Damn. I saw the horrible, terrible news yesterday, and I'm still somewhat stunned: Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse is dead, after shooting himself outside a friend's home.

I'm reeling, awash in sadness and anger at the same time; sad that Linkous thought things were so bad that he had to step off the stage permanently and angry that he'd leave his family, friends, and fans bereft like this. There're few things more selfish, to my mind, than suicide, and I'm having a hard time coming to grips with it.

I'm not going to claim to've known the guy personally, don't worry, but I do feel weirdly connected to him and his work, having listened to it and loved it for fifteen years. I happened upon a copy of the Sparklehorse "Hammering the Cramps"/"Spirit Ditch" 7-inch back in 1995 or 1996 (can't remember which, sorry), right out of college, and was immediately blown away by the eerie, dirty-sounding, yet hauntingly beautiful countrified psych-pop.

The debut album of Linkous' one-man band, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, was a creaking, whispering, rambling mishmash of country, folk, pop, and little crufts of noise, and for me, at least, it was eye-opening. To me, Sparklehorse bridged the gap between Guided By Voices' rough-edged, catchy-as-hell pop and the Flaming Lips' swooning, primary-colored, high-voiced psychedelia -- it was strangely, gorgeously layered, something you could listen to over and over again and hear a new facet of the sound.

I only got to meet Linkous once, and that was by phone, back in 2006. I'm still not sure how I lucked into it, looking back. Some kind soul at his label at the time (Astralwerks) had sent his latest CD, Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain, so I'd emailed them just for the heck of it, to ask if there was any hope in hell of speaking with the guy.

Apparently not realizing how low-rent a publication they were talking to, the label folks set it up, and a few days later, I was calling Linkous at his home in the backwoods of western North Carolina. He was the nicest, most low-key guy, just sort of this apologetic country boy who made music and figured his career was going nowhere fast. He was surprised that people wanted to talk to him, to hear from him again, even though he'd fallen into a deep depression and had essentially walked away from music completely for several years. He was humble and grateful to be making music again.

It broke my heart, honestly. That this guy, who'd helped mold my love of music and showed me noisy, messy stuff could still be beautiful and sweet, would be so uncertain of himself that he figured nobody really wanted to hear it anymore... It was tragic, even then.

But things were on the upswing, it seemed like. He'd collaborated with the soon-to-be household name producer Danger Mouse on Mountain, and they already had plans to do more, which turned into Dark Night of the Soul -- it sounded amazing, but then got mired in legal bullshit and never saw a "real" release. Still, things were going pretty well, at least from my vantage point.

I guess they weren't going so well, though, from where Linkous stood.

Again, I can't claim to've been friends with the guy; all I know is that he and the music he made was pretty damn important to me, and now the music's all that's left. The funny thing is that although I've been listening to his albums over the past couple of days, they don't make me feel sad, not at all. Listening to songs like "Homecoming Queen" and "Gold Day", I can't help but smile.

So here's to you, man. I'm going to choose to celebrate what was and be happy for it. To that end, here're a few of my favorite Sparklehorse tracks:

Sparklehorse - "Hammering The Cramps"
Sparklehorse - "Someday I Will Treat You Good"
Sparklehorse - "Gold Day"
Sparklehorse - "Ghost In The Sky"

(I'm just posting 'em here by way of tribute, btw. If they need to be taken down, just let me know, and I'll remove 'em immediately.)

Labels: Free Stuff, Musical Crap, Random Rambling, Things To Download, Things To Hear

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JOSHUA STARNES:

Joshua Starnes is Vice President of the Houston Film Critics Society. He is a contributor to Space City Rock. His Picks are below.

82nd Academy Awards

???Even if you've never heard of Punksawtaney Phil or you still get snowstorms after February it's still easy to tell when Spring is on the way, because that's when the annual Hollywood backpatting reaches the fever pitch that is Academy Awards.  For four-plus hours Hollywood becomes the center of the world (or more so than usual, at least if you live there) as they announce their picks for the best and the brightest from the previous twelve months.  And sometimes they even get it right.

Best Picture

For the first time since 1943, the Best Picture category has been expanded to 10 films (at one point in the 1930s, as many as 12 films were nominated), offering a great many more films the opportunity to advertise themselves as Best Picture Nominees. Cynics among us might suggest that this is largely a method to aid to the marketing of films (and film as a whole) during a recession, a complaint the Oscars have suffered under almost since their inception. Or we can be optimistic and call it a return to the Golden Age of Hollywood when politics had to less to do with who was nominated than merit. The reality is that situation is probably going to be about the same as it was before the category was expanded: a mixture of well-marketed films that get nominated because it seems like they should, films so good they can't be ignored, and the odd head scratchers leaving you wondering what the Academy was thinking. 2010's mix is a pretty much exactly like that, only more so:

Nominees

Avatar

The Blind Side

District 9

An Education

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire

A Serious Man

Up

Up In The Air

The biggest change over the last few decades is that the extra slots, especially in a weak year, allows more 'entertainment-heavy' films into the pool, the one type of film the Academy generally loathes to nominate. While Avatar seemed like a shoe-in for a nomination, many thought the same of The Dark Knight last year. Then again, that's probably why we're talking about 10 films anyway and for all its faults the Academy rarely makes the same mistake twice in a row. District 9 and Up would probably never have been nominated, however, (particularly Up as the Best Animated Film category was specifically added to keep them from being nominated for the BIG award).

The Hurt Locker, Up In The Air and Precious were also certain to be nominated. The intense marketing pressure of filling that last slot would have driven out most of the weird nominees in favor of something safe that would settle for being honored to be nominated. But this year we get all of the above, with not one but two left field entries; The Blind Side and A Serious Man.

Actually, even though it has no chance of winning, The Blind Side isn't such a strange pick, particularly given the groundswell of grass roots support for it since it was released back in November. The real head-scratcher is A Serious Man (pushing out better and safer Oscar-bait choices like Invictus or Bright Star) as it it didn't make any particularly deep waves with audiences or critics. The most frequent response to it's nomination is a sudden realization that you haven't seen it or even heard anyone's opinion on it. The only rationale seems to be that it is a Coen Brothers film, and since they have such a sterling reputation for quality it must be good even though no one's seen it, and the people who have, have generally forgotten it. And that Clint Eastwood was probably getting too smug for his own good.

For the most part, though, it's a pretty good (and unsurprising) list, but only two films have any real shot this year: The Hurt Locker and Avatar (with Up In The Air coming in a distant third). The big award is without question the most politicized of the bunch, with winners often picked based on who seems like should get the award rather than who deserves it; what the picking of a certain film says about the people who awarded it. But there's always room for surprises and lot relies on how the Academy's memory. With it's Golden Globe win and stunning box office take, Avatar certainly has the most momentum at the moment, and a lot of years that would be enough. But James Cameron already has a couple of Oscars, for the last highest grossing film of all time that he made, and that sort of thing does matter. And while they may nominate one, the Academy generally hates giving big awards to sci-fi or fantasy unless they have no real choice.

This year they do have a choice, and that is The Hurt Locker. It's pretty much everything Avatar is not; small, subtle and with a taut focus on a complicated main character. It doesn't hurt that it's topical, quite good and it's the first nomination for most of the people making it, even though they've been in the industry for some time. It's actually a pretty close call, which is unusual for Best Picture (only the nominees are usually surprising). While Up In

The Air or The Blind Side could manage some sort of dark horse win, I think this will be one of the safer categories of the night, which is why I suspect the Best Picture of 2009 will be:

Best Picture

The Hurt Locker

(and just in case anyone was wondering, my own pick for best film of the year was Precious but it has practically zero chance; they're just going to have to be honored to be nominated).

Best Director

Just like with real elections, award voting tends to be strictly down ticket. This is most notable in the technical fields, where generally only critically acclaimed films are nominated despite the fact that a movie doesn't actually have to be any good to have great sound design or visual effects or what have you. But it's just as prevalent in the artistic fields, which is why Best Director nominees almost always follow Best Picture nominees exactly. And 2010 is no exception.

