Sometime-Texan Lee Hazlewood passed away Saturday in Nevada at age 78 after a lengthy battle with renal cancer. His latest, Cake or Death, was essentially his death album, his sign-off, but not his swan song. The Haze wasn't that kind of cat. His self-deprecating sense of humor and lyrical tongue solidified much of his career. I only recently got into Hazlewood's early albums, but the lyrics to 1966's "My Autumn's Done Come" seemed eerily prescient:

Kiss all the pretty ones goodbye
Give everyone a penny that cry
You can throw all my tranquil pills away
Let my blood pressure go on its way
For my autumn's done come
My autumn's done come Read More | Comment »

Pride. A pride of Leo’s nest at the Chronicle. August is our month. Today one departs, a good one – a fierce, passionate one. One we’re sorry to lose. Another one turns 27 today, one who’s all claws and balls. Sexy beasts both.

I’m a Leo, textbook: big, vain, incisors at the sharp. We’re also all pussycats, Nilsson through and through. Pet us and we purr. Millenniums we’ve been domesticated.

Berkeley, Memorial Day weekend, in the Spoken Word vinyl undersection of Amoeba Records, $2: Signs of the Zodiac: Leo, A&M Records, 1960. Artwork to die for. Mine. Read More | Comment »

Until I heard them at the NAMM party on Saturday night at the Continental, I’d forgotten how good the LeRoi Brothers sounded. We were hanging out with actor-musician Chris Mulkey, who’s playing the new coach on NBC’s Friday Night Lights, when the LeRois cranked up and damn, they smoked their hipshake Texas rock like it was 1982.

That’s partly because Steve Doerr and Mike Buck have held the guitar and drums down since they were a trio with Don Leady on bass. That means I think of bassist Pat Collins and guitarist Casper Rawls as “the new guys.” Which is in no way true but makes me feel better about feeling old because I remember when Joe Doerr was the young buck in the herd. But there they were, 25 years on, kicking ass with “Chain of Love” and other songs heavily cobwebbed in my memory. It's like running into an old friend you didn’t owe money to. I made a note to dig out my vinyl copy of Check This Action. Read More | Comment »

Local label Misc. Music - "the dysfunctional music corporation" - hosts another monthly installment of noise therapy under South Congress at Ego's tonight. Gil San Marcos, Mastertape, Ugly Luggage, and Aliens help clean out the wax, starting at 9pm. Check "Off the Record" for more on the label in Thursday's issue. Read More | Comment »

The combination of Boris' Pink, and the Japanese trio's recent collaboration with guitar god Michio Kurihara, Rainbow, unlocked a spectrum of sounds and hues previously unimaginable to Off the Record, some of which are encapsulated in haiku form below, along with a few notable psych releases.

Boris is scheduled to hit the Scoot Inn on October 19, while Kurihara's band Ghost is scheduled to appear at the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans Halloween weekend. Breathe in, breathe out, and jump. Read More | Comment »

My job sucks today, as it does on any day when the world tilts to one side and then straightens, one soul lighter. At least that’s the way it felt to hear about Uncle John Turner’s death on this sky-is-crying Thursday morning.

There’s so much to be said about Turner’s legacy to Texas music and the blues that if I were queen of Austin, we’d already have a statue of him next to the statue of Clifford Antone next to the statue of Biscuit next to the statue of Doug Sahm next to the statue of Stevie. While you most likely know those last four names, chances are that Uncle John Turner’s name draws a blank.

There’s a bit of irony to the announcement I heard on KUT while driving home, thinking about Uncle John. Jay Trachtenberg was saying that today is Mick Jagger’s birthday as well as the day that Emotional Rescue went No. 1 in the U.S. 27 years ago. It reminded me that the Stones made their initial foray on the rock scene as a blues band, as did the Animals, the Yardbirds, and numerous other British Invasion bands circa 1964. It would take the stateside bands another few years to reclaim the blues, and that was done in large part by two Texans: Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter. And what Johnny Winter knew about the blues, he learned from Uncle John Turner. Read More | Comment »

The absolute coolest thing about listening to teenagers play rock & roll is their unadulterated love for it. They embrace songs the way they hug you – tightly and sometimes awkwardly but with all the passion their little hearts can muster.

