mike Ness is hardly a stranger to life's unfortunate twists and turns; both with Social Distortion and solo, his songs are replete with addicts and ex-cons trying, and often failing, to walk the straight and narrow.

But Ness' hard-luck characters took an unplanned back seat Tuesday to-the-all too real predicament of opener Jesse Dayton. En route from Dallas, Dayton's tour bus was pulled over in Magnolia County for the stereotypical broken taillight; the subsequent search turned up a certain illegal substance in the singer's backpack that, he said later, had been there "since I don't know when." The bus was impounded, and Dayton rewarded with a side trip to the county lockup, but due to some nifty maneuvering by his lawyer - who had him out of jail and on the road in four hours - he made the gig in time to provide some extra oomph to a set-closing medley of "Folsom Prison Blues," "Rebel Rouser" and "White Freight Liner Blues."

More

Craig Hlavaty

Check out our slideshow of Roger Waters in the Woodlands.

Better than: Getting an extra nickel in your dimebag

Download: Dark Side of the…wait, surely you already have this, right???

As only one of four U.S. dates and the last stop on the tour (perhaps to make up for the rained-out Rice Stadium gig years ago?), the Houston classic rock audience responded by rewarding the former Pink Floyd singer/bassist with a sold out show. I’d never seen the lawn so packed before, proving that sometimes a band’s catalogue of material is so strong that it can overcome any hesitancies about who is actually playing it.

For the show’s first half, Waters and his extensive, polished-to-a-sheen ensemble (including late-model Thin Lizzy guitarist Snowy White) offered up a heaping helping of Floyd warhorses (“Have a Cigar,” “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” “Mother,” “Wish You Were Here”), rarities (“The Fletcher Memorial Home”) and solo material (“Perfect Sense-Pt. 1” from Amused to Death).

But the best moments came at unexpected times. The heavily trippy early Floyd track “Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun” was a mindbending blowout, complete with projected footage of the then-young band frolicking on a beach (ah, Syd, so young and vibrant…).

More

Doyle Bramhall
May 3, 2008
McGonigel’s Mucky Duck

Better Than: Every tired-ass blues jam or interminable harmonica throwdown on the planet.

Download: This scorching version of “Big” with C.C. Adcock and Nick Curran on guitars.

With producer/guitarist C.C. Adcock on emergency leave due to the suicide of his former producer Tarka Cordell, Austin blues veteran Doyle Bramhall scrambled personnel for Saturday’s show at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck and came up with another winning lineup. Working his way through the tracks on his latest Grammy-nominated Yep Roc album Is It News as well as fresh versions of several songs written with Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bramhall opted for a minimalist three piece lineup that included regular guitarist Nick Curran augmented with Austin legend Casper Rawls (Leroi Brothers, Toni Price). Rawls, who it seems has played on or produced half the records made in the Western Hemisphere the past 25 years, anchored the rhythm end while Curran was given most of the nasty licks assignments. Both men proved up to the task.

More

Photo by Rosa Guerrero

Sean Reefer & the Resin Valley Boys
Boondocks
April 28, 2008

Better Than: A double drive-in bill of Dazed and Confused and Reefer Madness, reenacted Rocky Horror-style.

Download: The Velvet Underground's "Heroin," so nobody feels left out.

If you go see Sean Reefer & the Resin Valley Boys, even for free on an otherwise unassuming Monday night, get ready to double the babysitter's tip, call in sick (or at least tardy) on Tuesday and, on your way out, dodge an elbow-throwing, room-clearing brawl. Who could ask for anything more? Or less?

In their defense, not all of this can be laid at Mr. Reefer and his cohorts' feet. They were done by midnight, leaving a good two hours for the folks at Boondocks to make their own bad decisions. With such a sizable interval, surely the trio's volley of songs about marijuana, cocaine, whiskey, pills and No-Doz (among the many controlled substances, both legal and illegal, that found their way into the set list) had very little to do with the melee that erupted once the lights finally went on. Perish the thought.

More

Everyone is a music critic. Immediately after the show, my compadre who sat third row center said he thought the show was mediocre, that Earle “was just going through the motions.” A woman not that familiar with Earle’s catalog or career seeing him for the first time “loved it.” One of my running buddies said he “liked it, but the dj was a pointless addition except on a few songs.”