Nominees

Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker

James Cameron - Avatar

Lee Daniels - Precious (the title's too damned long to keep typing out)

Jason Reitman - Up In The Air

Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds

While a lot of the artistic categories will get their award 'just to give the film' something, Best Director usually also follows Best Picture; in fact it's often quite an upset when that doesn't happen. Cameron actually has more of a chance here than for Best Picture simply because of the immense technical job he did with Avatar (and which Avatar is much more successful as than as a movie). But once again, he's also already got one and I don't think the Academy will be able to pass up the chance to finally give a woman a Best Director statue, so the winner will probably be:

Best Director

Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker Also, we can probably take it for certain now that Quentin Tarantino will have to wait until he's about as old as Martin Scorcese was to finally get an Oscar for an inferior film, in order to make up for not winning for Pulp Fiction. Best Actor

In the reverse of most of the last couple of years, only Best Actor offer the opportunties for real surprises. Except for Colin Firth's admittedly deserved nomination for A Single Man, any single one of these individuals has a real shot. (Despite how good he was in it, A Single Man was probably the most turgid film of the year; most Academy voters were probably unable to stay awake through it to decide whether or not to vote for it).

Nominees

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart

George Clooney - Up In The Air

Morgan Freeman - Invictus

Colin Firth - A Single Man

Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker

Clooney actually gave probably the best performance of his career as a termination specialist who's cut himself off from the human race and Freeman BECAME Mandela, so much so that it didn't really matter how accurate the movie was. But they both already have Oscars and Bridges doesn't, and that will probably cinch it. Which is perfectly okay. Bridges washed up old man doesn't just look like a country singer, he looks like a country song and Bridges inhabits him with skill and grace. The first half of Crazy Heart was probably the best first half of any film in 2009 and even if it didn't really know where it was going until it got there, you could easily award Bridges and not be wrong. Which is why this time next year we'll be seeing ads for Tron: Legacy starring Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges.

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart

Best Actress

Unlike Best Actor, but very much like all the rest of the acting categories, there is no drama around the Best Actress award. A lot of that is the fact that Hollywood has a really hard time coming up with roles for women; for the most part they're just used as set dressing even when they're the star. More often than not you end up with some completely off the wall picks mainly because there weren't many choices and the queue has got to be filled somehow; 2009 wasn't quite as bad as that.

Nominees

Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side

Helen Mirren - The Last Station

Carrey Mulligan - An Education

Gabourey Sidibe - Precious

Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia

There's actually a couple of excellent performances from little films in here, so that the Academy wasn't left filling in spots with well known, well regarded actresses in lesser roles (though there was some of that, too). In fact, there were enough really good lead performances this year that there are some real gems missing here; specifically Abbie Cornish for Bright Star and Saoirse Ronan for The Lovely Bones (whether you liked the movie or not, much like A Single Man, she was very good in it).

But they weren't nominated and the rest is all cold, hard math. Mirren and Streep have Oscars, Mulligan and Sidibe are young and have the opportunity to be nominated again. That just leaves Bullock, in the midst of a major career resurgence and after receiving several other awards (including the SAG and the Golden Globe) in what is, if we're honest, probably her only chance to ever be nominated.

Best Actress

Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side

And if we continue being honest, as sentimental and sappy as "The Blind Side" was, Bullock was very good in it. And shit, if Julia Roberts can get one...

Best Supporting Actor

In a lot of ways the Supporting Actor category this year is the most and least surprising. The most because of who was nominated and who was not. Several people you fully expect to be here are here.

Nominees

Woody Harrelson - The Messenger

Christopher Plummer - The Last Station

Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones

Matt Damon - Invictus

Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

Woody Harrellson gave the best performance of his life in The Messenger and made that movie worth watching (especially the notification scenes, which are probably the hardest couple of minutes of film to watch of anything made this year) while Ben Foster often threatened to drag it down. Stanley Tucci has been rightly noticed as probably the best thing about Peter Jackson's misguided The Lovely Bones. He got the showy role in that film, however; unfortunately overshadowing Mark Wahlberg's excellent turn in the film. I'd forgotten he can act when he puts his mind to it. Christopher Plummer is one of the real head scratchers; there's nothing wrong with is performance as Tolstoy in The Last Station but it strikes me more as an actor's lifetime achievement nomination for the film that is probably the least viewed of anything nominated for an Oscar that's not a foreign film or a documentary.

But the two big surprises are the inclusion of Matt Damon and the absence of Christopher McKay for Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles. McKay inhabited Welles in a way that every other actor playing a real person this year wishes they could have managed (doesn't hurt that Welles was very much larger than life even in his real life). And Damon, while solid in Invictus wasn't really a reason to watch the film. And considering how few nominations Invictus actually got, it's strange that this was one area they decided to notice it in. Freeman's performance aside, it wasn't a particularly actorly movie. Maybe it's the fact he held onto an accent. Actually Damon is a good actor, but for some reason he never gets nominated for his actually good performances. He really should have been nominated for Best Actor this year for his hilarious turn in Steven Soderburgh's The Informant! Perhaps this is to make up for that. None of that matters, however, because the reality is for the third year in a row, Best Supporting Actor is a foregone conclusion. Christoph Waltz's towering performance in Inglourious Basterds has won just about ever supporting award given out so far and will certainly win every one yet to come. It was probably THE performance of the year.

Best Supporting Actor

Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress

It's a really similar situation in the Supporting Actress category. As usually happens in the Actress categories, the number of actually qualifying roles dries up fast, leaving the Academy to scramble to find people who seem likely they should be nominated.

Nominees

Penelope Cruz - Nine

Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air

Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart

Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air

Mo'Nique - Precious

Farmiga and Kendrick are rightly nominated for making "Up in the Air" work as well as it does. Those Twilight people are going to have to pay up to get Kendrick back for the next film. And it's hard to argue with Gyllenhaal's trepiditatious single mother in Crazy Heart but by then you can see the Academy working hard to find some good nominees. I'm actually a little surprised Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent haven't gotten more notice for Inglourious Basterds. Gyllenhaal's nomination has a whiff of looking for a recognizable name in a role that you might be able to take serious. Which is how we get to Penelope Cruz for Nine. It's a movie that didn't really need to be made from a musical no one really liked to begin with. Cruz was probably the least annoying thing in the film but that doesn't say much, and if that's the requirements for an Oscar nomination nowadays, that's not saying much. But, as with Supporting Actor, none of this matters. No one is going to beat Mo'Nique for her performance in Precious. She may go down as one of the best villains of the decade for that role. It's surprising as it is harrowing; I honestly had no idea she could actually act. Short of some sort of upset from Up in the Air she's a lock.

Best Supporting Actress

Mo'Nique - Precious

Best Adapted Screenplay The screenplay categories get used often as gift awards for the Best Picture nominees that aren't going to win, and that may well be the case again this year. Every so often a screenplay is just so good it can't be ignored, but more often the not it wins for the movie, not the actual words behind the movie. In a perfect world that would mean In the Loop would win. A mixture of political theater and comedy, it was so dry it actually takes a minute to realize how insane it is, with some of the sharpest characterization of the year. But this is probably not a year when the most deserving is going to win, and it's going to have to be satisfied with being nominated.

Nominees

District 9

An Education

In the Loop

Precious

Up in the Air

The rest are all Best Picture nominees, which should seem fitting. The best films should have great screenplays to start with (which is the point where I point out once again the complete absence of Avatar from any but technical nominations; even Star Wars was nominated for Best Screenplay). There are several other excellent screenplays missing from this category, including Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Informant! But people often have a difficulty not nominating Best Picture nominees for a screenplay award unless there's a really good reason not too (*cough*Avatar*cough*) and the sheer number of nominees this year is swamping the screenplay categories. It's kind of a surprise The Blind Side isn't here, then again, maybe not. It's a film that works on a purely emotional level and has many flaws, it's screenplay not the least among them.

With Avatar eating up a lot of the Christmas air, Up in the Air's chances for a major award have begun to fade -- people definitely have a love it or hate it reaction to it's unsatisfying look at modern life -- and this will probably end up being its consolation prize for not getting anything else. Which is sad, because it's probably the weakest screenplay in contention in this category except for District 9 which only really works when the visuals are factored in. Which isn't the way it's supposed to be, but is often the way it is.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Up in the Air

Best Original Screenplay

This is the only artistic category that is a genuine toss up. Because so many of the best picture nominees are from adapted screenplays they don't quite overwhelm the category. And some of the nominees, like A Serious Man just aren't serious. They're they because it seems like they should be, because it was hard to decide what did. It's like the Martin Scorcese or Woody Allen factor. Eventually you just start getting nominated because there are five slots to fill and you're a known quantity.

Nominees

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

The Messenger

A Serious Man

Up

Up certainly deserves the Original appellation and The Messenger is surprisingly affective, though Moverman probably more deserved a nomination for I'm Not There two years ago. And The Messenger is a much more performance driven than script driven film.

