These days, anybody can put out an album. All it takes is a couple of instruments, a mic, and a computer, and poof: instant bedroom-studio rock that you can dump out onto the Web for all to hear and comment on (and okay, maybe even buy). After a while, though, that whole “album” thing, it gets boring, played out. When that happens, well, what the hell do you do next?…
Written on December 13, 2012 | Posted in
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Been meaning to post about this for a while now, and we’re seriously coming down to the wire, so it’s kind of now-or-never… Shane Patrick Boyle, one of the awesome, hardworking organizers of Zine Fest Houston…
Written on December 11, 2012 | Posted in
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Once upon a time, I happened across this CD. I was going through the “Local” racks at one of this city’s few, fine music stores (the long-gone “old” Soundwaves, most likely, before they moved onto Montrose proper), and lo and behold, there was this neat-looking album…
Written on January 12, 2012 | Posted in
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Damn — I’m starting to feel like an even bigger slacker than I normally do, folks. Over the past year or so, I’ve watched as my H-town music-critic brethren not only write brilliantly and humorously about things musical but also step out into the wider world…
Written on June 3, 2011 | Posted in
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Alright, so I’m not generally the biggest fan of ambient/experimental music — I truly love M83 and My Bloody Valentine, and I like Ulrich Schnauss, but honestly, a lot of music like that just feels un-anchored to me, drifting around like airy sound that doesn’t mean or signify a damn thing…
Written on April 15, 2011 | Posted in
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UPDATE: Argh. I suck. In my haste to slap something up here about Record Store Day, I totally neglected to mention one of my favorite bastions of music-dom, Sig’s Lagoon. Which is particularly stupid since today they’re having their quasi-annual Swap ‘n Bop (both at Sig’s and at The Pachinko Hut, nearby), with lots of […]
Written on April 17, 2010 | Posted in
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This is a pretty neat one… In case you haven’t heard, longtime SugarHill Studios engineer Andy Bradley and veteran Houston music chronicler Roger Wood (whose book, Down in Houston, I’ve been wanting to read for a while now) collaborated on a new book about the history of SugarHill and its predecessor(?), Gold Star Studios. It’s […]
Written on April 9, 2010 | Posted in
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While I twiddle my thumbs wait for InMotion to get back to me on my support ticket, I figure it’s way, way past time for me to mention a second awesome-sounding show that’s going on this evening… Some might remember that way back in May or so, yours truly did a little writeup on the […]
Written on September 18, 2009 | Posted in
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Cool news — I’d worried for a while now that H-town-bred Pavement-gone-Wilco guys Bright Men of Learning had gone the way of Bring Back the Guns or the Guilloteens, fading out without so much as a final “seeya” message to their fans. Thankfully, that’s apparently not the case, and the band are back in action. […]
Written on September 18, 2009 | Posted in
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Okay, so I now know why I’ve been feeling twitchy & off-kilter lately: it’s been too damn long since I posted anything about fave pop-punks Something Fierce, obviously. Remedying that right now, then. Singer/guitarist Steven G. just sent word (along with some sort of kinky threat/invite that I’m not gonna go into here) that the […]
Written on August 31, 2009 | Posted in
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This afternoon’s a good one for heading over to Midtown, because today (Sun., June 14th), from noon-6PM, is the rejuvenated & resurrected Swap N Bop fair/festival at The Continental Club. There’ll apparently be lots of folks there selling and/or trading stuff, Mr. Adam the BBQ Man will be cooking away, and there’re some darn good […]
Written on June 14, 2009 | Posted in
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It’s been a hell of a week for good news, I have to say. 2009’s already been a good year for H-town music, but with some recent little bits of news, things are looking upwards even more. Springfield Riots Release an EP: Firstly, pseudo-newbie band Springfield Riots is officially releasing their debut EP, Say When, […]
Written on June 13, 2009 | Posted in
