For a large chunk of my life, I would proudly declare to anybody who’d listen that I hated country music. I got downright righteous about it, honestly, for reasons that would probably only make sense to teenage wannabe music nerds with inflated senses of their own importance. And yeah, I’d imagine it was pretty freaking annoying…
Hey, y’all — it’s Thursday, March 30th, and holy crap, I cannot believe we’re right at the end of March already. Seriously? Damn. I am way, way, way behind with a whole lot of stuff… That’s not why we’re here, though, so we’ll skip that and focus on the here and now. Good? Good…
Hey, folks — it’s the start of a busy-as-hell weekend, looks like, so I wanted to at least mention a handful of cool-sounding (to me, anyway) shows going on tonight, Friday, May 24th. I’m a bit under the gun today, though (yeah, like that’s abnormal), so if I neglect mentioning your band/show specifically, um, sorry?…
Well, it may be only Thursday (March 23rd), but even still, there’s a ton of things going on, and one of said things looks especially cool. See, local photog/manager/music-lover/tastemaker Mark C. Austin will be celebrating his 40th birthday (young’uns, I swear…), and he’s doing it with a full-on party/charity concert tonight up at The Heights Theater…
Hey, there — it’s now Saturday, March 11th, and while the grand opening festivities that were planned for today over at the rechristened/remodeled Avenida Houston (i.e., the area of Downtown Houston around George R. Brown Convention Center) was postponed to a later date because of the weather, there’s still plenty going on…
Alright, y’all. We’re at the start of what promises to be a very busy not just weekend but full week (hell, almost two weeks), and yours truly is going to do his best to keep up with it, beginning with tonight, Friday, March 10th. And away we go…
One of the best things I can say about any album, and even more so for an EP, is that it felt like it went by too fast, that I wanted it to keep going. That’s where I am with Miears’ new Who Will Save You? EP; it’s alluring and lush and intense, and I just want to hear more of it, or at least the whole damn thing, over and over again….
Well, so I blew it for yesterday’s pile of cool shows, sadly — had a thing, and it ended up taking all damn day… But we’re back again for Sunday, February 19th, and lo and behold, there’s one show in particular that sounds like it’s worth checking out…
So, um…hi! I know, it’s been a while, and I feel like an ass about that — many times I had fully planned on posting about one show or another, but something would intervene (multiple illnesses, family emergencies, injured children), and said show would fall by the wayside. Hell, I didn’t even get to post anything about the Super Bowl madness that engulfed the city for the better part of three weeks…
Hey, all — long time, right? This new year of ours has been a little rough on yours truly, between frenzied work to meet post-holiday deadlines at the Day Job (and yes, said deadlines have since been moved, naturally), some personal family stuff, holiday recovery time, and the flu thing I’m still fighting right now…
I’m not an art guy. I tried to be, back when I was a kid, but it turned out I was pretty mediocre at it, so it fell by the wayside. And in terms of speaking about art, I’m largely clueless — I feel like I just don’t have the vocabulary for that, in a lot of ways…
Hey, folks — back again with Part 2 of SCR‘s little rundown/preview things of as many randomly-selected musicians and bands performing this weekend —Saturday, December 17th & Sunday, December 18th — at Day for Night as we can cram in in the short time we’ve got left…
Alright, people — Day for Night is very, very nearly upon us, with only a day or two until it explodes into new venue Post HTX (aka the former Barbara Jordan Post Office in downtown Houston). And I’ll admit to having some mixed feelings about it; on the one hand, I’m psyched…
As we mentioned a short while back, this year’s Houston Press Music Awards are upon us. While I’m sure there was some whining and griping, as always, especially about the new, more free-form, less rigid categories…
Red Fang are a conundrum of a band, one that I love for seemingly totally diametrically opposed reasons. On the one hand, I love their over-the-top, raw, heavy-as-fuck, metal sensibilities, the kind that write songs to make you punch the roof of your beat-to-shit old car…
Alright, folks — I had planned to post about this yesterday…and then there was that torrential downpour that hit most of the city last night, and, um, I was afraid I’d put up the post and then immediately have to say, “welp, sorry, it’s been canceled due to the weather.” So I chickened out, I’ll admit it…
With their new, self-titled EP, down-low, funky/reggaeified pop trio Jerk has staked out some impressively new, (mostly) unexplored territory. The Houston-dwelling band starts off sounding like a kind of downtempo…
I love Keeton Coffman. Until now, I’ve been unable to even start to explain why; there’s just something about the guy’s voice that works for me, pulling me along with the song. It helps that he’s got this Springsteenian delivery I dig, sure…
Once in the long-ago, this little Website used to be an even-littler actual print zine. I know, right? Paper — who the hell does that? (Kidding! Kind of…) But before that, even, there used to be little old me as a college student…
Y’know, after last year, I was afraid Something Wicked was done for; when they had to cancel due to the torrential downpour hitting the area, people were pissed…
Things have changed a fair bit for Seattle band The Head and the Heart, these past few years. Most famously, frontman Josiah Johnson has been struggling with addiction, which means that while he wrote/co-wrote the songs on Signs of Light — particularly the title track, which closes out the album…
