Can’t Always Get What You Want, Pt. 2 + A Last-Minute Review

Man, what a week… It’s fairly safe to say that things haven’t gone quite the way I’d planned ’em. Seeing as this was shaping up to be one of the coolest weeks for The Rock here in Houston in quite some time, I’d hoped to be the music-fan-about-town. Screw SouthBy — I figured a little Guilloteens here, some Blades there, plus some Jonah Matranga, all topped off w/some Palomar, maybe some Ladyhawk, and what the hey, some wild Irish fiddle, and I’d be a lot better off than if I were trying to negotiate the hordes of Sixth Street. I’m a married guy with a little midget at home, so I don’t get to do this sort of thing real often; I was looking forward to it.

But alas, it was not to be. After spending last weekend nursing my wife and the munchkin w/no ill effects to my own health, I thought I was in the clear. I made it out to Walter’s Monday to see the Fatal Flying Guilloteens (warning: do not view the site at work…) — who I hadn’t seen since Mike G. made the switch from drums to vocals, and I have to say that they get better every time I see ’em, amazingly — and hang with out-of-town pal Conor, which was very cool, and got to re-meet the fabulous Ms. Rosa in person afterwards at Rudz. And hey, no cops raided Walter’s, at least not while I was there, so that’s a bonus.

I stuck around Walter’s after the Guilloteens long enough to catch part of Iron Age’s set, which wasn’t bad, I’ll grant, but mostly got me desperately needing to rip my Metallica CDs onto my iPod. And it was good to say “hey” to Mike and Shawn G. once again, even if Shawn thought I’d left town a while back to go to school up in Denton. Ah, well; better than dead, I guess, and I had a damn good time, all things considered.

Tuesday was equally a blast, at least at first. I swung up to Super Happy Fun Land in the pouring rain to catch Jonah Matranga and hang out w/friend Mel and his crew, all of whom happen to be the coolest folks. After a truly, truly bizarre, halfway-hysterical set by a SXSW passer-through named Toof who did things with a bass guitar, a keyboard, and an iMac that I still can’t entirely comprehend (and if I could remember more of the lyrics to “Just Give Me Anal In the Morning, Baby,” I would, but then this site would probably be blocked from every high-school PC in the known universe, if it isn’t already), Jonah took the stage and played low-key balladeer to all us emo-kid types.

He played some new songs he’s been working on, and they blew me away — at one point I caught myself thinking, “oh, yeah, that would be great on a mix…no, wait, maybe that one…” The high point, though, was him acceding to audience demand and rocking out (acoustically) “We Had A Deal,” off The Volunteers. I’ve never seen somebody so happy to hear the crowd singing the words louder than they were in my life (actually, that kind of thing’s usually just uncomfortable and weird).

Afterward, I caught a bit of Barbez’s set — liked the klezmer-sounding songs, not so big on the rest — and then headed for House of Pies w/Mel, Jonah, and two Jonah fans/friends whose names I’m utterly and completely blanking on (sorry, ladies; my memory of the evening is hazy). Sure, I was up way, way, way late on a work-night, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to cap the show w/some chocolate cream pie.

Unfortunately, nature had its revenge on me, later that night, and by morning I was thoroughly miserable, sick, and exhausted. And I’ve been fighting this goddamn flu crap ever since. Profuse, profuse apologies if anybody I ran across/into, esp. at SHFL (which is, by the way, a very cool place to catch a show), is now sick thanks to my plague-infested self. I am really sorry, even if you cut me off on the freeway home or something; I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I don’t remember anything of Wednesday, and was so out-cold I couldn’t even make it to the Palomar show, despite their album being utterly great. I spent the next two days feeling up and down, and now it’s St. Freakin’ Paddy’s (okay, it was, about 20 minutes ago), and I’m so sick I can’t even knock back a celebratory glass of Jameson’s. Fuck.

Ah, well. On the plus side, there’s still time to check out one very-very-very cool show tomorrow, er, today (Sunday, 3/18, that is) — Winterpills are playing at Last Concert Cafe with a bunch of local folks (Carrie Ann Buchanan, Dave Fahl, & a few others I can’t remember). And because we here at SCR would like for this little e-zine to be at least a relatively-current proposition, we have — lo and behold! — put up a review of the new Winterpills disc, The Light Divides, in time for the show. Read the review here, then check out the band; they’ll be good, honest.

And hey, while we’re at it, we’ve also updated the Bands page slightly to include screamo/loud-and-noisy/whatever-core heroes The JonBenét. Enjoy; more updates to the horribly-outdated Featured Bands to come soon…