Cover Story
Starry Eyes
Roky Erickson’s monumental comeback
Nosferatu: The Vampyre
Nosferatu: The Vampyre 1979, PG, 124 min. Directed by Werner Herzog, Starring Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor. Kinski makes a worthy successor to Max Schreck as the ghoulish Count Dracula in Herzog’s atmospherically creepy and contemplative Nosferatu. One of the director’s most popular films, his vampire film ranks as one of the…
“The Witness” and “Lolita: Slave to Entertainment”
“The Witness” and “Lolita: Slave to Entertainment” In “The Witness (Jenny Stein, 2004, 58 min.) a tough Brooklyn construction worker is transformed by the love of a kitten and becomes inspired to rescue abandoned cats. The documentary “Lolita: Slave to Entertainment” (Tim Gorski, 2003, 56 min.) looks inside the multibillion-dollar aquarium industry and the ethics…
That Man: Peter Berlin
That Man: Peter Berlin 2005, NR, 80 min. Directed by Jim Tushinski. This is an encore presentation of this past festival’s winner of the Best Documentary award. It presents a biographical portrait of Berlin – one of the most famous of all gay icons, a Seventies hunk with a Dutch boy haircut and bulging trousers,…
Best Ofs
Orange MothersGreatest Hits (I Eat Records) Ethan Azarian must be an ancestor of Hans Christian Andersen, or perhaps a seventh cousin, twice removed, of Jacob & Wilheim Grimm. Azarian writes songs of the fantastic and surreal, twisted up with just the right amount of dysfunction. His Orange Mothers have become an Austin institution since their…
Best Ofs
EminemCurtain Call: The Hits (Interscope) Slim Shady says he’s retiring, and perhaps it’s just as well. After peaking on 2002’s mass-media funhouse The Eminem Show, he stumbled badly on last year’s vindictive, redundant Encore and has now all but disappeared save the TV spots hyping this cursory (and perhaps premature) collection. The “Stan” Grammy duet…
New Year, Old Films
Mid-20th-century must-sees: Part I
Sparkling Examples
It’s that time of year again …
Best Ofs
Shel SilversteinThe Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words His Songs His Friends (Columbia) It’s disconcerting to associate the literary icon of your youth with songs and poems about getting stoned and doing naughty things with naughty girls. But to love Shel Silverstein is to love the joie de vivre of a story like “Peanut Butter…
Bringing the War Home
No More Victims works for peace, one wounded child at a time
AFS Celebrates Its 20th, and You Can, Too!
The Austin Film Society is turning 20, and, in January, the world-class safe house for cinema of all stripes from Austin to abroad will ramp up its programming in celebration of the art and culture of filmmaking – a celebration whose festivities, it must be said, are sustained throughout the year, nearly every day of…
Food-o-file
A goodbye to Gus Vayas and the GM Steakhouse occasions an explanation as to why we can’t save the world
Best Ofs
Johnny CashThe Legend of Johnny Cash (Hip-O) The irony of the sprawling box set/book Cash is that most of the Man in Black’s common-man subjects couldn’t afford such a tribute. Legend fills that gap with a single disc retrospective of nothing but the hits (“Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire”) and…
The Iraqi Toll
“I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.” That was President George W. Bush, speaking to the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia on Dec. 12, in his first public acknowledgement of any overall estimate of civilian deaths in the Iraq war.…
Our Shostakovich Year
On the centenary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s birth, Austin arts groups join forces to throw the Russian composer a yearlong party
Best Ofs
Rosanne CashThe Very Best of Rosanne Cash (Columbia/Legacy) If you’re someone who wants just one Rosanne Cash disc, this might be it. With 16 tracks, it highlights all facets of her career, from rockabilly (“My Baby Thinks He’s a Train”) and Top 40 country (“Seven Year Ache”) to distinguished singer-songwriter (“What We Really Want”). Duets…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
A Shostakovich Primer
Anyone wishing to get a head start on the local celebration of Shostakovich can find a wealth of recorded material to listen to. But say you’re new to the composer’s work – where to start? Our three Shostakovaphiles offer a few recommendations. Bay: You should start with a recording of the opera. Buckley: I think…
Film News
The 2005 numbers from the Texas Film Commission? Not bad. Gary Busey coming to town? Scary. Plus, Rhiannon Elizabeth Rodriguez-Avellán, Susan Youssef, and Tracie Laymon.
Best Ofs
Todd SniderThat Was Me 1994-1998 (Hip-O) With 17 songs from the three albums Snider recorded for Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville label, plus a previously unreleased grunge version of Buffet’s signature tune, this is a commendable primer to the former San Marcos-based singer-songwriter’s early days. Those that know Todd from his more recent acoustic persona might be…
Are Partiers Dimming the 37th Street Lights?
Changes on popular Central Austin street irk, worry neighbors
Shostakovich 100 Schedule
One opera, two piano concertos, a handful of symphonies, a dozen string quartets, and a score of songs – Shostakovich 100 will be serving all this up over the next 12 months, covering every aspect of the composer’s varied output at every stage of his career, from his first composition at age 13 to his…
TV Eye
Last week, I launched a riff on ‘fascinating’ TV-related events of 2005. Here’s where I left off.