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Tonight, tonight, tonight…punker-than-you H-town label/print conglomerate Ditchwater Records is staging its second-ever (I think?) record release show extravaganza tonight, Friday, May 29th, up at Rudyard’s. It’s a joint 7″ release thing, celebrating new releases from both sneering, knife-wielding glam-rockers The Wrong Ones (not to be confused with the Glaswegians of the same name) and crazed […]
Written on May 29, 2009 | Posted in
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Y’know, it’s funny, but I hadn’t realized just how long it’d been since somebody put out a comp of Houston (or at least Houston-area) bands. Back in The Day, when CD burners & whatnot were prohibitively expensive, that often seemed to be the only way a band would get on a CD, to go in […]
Written on May 13, 2009 | Posted in
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I’m a little hazy on the background of the whole Record Store Day thing — meaning that it seemed to magically appear out of nowhere a while back, and yet musical-type people I know acted like it was some long-standing holiday or something. Did I just miss those first ten years of Record Store Days, […]
Written on April 18, 2009 | Posted in
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I’ll admit that I’m tempted by tonight’s show at Fitzgerald’s, because The Hudson Falcons are pretty great, but honestly, The Mink is The Place to Be this evening. Local boys Tambersauro will be opening this evening (Wed., March 4th), starting around 9PM, for Baltimoreans (Baltimories?) Thank You and San Franciscans (and ex-Black Eyes members) Mi […]
Written on March 4, 2009 | Posted in
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Barely three weeks into 2009, and believe it or not, there’s already a seeming torrent of eagerly-anticipated releases exploding out of H-town. Seriously; there’s now new stuff out by The Wild Moccasins and The Born Liars, with stuff right around the corner from Young Mammals, The Tontons, Teenage Kicks, and listenlisten. Oh, and then there’s […]
Written on January 23, 2009 | Posted in
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No, it’s not what you think — it’s just that the HandStamp folks broke the news that local old-school country diva Miss Leslie, who’s utterly phenomenal, is giving away autographed copies of her 2008 album, Between the Whiskey and the Wine to anybody who sends her their email addy (to be put on her mailing […]
Written on January 5, 2009 | Posted in
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Of course, it being the holidays and all (not to mention Houston in general; when people gripe about this city, they fail to recognize that in a place this big, there’s always something cool going on, somewhere. There’s literally a festival every freaking weekend in some part of the city, some film being shown at […]
Written on December 6, 2008 | Posted in
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Good, good, good news. Meant to post about this last week, but eh, Thanksgiving… Anyway, now I can say it with authority, having actually heard the new Something Fierce album, There Are No Answers: you really need to get yourself a copy. Really. It’s bad-fucking-ass, honest, a fiery burst of poppy punk with irresistible melodies […]
Written on December 1, 2008 | Posted in
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Yeah, I totally get it now. Wow. It’s been barely three days since I got my Jesusphone — er, iPhone — and I completely and totally get the nickname. I feel like a kid who’s been riding a tricycle all his life, only to be abruptly plopped down in the driver’s seat of a fully-loaded […]
Written on September 4, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized
Damn…my head’s spinning and I really, really need to get to bed, but dammit, this sounds too cool to pass up writing about. According to our inside source over at cool-ass Midtown record store Sig’s Lagoon (which is coming close to eclipsing my love of Cactus, I have to say), awesome poster artist Uncle Charlie […]
Written on June 20, 2008 | Posted in
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Big, big, big “thank-yous” to my little bro for pointing out this news. Not only will The State, probably the funniest sketch-comedy troupe outside of the original SNL cast (okay, and maybe SCTV), be finally releasing their long-awaited DVD set(?), but they’ll be doing a reunion show, to boot. Holy fuck. Once I see that, […]
Written on June 18, 2008 | Posted in
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So, I’ve had my 4G iPod for a few years now — same one I initially bought, never replaced or upgraded or anything like that. It kept me sane during my time as a contractor, esp. at The Big Red H and ExxonMobil’s Bell St. office (right next to the elevator; yay!), and while I […]
Written on June 18, 2008 | Posted in