I’m sorry I won’t be flying in or out of Austin this week, but those who are can hear five of Austin’s best young local bands at Austin-Bergstrom.

When I say young, I mean young – most coming in under 18. They're not the oh-aren’t-they-cute-practicing-in-the-TV-room variety of kid bands; most of them have been in and out of the local music camps or received extensive training. A few of them have good DNA and/or family connections to thank but that doesn’t replace innate talent or that adolescent fire that burns under their butts.

Westlake High School student Kelli Tucci started the week off. Tucci is a graduate of the Austin School of Music and falls into the pop singer-songwriter category. Max Tolleson of Max & Henry (and grandson of entertainment attorney Mike Tolleson), on the other hand, attended the local Natural Ear Music Camp before teaming with Henry Gillespie (son of literary diva Spike Gillespie). The two make serious noise on their debut CD called, naturally, Max & Henry, a savvy choice of covers from “Killin’ Floor” to “Bang a Gong,” and the two guitarists wisely drafted Ernie Gammage and Christine Albert’s son Troupe for bass and drums for their Tuesday show. Read More | Comment »

The Austin City Limits Music Festival announced its official
aftershows this morning. They can be viewed here.

The concerts should ease the strain of choosing sides during the festival's more painful pairings (Spoon vs. Queens of the Stone Age), though a few conflicts (MIA vs. LCD Soundsystem, Muse vs. Arctic Monkeys) are left unresolved. For those who survive the weekend, Yo La Tengo will beat your ass at the Parish on Monday night, while Common, who is not scheduled to perform at ACL, graces La Zona Rosa on Sunday. Perhaps even more exciting is the empty slot still looming Saturday night at Stubb's. All available tickets go on sale Saturday, July 28 at 10am through Front Gate Tickets. Read More | Comment »

The first time I saw W-S Burn was last summer and I couldn't decide if I liked them. Perhaps it was the wind chime/lamp contraption singer Amanda Beddard (aka Pixie) was spinning on stage as she sang. (I have an undiagnosed fear of wind chimes that stems from a childhood accident.) But, damn, she had an amazing voice.

I saw them again last month at the Parlor, and I confronted my fear. The duo - with former Brother JT collaborator Steve Gigante on guitar - moved here from Atlanta last year, but before that they lived in Knoxville, Tenn. For the past three years they've been playing as W-S Burn (W-S stands for Winston-Salem, which is where Beddard is from), spinning blues and folk into Southern gothic, and releasing a handful of home recordings that literally sound haunted. Beddard's voice ramps from purr to howl, and the lamp-chime only makes it affecting. Truly engaging to watch.

"Pixie has been writing songs since she was a little kid," Gigante relates. "Actually, one of the songs on [2004's] Two Dreams Tucked in Tight called 'Augustine' was written by her when she was 11 years old. And the version on that disc is the first time we had ever played it together. It just came out. So, there's a strange symbiosis happening which I really love. Writing songs together has been one of the most enjoyable musical experiences of my life." Read More | Comment »

A goddess on a mountain top,
Was burning like a silver flame.
The summit of beauty and love,
And Venus was her name.

Looks like a sand bar to me, Venus’ bed, but Lisa Small, associate curator of the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York, lays the goddess on a wave. Small’s lecture last Sunday as part of the Blanton Museum’s summer event guide opened many a bright eye.

According to Small, “The Birth of Venus” hanging at UT's Blanton through Aug. 5 provenances as one of two authorized copies of Alexandre Cabanel’s blue ice cream Sunday, lighter than its faux twin at the Metropolitan in NYC. Maybe the Met’s is darker, as Small claims, but in that museum’s upstairs corridor, where it rains lights, “Venus” radiates only skin and sky. Small’s assertion that the copies are half the size of the original hanging in Paris brought back instant recall of just how big Cabanel's canvas really is, especially in the alternately cramped and outsized spaces of the Musée D’Orsay. Ooh la la…

That first international viewing was all it took, too. The moment its ID was read, a quarter rolled down into my jukebox and I could hear the tone-arm set down on a spinning 45. Snap, crackle, pop. Read More | 1 Comment »

An interesting interview with Ramesh from Voxtrot here, following the lukewarm response to their album.

