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
I knew it had been a long-ass time since we were last graced with a Tom Waits show in these parts, but I had no idea just how long it had been. According to his singularly obsessive fansite, it will have been a full 27 years and one month since we last heard the extreme bluesman and song poet. A full Houston tour history follows, after the jump…
The pun is difficult to resist: The Slip is the second Nine Inch Nails album to arrive with free download availability, and the slip is what Trent Reznor has given to corporate parties who stand to profit from his music or the legal regulation of it.
“This one’s on me,” writes Reznor on the NIN Web site under the download link. The record’s release was cryptically alluded to in a post to the band’s Web site on April 21 and in the metadata of two mp3 singles, “Discipline” and “Echoplex,” released on April 22 and May 2, respectively.
Unlike the recent Ghosts I-IV, The Slip features lyrics on seven of its ten tracks. Veteran NIN members Josh Freese, Robin Finck and Alessandro Cortini return the band to a harder electro-industrial sound akin to Year Zero (2007) and With Teeth (2005).
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.
So guess what happened here tonight, on the block? A girl, perhaps anywhere from 15 to 18 years old, got hit by a train. My friend saw it. So did a couple of other friends and neighbors. I live upstairs, maybe 75 yards from where it happened, and I heard about it from a friend down the block who said there were a bunch of ambulances in front of my apartment. I hadn't even been off from the record store an hour, and I was like, 'Huh?'
'This chick got hit by a train.' I was immediately like, 'No way.' But then they were like, 'Yeah,' and within an hour (that I, I'm very proud to say, spent drinking with my friends), it was on the 10 p.m. news. I believe you can find the video here.
That's the only footage I could find on the whole wide Internet. Seemed like there were several news trucks out there, so I supposed it was on a lot of stations. Maybe even CNN. Break up this whole Clinton-Obama monotony. Too bad we've already had the primary here, or Barack and Hillary would have had to taken sides: Which one of these prospective Presidents wants to stick up for the girl who plunged (or stumbled) in front of that train? What kind of health-care nightmare is that?
To give Hucknall his propers, few British vocalists bothered to study the lessons imparted by chronically underappreciated (and underpaid) black American singers like Bland, especially in the days when Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Wham! and Duran Duran set the tenor for pop success. Fewer still applied those lessons skillfully enough to challenge those bands on the charts, but Simply Red did well enough, and still do - indeed, their most recent effort, last year's Stay, topped Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Albums tally. Cold comfort for a band that twice tasted the sweetest nectar pop music had to offer, but on the other hand, has anyone heard from Paul Young lately?
Pitchfork reported Friday that Cat Power, the New York-based singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, has been ordered by her doctor to refrain from performing indefinitely. Marshall, whose harrowing, emotionally stark songs were often overshadowed by her crippling stage fright and a tendency to come apart onstage, got sober a few years ago and has since released the critically adored, soul-tinged albums The Greatest and this year’s Jukebox.
Marshall’s shows tomorrow in Dallas and Wednesday in Austin were also canceled. The dates will be made up later this year, a representative from her label, Matador Records, told Pitchfork. - Chris Gray
Southern California roots-rock and alt-country singer/guitarist Chris Gaffney has died. In recent years, Gaffney had performed with former Paladin Dave Gonzalez as one half of the Hacienda Brothers and also, for the last nine years, in Dave Alvin’s backing band. Gaffney had been suffering from severe liver troubles in recent months and was awaiting a transplant when he passed away. He was 57.
After honing his craft in Arizona road houses, Gaffney moved for a time to Canada, where backed Webb Pierce and Ferlin Husky. By the mid-‘70s, he had moved to Southern California, and in 1977, he formed a partnership with Wyman Reese, who would serve as the producer for Gaffney’s first three albums, which he released on the HighTone label over the course of the ‘80s and ‘90s – Loser’s Paradise, Chris Gaffney and the Cold Hard Facts, and Mi Vida Loca.
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).
Tired of never knowing why people around you are walking backwards or pillow fighting?
The Flash Mob has been popping up all over town and we even caught its last shenanigan on video. The secret society behind the aforementioned random acts of silliness is going a little more public with announcements and even leaked its latest plan to us (and everyone on MySpace). The event is scheduled to land on Saturday’s Westheimer Block Party (because that’s one place where people will totally be shocked by something out of ordinary.) But, still, we have to admit they are pretty fun to watch.
Justin Trevino, lead singer and guitarist in the band Buxton, has cool parents. For the past few months, they operated The Forum, LaPorte’s first and only indie rock venue. No more.
Trevino told me last night that his parents had decided to close it down. Last night was the Forum’s final night. “It was just too expensive,” says Trevino. “I think they just wanted to try it out. They have enough to pay rent, but insurance and all that other stuff really adds up.” – John Nova Lomax
Just got an email from Reg Burns, Little Joe's off-and-on manager, which I will excerpt here:
"Just got back from Ben Taub ICU... The nurse finally came and told us it was OK to see him. I told her he was a famous musician and she said that he has been telling her that."
Roger Wood passed along some terrible news this morning – Little Joe Washington is in intensive care at Ben Taub. Although the pint-sized blues guitar genius has cheated death on damn near a daily basis for the past decade, and climbed out of what seemed to have been his death-bed in 2001, this time the prognosis looks especially grim.
I can remember the first time I ever saw Washington.
