Coming into Day 1 of the weekend, Friday, May 13th, and there’s a decent-sized pile of good stuff going on, I have to say. Of course, it may also be that I’m just cheery today after finally getting to visit Bernie’s Burger Bus…
Argh. Late, late, late, sorry — spent the day dealing with sick kids & family members, and it just plain got away from me, I’m afraid. Which sucks, because there’s a lot of very awesome stuff going on tonight, Saturday, May 7th…
Yep, yep, yep — it’s a Friday (May 6th, to be precise), and here we are again, with a full slate of shows staring us (er, me) right in the face all damn weekend. I’ll try to hit some highlights, or at least what seem to me like highlights…
Holy freaking crap, y’all. I’d thought last night was busy, but today (Saturday, April 30th) has turned out to be downright insane. There’s so much going on today & tonight that I’m not entirely sure where to start; I definitely can’t talk about all of it, I’m afraid…
Gotta do this quick, y’all, but there’s plenty going on tonight, Friday, April 29th, even if I can’t give a detailed rundown on all of it… First up, there’s a cool show tonight at Walter’s, with the excellent {Art Institute} & {Satin Hooks}…
Another weekend, another big-ass pile of shows to (potentially, at least) check out… I’ll keep it short & sweet for the moment, if I can, for tonight, Friday, April 22nd. First off, The Mink‘s got the winner tonight, at least for yours truly…
Hey, all — gotta make it quick, as I’m headed off to some anniversary-celebrating with the wife this evening… Tonight (Friday, March 25th) is one hell of a busy night (er, and day, too), though, so there’s plenty, plenty to check out…
Heading into one heck of a New Year’s weekend, I have to say — neither Friday nor Saturday are slouches, if you check the schedule — but tonight, Thursday, December 30th, is looking pretty great all on its own…
Day 2 of a busy-as-hell weekend… Today (Saturday, December 18th) is a pretty massive one, particularly on the local front — and believe me when I say that that’s nothing to sneeze at. Anybody who thinks nothing worth listening to…
If you’ve heard The Apples in Stereo, then you can probably guess that they put on a pretty good live show. The most accessibly poppy group of the now legendary Elephant 6 collective, they’ve been creating feel-good songs…
Um. Wow. That’s really the only thing that comes to mind when I just sit here & stare at the list of all the ridiculously cool shows going on tonight (Sat., November 6th, that is). It’s like somebody up there decided to torment me personally (real likely, I know)…
Damn, damn, damn. Apparently I missed the real-brief note about it on the band’s blog last Friday, but I happened to see this AM that the guys in the band had gotten back online and explained a bit further…
Man. I hadn’t heard about this ’til very, very recently, and I’m still feeling sick about it; I didn’t know Mareshah Shepard, but as somebody who’s dodged cars many times on Washington Ave…
I can pretty much guarantee you won’t know any of the bands playing this show, but I think it’s going to be pretty awesome, even still. In case you hadn’t been paying attention at all to things going on in Houston related to music…
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: as somebody who’s been a passionate observer of the music scene here in H-town for something like 15 years now, it does my soul good to see that these days nearly every damn band in town is attempting to hit the road and play to non-hometown crowds…
I’ve been looking at this all wrong. My initial instinct, based on the band’s youth and cheery energy as much as on their knack for similarly cheery, shiny-sweet pop songs, is to applaud The Wild Moccasins for finally breaking out of the “kiddie-pop” niche…
Talk about taking the good right along with the bad… I have to admit, the show tonight (Wednesday, June 30th) up at Röcbar sounds pretty damn awesome, even if it hurts a little at the same time….