Whatever your feelings on the band, he has some valid points about being an "indie" band in the era of mass, orgiastic downloading where everyone's a critic and 15 minutes has become more like five. Read More | 2 Comments »

KAOS959.com, the South Austin Internet radio station with shows like Colostomy Grab Bag o' Fun and Wasted Hippie, also profiled earlier this month, is holding a benefit Saturday with locals Hit by a Car, Micah Omega & the Mutations, Kraked Surface, and My Fascist Pussy. Naturally, this benefit will be held at Conan's Pizza, 2018 W. Stassney, starting at 7pm. Read More | Comment »

If you build it, they will come. Austin acts dominate the third Wall of Sound Festival Saturday, Sept. 22, the weekend following the Austin City Limits Festival, at LaGrave Field in Fort Worth. The three-stage show is easy on the wallet (advance tickets are only $30, available here) and includes headliners Explosions in the Sky and Ghostland Observatory, as well as Pinback, Om, the Books, Brothers & Sisters, Peter & the Wolf, the Sword, Lions, Ume, White Denim, and Tacks, the Boy Disaster. The full lineup's at the link above and to the right.

For those unwilling to make the trek up I-35, a handful of Dallas' finest, including Black Tie Dynasty, Shanghai 5, Golden Falcons, and the Tah Dahs, hits the Parish on Saturday as part of the "Debbie Does Austin" showcase. Read More | Comment »

Ghost stories, lullabies: spectral opposites of the same comfort. Two nostrils perched above covers pulled high serve them equally, same as a leaping campfire.

That firelight centers the prologue of John Carpenter’s The Fog. Follow-up to the previous year’s indie tide-turner, Halloween, the filmmaker’s fourth big-screen hit and run blunts its predecessor’s serrated edge with good old-fashion ghost-busting. The blood and guts of All Hallows Eve 1978 recede for The Fog’s milky screen of vengeful dead men returning to celebrate Antonio Bay’s birthday. Jamie Lee Curtis climbs back aboard as well. Cue the piano. Read More | 1 Comment »

The buzz around St. Vincent is warranted, as her debut album Marry Me, out today, should attest. Full of religious allusions, illusions of love, and love gone cold, it’s not nearly as fluffy and stuffy as one might think from her previous collaborations – Polyphonic Spree, Sufjan Stevens.

Instead, she crawls through land mines, sees Paris burning, and lusts after holy men, making Marry Me an almost unattainable goal. And that’s precisely why it’s such an engaging listen. The beatific music is secondary to Clark’s doom-filled lyrics. On “Landmines”:

I’m crawling through landmines
I know because I planted them
Under cover of night

And on the jazzy “Human Racing”:

Romeo, where’d you go?
It’s been years and still no sign, but I’m keeping hope alive
Juliet, how you been?
You look like death, like you sure could use some rest

Yes, much of Marry Me seems conflicted and desperate. Love is the answer, according to Clark, and it’s an awfully European gesture. The early century sensibility in her songs becomes even more interesting knowing Clark is from Dallas, and was born in Tulsa, Okla., one of nine children. Read More | Comment »

Mohawk's Tuesday July residency is a good'un, I tell you what. Ume, led by whirling dervish Lauren Larson, knocks down the hive tomorrow night (and July 24) along with Ringo Deathstarr, and Horse + Donkey feeds back to black next Tuesday.

And this Wednesday night, a certain sea-faring group from the Northwest will perform a rousing set of salty tales. Last one there has to swab the poop deck. Read More | Comment »

“I’m going to have to shave you,” nodded the nurse, holding up a little white Bic razor.

We both looked at my chest. Standing there on a treadmill, soon to sport more electrodes than William Hurt in Altered States, I sighed. It took me 30 years to grow that!

“One Way Out,” an Elmore James/Sonny Boy Williamson razor strap, smolders infidelity, but mortality ain’t materializing any great escapes either. There’s only one way out of this life, and “oh, baby, I just don’t know.” The Allman Brothers’ cover of “One Way Out,” Live at the Fillmore East, 1971 (originally from Eat a Peach), chops bone.

