Houston Music Blog

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

Times New Viking

​

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.

​

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

​

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

​

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.

You can think of this weekend's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin as the indie, metal, and hip-hop little brother of the more staid Austin City Limits Music Festival. The fourth edition of the two-day event held in Waterloo Park in Austin starts tomorrow afternoon. Per our stated life path, Rocks Off will be there covering all the bands, fans and assorted debauchery that all that comes with.

This year's line-up is rife with musical pioneers, unsung heroes, along with the usual "It" bands that you will forget in six months and the one or two bands that will soon be smirking that they were once small enough to play a side stage. In fact, indie duo MGMT played one of those stages back in 2007 and by the next fall were commanding a strong following at ACL. It's amazing what a little label push and a catchy-as-shit song can do within the span of 12 months.

​"Never come with a list."

Those words of advice came from a vendor about four hours into the fall Austin Record Convention, at which point we'd purchased only a single piece of vinyl, a Lovin' Spoonful greatest-hits album complete with commemorative, frameable photos of the band in the sleeve. We weren't interested in collectible Beatles records or Elvis 45s. We wanted the obscure stuff. We didn't find it.

We heard a lot of this: "Yeah, I have that record at home. But I don't bring it to conventions because that stuff doesn't sell." Meanwhile we're standing there, crumpled list in one hand, cash in the other. Regarding Mel Tormé, one vendor told us. "I have that record in my personal collection. It's in my beatnik section."

​This past Spring, Rocks Off attended her first record show in the meeting room of the Hilton Hotel on the Southwest Freeway at Westpark. Before then, we'd been content to find vinyl in the $1 bin at Salvation Army, at garage sales, or in the junk closet of our grandparents' living room. But our search for LPs had become more specific. After all, you can only want so many copies of Whipped Cream & Other Delights.

Our preconception was that record shows would be filled with the bastard love children of Seymour and Jeff Alberston, but instead we met guys like DJ Shorty, who helped us realize that record shows are the best places to build a niche collection.

Which is why we're headed to Austin this weekend for the Austin Record Convention. We've made a list of records we've always wanted but have yet to find, and our plan is to stick to that list and only the list so that we leave with enough gas money to make it back to Houston. After the jump, a few of our picks.

Photos by Tom Tracy/ click here for more

"Happy" couple Tom Overby and Lucinda Williams' first kiss as man and wife

"Tryin' so hard to be a happy woman," Lucinda Williams sang on the title song to her 1980 album and again Friday night at First Avenue in Minneapolis. Looks like she finally made it.

During his Fourth of July road trip to San Antonio, Lonesome Onry and Mean found himself listening to Maria Taylor's excellent LadyLuck and wondering how he could have been so remiss in not reporting on such a fine record.

Producer, singer, writer, arranger, Taylor is a huge multi-threat talent who manufactures appealing, instantly memorable songs. I don't remember the last time I heard a record with so many instantly likeable tracks that seem to fit so many radio formats. This is certainly one of the catchiest records LOM has heard this year and stands a better than average chance of winding up in the year-end Top 10.

Kim Douglass

Hey, it's been a couple of days since we used this photo...

Like a mother sending her baby off to college, we here at Rocks Off are pretty proud of the Wild Moccasins for representing Houston's up-and-coming indie scene so well on the band's first extended tour this past month. So naturally, when we found out Cincinnati Internet radio station WOXY ("The future of rock and roll") posted the group's June 22 "Lounge Acts" in-studio performance on its Web site, we wanted to share it with you. Check it out here.

The Moccasins return home next Saturday at Mango's with Buxton and Ghost Mountain. Still miss them? Rocks Off compiled a few of the band's recent Twitter updates after the jump.

Photos courtesy Muhammadali

See what happened to those towels a little later on here (NSFW).

Since January, Rocks Off has been a fan of Muhammadali. From the first house shows and split tape with Black Congress, we have been hooked to their Melvins and Jesus Lizard stomp.