This will probably come down to The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds and there really is no telling which way the Academy will go. The down ticket affect is always a possibility, but Inglourious Basterds had by far the best dialog of the year and reminded people what talent Tarantino can be. If somehow Avatar prevails at the top spot this could be The Hurt Locker's consolation prize. I don't think it's going to play out that way, and Tarantino is probably due to be honored again. It certainly had the most original spelling.

Best Original Screenplay

Inglourious Basterds The rest of the awards will almost certainly be eaten up by Avatar. It is a technical triumph if nothing else. And that might be enough to put it over the top for Best Picture, after people just get used to voting for it, but I doubt it. There are actually a handful of places where it's not nominated, allowing Star Trek to be an Academy Award winning film, even it if is for Best Make Up (not really sure how the The Young Victoria got into that, unless it was for all the sideburns).

The Academy has gone to pains to make sure that no one is overlooked this year, and tamper down the furor of last year. It hates when people realize just how conservative and hide-bound it really is. Hollywood's all about being hip and in the now, after all. But it is, and this year's no different. Even with 10 slots, they still couldn't quite get it right and Invictus snub is quite strange, particularly in favor of stuff no one liked like A Serious Man.

More than anything else, this will be the year of the old hand for the most part, when people like Sandra Bullock and Jeff Bridges and Kathryn Bigelow, who have toiled for so long, finally get their rewards. Sometimes it's easy to forget how political this all can be, with its marketing campaigns and so many considerations that have nothing to do with the quality of the work itself. But that's the way it is. There were still plenty of snubs, like Amreeka for Best Foreign Film or Abbie Cornish for Best Actress of The Informant! for much at all (if there's any justice it will win Best Score, but that would require too much thought on the voter's parts). But overall it was a pretty decent year, if not particularly awe-inspiring. It's rare that the Academy has a real chance to pick the best picture as Best Picture, but this looks like it will be the one.

Unless Avatar wins.

ADAM WOODYARD:

Adam Woodyard is a contributor to Space City Rock, and gives his Oscar Picks below.

It's been several decades since the Academy last selected ten nominees for Best Picture. As critics everywhere scurry to try and apply old patterns to the new paradigm, let me assure you that they do not apply. Votes are split up between ten films, not five, and a needlessly complex mathematical system is now in place, that we needn't go into. Popularity of individual films means less than it ever did; all that is left is members of the Academy voting for the work done by themselves and their contemporaries. Other award ceremonies mean even less, as they are handed out by film critics and journalists. But looking at the history of the Best Picture Oscar, from 1927 to present, certain things—not all—remain consistent. The film most likely to win the Best Picture Oscar, in reverse order:

10. A Serious Man. The Coen Brothers just won the statue three years ago. The Academy feels that one is enough, at least for a few years… there are numerous instances of this, but the most recent would be all three Lord of the Rings films winning different awards, and not all winning the same award. Especially if (more resembling, say, Ron Howard, or Martin Scorsese), that Oscar comes many years into a well-established career.

9. District 9. The most talked about film of the year, at least until Avatar came around. No one is disputing the greatness of the film, but whether there are five nominees or ten, the effects-driven blockbuster does not win this award. Creative, yes… but it's not really actor-driven, is it? Other Best Picture Nominees in this category would include, say, Jaws, Star Wars, or The Sixth Sense.

8. Up in the Air. Essentially not a winner because of the same reasons as above. Also, in tying in with the same reasons as below, the Academy has more often favored big, sweeping epics with complex storylines and even more complex filmmaking. It is, at least in their view, simply a greater achievement to make a film with a cast of thousands. The exception is, of course, the year in which such a big sweeping epic doesn't appear (say, 2005-present), or, if an epic does appear, that filmmaker just won the award, so the Academy's focus is elsewhere (Letters from Iwo Jima, the first two LOTR films).

7. An Education. See above. Well-acted, well-written, but the Academy isn't going to give you the award if they haven't seen your film. See also, The Reader, The Shawshank Redemption. 6. Precious. While not even remotely the same film as #9 on the list, the reasons are the same. A well-made film from a first-time director, with its handful of leads turning in spectacular performances—this is reason enough to go see it. Does it move cinema forward as an art form? While it does admittedly shine a light into corners of our nation that are none-too-often examined… it is by no means unique in that respect. Awards? Yes. Best Picture? No.

5. The Blind Side. This selection is baffling. It's essentially what would happen if Precious were made for a mainstream audience , by a bunch of white executives. You'll leave the theater after Precious feeling depressed yet thoughtful. You'll leave the theater after The Blind Side feeling happy and in the mood to grab dinner at Chili's. The number of artistic liberties taken with this once-true story rivals that of The Great Debaters. The Academy loves Sandra Bullock, but this has as much chance of winning as Seabiscuit.

4. Up. An animated film hasn't been nominated since 1991. Then it kept not happening, so often, that a special category was created, and some fantastic films have won that award. But it never did have the same prestige, exactly, as Best Picture. Up is good enough to be in this category… as a nominee. Just as the actors and director from Precious put in some of the best work of the careers, the same can be true of the animators and writers of Up. But that's all. Someday the Academy may gives its highest honor to a film made entirely in one room… but not this year.

3. Avatar. A shoe-in chosen by people not paying attention, for two very large reasons. First of all, James Cameron just won the award in 1997, and hasn't made a film since. Second, Titanic had emotional weight and specific historical resonance, Avatar does not. Then there's the animation issue. But the real second reason, is that the script is by no means special or insightful, interesting or original. People who had never mentioned the word "screenplay" in their lives had this complaint over and over about Titanic, but the direction, quality of actors, and sheer spectacle, was great enough to overcome Cameron's mediocre screenwriting talents. While this is an old story updated in new clothes, it is still an old and standard story… much like Brokeback Mountain, another fine film that just didn't deserve the award. This leaves two films left, and while 10-3 are very cut-and-dry, the final two are by no means.

2. The Hurt Locker. One of approximately 900 films to be released regarding the war in Iraq, most of them largely forgettable. The Hurt Locker sets itself apart for all the reasons you've read—it is a timeless story, the focus is on the people and not the politics, Kathryn Bigelow is awesome, Jeremy Renner is the finest young actor you've never heard of. These are all true. I was more curious to see this film than all the other Iraq movies, for just that reason. I wasn't disappointed, and this is a truly great film that really does have the ability to render you in awe, if you let it. But watching it, can one really say, "This is an Academy Award Winner for Best Picture?" Bigelow shot reels upon reels of film, and may well win a Best Director Oscar. And until about a week ago, I had this film as #1 on my list. Then I watched it again… Best Pictures are not made to be watched once and then forgotten.

1. Inglorious Basterds. More like Chicago than The Return of the King, this is a sweeping epic for which lightning really may strike this year. Thanks to the relentless hype machine, the filmmaker and his film are not under the radar, nor mysteries. Whether people love or hate this film, they have actually watched it. And it is the Academy—not the popular vote—who gives the award. Whether you look at Wings (1927), The Apartment (1960), Titanic (1997) or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), this film more than anything else on this list left movies different. The filmmaker created this … thing, this experience, and created images, made us feel things, gave us things to talk about that are both broad, and specific right down to the now, whether you're watching the movie in 2010 or 2035. Popular opinion has Basterds way down the list, far below Avatar or Up or New Moon. But let's remember one thing most critics consistently seem to forget—this is an award given by the people who make the films. And next month the film will win Best Picture… and in 25 years you can watch it again, and smile as you get nostalgic for that strange, controversial, violent, divisive yesteryear that was 2009.

CREG LOVETT:

I have seen all of this year's Academy Award Nominees. The Academy did not even nominate the best films, actors, writers or animators. The Oscar award was created to promote the studios, so that is how the Academy voters make their choices. They are rich social liberals from the 1950's. They are hopelessly out of touch with American society, and uninterested in Art. I'll make my predictions quickly because I have asked 2 of my favorite local critics to present their picks.

Best Picture goes to The Hurt Locker because a war movie with no point of view and no message is what passes for innovation in Hollywood. Avatar is a close second, but it with its hamfisted mash-up of world religions, philosophies and perspectives, it could have been directed by DJ AM for less $$.

Best Director goes to Kathryn Bigelow for reasons listed above. Not because she's a female. Though she is, and she's a foxy 60 year old action film director. If you haven't seen Strange Days, get it from Netflix. By the way, she directed Point Break. You love it.

Meg Ryan must be rolling over in her grave because Sandra Bullock is THIS CLOSE to winning Best Actress for doing what she was once the best at. I've seen the Blindside. It's the most unintentionally racist movie about racism since Crash. You'd have to be Canadian for this Hallmark Channel clunker to teach you anything about American culture. Luckily Merryl Streep will win Best Actress for playing Julia Child in Julie and Julia.

