Blogs

Austin newcomers nelo's press kit helpfully points that the sextet's names rhymes with "hello." A much better homophone would be "mellow," because their self-titled debut is about as chill as an October afternoon in Wisconsin without any long underwear on. Saturated in acoustic guitars, breezy horns and silky come-ons, nelo seems destined to draw the adoration of comely young coeds and the scorn of so-called "serious" music fans in equal measure.

According to Idolator, Madonna will play her first Houston concert since 1990's Blonde Ambition tour November 16 at Minute Maid Park. Ready for this, Uncle Drayton? - Chris Gray

My Morning Jacket have announced their fall tour. Check the dates after the jump, and let the wailing and lamentations begin...

If you ever dug the scene at The Ale House, you probably know or have seen Angela Mullan Jenkins. An Irish immigrant with a penchant for having a damn good time, she came to Houston in 1980 and began her long association with British Investments as a waitress at the Richmond Arms about the time Rod Stewart’s “Maggie Mae” became the unofficial British national anthem. From there she moved to The Ale House on West Alabama, where she developed one of the hippest music venues in town.

She was the first person I knew who knew who U2 was – and she introduced me to the Pogues. She turned the Ale House into a jumping joint that was instrumental in the whole underground rock scene in Houston from the late-70s until it shut its doors in 2001. The True Believers slept on her floor more than once, and she opened her stage to upstarts like Jesse Dayton’s Alamo Jets. She was that kind of cool.

About a decade ago, Ed Hall staged sweaty, savage shows marked by the Austin trio performing in body paint, bizarro film projections second only to the Butthole Surfers and suffocating psych-punk that made the Black Angels sound like Donovan. Along with Crust and the Cherubs, Ed Hall was one of legendary Texas underground label Trance Syndicate's flagship bands, and were heavily influential on future labelmates ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.

A few months after 1995's La La Land, Ed Hall - by then a decade old - decided their eardrums (and day-glo budget) could use a break and packed it in. But once a freak, always a freak, and in 1999 Gary Chester, Larry Strub and Lyman Hardy reconvened, enlisting friends Jason Craig and Shane Shelton to fulfill their crypto-futuristic vision that swapped out bleeping keyboards and rubberized basslines for Ed Hall's twisted guitar symphonies.

No need to wait until the weekend this time around. There are plenty of good local gigs right in the middle of the week:

The Monocles bring their sublime garage-punk – and a brand new 7" – to the Mink tonight. Also on the bill are locals Focusyn and Dizzy Pilot, who put on one of the most energetic live shows in town and feature member of Southern Bellugosi, Drill Box Ignition and Motion Turns It On. They released their latest E.P, Shit Out the Bones, last year.

Twenty years ago, Michelle Shocked, who plays at the Mucky Duck this Wednesday, had the music world by the tail. As attested by the quasi-bootleg album The Texas Campfire Tapes, recorded live to a Sony Walkman unbeknownst to Shocked at the 1986 Kerrville Folk Festival, the singer had the voice, the brains, and the ability to stay contemporary while showing a sincere and profound appreciation for the music of the past.

After signing to Mercury, her 1988 single “Anchorage” charted in America and overseas, and her major label debut album Short Sharp Shocked, which sported as cover art a newsman’s picture of her in a police choke-hold at a San Francisco protest, was one of the year’s most critically acclaimed debuts. (It was produced by Dwight Yoakam guitarist Pete Anderson, who is currently in the studio with Houston’s own Aaron Loesch. Read more about that here later this week.)

Captain Swing was a stylistic break from her first two records – in this case, she predated the swing revival and the title referenced not just that but the rural riots of 19th Century English farmers. Her next album, Arkansas Traveler, was an exploration of American rural music, heavy on the fiddle tunes and sporting guest shots from Taj Mahal, Uncle Tupelo and the Band. As she puts it, Americana before there was such a thing.

Despite the rash of festivals this weekend, those who prefer to confine their musical pursuits to indoors have precious little to complain about. Everyone who missed the late Infernal Bridegroom Productions' Daniel Johnston-inspired tour de force Speeding Motorcycle gets a second chance of sorts when Motorcycle's Austin cast, on loan from Zach Scott Theater, pays a call on Rudz with a company including recently relocated Houstonian Joe Mathlete, seasoned Johnston interpreter Kathy McCarty, members of Invincible Czars, the Horsies (who return next weekend to frolic at the Continental with Pong), Meat Purveyors, Cat Scientist, Bad Mutha Goose and many more.

Tonight, Austin's crack '70s and '80s cover band Skyrocket! heads gets down in Midtown at Sammy's on Main, while locals Thee Armada funkdafy Fitzgeralds with Westheimer Block Party standouts Mechanical Boy, among others, twisted California surf-psychobillies Deadbolt brave the wilds of Rudyard's and Lone Star Porn Star imports some Motley Crue sleaze to Clear Lake's Scout Bar. Those with slightly more refined tastes might prefer blue-eyed soulstress Shelby Lynne, whose new Dusty Springfield homage Just a Little Lovin' is inspiring the usual critical raves, at Warehouse Live, or Rodney Crowell guitarist Will Kimbrough, an accomplished singer-songwriter in his own right, at the Houston branch of Bend Studios, 508 Pecore. See here for ticket information.

I finally got around to checking out the entertainment line-up at Discovery Green, and tonight's offering really caught my eye.