Steve clanged a guitar note or two and his voice isn’t what it once was, but I thought he brought the goods. No, he didn’t play the hits that most of the aging, balding boomers in attendance came to hear (probably so they could argue interminably about whether this show was better than the one in Dallas). No “Hillbilly Highway,” no “Guitar Town,” and in typical obstinate fuck-you Earle fashion, instead of pandering to the repeated screams for his Houston song “Telephone Road,” he gave it the night off.

With acts that have been around as long as Earle and Springsteen, there’s always a contingent that goes away angry because the band didn’t play the oldies (see Chris Henderson’s recent review of the Ministry concert). Earle quelled those people by opening his set with a string of acoustic deep tracks that recalled all of the older albums without giving in to a rote repetition of “the hits” like a trained seal hamming it up for a morsel of mullet.

More

Steve Earle, Allison Moorer
Cactus Music
April 24, 2008

Better Than: "A Night at the Opry, Sponsored by C-SPAN"

Download: It was an IN-STORE, for God's sakes. No downloading allowed.

For all his prickly politics, Steve Earle deserves credit for knowing exactly what his audience wants to hear. The grizzled, balding "hardcore troubador" had barely said hello Wednesday evening at Cactus Music - in fact, I don't think he did - before launching into a rambling reminisce about mentor Townes Van Zandt, whom he met in Houston shortly after moving here from the San Antonio suburb of Schertz. "They wouldn't let me play Anderson Fair, so I hung around the Old Quarter," he said, prompting a round of appreciative applause. Earle knows which local club names to drop, too.

Calling Townes a "migratory beast," Earle talked about he and Van Zandt bumming around Colorado many moons ago, when part of Van Zandt's skiing lesson included a hit of acid. "Like I said, I don't ski," Earle chuckled. Recalling a more recent trip to the Rockies, "I swear I saw Townes's ghost and his horse Amigo coming across the mountain," he mused, before picking his way through one of the many Van Zandt songs in his repertoire, "Ft. Worth Blues" - which just happens to contain the lyric "Houston really ain't that bad a town." See what I mean?

More

The past: The New York Dolls, along with Iggy Pop and the Stooges and MC5, are credited as the godfathers of punk rock. The original line-up formed in 1971 and played its first show on Christmas Eve at a homeless shelter. The band broke up in 1975. In 2004, Morrissey organized a reunion of the three surviving band members, frontman David Johansen, guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and bassist Arthur Kane, who died that same year. In 2006, they reformed yet again and released a new album, One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This.

The present: New York Dolls in Dallas. -- Daniel Kramer

Ministry, with Meshuggah and Hemlock
Friday, April 18
Verizon Wireless Theater

Better Than: Moping at home because you’re the sort of atavistic dork who heard that they band wasn’t going to play “Jesus Built My Hotrod” or “Stigmata”

Download: With Sympathy

Openers Hemlock played for a very fun 27 minutes before retiring to their merch table (I’m told frontman/bassist Chad Smith was in the pit for the entirety of Ministry’s set and, though I didn’t see if myself, it sounds realistic). The Sin City trio has been touring for 15 years, and only recently have they had any kind of tangible label support. They’d probably have torn the roof off Meridian; in this case, they had a good time without burning anything into the audience’s memory. I’d rather have seen them headlining a smaller venue.

More

Shelby Lynne
May 18, 2008
Warehouse Live

Better Than: Any show in Vegas right now

Download: This, for starters

I’ve been around enough to know ringers when I see them, and the four men clad in matching black who walked out at Warehouse Live to set the stage for Shelby Lynne’s entrance were certainly pros of the highest magnitude. I immediately recognized drummer Brian Owings, the guy who played on “Third Rate Romance” and who works regularly with Buddy Miller; but the real ringer was John “JJ” Jackson, who played two years with Bob Dylan and has also played with Lucinda Williams. They laid down a warm, slow jazz intro for Ms. Lynne to float in on like a fairy with attitude.