Best Actor will be Jeff Bridges. Waylon Jennings never looked more like Waylon Jennings when Bridges first takes the "stage" in a New Mexico bowling alley. His performance is unreal. Just look at the way he hold his guitar. Crazy Heart is also the most experimental film in the bunch. Look at the beyond-extreme-close-ups on Bridges face throughout the first two acts. A bonus is that the second half of the movie is set in Houston. The only thing they could have done to make this movie better for me is if it had been a 6 or 7 hour epic bio-pic, or if they'd have had Ryan Bingham had replaced Colin Farrell.

Best Supporting Actress can only go to Mo'Nique for playing one of the best villains I've ever seen as the mother of Precious in Precious. If I'd have had a vote, I'd have voted for her, the film and the script. It's a special movie. Don't miss it.

Best Supporting Actor will go to Christoph Waltz.

Best Animated Feature will go to UP, but the actual best cartoon movie wasn't even nominated. Ponyo came out on DVD last week. It's the best animated feature in a several years.

Best Adapted Screenplay will go to Up In The Air, but In the Loop was by far the best, smartest most clever script of any movie I saw this year.

Best Screenplay will go to Inglorious Basterds because I'm the only person who can't stand Tarantino's unnatural, not believable dialogue. A Serious Man was far better. Me, and Orson Welles should have been nominated here, as well as Best Actor for Christopher McKaye. Richard Linklater's movie was inexplicably not distributed even though Zach Efron and Claire Danes were great, the script was better, and Christopher McKaye played the best Orson Welles I have ever seen.

Best Foreign Film will be Un Prophete.

Best Documentary Feature will hopefully go to The Cove for exposing the slaughter of 35,000 dolphins ever year in a small Japanese fishing village. The dolphins are sold as phony whale meat to unsuspecting Japanese. The legendary trainer behind the Flipper TV series shows just how smart and benevolent dolphins are, and then he shows us horrifying footage of the dolphins being mercilessly murdered by poor fisherman. It is as compelling as any documentary I've ever seen. It is terrifying and inspiring at the same time. This was the most memorable movie I saw in the past year. Please don't forget to see this movie which could and would change your life if you watch it today. www.thecovemovie.com

Labels: Moo-vies, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Things To See

Creg || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Argh. If you've checked out either our cheery little blog or the much-loved shows list within the past 36 hrs. or so, you may've noticed that both parts of this site looked pretty damn weird and/or totally unformatted, with all the actual page content jammed over into the right-hand sidebar like a very large person in a very small swimsuit. sigh.

Apologies for the weirdness -- I'd initially blamed my perennial Web bugbear, Blogger, for the issue (we've got history with this sort of bullshit), but now it's looking like it's actually Feedsweep that was the culprit. They apparently changed some of the functionality of their feed widgets, a couple of which SCR uses, and that appears to've broken the formatting of both sections.

At any rate, the problem should be fixed now, at least formatting-wise. I've had to remove the "Stuff to Read" and "Recent Blog Posts" sections from the sidebars of both for the forseeable future; when I can figure out how to fix 'em so they don't hose up everything else, I'll get 'em back on the site.

Thanks to the kind folks who emailed to warn me that the site was doing crazy shit -- the heads-up is/was greatly appreciated...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Yours truly spent some quality time last night with his peers in the H-town music-writing community last night, thanks to Caroline Collective-izer and all-round cool guy Matthew Wettergreen, who cajoled and coerced nearly a dozen writer-type people into showing up at Cecil's and hanging out for a few hours. And it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Because I tend to generally be kind of a shy person by nature and am these days a kid-having, near-burb-living homebody, the sad reality is that I often meet my fellow writers, even in the relatively small, brackish pond that is the Houston scene, only in online form. So it was extremely cool to be able to catch up with the handful of folks I have already met and finally put a face to an email address/byline for a lot of the others.

I'd like to say we discussed deep, secret Music Writer Things, but the reality's a lot more goofy -- I ended up talking SXSW and beer with David Cobb & Craig Hlavaty, the perils of flight with Sara Cress, and then (somewhat more seriously) how annoyed I get with great, great bands that write amazing songs and then vanish in a puff of smoke before anybody outside their little micro-scene gets to notice 'em.

There were a few folks who couldn't make it (sorry to hear you had to work, Adam...), but all things considered, the turnout was pretty great. Here's the list of folks I remember seeing there last night, in quasi-alphabetical order (and if I leave anybody out, I'm really, really sorry):

• Me (duh)
• Marc Brubaker (Houstonist)
• David Cobb (Houston Calling)
• Sara Cress (29-95.com)
• Andrew Dansby (Houston Chronicle; 29-95.com)
• Anna Garza (Free Press Houston; ex-Hands Up Houston member)
• Craig Hlavaty (Houston Press)
• Joe Mathlete (29-95.com)
• David Sadof (Houston Music Examiner; ex-Lunar Rotation host)
• Brittanie Shey (Houston Press)
• Matthew Wettergreen (Caroline Collective)

• John Gray (an accidental walkup -- he was apparently meeting w/Craig to go see Mariah Carey and found himself trapped in the middle of a bunch of fellow writerly people; Houston Press)
• Bucky (another surprise walkup; ex-Hands Up Houston member)

Like I said, there were some who couldn't make it -- I'd have loved to meet the Breakfast On Tour gang, the IndieHouston.org guys (again), or the AudioADD or weworemasks folks, any of 'em -- but it was quite a crew, even still. I joked morbidly at one point that one well-placed bomb could take out the bulk of H-town music coverage... (Hrm. Maybe we should keep the time/location of these things secret so as to avoid the wrath of disgruntled band members/musicians?)

Anyway, thanks to Matthew for setting it all up, and high-five to all the folks I got to chat & bond with; I've got my fingers crossed that there'll be many, many more of these things.

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 7 comments

I'm a little torn about mentioning this on here, but it's just too damn weird and seems to get weirder by the day. Back in 2008, a very nice woman (I'm not going to put her name up here unless I have to, in case what's going on isn't her fault) emailed me, saying that she was a local artist and music fan, and she wanted to see about helping out with this little site. We emailed back and forth a few times, she seemed pretty cool, and so we sent her a handful of CDs to review; that's usually how it works.

She emailed not long after that about a Christmas-type craft market she was involved in at a local church, and it sounded cool, so I mentioned something about it on the blog, then ended up going to the actual thing. The woman I'd talked to online spotted me and introduced herself, and she seemed nice, friendly, and sane. Over the course of the next year, she wrote a dozen or so reviews for the site, all of which I liked and happily posted up on SCR.

Now, however, I've gotten a series of increasingly deranged emails from this person's email address, and I'm not sure what the hell is going on. She emailed a while back to wish me & the fam a merry Christmas, to which I sent back the same, and then this week I started receiving bizarro emails like this, ostensibly from her:

MR. JEREMY HART,

YOU HAVE 24 HOURS TO REMOVE ANY MENTION OF THE NAME 'XXXXXX' AND ANY
AND ALL WRITTEN CONTRIBUTIONS
FROM THIS WRITER.

ATTORNEY AT LAW
JIM ADLER

And this:

PAGE 2 OF 2

MR. JEREMY HART OWNER OF WWW.SPACECITYROCK.COM

YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO PERMANENTLY DELETE/ERASE ANY AND ALL CONTRIBUTIONS
MADE BY XXXXX
WHETHER IT BE WRITTEN OR PHOTOGRAPHIC IN NATURE. HER NAME OR CONTRIBUTIONS
ARE TO BE SEEN NO WHERE ON
WWW.SPACECITYROCK.COM OR ANY AFFILIATES OR SUBSIDIARIES THEREOF.

THIS IS YOUR FIRST AND FINAL WARNING.

ATTORNEY AT LAW
JIM ADLER

Naturally, my first thought was, "holy shit, am I being sued by The Texas Hammer? Badass!", but that probably just shows I watch waaaay too much late-night TV. My second thought was significantly more confused, something along the lines of, "wha?"