Wow. There aren’t all that many shows that honestly make my jaw drop (old and jaded; what can I say?), especially reunion shows, but this one hit me like a brick to the face. Er, assuming that brick were actually made of chocolate and I was then allowed to eat it and scream and run around like a crazy person…
One of the best things about going to a Wild Moccasins concert is the audience. Their signature sugary-but-feisty sound and friendly stage presence have gained them quite an impressive following among Houstonites…
While I’m pretty sure that’s not what it’s talking about, the A-side of the new 7-inch single from retro-rockers Paris Falls, “Big Surprise,” actually does find itself a little ways off from what I’ve come to think of as the band’s main musical neighborhood…
It’s shaping up to be quite a handful of days, coming up. Starting tonight, Fri., June 18th, there’s good, good, practically unmissable shit literally each night…
Pretty busy night for a Wednesday (June 9th, that is), honestly, and so I’m feeling compelled to pull myself out of the muck, at least for a bit, and remember that yes, life does indeed continue after the weekend. Musically, anyway…
Time for the second installment of the weekend’s cool shows, and tonight’s actually more jam-packed, if anything, than last night. Let’s just cut to the chase, eh? Here’s what sounds good to yours truly: ST-37/Linus Pauling Quartet (split-7″ release)/Golden Cities @ Rudyard’s
1120 Naylor St. Houston, TX. 77002 (713) 222-2679 “walters” at “4215washington dot com” Booking: “booking” at “waltersdowntown dot com”
Honestly, it’s apparent right from the first stagger-stomp second of opening track “What the Misanthrope Said” which way Omotai’s Peace Through Fear is going to go: heavy, thundering, hammer-like slabs of sound crushing you to the floor while the gods look on, laughing, from high, high above…
It seems that being a musician these days is more about finesse than power. Where volume may have sufficed more than a decade ago, the listening public has softened and heightened their musical palette. Beach House‘s recent success…
Holy crap, I cannot believe I (well, nearly) forgot about this. Yes, Steve Martin, that Steve Martin, a man best known for his comedic work but who dabbles in both literary-type things and music, as well (and, um, wins freaking awards for it, no less), will be playing tonight, Monday, April 26th, down in Stafford […]
“Mutha Fuckin’ Kings of Thrash.” That’s the moniker that Warbeast should start billing themselves as. This band of Texas thrash luminaries walked into Walter’s and laid waste to all in attendance…
There’s a strangely rural thread that winds its way through the entirety of Akron/Family’s newest, Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, seemingly pointing backwards from the band’s NYC-bred sound to their roots in the Midwest, and that rustic, Middle America upbringing does indeed shine through…
Deer Park boys The Gold Sounds know how to start off an album, that’s for damn sure. Opener “She Got Me Singin So Low” comes crashing in, so rambunctious and wild you can practically hear singer/bassist Sean Donnelly’s knowing smirk right through the speakers…
Psychedelia-infused ’60s-retro rock-pop is still in full force. It seems that a new artist in this very creative genre comes out every other week with a good-to-great album. Drug Rug’s latest album, Paint the Fence Invisible, is a beam of sunlight…
At the end of the day, Art Brut just wouldn’t work without Eddie Argos. I mean no disrespect to the other members of the band, because they’re all fine musicians, and Art Brut vs. Satan is musically a finely-crafted pastiche of everything I love about Britpop…
It hit me in the car, on my way back to the house yesterday, and suddenly, it all seemed plain as day: it’s Paul McCartney. That’s who Fruit Bats’ Eric D. Johnson reminds me of, more than anyone else, at least on the band’s latest, The Ruminant Band…
“Retro” has become a bad word in the musical world. First we had the ’70s stoner bands, the neo-thrash bands, and the revival of glam. So what’s a band like Nebula supposed to do, when they were retro before retro was a cool, and subsequently uncool, thing to be?…
Holy freaking crap. Y’know, I really hate it when one’a them pesky Internet rumors pops up on the screen and makes my stomach feel like it’s dropped into my feet, and I had that exact thing happen this AM when I read that now-venerable H-town venue Walter’s on Washington is moving (or maybe closing). My […]
Honestly, the greatest thing about the Small Sounds’ self-titled debut has nothing to do with the guitars, the melodies, or even the words. It’s just that the album possesses this amazing, gentle warmth — listening to those jangly guitars swing and sway…
The Wild Moccasins. Dang, that was a good one. Seriously — I haven’t seen a show as flat-out, nonstop, good as this past Friday’s Wild Moccasins CD release show with Buxton & Teenage Kicks in quite a while. There’ll hopefully be a full rundown at some point soon, but I had a blast & wanted […]
Yeah, you read that title right — tonight’s another “damn, I wish I had a cloning machine…” night, with great, great things happening all over our (not-so-)fair city… Option Uno: Tops on my list is tonight at Rudyard’s, where Clevelanders mr. Gnome will be blowing the roof off, setting hair on fire, and creeping everybody […]
