Sadly, I don't read as much as I should of the various blogs & such floating around H-town. I'd like to, really, but honestly, doing that on top of all the other crap I have to attempt to fit into my day would melt my brain. That said, I'm currently wasting a whole lot of time here at work (uh-oh...) obsessively devouring everything that adifferentryan puts up at his blog, The Skyline Network. Hot damn, is it good -- entertaining as hell, and far, far, far more up on local scene happenings than yours truly currrently, uh, happens to be. (sigh.) In one short morning, I've caught up with Spain Colored Orange and Antarctica Starts Here happenings, downloaded a Paris Falls track, and run across a good dozen local bands/rappers/whatever that I'd never heard of before. Man. The weirdest part, really, is that I know I've been to the blog before, a year or two ago, but that at the time it seemed to be pretty much dead & buried (yeah, yeah, like I can complain about that); no longer, it seems. I'm going to have to add this one to my reader so I make sure I don't miss anything. Kudos, Ryan, for making me feel more out-of-touch than I generally figure I am anyway...

Labels: H-Town News, Things To Read

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Oh, man, this is awesome. I really, really need to go by and check out the Domy Books store, and tomorrow's installment of the Domy crew's weekly movie showings gives me even more of a reason. Hrm. Maybe I can talk the mother-in-law into watching the midget...

Why the frantic babysitter search? Well, because tonight, Wed., 2/28, those crazy Domy kids are showing both Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Idiocracy. I've seen the former, and it's amazing, a weirdly endearing (to me, anyway) glimpse back into the past -- the parking lot outside a Judas Priest concert in 1985, specifically -- as well as some hysterically funny/sad shit.

The latter's relatively new on me, but apparently it's the latest project from Beavis & Butthead/King of the Hill creator Mike freakin' Judge, which means that it logically should be really damn funny. (Oh, and it co-stars Maya Rudolph, who's one of the few truly funny people left on Saturday Night Live. She needs more work like this, O Powers That Be.) Oh, and both flicks are free-free-free, which is of course the best price in the world.

Anyway. Good movies, cool (I'm told) place, should be a good time. Heck, with a little luck, maybe my homebody ass'll even be there...

Labels: Moo-vies, Things To Do

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Tonight. At Walter's. Red Sparowes -- what I've heard's been darn good, although I can't for the life of me explain why I think so (I need to hear more, honestly). My Education -- cool instro-atmospheric rock from Austin; I've been up-and-down on 'em in the past, but they've gotten a whole lot better since my first encounter with 'em. Sharks and Sailors -- one of the best bands in town, and definitely in the top five or so when it comes to indie-ish rock. This show is big, and good. You should go. Hell, I should go.

Labels: Things To Do

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Damn. It really feels at times like I've neglected the Houston "side" of Space City Rock for the better part of five years now. And that sucks. Nobody to blame but me, unfortunately -- with the house, the wife, the kid, and the attempt at making the e-zine "side" of the site work like, well, a real e-zine, I've tended to shove the Houston stuff aside.

The result of that is moments like last night, when I was going through the Bands page of this site, and I kept hitting little bits of various band blurbs that made me spit out my soda and yelp, "What? how fucking old is this?" And yes, it really has been that long since some of those writeups were updated, to the point where I ended up moving Los Skarnales, Panic in Detroit, and Sore Loser all over to the Band Graveyard. Sad, sad, sad, I know.

On the positive side, I added the first two "new" bands to the Featured Bands section in quite a while: Georgia's Horse and Mansion, to be specific. I've only relatively recently heard either band (hard to believe, really, given how long Mansion's been slugging it out in the scene; sorry, you guys), but they've both knocked me over in a big, big way in a pretty short amount of time. If you haven't seen/heard them already, you really, really need to. Seriously.

At any rate, this hopefully will signify me turning over a new leaf for the "locals" part of SCR. Keep an eye on the Bands page, in particular, 'cause I'll be attempting to add a bunch more deserving local heroes to the list in the coming days...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Featured Bands, H-Town News

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Normally this cross-referential blogging-about-other-blogs thing kinda irks me -- there's nothing as irritating as following the digital breadcrumb trail of some little blurb back through a half-dozen blogs linking to one another just so you can find out where the hell it originated from -- but what the hell, I'm doing it. Just watch me, punk...

First off, I should note that I think Houston Press Music Editor John Nova Lomax has done more for the state of music in our not-so-fair city than anybody within recent memory, with maybe the exception of the Hands Up! Houston/Super Unison crew. The guy knows his shit, he's passionate about it, and he's willing to cover even local music most respectable news outlets wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot-pole just a few years ago (like, say, H-town hip-hop). I think back to the pre-Lomax days and shudder, remembering how it was about as likely for a local band to get covered in the Press as it would be for said band to be visited at their Francisco's space by Ed McMahon. (Don't get me started on the bad-old-days Chronic, by the way; you kids who bitch about local music coverage have no idea, I swear...)