A few weeks ago at ali's final Houston show before leaving for a quasi-national tour, we asked them to give us a glimpse into the touring lives of one of our town's hardest-working bands. The first dispatch appeared in our inbox Wednesday morning from bassist Dirty Jeff Smith; the band was presumably in Ohio.

And most excitingly, we finally get a definitive way to spell the band's name, directly from them. Turns out it's one word after all.

From Smith:

"Muhammadali goes on tour! One problem: no drummer."

A postcard of "downtown" El Campo in the 1930s.

This weekend, Rocks Off escaped a Czech family reunion to do some sightseeing around El Campo, the tiny hamlet just off U.S. 59. Before the silent auction, we made sure to gorge ourselves on free beer and kolaches before making a quick exit out the back.

El Campo is a sleepy town that boasts a three-screen movie theater ("Serving Wharton County since April 13, 1984"), a huge Buc-ee's convenience store on the outskirts of town and the ever-present smell of barbecued sausage in the air. Those three things pretty much encompass all we personally need in life. If we ever decide to leave the 'burbs and the Montrose behind, we are most definitely going to shack up in El Campo. Plus it's probably the only city Rocks Off has ever been to where our last name is pronounced correctly. The Garden Of Memories cemetery just down the road is awash in vowel-challenged surnames.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

This past weekend, Rocks Off took a respite from sweltering H-Town to visit family in our equallly sweltering, ball-sweat-inducing neighbor to the south. Corpus Christi is rather small compared the teeming ant farm we have here, topping just over a quarter of a million beachified and sunburned folks. Rocks Off has been coming to "The Sparkling City by the Sea" to visit his grandparents and burn layers off his skin since he was born.

Over the past decade or so, Corpus has grown into one hell of a rock and roll town. Turnout for live music is massive across all genres and booze is cheap. The city has a good dozen tattoo shops that are nationally acclaimed for their artwork, with appointments hard to come by. It's actually quite a metal town, with Motorhead and Pantera stickers on the back of cars almost as ubiquitous as McCain/Palin tags are in Houston's suburbs.

Plus, any town this close to a beach is sure to invite debauchery on the scale of an '80s sex comedy.

Kim Douglass

It's now been exactly a week since the Wild Moccasins kicked off their first-ever extended tour with a sweaty show before a packed house at Mango's, and like a lot of people (we imagine), Rocks Off is curious how the H-pop heroes are faring on the road. Luckily, instead of having to rely on their finding a pay phone - though the Moccasins may not be old enough to know what one is - or somewhere with wi-fi (which isn't always easy out in the hinterlands), we can keep tabs on them through the miracle of Twitter.

So far the band seems to be faring pretty well. They're eating, which is no guarantee on the road, found some free juice in Florida, saw a rock star walk by in Athens and appeared on CNN while visiting Atlanta Tuesday (hope they plugged their show). On the other hand, they've already had to pawn a pair of sunglasses. Either way, they're certainly taking a lot of pictures...

Mark C. Austin

Didn't go to Jazzfest? Don't worry. Neither did Rocks Off, but that guy above sure did, and so did our intrepid photographer Mark C. Austin. See what else he shot in the Big Easy right here.

Photos by Frank Stewart/ Jazz at Lincoln Center

When Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis first shared the stage at New York's Allen Room for Jazz at Lincoln Center almost exactly two years ago, the concert was simply billed as "Willie Nelson Sings the Blues." There was no hint that music history was about to be made, but the pairing resulted in one of the best releases of 2008, the CD/DVD Two Men with the Blues.

For their second concert together Tuesday night, Marsalis and Nelson chose not to simply reproduce Two Men's material but instead explore the legacy of Ray Charles, cleverly sequencing the songs to tell the story of a love affair from beginning to end and beyond. The program began with "Hallelujah (Boy I Love Her So)," played with a New Orleans feel. Feeling comfortable with Marsalis' working quartet (plus harmonica player Mickey Raphael) behind him, Nelson improvised a few riffs on his battered acoustic guitar Trigger.

