Tonight: See The Tontons, (Maybe) Get on TV, Support Your Scene!

Whoa. A bit short-notice, for sure (yeah, like I never do that, right?), and it’s already been ably written up at Houstonist & 29-95.com, I know, but I figure it deserves some passing-along, in the unlikely event that there’re music lovers in this city who read this little blog and not one’a them big ones.

It seems that the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to put together a video promoting — wait for it — the wonders of music in Houston. No, really. (Quit laughing, you.) And admittedly, this seems sort of like my mother deciding to promote a hardcore band (i.e., something she knows very little about), but I’ll be damned if they haven’t picked an honest-to-God winner to feature in the video: The Tontons.

Again, with emphasis: whoa. Not only are those four kids the deserving recipients of much awardage and acclaim, but to put it simply, they’re fucking incredible musicians, especially live. My hat’s off to whoever picked their name out of the steaming morass of many hundreds of bands in this city; it would’ve been damn easy to go the safe-and-simple route and pick somebody my parents probably wouldn’t object to, but the GHCVB instead showed that maybe they are paying attention to music in our fair city, after all. I now feel (a little) bad about my initial kneejerk snickering.

So, what’s the deal? Well, tonight, August 31st, the Tontons will be playing a free, early (6PM, I hear) show at the House of Blues — I guess it would’ve been too much of a stretch for them to play Rudz or Walter’s and keep it really-real? — while the GHCVB’s cameras roll, capturing the band blowing the roof off the damn place and then burning the rest of it down to the ground. The idea is reportedly to make H-town music look good-good-good, y’all, and maybe attract folks to bring their conventions & tourist dollars & whatnot down here.

Of course, for such a thing to work, the crowd had better be freaking huge. Ever see concert footage of a band playing to a crowd of their ten closest friends? Nope. Why not? Because it sucks, that’s why not, and nobody wants to pay money to show something lame like that, however accurate a portrayal it may be of the band’s real life. (Caveat: okay, I actually have seen footage of a show like that. It happened to be my own, and as far as I’m aware, nobody owns a copy but me, thank God, for the reason I just outlined…) So if this video thing’s going to be a success, everybody and their brother need to flock downtown, shake it in front of the cameras, and show the Tontons (and our city) some love.

Got it? Go do it.