Anybody can write a political song; conversely, very few people can write a good political song. For every Public Enemy or Billy Bragg out there, there’s a metric ton of flat-out terrible also-rans. And then, thankfully, there’s The Wheel Workers, who take political songwriting and graft it to smart, clever, earworm-packed pop…
And here we are, again, with the second of this weekend’s several festivals, this time way up north of town in Old Town Spring. It’s a brand new one called End Hip End It (the joke of which I just got), and unlike most of our local music festivals…
Dammit. This was supposed to get posted last night, but yours truly actually passed out on the couch and blew it — it’s been a long-ass week, I’m afraid. Sorry about that… But hey, you’re not completely out of luck, because Untapped Houston kicks off this afternoon at 4PM (3:30PM for VIP pass holders, I believe)…
This weekend, y’all — I mean, seriously. There’s so much going on that I’m having to split it up and skip a whole bunch of stuff…or else I’ll never have enough damn time to post about any of it. Not a bad problem to have, all things considered. So here’s what’s happening just tonight, Friday, October 14th…
So, did you realize Houston has a Thai soul-pop band? None of whom are from Thailand, mind you, as far as I’m aware, but Khruangbin have embraced the ’60s-era pop/funk stylings of that country, where bands took American and British pop music and filtered it through Thai culture to make it something strange and different and their own…
It’s been a long road for The Dandy Warhols. They’ve occupied a very specific niche, it seems like, over the course of their 20-plus-year career, standing at the intersection between psychedelic rock, Brit-influenced pop, and indie-rock, and despite being real-live adults these days…
Alright, so this week I’m attempting to get this whole “cool shows coming up” thing done a bit early, in part because, well, I keep running out of time at the end of the week and partly because there’s some seriously awesome stuff happening mid-week. So here’s my attempt at Part 1 of your weekly rundown, with subsequent parts (hopefully) to follow…
So, if you fall off the horse, you’re supposed to pick yourself up and get back on it again, right? That’s what I’ve always heard, and it kinda-sorta feels like it applies to yours truly right now. I’d planned on doing all the weekend-rundown stuff last weekend…and then other things intervened, like me getting sick, and one of the kids getting sick. It happens; sorry about that…
I heard this too late by a month or so, it feels like; here in Houston, despite it still being too goddamn hot to willingly spend significant time outdoors, summer’s finally on its way out, giving way to what passes for “Autumn” in these parts (i.e., “chilly” temps most Northerners would snicker at, although I’d dare ’em to try to survive the heart of summer down here…). See, Ra Ra Riot’s Need Your Light is, at its core, a summer album, at least to these ears…
I went into Lucky Ones, the fourth album from The Crookes, with some trepidation. See, everything I’d heard or read about the Sheffield band focused on how singer George Waite’s voice seriously sounded just like Morrissey’s…and, to the unending horror of my wonderful, Morrissey-loving wife, I’ve never been a fan…
Once, there was a band called Featherface. They were awesome, an intense, thoughtful blast of fuzzy psych-pop goodness. They toured, played SXSW, moved up to Austin, made some trippy, strange videos, got some cool press, and then…poof, they were gone. Before what turned out to be their last-ever show…
Okey-dokey — back on this horse, sort of, and since I’ve already been running later than I’d like to be, I’m now at least trying to get ahead. It is one hell of a busy weekend, music-wise, and some of it we’ve already talked about, but there’s plenty more we’d recommend…
So. I stopped doing these little weekend-preview things a while back, because honestly, it was eating my life and giving me a nervous breakdown; I kept running out of time to do ’em, which meant I had to scramble, and that stressed me out, and y’know, other stuff needed to get done, right? Lately, though, I’ve been missing it…
There’s a hell of a lot of good stuff going on this weekend — and yeah, we’ll hopefully get to that soon — but this one stands out for me. It’s partly because the Steamboat Ampworks guys are good people and partly because, well, if money was no object, I’d already freaking own one…
Oh, man. I got a bit wrapped up in the countdown to Yes, Indeed! 2016 last week, so I let this one slip a bit, and that means that unless you’ve been sailing a raft across the ocean for seven or eight days now — or, alternately, hate music and/or joy, in which case I don’t have a clue how you’re reading this — you know that the organizers of Day for Night, FPSF‘s quasi-sister festival in the winter months, released the official lineup…
From the moment the video for Frog Hair’s “My Best Foot Forward” begins, it is clear both in its immediate inspirations and the longer, deeper history it is part of. A lonely-looking mad scientist puppet weaves his perfect companion together, or attempts to, unaware that he is succeeding beyond his wildest dreams…
Back again, as promised, for Round Three (aka The Final Round) of SCR‘s happy little preview/writeup things for Yes, Indeed! Music Fest 2016, which will be unfurling tomorrow, September 17th, over on the eastern fringe of downtown. 25 damn cool bands/musicians, from here and elsewhere, will be doing their thing at four stages…
Alright, and here we are again, with Round Two of our little writeups for this Saturday‘s (September 17th, for the calendar-less) Yes, Indeed! Music Festival, slated to explode into the area east of Downtown, right around Warehouse Live, wedged in between the George R. Brown Convention Center and the BBVA Compass Stadium…
Yes, friends, neighbors, Houstonianites, it’s just about time again for the “other” half of the bi-annual music festival extravaganza that’s known either as the Yes, Indeed! Music Festival or Madness on Main Street, both put on by super-organized people Jason Smith and Phil “Bassman Pep” Peterson…