I responded that I thought this was a scam and wanted to hear from the writer itself before I did anything. So then the capper came today (with all formatting and language intact, minus stuff that'd identify the actual writer):

To: Jeremy Hart,

XXXXX here. The reason that you totally SUCK at managing and updating your
website is because you are currently living in hell on earth since you
choose money over Jesus & family. You sold your soul to the devil and you
look fucking ugly as shit and have no friends because of it. The only way
that you can get out of the fiery furnace of never-ending hell is when you
remove my name, articles, photos that I provided and/or donated. There shall
be no trace of my name or contributions on this site of yours. I never gave
you copyright permissions. If you choose to deny Christ and you don't follow
these instructions your soul will burn eternally forever and ever and ever
and ever times infinity. WS:

*If you want to get even MORE out of HELL than you should give away *

*everything you own including your house and cars to charity and live in a
homeless shelter or on the street until God directs you further on where to
go and what to do. Let your family take care of themselves. *

*You are an unfit father and deserve only the worst condemnation that's
coming to you.*

- REMOVE IMMEDIATELY --- THE CLOCK IS TICKING AND YOU ARE ALMOST DEAD.

Wow. I'm even more confused about this mess than I was with the first emails. Now, there've been situations in the past where a writer needed me to remove something they'd written -- in general, it's been because they were able to sell a piece to a real-live paid publication, and hey, I can't fault 'em for that. I've always, always, always done what they'd requested and taken it down ASAP. This is a volunteer-driven site, and despite the copyright notice at the bottom of the pages, I don't consider myself to be the final owner of the content; that's primarily there to protect the writers from having their writing swiped by some other site or publication.

In this case, though, I was pretty pissed after reading the last email (there was another in there that quoted Biblical verse and said something about how this person has the keys to Heaven and I don't), and I was not inclined to give in to any demands. Here's my response:

XXXXX -- assuming, of course, that you actually *are* XXXXX, since you sound absolutely nothing like any other correspondence I've received from this address -- I'll make my initial response simple: no. That's the gist of it, but if you'd like further elaboration, read on.

First of all, I suspect this whole thing is a scam by somebody who's pirated this address and who is attempting to make the real XXXXX look bad. Especially because of those initial emails purporting to be from lawyer Jim "The Texas Hammer" Adler (yes, I watch local TV, too), which I'm fairly sure were fraudulent. If I'm wrong about that, and this really *is* XXXXX, I've apparently misjudged you greatly these past several months and sure wish I knew what the heck triggered this.

Second, removing the reviews is extremely unfair to the bands and musicians being reviewed. I'll immediately remove "your" *name* from the reviews, if that's what you'd like, but I'm not taking 'em down. I'll refrain from posting the several sets of pictures you sent, however.

Third, in exchange for the reviews, I sent you CDs (for all but the XXXXX and XXXXX reviews) that were received by me from various PR companies and record labels and for which I am responsible. Unless I am able to return all that promotional material to the labels and PR people in question, I don't feel comfortable removing the reviews. I'm not in the business of giving away CDs just for grins. You want the reviews down? If you really *are* XXXXX, then you should be able to send me back the CDs I sent and delete all related digital media from your hard drive.

Fourth, threats and the like only serve to piss me off and make me *less* likely to do what you want me to do, particularly since you miss the mark repeatedly. I'm choosing money over Jesus and family? Wow -- I'll have to remember to tell my wife when I get home that I've been raking it in all these years with the Website, and we can finally retire to our private island. Please. I have yet to make a single dollar of profit from running this site, but have instead sunk thousands of dollars of my own money into it, because I genuinely love music and want to help out bands and musicians both in Houston and elsewhere.

I suck, as you put it, at managing this site because I have to have a 9-to-5 day job to be able to continue to afford to run it. Claiming that I "choose money" is ridiculous and demonstrates that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. As for how I should give away all my possessions and live in a homeless shelter, well, thanks for the advice, but no.

The ironic thing is that if you'd come to me and said, "hey, I really need you to take down all the stuff I wrote and remove my name from your site; I'm really sorry, but I've got a conflict with having it all up there," I'd have taken it down. Immediately. Since you decided to go about this in this way, however, I'll be damned (get it? ha!) if I give in to your threats and smears. And as for the vitriolic attacks on me and my family, particularly the bit about me being an unfit father, you can go fuck yourself.

Now, I'll admit that I'm no lawyer, so I'm curious to hear what the legal ramifications of this might be. Can I be sued if I refuse to remove the writer's material from the site? As I said above, I've generally done so in the past when it was requested, so I've never run into this before. I definitely can't afford to fight a lawsuit, especially not over some bullshit like this, so I'm just curious as to how long to fight it. Any lawyers out there feel like weighing in? Keep in mind that here at SCR we generally don't use contracts or anything.

I should say, by the way, that if this whole thing didn't seem so damn shady and strange, I'd have gladly taken down the "offending" articles. I'm not going to let a band or musician bully SCR into removing a negative review, no, but I respect the people who selflessly give their time, energy, and creativity to write for this site, and I consider their work to be theirs. So I guess my letter above's a bit of a bluff, or at least just a middle finger to somebody who's either a scam artist or has gone off the rails and started behaving inappropriately.

I'd also wanted to post this up here in the off-chance that whoever's been emailing me is a con artist posing as this writer. If she sees the first part of this post, she'll know I'm talking about her; if this isn't you sending all this crap, email me at "gaijin" at "spacecityrock dot com", please, and let me know. If it is you, well, you can re-read the last sentence of my email above a few more times.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 7 comments

I'm Creg Lovett, and I'm going to be writing a column on Alternative Cinema in Houston. I first came to Space City Rock 4 years ago when a magazine I was writing for crashed and burned, and left me hanging with no place to publish my cover story on Michael Haaga's Plus and Minus Show which was complete with photographs, layout and many hours invested. I'd looked all around town for a home for this piece, when my friend Tom Koenig suggest Jeremy Hart and Space City Rock. "That website has been around forever, everybody looks at it, and the guy who runs it is really proud of his city." That's what Tom said. I took one look at Space City Rock and thought "This is the best Houston site I've ever seen. They don't need me." But Tom insisted and I emailed Jeremy for the first of many hundreds of times. (and hopefully thousands more) Much to my surprise, Jeremy posted it a that weekend as a feature. John Lomax said he liked it, and Michael doesn't think I wasted his time. So thanks Tom and thanks Jeremy.

I've written quite a few things since then. A few movie reviews, a lot of crappy CD reviews, and probably most notably a live review of Jandek that got me a thanks from Dan Workman. (!) See, the coolest people in Houston really do read this site.

To me Space City Rock has always been the anti-Ain't It Cool News. Jeremy isn't a shill, and nobody on his site is either. It's a huge website full of original material created by people who are really out making the scene what it is (so blame us). Every promoter and club owner knows this site. A lot of the reviews of bands all over the country are written by guys in really cool bands here in Houston. It's really something special and I'm proud to have a password so I can stay up late posting sappy drivel like this!

SO I have always believed that Houston has as much to offer as any of the "cultural" cities in the country. We have beaches, we have pro sports, we have a restaurant with a Michelin star. And most of you would agree that Rudyards, Fitzgeralds and The Continental Club stack up against anything Austin has to offer. We don't just attract Britney Spears to the Toyota Center, or nostalgia acts to the Woodlands Pavilion. We have a very rich tradition of culturally significant punk rock, Texas rock, alt-country and some of the best gangster rap in the world.

But we also have as much or more Alternative Cinema as Austin. It merely suffers from the same issues we've all talked about for years in the punk scene. Too far apart, bad parking, etc...

But its there. And if you can drive out to Fitzgeralds your whole life when their wasn't all that other stuff around it, just that scary store down the street, you can drive a few blocks to the Aurora Picture show. You'll be glad you did. Many of you have.

The Aurora Picture Show will be in Mandell Park (at the corner of Richmond and Mandell) in the museum district this Saturday, September 26th at 7pm for a free garden party showing films about gardening and nature. It's a picnic. It's free. It's family friendly. The Aurora Picture Show is Houston's foremost micro cinema. The Church of micro cinema meets at www.aurorapictureshow.org.

Today the Museum of Fine Arts (www.mfah.org) continues their Contemporary World Cinema Series with the Manhattan Film Festival. Its a beautiful theater, there's a Cafe Express in the building, and the parking is free. Thursday through Saturday they'll show "Herb and Dorothy" as part of their Artists on Film series.

Diverseworks Flickerlounge recently started their ongoing series of videos relating to the artists and exhibits in their gallery space called "i found myself an innovator". I've found everything at Diverseworks both challenging and accessible, and their Flickerlounge is the funkiest cinema experience I've had in a long time. (www.diverseworks.org)

This Friday Rice Media Center/Rice Cinema has something very special when, as part of Rice families weekend, they are screening Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" for free at 7pm. I've seen this movie dozens of times. It is, to me, his most accessible film, and I mean that in the worst way. But don't miss this. Orson Welles' worst films are better than many of the Oscar winners of today. And it is very funny to see his interpretation of marijuana addicts. Doubly funny is NRA spokesman, and deadguy, Charlton Heston portraying a Mexican by smearing some sort of grey shoe polish on his face. If you haven't been to Rice Cinema on the campus of Rice University, then you'll be glad you learned about it. Most screenings are free and open to the public. www.ricecinema.rice.edu.

