Rocks Off is about as excited about Sunday's AC/DC show as we were for the Black Ice ballbreakers' show 11 months ago, but for a much different reason. Last time it was because we hadn't seen AC/DC since 1996 at Austin's Frank Erwin Center; this time it's because we're itching to see the band behind our pick for hard-rock album of the year, Everyday Demons. It's not AC/DC, rather openers The Answer.
Formed in Belfast in 2000, the Answer is fueled by the denim-and-diamonds riffs of guitarist Paul Mahon, and although Demons conjures hints of bands like Humble Pie, the Black Crowes and the Cult, it's no retread. Singer Cormac Neeson (how's that for an Irish name?) has a firm grip on that Chris Cornell growl 'n' wail even while tackling some pretty serious subject matter - suicide on "Why'd You Change Your Mind," political disillusionment on "Too Far Gone" and faithless women (several songs, particularly "Walkin' Mat"). Hometown mash note "Dead of the Night" is a worthy successor to no less than Thin Lizzy's "The Boys are Back In Town."
Two alumni of Houston's fabled folk scene return to Anderson Fair this weekend.
Vince Bell lives in Santa Fe, N.M., these days, but he will always be associated with the heyday of the Houston folk scene and Anderson Fair. Mentored by Townes van Zandt and Guy Clark, Bell had a major influence on Lyle Lovett, who recorded Bell's "I've Had Enough" on his album Step Inside This House. Nanci Griffith, another Anderson Fair regular back in the day, recorded Bell's "Sun & Moon & Stars." Bell is touring behind his new album, One Man's Music.
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.
A decade and six albums into their career, Memphis country-punks Lucero made the leap late last year from their own indie label, Liberty & Lament, onto Universal/Republic Records. The band's rabid, boozy following may have been hesitant at the time of the signing, fearing a dilution of the band's sound at the hands of corporate handlers. But anyone who has given last month's 1372 Overton Park a spin will instead hear Lucero venturing into stranger territory only hinted at on previous albums.
This weekend, Lucero hits Texas to play Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin ahead of their date Monday night at the Meridian. They are currently touring the country behind 1372 with fellow Memphis act Cedric Burnside & Lightning Malcolm and punkier kids the City Champs and the Dirty Streets. We talked with lead singer Ben Nichols while Lucero was getting ready for a gig out in Cleveland, Ohio. We discussed the bands new direction and some of the ingredients that are shaping their new, soulful tone.
Rocks Off: 1372 Overton Park seems like the next logical progression after the past two albums, 2005's breakthrough Nobody's Darlings and 2007's Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers. What's been the biggest thing defining this new direction?
Ben Nichols: With Darlings, it was just the four of us, the four original members. Then we added Rick Steff on Rebels, Rogues and just the addition of Rick on piano and organ allowed us to expand the idea of the band a little bit. It allowed us to do stuff we weren't able to do before. It was more fully realized on 1372. We went into the songwriting process more intentionally, if that makes any sense.
Kenny Rogers brings his vast collection of hits and the plastic-surgery disaster he calls a face to Jones Hall to perform with the Houston Symphony tonight, and obviously Rocks Off's extremities are sweating profusely in anticipation. Not because he can't wait to hear "She Believes in Me" with full orchestral backup, but because we're such huge fans of his Kenny Rogers Roasters chain of restaurants, featured in one of our favorite Seinfeld episodes.
The Roasters chain is mostly confined to Asia these days, giving the Filipino government a convenient place to dispose of all those avian-flu-infected carcasses. Still, Rogers' return to his hometown got us thinking about other... inspired celebrity products.
Don't act so surprised...
As we can fatefully attest, rock and roll and tattoos go hand in hand. The first time Rocks Off saw a grizzled punk rocker walk by at Fitzgerald's back in the '90s with two sleeves full of tattoos and a chest full of nautical-themed art, we mentally pointed at him and said "That's what we want", and from that day on we were hooked.
Since we started getting tattoos we have seen the world change in regards to how inked people are regarded. They were one or all the following: drug addicts, musicians, mechanics, or jailbirds. We remember a time when tattoo shops weren't huge magnificent buildings with buxom blondes working the front desk with a headset on, like on so many reality shows.