Lomax has done a lot to change that, and I'm eternally grateful to the guy for it. As a bonus, by the by, he happens to know a hell of a lot about the history of music here in Hell City, and he's started a new blog section over at HouSTONED called Catfish Reef that peels back the years to dig up long-forgotten classics from before relative newcomers like yours truly (it's only been, what? 16 years?) weren't around to witness the first time.

And it's fucking beautiful. Seriously. Go read the posts, then cross your fingers and toes that he keeps it going a while longer, at least. Call me a slavering Press fanboy, if you want, but dammit, Lomax, I'm glad to have you on our side.

Labels: H-Town News, Musical Crap

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Man, this late-night updating thing is kicking my ass (and soon, my wife may, as well)... At any rate, it's New Review Time on the ol' SCR site: Anyway, beyond the new live review, there's another pile of new reviews up on the site: Deftones, The Shins, Dead Child, A New Dawn Fades, The Dent, The Minstrels, Speakerfire, and Tommy and the Terrors. Hooah. I need sleep.

Labels: Reviews

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Well, I'm not as excited about one particular show this weekend as some probably are -- sorry, but I really don't think Cobra Starship's pseudo-theme to Snakes On A Plane is even all that entertaining, much less a good song. Needless to say, then, I'll be skipping the Cartel/Cobra Starship show @ The Meridian. Plenty of other good stuff going on, though:

Fri., February 16 @ Notsuoh: Slo Gun aka Indian X/Karina Nistal/Mic Skills/Nosaprise
Okay, so I like this show partly because of where it is; I haven't been to Notsuoh since it closed, and it makes me happy as hell to see that glorious bastion of weirdness reopened in downtown. Beyond that, though, this sounds like a decent little showcase of local hip-hop skill -- haven't seen any of the acts, unfortunately, but I have it from good sources that Nosaprise, in particular, is damn good.

Fri., February 16 @ Rudyard's: Broken Teeth/Hell City Kings/Whorehound
Been wanting to see this one; Broken Teeth are Austinites but are reportedly very cool in a full-on rawk kind of way. Haven't seen Whorehound, but locals Hell City Kings are one of the better local garage-punk bands I've heard lately.

Fri., February 16 @ The Continental Club: The Phantoms/Chadd Thomas & His Crazy Kings/The Octanes/Ghost Stories
Not a clue about most of these folks, but I dig the heck out of Chadd Thomas. I need to hear them more, come to think of it...

Sat., February 17 @ Notsuoh: The Wiggins/Donna Huanca/Sporatics/Faux Fox/Cry Blood Apache
Another Notsuoh show, and probably the strangest thing going on in town this weekend. The Wiggins are (er, is) bizarro but very entertaining, and I've heard the same about the other folks on the bill. Should be weird & fun.

Labels: Things To Do

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This "editor/co-publisher" shtick has its perks from time to time. Sure, there're all the moments when I want to rip the hair out of my head because things don't happen when they need to, there's me staggering into work bleary-eyed the morning after the almost-weekly update (yep, I've got a day job, and I like the place, so I don't like being a slacker at it), and the near-constant drone in the back of my head that tells me nobody's paying attention to this shit anyway, so why bother, there's, well, the music.

Being the guy who checks the mail, I'm the person who gets to/has to sort through the pile of envelopes from labels big and small, pulling out all the CDs and CD-Rs and pamphlets and promo materials. And I have to say, it can be kind of a kick. Every mail run's like Christmas -- I get 'em home (sometimes), rip open the packages, and see what the catch looks like, and more often than not, there're at least a couple of albums floating around in there that I've wanted to hear, for one reason or another.

The hard part, really, is what comes next. I then have to/get to listen to every freakin' thing in the stack, good or bad, and try to come up with something to say about it so Space City Rock's crack squad of reviewers can decide whether they want to bother (we don't assign stuff to people here, nuh-uh; it's kinda hard to tell somebody to do something when you, uh, don't have any money with which to pay them for it). A fair amount of the time, it's all "eh." Neither awful nor amazing, just kind of middle-of-the-road, okay-for-what-it-is music. Write it up and pass it out to whoever wants to review it.

Some of the time -- although not as often as you'd think -- it's bad. Bad, bad, B-A-double-D bad, and not bay-ud, like George Thorogood. I'm talking just plain crappy, why-in-the-hell-did-somebody-do-this? horrible. Those are rough; we've received CDs where I had a hard time handing them out for review. I've actually talked people out of reviewing CDs, which is really pretty counterproductive for someone who runs an e-zine based (somewhat) on CD reviews. What can I say, though? I'm not one of those people who can find something good about any chunk of music you give 'em; I'm a firm believer in the idea that time is precious and shouldn't be wasted listening to music that sucks, especially when there's so much good music out there.