Dallas-raised Norah Jones then walked onstage sporting a strapless dress to duet with Nelson on "You Are My Sunshine," played almost unrecognizably with a Latinesque beat. Jones seemed quite at ease belting this standard - gone was her ballads' usual sweetness - and seemed to enjoy dirtying things a bit, while Marsalis contributed a mournful solo that contrasted with the tune's happiness.

I was told by my travel agent that I wouldn't be able to leave Washington D.C. 'til the end of the week because of the lack of return flights, but luckily some seats opened up for me. A high fever had already taken over my body, and I was ready to get home to get some rest.

Photos by Massa Mohawk

The sweetest revenge for eight years of failed policies came when the helicopter door opened. To watch former president George W. Bush walk to that helicopter and wave bye to the world had to be the most memorable moment of the entire inauguration. Who would have thought that Bush could have stolen the show without saying anything?

The large crowd applauded and erupted in excitement when they saw him boarding his departure helicopter. Everyone in the viewing party stood up and waved at the screen like Bush could see through the projector screen. I tried to hold my smile because I didn't want to look too happy to see him stripped of his presidency but even I couldn't hide it. Out with the old, in with the new.

Photos by Massa Mohawk

The inauguration events started early. The people that left the hotel late last night were smart. They knew it would be too packed and too crowded. The police were blocking off all of the entrances to where the inauguration of the first black president would be held.

My friend who used to play in the NBA emailed me telling me that he had a good spot reserved for me if I could just make it there. I couldn't. Also, it seems that the weather was a lot colder than the night before. I could feel myself getting sick.

I didn't want to miss any part of Barack Obama's speech, so I dipped into a sports bar to watch the action on a projector screen that stretched the height and length of an entire wall. I have never seen people more proud. People cheered, laughed, and almost cried during the inauguration. 

Photos by Massa Mohawk

When I landed, I thought I was gonna see snow because I was told that it was six degrees in Washington, D.C. There wasn't any snow but it was so cold that I could feel the air piercing my ears and making my eyes water.

Me and my travel party went straight from the airport to a crowded new hotel that was filled with people in designer suits and expensive evening gowns. We could tell something serious was going on because of all the security and the metal detectors that we had to pass through before making it to the check-in counter.

While I was checking in and getting keys to the five rooms that I had reserved a couple months prior, I noticed there were hundreds of people waiting in what seemed to be a cab line. The line started outside of the hotel and extended into the lobby past the elevators. If I would have known that the people in that line were all waiting to go directly to the [National] Mall where the inauguration would be held the following day, I would have secured my place in that same line instead of going up to my room and wasting a couple hours getting settled. 

[Houston rapper Chamillionaire, whose Mixtape Messiah 6 is in stores now and LP Venom will be out soon, was kind enough to keep a diary of his trip to Washington, D.C. for Barack Obama's inauguration last week. Rocks Off is glad he's feeling better, too. Today: Leaving Houston from an auspiciously named airport.]

Photo by Massa Mohawk

How i

ronic. You have to be able to see the humor in the fact that I was flying out of an airport with the same first and last name as the person that the world was about to see stripped of his presidency. George Bush Intercontinental Airport was packed full of tourists rushing to catch their flights. It seemed like a mixture of mostly African-American and white people who were all taking their kids and family members to be a part of history.

I made it to my gate in perfect timing to see the seven-foot-tall NBA star Dikembe Motombo Board the plane. On the way to Washington I sat in first class seat 1A next to a talkative grey-haired white man who told me that I was crazy for wanting to visit Washington, D.C. at a time like this. He said that there would be too much traffic, and too many blocked off streets, and too many crazy people. I think he was correct about everything except the crazy people part.

What I don't think he understood is how strong the sense of pride and excitement there would be for the election of the first black president. This would be a moment in history that millions of people could only be a part of once in a lifetime. There's nothing really crazy about that. He told me about the millions of dollars spent and the thousands of TV screens that would be set up for viewing of the inauguration. He probably would have been in my ear the entire flight if it wasn't for the UGK albums that I loaded into my iPod before I left home.

Tomorrow: Arriving in D.C. and scoping the scene.