Sometimes the shops we frequented and still frequent don't even have a front desk. The soundtrack wasn't Buckcherry or Kings Of Leon; it was proto-sludge bands like Hawkwind or rock-steady ska in the vein of the Slackers. Also, not everyone has some horrific sob story surrounding each one of their ink spots, like the television would have you believe. There are times when a naked zombie girl straddling Death just looks cool on your arm.
Looks like Rocks Off better get out of here pretty quick and take a nap, because it appears we'll be overindulging at Mango's for two nights in a row. We might be able to dance off some of those beers this time though, because on his way to Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, former Houstonian Jonathan Toubin steers his New York Night Train into Mango's for the traveling edition of his wildly popular monthly Soul Clap DJ night.
Toubin, a familiar face to those who hung around the Axiom and Pik N' Pak, will delve deep into his finely honed collection of '50s and '60s soul and R&B - the grittier, the better - to help you get over the hump by shaking your rump. Then, at midnight, Toubin and a select panel of judges - Tex and Erica from Indian Jewelry, Big Star Bar owner Brad Moore, recent nonvoter Rad Rich, sometime Rocks Off contributor Dusti Rhodes and Beaver's Ice House Chef JJ will determine who's got the moves that groove in an old-fashioned dance-off.
Rocks Off urges only the sexy people to enter and the rest of you not to block our view. The prize is $100 or, as we like to call it, a hundy. Mango's is hot and sweaty on a slow night, so no telling what it's going to be like this evening. We have a few ideas - Lord help us.
Lonesome, Onry and Mean just noticed that venerable listening room McGonigel's Mucky Duck has a major streak of high-grade talent Nov. 12 through 17. Beginning with the Subdudes on the 12th, the Duck quickly plows through Texas legend Ray Wylie Hubbard (13th), troubadour-poet Tom Russell (14th), one of Nashville's biggest talents, Darrell Scott (15th) and George Strait hit writer/two-time Grammy winner Jim Lauderdale (17th).
Since reforming a couple of years ago, the Subdudes have been packing out the Duck whenever they pass through town. Like the Iguanas, the 'Dudes bring it the old-school New Orleans way.
In our alter ego as a print journalist, this week Rocks Off sits down with Uncle Charlie, whose vibrant posters have been adorning Houston concert halls and living-room walls (like ours, for example) since the Vatican and Unicorn days when Charlie did gig flyers for his own band, Houston hardcore legends Dresden 45.
Since last June, Uncle Charlie has also been officially legally blind. As you can read here, that slowed him down for a little while, but hasn't stopped him one bit. Charlie was nice enough to send us several recent examples of his work. His posters and prints are on display and for sale at Sig's Lagoon; Charlie hosts an exhibition at Midtown's only record store this Saturday starting at 6 p.m.
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 1809-1847
Here at Rocks Off, we enjoy album covers with turds on them and making fun of R. Kelly as much as the next guy. And just wait until Chris Brown gets here next weekend.
But there's a lot more to music than that. In a possibly fruitless effort to class up the joint a bit, we're introducing a new feature illuminating some of our favorite works in the classical repertoire as played by the Houston Symphony.
We could have hardly picked a better place to start. Composed between 1838 and 1844, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor (op. 64) is, writes the All Music Guide's Roger Dettmer, a "pillar of the violin concerto repertoire" and one of the German-born composer's final orchestral works. Mendelssohn composed it especially for his good friend Ferdinand David, concertmaster for the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, which Mendelssohn conducted for many years.
Next Tuesday, Rocks Off Movie Night at the Mink returns with the 1980 "classic" Urban Cowboy. Classic if you're from Houston, anyway.
The film kicks off our three-week series on movies filmed in and around Houston proper. Ben Stiller's directorial debut Reality Bites and Wes Anderson's hipster-baiting Rushmore follow in the coming weeks. We were going to show Robocop 2 tonight, but the Mink is having a hard time finding a replacement bulb for its projector, and most of the Rocks Off crew is going to be at Surfer Blood anyway. Also, Robocop 2 pretty much blows fajita chunks.