Which brings me to the last category. Sometimes I'll plunk a CD in the player, ho-hum, figuring to write a quick summary and move on, and it floors me. It doesn't happen often, it's true, but it's nice when it does. It's moments like that when I want to giggle "Mine, all mine!" maniacally and pretend I never got it so I can swipe it and surreptitiously add it to the CD collection.

Nope, nope, can't do that. Bad, bad, bad. Things need to get reviewed, and I can't review every damn thing that comes across my desk, not even every damn thing I like. It's the Head Honcho's Dilemma: I want all of It, but I sure as hell can't do all It myself, on my lonesome. So I tearfully bid adieu to CDs, send them winging on their way to further waystations along the Road of Rock. Other people review 'em, and sometimes I cringe when they don't get what I would've gotten (and written) about the music (Immaculate Machine, Ladyhawk, I hardly knew ye...). But each writer's got his or her own thing, and I have to respect that.

Anyway. Long meandering glimpse into the solitary, oft-frenzied life of the e-zine publisher over. The reason for my big long sideways wander, though, is because in the pile of innocuous discs to which I've listened today were, count 'em, four gems, four CDs that I'd dearly, dearly love to listen to & write about at length...but which I may not get a chance to. Just in case, then, here goes:

The Little Heroes, Cinematic Americana (Wednesday)
Wow. It's quiet, it's delicate, but it still drives like The Stills' best moments and brings to mind Death Cab if Ben Gibbard were more into Son Volt or the Jayhawks.

Die Hunns, You Rot Me (Volcom)
Raw, raw, raw rock-n-roll -- not really "punk," mind you, except in overall attitude -- from a pile of SoCal old-school punks (ex-Circle Jerks, ex-US Bombs) and one scary-looking lady on bass (ex-/possibly-still-in-Nashville Pussy). Think Social Distortion, or maybe Tom Waits on speed.

Smoke or Fire, This Sinking Ship (Fat Wreck)
Nice. I nearly slapped my forehead when I read that these guys, while from Boston originally, moved down to Richmond, VA.; the very first thing that comes to mind, at least for me, is Avail. And that's a very, very good thing.

The Broken West, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On (Merge)
The best of the bunch (so far?). A roaring burst of power-pop so clean and brilliant I swear I've heard it before somewhere. The gloomy gray weather here's had me down for the past few days (heck, make that "weeks"), but this made me smile.

There you go. With any luck, I'll be able to expand on one or two of those later on.

Labels: Musical Crap, Pseudo-Reviews

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Just Missed You, Hank [2/13/2007 10:56:00 AM]:

Well, we tried -- when the new stuff went up on the site late-late-late last night (the lateness of which means my wife is not happy with me at the moment), we were just shy of getting it officially online on Feb. 12th. Damn. It would've been cool, I thought, considering that the 12th is/was Henry Rollins' birthday, and last night we ran a review of the X/Rollins Band/Riverboat Gamblers show from a little while back. Ah, well...

Anyway, beyond the new live review, there's another pile of new reviews up on the site: the Take Action!, Volume 6 comp, Many Birthdays, Dead Moon, Four Star Alarm, The Good Mornings, Lamexcuse, The Silvermen, and Your Black Star. Have fun...

Labels: Live Reviews, Reviews

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And Finally... [2/11/2007 10:27:00 PM]:

Congrats to the Dixie Chicks for the win. While I tend to think the Grammys generally mean about as much to the real musical world as the Oscars do to the real world of film, Taking the Long Way is a good album, and the Chicks deserve it. Nyah-nyah, Nashville.

Labels: Entertainobabble, Musical Crap

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A Sad Sight... [2/11/2007 10:11:00 PM]:

Back to the Grammys: the Chili Peppers, God love 'em, are on stage playing a song so weak and anemic it makes me wonder if Freaky Styley really only ever happened in my head. Guys, c'mon. You've turned into the Aerosmith of funk rock, releasing what sounds like the same song over and over again (and even swiping the Beantown band's penchant for re-using the same song titles, to boot). I think it's great that you've been clean a while now, but damn.

And how big a mindfuck is it for a child of the '80s like yours truly to see Al Gore, of all people, onstage to present the Grammy to one of the most-censored bands in the history of rock? Answer: a big one. Wow.

Check the moment of stunned recognition between Anthony Kiedis and the ex-Veep: "Um. Dude. Your wife, she..." "Yeah, about that... Different times, y'know?" "Yeah." "Here." [hands over the award] "Thanks!" Four words: "Party On Your Pussy."