Basically, it's a showdown between two New Orleans-style brass band with Houston ties. In this corner you've got...

This morning C3 Entertainment unveiled the lineup for the 2008 Austin City Limits Festival, scheduled for September 26-28 in Austin's Zilker Park, and it's looking more than ever like Coachella on the Colorado. The first name on the card is... Foo Fighters. Seriously. That means everyone hoping for Radiohead at the end of the Zilker rainbow will have to pony up for Lollapalooza or pay through the nose for next month's long-sold-out Houston and Dallas shows. Coachella, meanwhile, got Jack Johnson, so I guess we dodged a bullet there. But they also got Kraftwerk.

ACL's other above-the-fold names are, once again, either former chart-toppers gone niche artists (Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, David Byrne, John Fogerty); more recent alt-rock heavyweights (Raconteurs, Mars Volta, Against Me!); favorites of both Pitchfork's hipsterati (Vampire Weekend, Duffy, Hot Chip) and their bearded bong-ripping cousins (Band of Horses, Black Keys, Iron & Wine); R&B ringers (Erykah Badu, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings); boot-scooting Lone Star flag-wavers (Eli Young Band, Robert Earl Keen, Kevin Fowler); acts too pricey for iFest (Manu Chao; Gnarls Barkley); Austin A-listers (Roky Erickson; Alejandro Escovedo; Okkervil River); or inexplicable festival perennials who must have some damn good dirt on the producers (G. Love & Special Sauce, Asleep at the Wheel).

This is a good weekend to be broke. Not only is the Westheimer Block Party tomorrow afternoon, but Sunday brings Rice Radio's 17th annual Outdoor Show at the university's Intramural Fields 2 and 3, somewhere near the business school. Brooklyn indie-rockers Parts and Labor headline an otherwise local bill that offers an excellent cross-section of KTRU fare: experimental grooves from Social Insects and :::KAI/ROS:::, jazz courtesy of the Taylor/Dove/Cogburn trio, the Joy Division-ish chill of Balaclavas, beats and rhymes from Nosaprise and bleeps and blips by electronic knob-twiddlers Dead PA. Children's performer Rachel Buchman gets things started at noon, making this an underground-music afternoon the whole family can enjoy.

I’m about to tell you about two shows that are anything except garage rock, but due to their roots, spirit and aesthetic are precisely garage rock. But first, some history:

Early garage bands owe a massive debt to the Stones, primarily the early recordings, which were mired in R&B covers. It could be argued that the Stones brought “black music” into garage the way that Elvis did for the music of the Stones’ generation; there were garage bands kicking around America prior to the British Invasion, but the Stones and Beatles hitting U.S. soil blasted open the doors. As stated in the John Goodman narrated documentary “Tales of the Rat Fink” – about the 50s-60s era of custom cars and the cultural impact of Ed Roth’s vision – once American crowds caught an eyeful of those two bands, “the garage was no longer a place where kids tuned their cars; it became a place where kids tuned their guitars.”

It’s no wonder that the Beatles vs. Stones question remains a staple of asinine bar yammering: The two bands represent two looks, two sounds, two genealogies...two identities. Though their respective discographies were just budding at the time, young musicians were able to discern the tone and – even if vicariously – choose their forefathers, in the process strengthening a musical and cultural divide by forging disparate paths.

For more than 40 years he’s been making eardrums ring and, according to his physician, growing calluses on his own. But Blue Cheer founding bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson shows no desire to turn down the volume knob on his power trio. Houstoned Rocks recently spoke with the sage stoner while he was somewhere on the East Coast, touring to promote the band’s surprisingly powerful new record, the aptly titled What Doesn’t Kill You…

Houstoned Rocks: Your Houston show piggybacks on Blue Cheer’s SXSW showcase and appearance at High Times magazine’s “Doobie Awards,” where you’re getting the Lifetime Achievement nod and have been nominated for “Best Pot Song.” How did you feel when you heard that news?

With a record number of Houston artists accepted into SXSW this year, sold-out crowds at shows like Hootenanny at the Mink and Bun B at Warehouse Live, and everyone from Fatal Flying Guilloteens and Karina Nistal to Hearts of Animals and Indian Jewelry raising eyebrows well beyond the Harris County line, the local music scene seems like it’s in pretty good shape to me.

But not everyone sees it that way, so Sunday afternoon at Fitzgerald’s, local club owners, booking agents, promoters, managers and other behind-the-scenesters will gather to discuss matters like the smoking ban, dwindling audiences at local shows, recent club closures and more. The meeting, scheduled to start around 3 p.m., is free and open to the public, and food and drinks will be available.

They Might Be Giants stop into town tonight, but last week Dusti Rhodes spoke with John Flansburgh about influences, kids’ albums, the band’s 25-year career and his views on today’s music scene.

How do you guys go back and forth between writing a kids album like Here Come the 123s and adult albums like The Else?

Well, I mean if we did more kids show it would feel more schizophrenic. Basically, we’re really involved in the production of music. There are different audiences, but the primary thing is kind of the same thing. Basically what we do is very much our own. It’s not like other kids' stuff. It’s not that big a stress, it’s all kind of just creative stuff, you know, so it’s all in the world of songwriting. If we actually did more shows for kids it probably would be a little bit different. We’re basically like adult performers and we write these projects for kids.

After writing kids stuff, do you have a preference? And do you find yourself during the creative process realizing that something you’re writing for an adult album may be better suited for kids or vice versa?