Florida-based indie kids Surfer Blood pull into Mango's tonight, touring ahead of their upcoming Astro Coast LP. The band was recently anointed by Rolling Stone's online feature "Hype Monitor" as "bright and booming and hooky as FM radio in the late '70s."
Rocks Off can hear traces of early "Blue Album" Weezer, fellow Floridians Against Me!, and even a few glimpses of My Morning Jacket in the Surfers' vintage sound. "Swim (to Reach the End)," with its anthemic chorus and echoey vocals, is getting the most spins around the blogosphere. The band says Astro Coast was recorded "on cheap microphones and a student Pro Tools rig" in a dorm room, which adds to the songs' already sleepy feel.
Back in the summer of1997, one couldn't walk out of their house without hearing someone humming, blaring, or damning to Hell that juicy nugget of pop rock that was Hanson's "MMMBop". Depending on your age and gender, you either understood the hooky genius of the song or you were just in love with the boys dreamy locks of hair and gentle Oklahoma-bred smiles. For a moment in time, Isaac, Taylor, and Zac could do no wrong in the eyes of teen girls the world over.
Smug folks dismissed "MMMBop" as pop fluff of the illest repute, forgetting the fact that it was written by three musically-educated teen boys who worshipped artists like the Beatles and Chuck Berry. Insipid as it was at turns, it was also expertly crafted. In a year that gave us the Spice Girls, Aqua's "Barbie Girl", and the Backstreet Boys, it's strange that actual instrumentation was shunned. A few more singles were culled from their Middle Of Nowhere LP over the rest of the year, and the brothers released the requisite Christmas album just in time to cash in on the hype surrounding them.
It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to decode Houston's oddest monikers in order to find a little meaning.
Brandon Holley
The Manichean is a - well, it's band that plays music here in town. Define them, you say? Not these easiest task in the world. You could just say that they're awesome, of course, but that's no real illumination of the nature of this local union of weirdness. It's loud and experimental and it's got horns and strings and it's full of weird spoken-word and atmospheric moaning, and most of all it really REALLY rocks your socks off.
Hell, it rocks the socks off of people who have yet to buy socks, but may in the future.
But what is a Manichean? We sat down with vocalist Cory Sinclair to find out. It turns out that Manichaeism is an extinct Gnostic religion that flourished until the 14th century. Though never as popular as Christianity or Zoroastrianism, it spread very quickly from Rome to China, and was almost universally feared and suppressed by other religions. Even the Buddhist gave them a hard time, and they usually leave people pretty much alone.
Lonesome Onry and Mean is torn as to his whereabouts this evening. Drive-by Truckers will be knocking down walls and eardrums at House of Blues, and that's where we'll probably end up. But if Galveston was 70 miles closer - it's not the drive down, it's the drive back! - we would certainly be headed for Wrecks Bell's Old Quarter Acoustic Café tonight for a singularly fine songwriters show with the elusive Richard Dobson, David Olney and Sergio Webb.
The Truckers are touring behind their final New West album, The Fine Print, an extremely fine record despite its billing as an assortment of outtakes and rarities. In fact, the album has probably gotten more play in my truck in the past month than anything else I've received. From the opening track "George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues" through covers of Tom Petty's "Rebels" and Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone," The Fine Print holds together with more glue than most albums can muster these days. And when the Truckers get down the fine points of southern existence - the love/hate relationship with TVA, used-car lot arson and insurance fraud - they hit the bullseye.
In conjunction with the Truckers' show, frontman Patterson Hood will be doing an instore at Cactus Records at 5:30 in support of his new solo album, Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs).
Alan Ball was known for his masterful use of music in Six Feet Under. He's lost none of his touch when it comes to his current HBO series, True Blood - which happens to be set in the Louisiana swamps, not terribly far from Houston. With Season 2 just completed, Rocks Off is now working our way backwards through the episodes we missed as HBO begins reruns.Episode 1.4, "Escape From the Dragon House"
The song in the end credits this week is Lynyrd Skynyrd's "That Smell," but Rocks Off is just not going to talk about it. We like Skynyrd - who plays Galveston's Moody Gardens Amphitheater Halloween night with Leon Russell and the Edgar Winter Band, by the way - just fine, but refuse to believe that anyone is so in need of information on them that they are reading a column about music in a show about vampires. Sorry.