This Sunday I will be at the Houston Symphony's screening of Robert Weine's 1926 silent film "Der Rosenkavalier" as conductor Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony perform Richard Strauss' score of the film. The film was previously thought to be lost but was restored in Germany at great expense, and now it's coming to Houston! It's at Jones Hall, but don't be afraid. You can wear jeans. Seriously. That's what I'm wearing. The cheapest tickets are $29, but you've been claiming for years that Houston is an oil boom town, and if you didn't have a great job and a cheap mortgage you'd move somewhere "cultural" like Austin, Taos, Seattle or Vancouver. Well, Houston gets touring shows like this because of the oil companies. We get access to some amazing things like this because there are six million people in and around Houston. You'll learn to love living here because of things like this. Performances are Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday matinee is at 2:30. Their website has video and audio samples of the show. Buy tickets at www.houstonsymphony.org.

So that's an introduction to the Alternative Cinema Houston Blog. Next week I'm going to the preview screening of "Capitalism: a Love Story" and I'll post a review of that. In coming weeks I intend to cover the Bollywood Cinema 6 which is an actual multiplex showing Bollywood films. I'll write about Cinema Latino in Pasadena, another 6 screen multiplex, all their movies are in Spanish. Dean's Credit Clothing shows films on the first Thursday of every month with the help of the Houston Film Commission. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (www.camh.org) often has some really far out video installations. There are 2 drive-in movie screens in Tomball. There's at least half a dozen movie theaters where you can order a pitcher of Shiner in Houston. And I know of some places that have video's even Tarantino hasn't seen -yet.

There is more to art house/obscure movies in Houston than Landmark's River Oaks Theater, the Angelika, and A/V Plus (on Waugh). Those places are great. And they may have closed down Landmark Greenway Plaza 3, but Alternative Cinema in Houston continues to grow. Together we'll explore everything Space City has to offer. -And hopefully soon I'll have an @spacecityrock.com email address so you can email me suggestions, questions, or death threats.

Nootch,

Creg

Labels: Alternative Cinema Houston, H-Town News, Moo-vies, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Things To Do, Things To See

Creg || Link || E-mail || 2 comments

Seen some awesomely cool written things elsewhere lately, so I feel compelled to mention 'em here, for the edification of all and because, as said, they're awesomely cool.

• Houston Press: "Ghosts of Washington Avenue"
  Man, this one makes me want to get all weepy. The Press's Chris Gray had a nice tribute piece to the impending death of the Washington Avenue strip in this past week's issue, and it's great not only in that it shines a spotlight on an area of town that's seen more clubs come and go than, well, pretty much any other area of town I know of, but also because it's the best, most freakishly comprehensive listing of all past/soon-to-be-past (since Walter's will be moving away in the near future). I had no clue Quiet Riot ever played The Abyss...

  As a bit of a caveat to the maudlin-ness, though, I have to say that, personally, Washington Ave. died a long time ago. After The Abyss/The Vatican went down, The Fabulous Satellite Lounge closed, Rockefellers became a "private event" venue, and Mary Jane's turned into an aging frat-daddy bar, those were pretty much the end for me. Walter's closing is pretty much just the final, long-delayed nail in the coffin.

  Good memories: I saw my first-ever "local" show at The Abyss, when my friend Andy's band The Suspects opened for a skinhead ska-punk band I can't remember the name of, and a very large skinhead girl kept stomping on my (foolishly) sandal-wearing feet. (I saw the same band blow The Toasters off that stage a few years after.) My friends and I were pretty much the audience for Too Much Joy's one and only show there, and we yelled loud enough and danced hard enough that the band came up to us while headliners Material Issue played and gave us beer. It was beautiful. I saw Agent Orange play there once, and showed up late to The Smoking Popes' show, just in time to go berserk to "Writing A Letter."

  Lots of memories about Mary Jane's, too, although a lot of 'em revolve around my own band's lame-ass shows there -- we had some good times playing with the likes of Trompedo, Hayflick Limit, & The Lonely Guys (among others) up on the MJ's stage. In the pre-Pam Robinson days, the place was nearly a DIY affair; then-owner Toby always seemed to show up around 11PM to run the sound, even if the show started at 10PM. I remember our drummer having to play soundman for the opening bands at least once.

  When the place was (briefly) the Shimmy Shack, I saw Jawbox there and had to pick my face up off the floor; caught The Gloria Record, Jets To Brazil, & The Weakerthans(!) there in later years. When Mary Jane's/Fat Cat's shut down, that was really the one that hurt...

• Nonalignment Pact: "Interview: A look at music licensing and copyright clearance"
  I'll admit that I'm a dork when it comes to stuff like this, but I find the whole concept of music licensing pretty fascinating. And yet, I don't really quite get it, y'know? It's intriguing to me in the same way that fusion's intriguing -- it sure seems like a neat idea, but I've got no clue how it actually works.

  So it's cool to be able to get a glimpse inside the workings of the machine from somebody who's actually been there, namely Annie Lin -- who some remember from her time playing on the scene here in town (and, yes, from back in the day at this here site, too).

  These days she's out in SF at The Rights Workshop, after a long spell in NYC working at The Orchard, so she's become (at least, from where I sit) something of a high roller in the music-licensing game. (Oh, and she's still playing live, too, which is very cool.)

  Kudos to Marshall at Nonalignment Pact for coming up with this one; it's seriously one of those things where I read it, smack my forehead, and say, "dammit, why didn't I think of that?"

• Houston Music Examiner: "Kelly Clarkson offers her 'Moonman' to Kanye West, supports Taylor Swift and Beyonce"
  Thanks to David Sadof for this one... I've always had a soft spot for Kelly Clarkson -- partly because I've watched far, far too many seasons of American Idol and have yet to see anybody survive it the way she has, sure, but partly because she seems to have a lot more of a spark than most pop singer/songwriters out there right now.

  And her recent blog post to Kanye West following his asinine stealing of the MTV Video Music Awards spotlight from Taylor Swift (and seriously, is this going to become an annual thing for the guy? Damn, I hope he at least was drunk like he claims...) cements the deal. It's freaking priceless, and in it Clarkson makes the point that hadn't even occurred to me 'til now (and yes, I know I'm slow), that it wasn't even an award he was up for. Thank you, Ms. Clarkson.

Oh, and if you're ever looking for other stuff we/I happen to think is cool, you can either look at the "More Stuff To Read" section over there on the right or see our/my Google Reader Shared Items page. Should you care about stuff like that, of course...

Labels: Entertainobabble, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Random Rambling, Things To Read

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 3 comments

That Matt Brownlie, he just doesn't stop moving, apparently... The latest thing he's involved with is called Dharma Punx Houston, and the idea is that it's a Buddhist meditation/ discussion group for folks who want to, well, learn to be better Buddhists. (I think?) They're welcoming all comers, regardless of "age, dress or lifestyle"; hence the "Punx" in the Jack Kerouac reference. While I'm no Buddhist myself (more of a deist than anything, honestly), this is a very cool thing.

The inaugural meeting for Dharma Punx is this coming Sunday, August 23rd, 11AM at the Houston Zen Center at 1605 Heights Blvd., and after that they'll be meeting every Sunday at the same time/place. Check out the flyer over there on the right, visit the Myspace page, or email "dharmapunxhtx AT gmail DOTDITDOT com" for more info. (Or, hell, just show up, eh?)

Labels: H-Town News, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Spiritual Stuff, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

[Ed. Note: writer/blogger Rock Houston sent this in a few days after the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase, but yours truly was out of the town & swamped after that, so it didn't go up 'til, well, right now. Enjoy...]

Rock Houston here. The following are my thoughts on the bands I saw at the HPMAS and the festival in general. Before I start, a big big thank you to The Houston Press for putting on this festival! It looks like a LOT of WORK coordinating this thing!

I parked around Fannin and Preston and made my way to Dean's as it was one of the few clubs I actually knew where it was. I kind of forget all these places because they don't usually have local original bands (that's too bad). Some of these places are pretty cool, but I guess they know where their bread is buttered, and it's not with local bands, right? I made my way down to Flying Saucer for Dune.tx, a band which should be nominated for the Houston Rock Hall of Fame (if it existed) for their longevity and rocking prowess.