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Been meaning to mention this for a little while now — with the “on hiatus” nature of things over at Super Not-So-Happy Fun Land, I was really, really worried that the Zine Fest Houston extravaganza was going to get cancelled or postponed indefinitely. Which would suck, frankly, because zines — not the digital kind like […]
Written on May 22, 2008 | Posted in
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I suck, suck, suck. In my frantic rush to post about Record Store Day, I woefully neglected to give even the briefest shoutout to the wondrous, magical Midtown haven that is Sig’s Lagoon (3710 Main, if you were wondering). Which is doubly stupid considering that in the past six months or so I’ve shopped there […]
Written on April 19, 2008 | Posted in
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I’ve always thought of myself as being relatively environmentally-aware, but man, having a kid puts that whole thing into overdrive, believe it. These days I find myself become maniacal about checking labels, avoiding super-processed crap, and feeding as much organic food as possible to the curly-haired, Gogol Bordello-/Hannah Montana-loving midget who lives in my house. […]
Written on March 28, 2008 | Posted in
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Well, after last year’s ridiculously good bumper crop of local releases, I’d kind of wondered what 2008 would bring — I feared it’d be a quiet year, relatively, with everybody touring on past CDs & 7″s & such, and no new stuff out ’til later on. What the hell am I gonna do without new […]
Written on January 14, 2008 | Posted in
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It just seems like it’s been one thing after another lately, doesn’t it? Clubs closing down left and right (R.I.P., Cosmos Cafe, the most recent casualty that I’ve heard about), musicians passing away or getting injured (I’m sure everybody’s heard about Pimp C‘s untimely death — heck, it made the nightly news last night — […]
Written on December 5, 2007 | Posted in
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Just a quick note to let you know that this next week’s installment of the Grey Ghost CD-R series is gonna be ever more supremely badass than it usually is — it’s reportedly one eleven-minute Hell’s Angels clusterfuck entitled “Hawg!”, by none other than the Linus Pauling Quartet, who thanks to their latest album All […]
Written on November 30, 2007 | Posted in
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Yes, it’s true. Scenester/erst-and-again booking guy Bucky has decided that dangit, he just hasn’t done enough music-related crap in this here city, so now he’s opening his own record store, to boot, called On The Mouth. Not only is the new enterprise named after one of the best.damn.Superchunk.songs.EVER (okay, yeah, I love the OtM album, […]
Written on October 18, 2007 | Posted in
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Damn. I’ve been meaning to post about this for days now, seriously, ever since the beginning of the week… Today (Saturday, that is) is the very, very last-last day to buy the week’s installment of the Grey Ghost CD-R series, this ultra-super-limited edition (13 copies only) bunch of little EPs put out by Grey Ghost’s […]
Written on October 6, 2007 | Posted in
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Dang. Y’know how sometimes you keep meaning to mention something, but something else always comes up, so you forget that first thing over and over and over again? I sure as hell do (come to think of it, that pretty much describes my life; what the hell was I talking about, here…?). Like with this: […]
Written on September 27, 2007 | Posted in
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Okay, so this makes me feel a bit better — got my very own copy of the new Something Fierce/The Hangouts split-7″ (out on Manic Attack!!! Records) yesterday in the mail. And unsurprisingly, it fucking rocks. Alright, so I haven’t yet listened to the Hangouts side (sorry; I will soon, I swear), but I couldn’t […]
Written on July 28, 2007 | Posted in
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Weird; June’s already shaping up to be Giveaway Month here at SCR HQ (and this one’s somewhat bigger one than the last, to boot…). We’ve got a pair of tickets to the Fall Out Boy show a week from today, Monday, 6/18, up at The Woodlands’ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion; also on the bill are […]
Written on June 11, 2007 | Posted in
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Had this one listed in the Rundown from the other day, but now it turns out its even cooler than I’d figured it would be: Sun., June 3 (i.e., tomorrow), theAUDITION, New Atlantic, The Graduate, and now also Monty Are I and 1997 are all playing at the Java Jazz Coffeehouse up in Spring. Now, […]
Written on June 2, 2007 | Posted in
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