So we'll tackle the title track, "Escape From the Dragon House" by the Los Angeles band Dengue Fever.
Rocks Off's knowledge of Cambodia is limited to Jello Biafra's assertion that there is some kind of holiday there. Also, we went to elementary school with a Cambodian kid named Chad, and really hope one day to meet someone from Chad named Cambodia just to balance it out. Apparently, there is quite a pop scene in that country, and when you fuse said pop with psychedelic surf-rock, you get Dengue Fever. You can also get it from mosquitoes, though we may have mixed up our Wikipedia entries when compiling our notes for this article.
King of R&B. Ghostwriter supreme. Pop genius. Unabashed sex fiend. Bump 'n' grind horndog. Acquited pedophile. Ultimately, history will decide whether or not R. Kelly deserves some, all, or any of these labels, but here are two facts that aren't in dispute: 1) the guy has written and produced some of the sauciest, raunchiest, funniest songs in recent memory, and 2) that June's The Demo Tape mixtape - Kells' first - was an unforgivable piece of garbage.
Since doing his fanbase a solid with 2007's Double Up, Kells has been busy (improbably) beating a child sex-abuse rap and polishing the oft-delayed Untitled, due out December 1. Now he's embarked on a full-scale tour, which means his road crew will have to do tons of trim coordination and that you, the R. Kelly ticket holder, must exercise your unalienable right to demand unrealistic song covers during the show. Here are a few suggestions:
Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"
Doesn't matter that this is a no-frills, no-kink pop song about a lover's distress originally sung by a British songbird. Kells could kill this, just totally knock it out of the park. Obviously, "bleeding" could be swapped out for "skeeting," completely and utterly warping and tarting up the core message of the tune.
When Rocks Off started asking local musicians to fill out music-related lists as suggested in Lisa Nola's Music Listography, we never expected to get one like this one from one-man skronk-blues machine Room 101, known to a few select people as Roburt Reynolds. Reynolds, who plays Thursday at the Mink with Digital Leather, the Energy and DJ Psychedelic Sex Panther, and again Friday at the Canvas (708 Telephone Rd.) with Giant Princess, Strictly Buisness, DogHouse and the Dead Leslies, chose to fill out "List Bands You Do NOT Like." All well and good.
But, as you'll soon see, he went a little above and beyond the call of duty. Which is why, of course, we started this in the first place. Enjoy.
1. I don't like bands of military officers trained at The School of the Americas (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). They are involved and engaged in committing decades of human rights violations, torture, murder, indigenous massacres, indigenous displacement, corrupt, brutal, and puppeteered governments, and the destruction of REAL humanity (from the Atlacatl in El Salvador to the current regime in Honduras). These bands of military officers have been trained by United States and International Military personnel on United States soil (Fort Benning, Georgia) for over 60 years.
It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off, we're trying hard to decode Houston's oddest monikers in order to find a little meaning.
We mean this with affection and sincerity: 10th Gräde Cütie destroys everything they touch and should be booked only with the utmost caution. They've been banned from Super Happy Fun Land (recently lifted), Dan Electro's Guitar Bar and especially White Swan for a legendary physical altercation with the staff. They are loud, drunk and rude. Eh, it's punk rock. Whaddya gonna do?
So why call a band of degenerate reprobates that sounds like Sloppy Seconds 10th Gräde Cütie? Rocks Off shot the band an email to find out.
Plastilina Mosh has a new CD out, All U Need Is Mosh, on Nacional Records, and brings its international sound to Houston Thursday for a free concert with Venezuela's Los Amigos Invisibles. That's right, it's free - all it costs is a very worthwhile trip outside the Loop.
Rocks Off hasn't picked up All U Need yet, but here are three picks from the album that should convince you to do it:
"My Party""Let U Know""Pervert Pop Song"
P-Mosh (you try spelling it correctly!) is made up of only two members, J.R. Gonzalez and Alejandro Rosso, both from Monterrey, Mexico. Rocks Off caught up with Jonaz in Brazil at the beginning of the duo's "All You Need is Mosh" tour.