Dune.tx shouldn't need a description, but in case you don't know them, they are Hendrixesque power-pop. They spend half their time in psychedelia and the other half in the realm of Matthew Sweet/Superdrag/Fountains of Wayne. The mix is just right and Chris, Rusty, and relatively new drummer, Kevin, deserve a lot of credit for rocking all these many years.

I tried to get over to see a little of Born Liars, but they were breaking down as I arrived. There were 4 or 5 acts at 5pm that I had wanted to see, including Benjamin Wesley, Elaine Greer, and Born Liars, but I settled on Dune.tx because they were my favorite act from last year's showcase. I stuck around to see 3 songs from Ryan Scroggins and the Trenchtown Texans. They played The Specials influenced ska/reggae with impeccable harmonies. Not my kind of music, but I have to recommend anyone who likes reggae and ska to see them because their vocal blend was amazingly pitch-perfect. Part of my goal today was to get out and see some bands I have never seen, so I was happy to see these guys. But a few songs of them was all I needed and I wanted to see a little of Ozeal, another artist I've never seen that has been recommended to me by friends.

I walked my way back up to Dean's and caught about 3 songs of Ozeal's set. It was pretty crowded at Dean's. I love this little bar, but not so hot on the way the stage is set up because it's hard to make your way to the bar when the band has a lot of fans. But I managed to make my way to the back. Ozeal does "sexy love you right" soul music. He's got a grooving band behind him and his vocals are smooth. It's interesting to see this style done in a local setting. You get used to hearing this kind of music in clubs or on tv, but it was refreshing to witness it in a small club. My friends were right in recommending Ozeal.

Around this time I looked at my schedule and realized that the HPMAS was 3 separate festivals in one. I could at this point decide to go to House of Blues or Hard Rocbar for the rest of the night or I could stick it out on Main. The festival was way too spread out for me, even with the shuttle service and rickshaw cab drivers. I decided I would just stay on Main street. There were plenty of bands I wanted to see there. But walking past several empty and unused venues I wished all of the festival could have been on Main. Oh well, House of Blues is a great place, but I wasn't going to make it over there.

Instead, I walked around the corner to finally hear a band I've heard about for years and always wanted to see, Free Radicals. They had a really nice crowd at the Red Cat Jazz Café. I ordered a drink, sat down, and enjoyed some jazz. Particularly interesting was their midi-vibrophone. It's a midi controller that you play like a xylophone. I want one! The vibes player was a standout in a group full of standouts.

I made my way back around the corner to Dean's again to see the last 3 songs of The McKenzies. I've seen the power-pop punk quartet several times over the last couple of years. They never have written songs that quite click with me, but they make up for any qualms I have about their songcraft with pure energy and the determination to entertain the crowd with FUN. And their crowd responds in kind!

As 8pm approached I walked down the street to Martell's to see The Tontons. A lot of people had the same idea. It got packed in there pretty quick. The Houston Press had just done an article on The Tontons, so it was hard to understand why they stuck them in this shoebox-sized club. They deserved the main stage at House of Blues. Next year, I guess. Asli and the boys proved (again and again) why they are the best thing going right now in Houston. You will have one more chance to see them at Summerfest before they go on a short hiatus. Make sure you do. I spent my last $8 on their new album on the way out.

I ended the evening seeing Buxton, a band I've only seen once previously, and that was when they performed brilliantly as Björk at Twotennany. They were an amazingly energetic yet drunken (them, not me) way to end the evening. Their singer wailed away like a yelping Bob Dylan. It was one bluesy train shuffle after another, but their fans made the show. The Buxton fans showed that Houston is the place to be for friends, music and camaraderie.

Final thoughts about the festival in general... I would like to see staggered times. Let's say Dean's has a band starting at 6pm, maybe Martell's could start at 6:30pm? Then you could go from place to place and always have music going on. Next, I know it's good to be eclectic, but maybe venues could be more genre specific. I could expect to see several of the nominees of a certain category at a certain place. I could also see it starting at 4 instead of 5 to fit more bands in. I mean, half the nominees were left off the bill? Is that fair to the voting process? If mostly bands that played yesterday end up winning then I think you can tell it's not fair... Finally, of course I would like to see more venues involved on Main St. But all in all, it was a fun time for me and for everyone I talked to, and I already look forward to next year's show!

Labels: H-Town News, HPMAs, Live Reviews, Musical Crap, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 3 comments

A bit early, but after missing Steve Earle at Cactus this past weekend, I do not want to drop the ball on this one, especially since the wife & I had to miss 'em the last time they came through town, back in 2007...

So, here we go with the good news: weekend-after-next, Friday, May 29th, the fine gents who do FOUND Magazine, Davy & Peter Rothbart, are stopping here in our fair city as part of their "Denim and Diamonds Tour". I have no freaking idea what's up with the title, no, but I do know that this tour's to promote their latest FOUND book, Requiem for a Paper Bag, which is reportedly a little different from their other books (which are mostly collections of past issues of FOUND) in that in addition to the usual entertaining detritus, the book also includes essays & short stories by folks like Chuck D & Seth Rogen.

If you're totally in the dark as to the idea behind the mag itself, well, the Rothbart brothers and their loyal, maniacal cadre of collectors/foragers/etc. comb the dumpsters and garbage cans and attics and gutters and backseats of America to gather the weirdest, most intriguing bits of scribbled-down kitsch/strangeness they can find, from painfully-bad love letters to notes from middle school in the '80s to crayon drawings to random signs to, well, look at their Find of the Day section for some examples.

The issues I've seen/read of the mag are utterly fascinating, to me -- the little bits and pieces are like glimpses into the absurd underbelly of modern life, all the stuff people write and think when they think nobody's watching. I dunno what the "live" FOUND show will be like, really (readings from the new book & maybe some recent/good finds, I'm guessing?), but from reports I've heard, past shows have been pretty incredibly cool.

Cooler still, of course, is the venue; just like last time, the Rothbart brothers' appearance this time out is sponsored by the utterly awesome Aurora Picture Show gang, but this time out the festivities will take place at the also-awesome St. Arnold's Brewery.

The price is $10 for Picture Show members and $15 for non-members (21+ only, sorry), and that relatively low price gets you all the beer you can drink, plus all the entertaining FOUND stuff. (And hey, if you've never checked out St. Arnold's, go see the old place before they move on over to their soon-to-be new home at 2000 Lyons.) Doors open at 7:30PM, and the show itself starts at 8PM -- I'd get there early, if I were you.

Labels: Arty Shit, H-Town News, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Things To Do, Things To Read, Things To See

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Hey, all -- the astute & keen-eyed may notice a few changes to the SCR site over the past week or so, so I wanted to mention what's new and/or different both so's nobody gets confused and to perpetuate the illusion that this freaking thing actually does change occasionally (kidding! kidding...um, kinda?).

New Classifieds/Board:
Yes, the old, ugly, pain-in-my-ass (and yours) way of putting Classifieds up on this site is dead, dead, dead, and I am happily kicking its corpse down the street. As yours truly is typically about a half-decade behind the latest Website technology, it should come as no surprise that the old method/page for classified ads was, while astoundingly popular, an utterly manual deal, requiring you to email me and me to remember/have the spare time to stick your ad up on the site via a dedicated Blogger blog. (At one point, I was all about using Blogger to do every damn thing; now, they can bite me.) This was not only plain-text-y blah and a major waste of time for me, but it meant that if I got busy, your ad could languish in my mailbox for, um, a really long time. Which sucked pretty hard for anybody looking for a new band member or band or vintage keyboard.

I'm really, really sorry about that, and to make amends, we're attempting to modernize somewhat. From here on out, if you want to post a music-related classified on the site, the Classifieds link takes you to the brand-new Space City Rock Board & Classifieds, where you can post your own ad in one of the four categories (Bands Seeking People, People Seeking Bands, Junk For Sale, & Junk Wanted), either logged-in as yourself or as a guest. Makes things way faster, way prettier, way better in general.

BTW, I've ported over the classifieds that'd already gone up this year on the old page, so if you sent me a classified ad under the old system, you may see your post out there now with my name on it. I did decide to scrap anything older than late 2008, so if you really, truly need your ad put back up, heck, go for it. All yours.

Plus, as you can guess from the board's name, this thing also includes "Board" areas, General Talk & Upcoming Shows, where anybody who feels like it can post stuff, babble about things they like/dislike, mention their band's next show, etc. It's pretty wide-open, as long as you keep it civil; no death threats, eh? That sort of crap does nobody any good.

I don't mean, btw, to try to steal away the Hands Up Board's loyal, if sometimes conflicted/embittered fanbase. Anybody who wants to use this thing can; if not, hey, that's fine, too.