Fade In: the whistles, the crowd. The buzz. Dickey Betts’ guitar. Loping just ahead of a swarming rhythm section, his fleet-fingered riffing bounds with animal grace. Airborne. Enter Duane Allman’s slide guitar, dripping with disembowelment.

A singular sound in the rock & roll library, Allman’s Coricidin bottle sliding across steel strings pressed atop steel frets burns ears and brands memory. Once heard, you’ve got the scars to prove it. Allman (1946-1971) wipes the face off “One Way Out” even as he flips its switch. Locomotive on track, baby brother Gregg Allman unwinds his predicament as if Mother Earth herself were reciting the book on tape.

Ain’t but one way out, baby. Lord, I just can’t go out that door.

Ain’t but one way out, baby. And Lord, I just can’t go out that door.

Cause there’s a man down there. Might be your old man, I don’t know. Read More | Comment »

First, the folks at the Backyard need to be applauded for the solution they’ve come up with to the horrible parking situation. They’ve arranged with a local Home Depot and a church on Bee Cave Road for offsite parking, where you can hop a shuttle bus to the venue. It’s the route I took, and it was remarkably hassle-free, unlike my last visit.

Under a sky that moved from threatening to exposing shafts of sunlight, but thankfully free of rain, this Independence Day celebration began with a much-too-brief set by L.A.’s Particle. The quartet offered but a glimmer of what they're capable of over the course of 30 minutes. Leaning heavily on dancing basslines, they delivered a slab of space funk that moved from high intensity to blissed-out trance with astonishing ease. At set’s end, they upped the cheese factor with a cover of the Commodores’ Seventies disco instrumental “Machine Gun.”

What followed was one of the best sets I've seen this year. File the music of Matisyahu under Hasidic Beatbox Reggae. While that might not make sense, it’s even more difficult to describe its positive nature without sound clips. Beyond the unique image of the Brooklyn-based rapper skanking while clothed in the vestments of his Orthodox faith, the fusion of sounds his fivepiece brought was awe-inspiring. No one mixes dub-wise hypnotics with roaring rock, shifting beats with slinky guitar and authentic reggae into such a delicious whole. Read More | 1 Comment »

Will Courtney was born into the music business, literally. His mother, Grammy award-winning gospel singer Cynthia Clawson, went into labor with him in a studio in Nashville, while his father, Ragan Courtney, a Baptist preacher, penned several of her hits. Raised on lovin’ spoonfuls of the Byrds and Beach Boys, Will, along with real-life sibling Lily, formed the aptly titled country-folk collective Brothers & Sisters as a reflection and extension of their roots. The group’s eponymous debut, released last year on the family label, Calla Lily Records, is rich with pastoral scenery and sun-kissed choruses that are as instantly familiar as they are welcoming. The ensemble recently recorded a new EP, which includes a cover of Neil Young’s “Albuquerque” in Los Angeles, where they recently took up a residency. Off the Record chats up Courtney after the jump. Read More | Comment »

“Upload this to YouTube so we can watch it!”

One of Pete Best’s men in black called to the cadre of camcorders in the audience in the Threadgill’s garden on a sticky June night. The greybeards and scraggly ponytailed ones nodded back agreeably at the guitarist as the band slid into “Till There Was You.”

“Why aren’t there more people here? He was a Beatle!” KGSR program director Jody Denberg and I muttered to each other as the band ably shifted into “Rock & Roll Music.” The old hippies in the crowd were game enough and when the Pete Best Band struck up “Twist and Shout,” the audience did just that.

If you’re not a fan of the early Beatles, it helps to know that like most of the early Sixties bands, they were a largely a jukebox band. Then-booking agent Allan Williams hired Pete Best as the Silver Beatles’ first full-time drummer in 1960. The “Silver” part was soon dropped but Best sat in a crucial position for the band as the drummer on the Decca demos and those brutal gigs and live recordings in Hamburg, the period that forever shaped the Beatles’ sound.

Best also played numerous Cavern gigs with the Beatles and was onboard when they backed up Tony Sheridan on “My Bonnie.” Best’s displacement by new manager Brian Epstein in late 1962 has been attributed to personality conflicts, questionable musicianship, and band jealousy. Whether it was any one or a combination of those is lost to history. Best continued to perform and record but with little success and seemed to drop from sight by the Seventies. Read More | Comment »