HPMA Nomination Time! (+ Bonus Music Rant!)

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!)