Mixtape & Other Links: You might remember a little while ago that I'd mentioned the new SCR Mixtape, powered by the Opentape framework here on our little site. Well, I have yet to get it to fit properly into the page like I want it to, but rest assured, it's still alive & well, and now it's linked from pretty much anywhere in the SCR site, as is the aforementioned Board.

Oh, and if you really want to keep up on what all goes on the Mixtape, you can subscribe to its RSS feed using your favorite newsreader. Should you want to keep stalker-ly close to us, y'know.

Possible Shows List Changes:
As I noted above, there was a time when the world of Blogger was magical and amazing to me, and back then it seemed like it could help me run the ever-popular Shows List oh-so-slightly. Times change, however, and these days the blog-based setup I'm using feels horribly antiquated and overly manual to use.

So, to that end, I've started messing more with Google Calendar lately. It's far from a "new" tool itself (although it's somehow still in beta, apparently), but I've only recently been really figuring out how to use it properly. The end result of that is that right now you can subscribe to one of the two public calendars I've currently got set up, via your own Google Calendar, Apple's iCal, or an RSS reader:

SCR Cool Shows:

SCR General Shows:

This is something that I've been needing to do for a while now, I think; it might take eyeballs away from the site, but hell, I think it's worth it. The real downside, though, is that it duplicates work, seeing as all shows now have to be added to both calendars. And that's never a good thing.

Right now, the Google Calendars exist alongside the old-fashioned, plain-text, blog-generated shows list that you all know & love. I'm thinking more and mor, though, about kissing that goodbye, too, in favor of a differently-formatted embedded Google Calendar showing both the "Cool" & "General" shows, as above. Something like this:

Apologies if it comes out a little weird -- still fiddling with getting the iframe to align properly. But that's the basic idea, anyway. So...what do y'all think? Good? Bad? Don't give a shit? If I can get it to work the way I want & people aren't horribly opposed to it, this may be the way the SCR Shows List shows up in the future (probably in the same place). If you care, leave your votes in the comments...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Cool Web Junk, Random Rambling, Things To See

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Yes, yes, yes, folks -- it's that time of year, again, when we Houstonians get to fly the middle finger high in the face of other burgs and say, "our bands could wipe the sidewalk with yours." Yep, I'm talkng about the Houston Press Music Awards, for which the nominating started yesterday.

So go, go, go, and nominate your favorites for anything & everything you can. You can also pick up a real-live paper copy of the Press and do it that way -- all nominations are due by 9AM on May 18th. If you don't bother to nominate, any bitching and moaning about the actual ballot when it comes out merits a punch to the head, so watch yourself.

I'd just like to say, BTW, that Craig Hlavaty hits the nail on the head in his post about this when he says H-town music fucking rules. Because right now? It really, truly, truly does. Trust me. I've lived here more than half my life, now, and I've been listening to and/or playing music in our sweat-stained city for all but a couple of years of that. And in the time I've made Houston my home, I've never, never, never seen this huge a quantity of bona-fide awesome music.

There've been great, amazing bands in eras past, yes -- Sprawl, Panic In Detroit, Celindine, etc. -- but right now bands like that are literally falling out of the fucking trees, I swear. It's like some mad scientist deep in the heart of the Montrose is busy blending together just the right amounts of indie sensibility, badass songwriting abilities, and quirkily unique musical style to crank out band after band that makes me smack my head and go, "wow! How in the hell do they do that?" Right now, I'm more apt to stick a CD by a local band in my car stereo than I am, say, the new Coldplay. (Which, yes, I do actually like, so it's not a totally unfair comparison.)

I'm serious about this, I really am. Now, my friends, is The Time. The people making music here, right at this very moment, they could go toe-to-toe with all the most hipster-hyped bands in Brooklyn, Portland, Vancouver, and Austin combined and likely still come out on top. When I force friends to listen to The Mathetes or American Fangs or The Western Civilization, you can see the confusion in their eyes as they try to process it: "This band's...from here? Wha? Really? No, that's not poss...wait, is it?"

Of course, that makes nominating badass Houston-band types for the HPMAs a difficult task; I know my personal list of Bands I Like Right Now is getting to be gigantic. Here's everybody currently doing their thing 'round town right now that I can think of that I happen to think are very cool & worth checking out -- maybe it'll kickstart your brain, maybe it'll give you some ideas of folks to try to catch later on, whatever. Here goes:

• A Thousand Cranes
• Alkari
• American Fangs
• The American Masquerade
• Antarctica Starts Here
• The ARE
• Thee Armada
• AWAKE
• B.
• Babel Fishh
• Balaclavas
• B L A C K I E
• Blackmarket Syndicate
• Blaggards
• Bolt
• Born Anchor
• The Born Liars
• Bright Men of Learning
• Bring Back The Guns
• Buxton
• Caddywhompus
• Campfire Stories
• Tody Castillo
• Clouseaux
• Come See My Dead Person
• Co-Pilot
• Cory Derden
• Devin the Dude
• Dizzy Pilot
• Airon Paul Dugas
• Electric Attitude
• Robert Ellis
• John Evans
• The Factory Party
• Fat Tony
• The Favorites
• Fight Pretty
• Fired For Walking
• 500 Megatons of Boogie
• The Flamin' Hellcats
• Flowers to Hide
• Phillip Foshée
• Free Radicals
• Tha Fucking Transmissions
• georgia's horse
• Ghost Town Electric
• Giant Princess
• Glacier Pace
• The Gold Sounds
• Golden Axe
• Golden Cities
• The Goods
• Elaine Greer
• Chase Hamblin
• The Handsomes
• Hearts of Animals
• Hell City Kings
• H.I.S.D.
• Hollywood Black
• Hungry Villagers
• Indian Jewelry
• Inner Lights
• The Jonbenét
• The Jonx
• Kam
• Ladyheat
• the last place you look
• The Last Starfighter
• Latch Key Kids
• Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers
• Like Yeah
• Limb
• The Linus Pauling Quartet
• Lisa's Sons
• listenlisten
• The Literary Greats
• The Loving Ones
• Mantis
• The Mathletes
• The Mayapples
• The McKenzies
• Mechanical Boy
• Menus
• The Monocles
• Motion Turns It On
• Muhammid Ali
• News on the March
• Karina Nistal
• No Talk
• Nosaprise
• O Pioneers!!!
• Oppressed by the Line
• Paris Falls
• Peekaboo Theory
• Perseph One
• The Phlegmatics
• Piano Vines
• Ragged Hearts
• The Ride Home
• The Riff Tiffs
• Room 101
• Rustler
• Satin Hooks
• Scale The Summit
• The Scattered PAGES
• Gretchen Schmaltz
• Ryan Scroggins & the Trenchtown Texans
• Searching For Signal
• The Secret Prostitutes
• Sew What
• Sharks and Sailors
• Sideshow Tramps
• sIngs
• Los Skarnales
• skyblue72
• The Small Sounds
• Something Fierce
• Spain Colored Orange
• Springfield Riots
• Stadium
• The Suspects
• Tambersauro
• Tax The Wolf
• This Year's Tiger
• Together.We are Instruments
• The Tontons
• Two Star Symphony
• The Tyburn Jig
• Winter Wallace
• The Watermarks
• Welfare Mothers
• Benjamin Wesley
• The Western Civilization
• While You Were Gone
• The Wild Moccasins
• The Wiggins
• Woozyhelmet
• The Wrong Ones
• Arthur Yoria
• Young Mammals
• Yppah

Dang. Okay, I know I'm forgetting people/bands, and probably a lot of 'em -- if you come up with other awesomely cool local people, put 'em in the comments to this post... (And yes, I'm well aware that the Bands page on this here site needs some work. sigh. I swear, you'll start seeing some updates soon, and a bunch of the folks listed above will get their very own writeups. Really. I mean it this time.)

Seize The Time, folks. Get out there, see these folks play now, while you can, buy their CDs/7"s/tapes/whatever, and -- probably most importantly -- tell your friends about 'em, too. Because these things do go in cycles, unfortunately, and while I'd like to claim that this wondrous Golden Age will last forever, it won't. Folks leave town, bands dry up like leaves & blow away, people break up; it'll all pass, sadly. Even from the list above, Ladyheat are currently preparing to flee to L.A., and I had to leave a bunch of supremely talented folks like Sabra Laval, Papermoons, & Jenny Westbury off here because they've already skipped town. Grab the moment while you can. (And again: nominate!)

Labels: H-Town News, HPMAs, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 1 comments