Amidst all the rum, sodomy, and lashing going on this week about the Pogues hitting House of Blues Thursday, it's easy to forget that they have a pretty stellar opener warming up the crowd. Hmm, kinda reminds us of another Irish band that brought a really kick-ass young band with them a few weeks back. Exceptt we don't think Glenn Beck quotes Justin Townes Earle lyrics on his radio show.
Earle will open for the Pogues tomorrow night, despite being felled by a leg injury he suffered late last week. Earle's sporadic Twitter updates indicate that he is still planning on being at the Houston show, and a rep from his label Bloodshot Records confirmed he will be hobbling but nonetheless performing. We didn't hear any definitive answer as to how he got hurt. The roots and country-picking Steve Earle offspring and Townes Van Zandt namesake was just in Houston this past May with the Old Crow Medicine Show at Warehouse Live.
Dear Rum, Sodomy & the Lash,
Who wrote the book of love?
- The Monotones, Newark, NJ
Dear Monotones,
I'm going to make me a big sharp axe, shining steel-tempered in the fire. I'll chop you down like an old dead tree. Dirty old town, dirty old town.
Dear Rum, Sodomy & the Lash,
Why do fools fall in love?
- Frankie L., New York, NY
Dear Frankie,
Well it was Bob and Charlie Ford, those dirty little cowards, I wonder how they feel. For they ate of Jesse's bread, and they slept in Jesse's bed, and they laid poor Jesse in his grave.
Dear Rum, Sodomy & the Lash,
Who's sorry now?
- Connie F., Newark, NJ
Dear Connie,
The years passed by the times had changed I grew to be a man. I learned to love the virtues of sweet Sally MacLennane. I took the jeers and drank the beers and crawled back home at dawn, and ended up a barman in the morning.
For the past few weeks, local blues scholar and Down In Houston author Dr. Roger Wood has been interviewing several of Houston's leading blues musicians about their experiences in "The Soul of Houston Blues Stories." For Wednesday's concluding program, a conversation with I.J. Gosey and Diunna Greenleaf about spirituality and the blues, we can't imagine a better location than Museum District metaphysical redoubt The Jung Center.
Rocks Off reached out to Dr. Wood Tuesday and got him to tell us a little more about Wednesday's program."The program will include a brief intro lecture in which I will trace some of the connections between the old songs called spirituals and the blues, including the evolution from spirituals to gospel music," he says. "My two guests will join me for the heart of the program.
"We will discuss, among other things, their personal experiences as music performers who got started in the context of in the church-house but eventually migrated to the blues stage. We will also talk about the concept of music - in general, but particularly gospel and blues - as medicine for the soul."And especially through I.J. Gosey's personal history, [we will] trace the phenomenon of long-standing weekly blues gatherings that are, in many respects, analogous to going to church.
Lonesome, Onry and Mean has never hidden our distaste for Christmas music. So if we were ever called on to choose our favorite Christmas song, the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" would win hands down.
We can still remember the day - we were still Pogues virgins - when the lyrics, waffling between an aching level of poetic sentimentality and the utter down-and-out drunken surly hilarity of a marital spat ("It was Christmas eve, babe, in the drunk tank") finally penetrated the cranial area and we thought, "Now that's a damned interesting Christmas tune!" It captures perfectly the mixed emotions that always attend the season.
Man: "You're a bum"
Woman: "You're a punk"
Man: "You're an old slut on junk
"Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
Woman: "You scumbag, you maggot
"You cheap lousy faggot
"Happy Christmas your arse
"I pray God it's our last"
Get out your towels: R. Kelly is coming to town. The singer would be best known as "that guy who sang that song in the Michael Jordan/Bugs Bunny movie" if not for the allegations in 2002 that he engaged in sex with an underage girl. Kelly was found not guilty of child porn charges last year, but thanks to file-sharing sites and Dave Chappelle, he's now forever destined to be remembered as "that guy who [allegedly] pissed on a 14-year-old."
Kelly's "Ladies Make Some Noise!" tour, with special guest Pleasure P, comes to Reliant Arena this Friday. And while we at Rocks Off aren't sure what kind of sounds you're supposed to make when an R&B artist starts urinating on you, we are sure that none of these micturition-related melodies will be on Kelly's set list.
More's the pity.
Post a Comment