More

Be sure to check out our slideshow of Deadbolt at Rudyard's

Billing themselves as The Scariest Band in the World and ragging on Dallas, Jane Fonda and anyone wearing Crocs, the voodoo surf punk band Deadbolt played at Rudyard's Friday night - there were no survivors. -- Daniel Kramer

Negativland
Herring Hall, Rice University
April 17, 2008

Better Than: Someone leaping out of a van Old School-style, kidnapping and blindfolding you, then reading Scientology for Dummies through a megaphone. I guess.

Download: Negativland's all-time classic "U2," profane outtakes of American Top 40 host Casey Kasem introducing the Irish quartet ("These guys are from England, and who gives a shit?") spliced with a rendition of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" on kazoo.

Whether it's a platinum-selling rock band, news organizations' lurid fixation on serial killers or children's-television favorites the Teletubbies, Negativland loves nothing more than skewering sacred cows, and for their first Houston appearance in seven years, the Bay Area media pirates locked onto the biggest bovine of all: the existence of God. Staged as a 1930s/40s-style radio broadcast of "It's All In Your Head FM," under the auspices of "Universal Media Netweb," and simulcast on actual Houston FM outlets KTRU and KPFT, the trio spun their trademark sample-heavy sound collage from an array of arcane electronic equipment, provoking both cheap laughs and serious thought as they made their case that the only place the deity - indeed, any deity - exists is within the human mind.

More

Pete Freedman, our counterpart at our sister paper up I-45, wants to know here.

More

Better than: Getting your fortune told by Madam Marie on the Boardwalk – accurately

Download: “Candy’s Room,” “She’s the One,” “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” “Badlands,” “American Land”

For two and a half hours and without a break, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band held a rock and roll revival meeting with a level of energy that can only mean he’s replaced some of his 58-year-old parts with bionic equivalents. Leaping, running, and spinning around his grounded mike stand, it was tiring just to freakin’ watch the show – much less be the one putting it on.

More

Ramsay Midwood wheeled the beat-up white van into the parking lot and stepped out in one of those cheap, goofy, beat-to-shit straw hats with the brim all taco-ed up like he’d slept with it on last night. On anyone else, the hat would’ve looked ridiculous, but on Midwood it looks like an invitation to a can of whup-ass for anyone who might care to cast an aspersion.

Thirty minutes later as Midwood and his unsung quartet of accomplices, in honor of the annual Under the Volcano crawfish boil, opened their show with a virile version of “The Crawdad Song” that sounded like Hank Williams fronting the Rolling Stones, I couldn’t help thinking how much more real the world would be if this ensemble was actually named Band of Heathens. Anyone who’s seen the official Band of Heathens, Austin’s new darlings for sure, knows what a misnomer that band name is on that group of guys. But Midwood and longtime partner in outlawery Randy Weeks, now they could righteously hoist the heathen flag and put fear in something besides the sorority sisters at Alpha Kappa Crappa or the slackers hanging around Momo’s in Austin.

More

Click here for a slideshow.

I'm almost ashamed to admit this was my first Westheimer Block Party, or Street Fest, or Surprisingly Well-Organized Locals-Only Outdoor Event Sponsored by a Competing Publication on a Shoestring Budget (That Nonetheless Needed More Food Vendors), or whatever you want to call it, really. Despite the many things I failed to understand - why HPD didn't block off the street, how that guy tapping on two plastic buckets with drumsticks all day didn't get sunstroke, what that dude walking around with a cardboard box on his head was hoping to accomplish (same for the stick-thin blonde in five-inch stripper heels), why the Good Lord saw fit to bless Saturday with such phenomenal weather - in a little more than five hours, I think I got the gist of what was going on.

It's not exactly AP calculus: Open a couple of clubs early, throw up a few stages in various parking lots, allow the city's artists and anarchists to peddle their wares, make sure there's plenty of beer on hand, make it free and a party's going to break out. It has to. A long time ago, SXSW taught me that trying to see every band on offer - even at a free festival - is a fool's errand, so I didn't sweat the fact that someone cooler might have been playing somewhere else at the same time. But because I still feel like The New Guy in Houston, I also avoided bands I had seen or heard before (though not entirely... well played, Buxton and Karina Nistal). Here's what I came away with, in chronological order:

More