Labels: Entertainobabble, Musical Crap

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Just a Quick Glimpse of Hell... [2/11/2007 09:54:00 PM]:

...from the Grammys. Timberlake, goddammit, just put the fucking guitar down. Please? This show's bad enough without you ruining one of the best Bill Withers songs ever.

Well, at least it didn't last long.

Labels: Entertainobabble, Musical Crap

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Because Everybody's a Folkie at Heart? [2/10/2007 07:57:00 PM]:

While I'm looking down the shows list, I've just got to point this out: Rik Emmett is playing McGonigel's Mucky Duck tomorrow night (Sunday, Feb. 11th, that is). No, really, that Rik Emmett, as in "of Canadian prog-rock cheeseballs Triumph."

Man...first one of the two guys from Blue's Clues, then Jeff Daniels(!?), and now an ex-shredder from the Great White North? Apparently the Mucky Duck has become the place to play if you're attempting some kind of musical/theatrical life change and want to unlock the folk-rocker lying dormant within.

Labels: Musical Crap, Things To Do

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Coming Up... [2/10/2007 07:05:00 PM]:

Boy. You'd think that being sick and bedridden would mean I'd be blogging away, every chance I get, but no. Instead, what do I do? I sleep. And sleep. And sleep. I'm getting really fucking tired of being sick, seriously. sigh.

At any rate, there're some interesting shows coming up that I thought merited a mention here -- some coming up sooner than others, actually:

Sat., February 10 @ Fitzgerald's: Rock Tribute Show, featuring LoneStar PornStar (as The Red Hot Chili Peppers), Smoke Eaters (as The Pixies), Dead End Boys (as The Misfits), Morgue City (as The Cult), The Contingency (as Fugazi), Truck (as The Toadies), Brian's Johnson (as AC/DC), Hell City Kings (as TurboNegro), Mind's Eye (as Pink Floyd), & The Cameltoasters (as Wesley Willis)
Wow. I've seen more than my share of wacky tribute shows in my time here in the Glorious City of Space, but this one is pretty bizarre. No real "theme," as far as I can tell, and some of the bands are about as weird-ass a pairing as I can imagine. The Cult & Fugazi? TurboNegro & AC/DC? Pink Floyd &, well, pretty much anybody else on here? The icing on the cake, though, is the mere fact that some band of lunatics (The Cameltoasters, whoever they are) have seen fit to pay "tribute" to the questionable genius of the late, clinically-insane Wesley Willis. If I didn't have the flu, I'd be there, if only to hear "Vampire baaaaat / Bit me on the ay-us!"

Sat., February 10 @ Walter's on Washington: Sound Team/Gulf of Mexico
Okay, I give -- if I weren't sick, I'd probably be at this show tonight, to be completely honest. Sound Team are one of those rare Austin bands that make me want to take the self-titled Music Capitol of the World at its name. Good stuff. (Gulf of Mexico I know nothing about, sorry...)

Sat., February 10 @ Rudyard's: Jana Hunter/Matt Valentine/Erika Elder/Graustark
Ooh, now I'm really torn. I don't know Matt Valentine, Erika Elder, or Graustark (well, beyond the initial "hey, I used to know somebody who lived on Graustark" reaction), but Jana Hunter gives me chills. In a good way, unlike the way I currently have chills. Fuckin' flu...

Tues., February 13 @ Warehouse Live: Take Action! Tour, featuring Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Emery, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, A Static Lullaby, & Kaddisfly
Yeah, so I'm sure all the discerning indie-hipsters out there wouldn't touch most of these bands with a ten-foot pole, but the hell with it. Even if I'm not super-keen on the music (I like both Scary Kids Scaring Kids & Emery somewhat, actually), I have to respect the goal. Keeping kids from losing hope and taking their own lives is a pretty worthwhile cause, and the Take Action! Tours do a commendable job of delivering more than just empty slogans.

Tues., February 13 @ The White Swan: Defiance, Ohio/O Pioneers!!!/Papermoons
I have yet to hear O Pioneers!!!, but dammit, I love their name. One of these damn days...

Wed., February 14 @ Rudyard's: Morgue City/The Contingency
Both locals, I believe, and both pretty entertaining, at least what I've heard so far (and heck, both of 'em are also playing the mondo-tribute show tonight, albeit not as themselves). Of course, your Valentine's date may not be quite as appreciative, but hey, it's your call.

Labels: Things To Do

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New Reviews, New Reviews [2/06/2007 02:59:00 PM]:

Yeah, yeah -- I know I'm slow. Spent my weekend running around getting stuff for & then attending a three-year-old's birthday party, so that kind of ate up all my time, sorry.

At any rate, there're new reviews up on the site: The American Black Lung, The Rocket Summer, LOW.Z, Black Ice, Hello Defective, JMprint, Blake Miller, & The Seximals. Enjoy...

Labels: Reviews

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