Best Ofs
TindersticksWorking for the Man: The Greatest Hits (Koch) Though London’s merry-widow sextet jumped labels two albums ago, this previously overseas sampling of the Tindersticks’ first four releases still marks its boundaries like a bleached skeleton. One bunny slipper from the Nenette et Boni soundtrack only hints at the ‘Sticks tributaries (Lee Hazlewood, Townes Van Zandt),…
Endangered Spider Spooks the Feds
Fish and Wildlife Service declines to add rare cave spider to federal endangered species list, saying C. cueva doesn’t exist; critter’s supporters cry foul
The Last Shall Be First
New Year’s Eve becomes a cultural extravaganza with First Night Austin
Ball of Fire
Ball of Fire 1941, NR, 111 min. Directed by Howard Hawks, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Dana Andrews. Barbara Stanwyck is a streetwise nightclub singer/dancer who, on the run from gangsters, ends up hiding out in the home of eight uptight, very proper professors (led by Gary Cooper) working…
Best Ofs
Johnny AdamsThe Great Johnny Adams Blues Album (Rounder) A soul crooner early in his career, Johnny Adams (1932-1998) explored the blues when he began recording on Rounder in 1984. These 12 tunes from that period reveal his ability to dig down deep on songs written by Doc Pomus (“Imitation of Love”), Percy Mayfield (“Danger Zone”),…
Houston Toad Clings to Survival in Bastrop
Worldwide study lists local amphibian as candidate for extinction
A Tuna Christmas
After 17 Decembers performing ‘A Tuna Christmas’ literally thousands of times all over the country, do the folks involved have some holiday tales to tell?
Rumor Has It …
Fans of The Graduate should skip this strange comedy, which posits that the real-life inspiration for counterculture icon Benjamin Braddock grew up to be a cheesy, brainless high tech zillionaire doing yoga and driving a Mercedes around Half Moon Bay.
Best Ofs
Shirley HornBut Beautiful: The Best of Shirley Horn (Verve) Jazz singer/pianist Shirley Horn died in October, within days of this album’s release, and with her departure went one of our elegant interpreters of song. Horn possessed a delicate but intense intimacy that few singers have ever attained. And who else could call on Miles Davis…
Rail Revival?
Proposed Austin-San Antonio rail line could take commuters all the way from Georgetown to downtown San Antonio on a Union Pacific freight corridor with 15 stops
National Champions of Comedy
Austin’s improv headquarters is fielding its own nationally ranked team (of comedians, natch) to put a live comic spin on the Rose Bowl championship
Munich
Munich is dense, thoughtful filmmaking that nonetheless flies along: Seething not only with multilayered, subtextual arguments, it’s also a heck of a thriller.
Best Ofs
Bob Marley & the WailersAfrica Unite: The Singles Collection (Tuff Gong) Otherwise needless mix built around the first family-sanctioned vault release in a decade. 1979’s “Slogan” undulates like its era, Survival/Uprising, as produced by scions Stephen and Ziggy Marley and guitarted up by Eric “I Shot the Deputy” Clapton.
Happy Holidays
Transit workers and Cap Metro contractor get closer, but still no agreement
George Carlin
As George Carlin brings his Off-Base and On Target tour to Austin, area comics talk about this savagely funny and influential stand-up artist
The Producers
The film’s wonderfully over-the-top performances often feel constrained by first-time film director Susan Stroman, whose inexperience behind the camera is all too apparent.
Best Ofs
Dead Can DanceMemento: The Very Best of Dead Can Dance (4AD/Rhino) Think of this as the best of a best of a best-of compilation. The dreamy, atmospheric brainchild of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, Dead Can Dance took 2003’s Wake, which summed up their 2001 box set, 1981-1998, and distilled it even further down to…
Abbott Expands Sony Spyware Suit
Music giant also engaged in deceptive practices, AG says
Readings
Readers need not be overly familiar with Porter’s writing to appreciate her as a protagonist in the engaging tale of her life, yet the book is authoritative enough to recommend itself to serious students, as well
Wolf Creek
Wolf Creek is an accomplished Aussie version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; it’s also a viscerally told slasher film that manages to do an awful lot with very little.
Best Ofs
The Beta BandThe Best of the Beta Band (Astralwerks) Why did Scotland’s Beta Band break up after four albums and eight years? Because planet Earth never appreciated brilliant songs like “Dry the Rain” and “Squares.” This 16-track retrospective has no hits, only highlights, from a psychedelic and sometimes-extraterrestrial band. The bonus live disc, from their…
Lakeway
What Wal-Mart couldn’t do, an old-folks home might
Page Two
Beyond Belief: Belligerent intolerance is no testament to faith
In a Lonely Place
In a Lonely Place 1950, NR, 94 min. Directed by Nicholas Ray, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame. A romantic, dark, and surprisingly adult drama featuring Bogart in one of his best performances as a bitter screenwriter who drinks and fights more than he works. Then he falls for Grahame.…
Best Ofs
New OrderSingles (Rhino/WEA) Thirty-one UK singles and not one that doesn’t make you pine for Manchester, Factory Records, and the late, lamented Hacienda. 2005 marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Joy Division’s twitchily alluring frontman Ian Curtis, but sans that tragic necktie party, New Order’s dance-floor soiree might never have been. Weep not…
Weed Watch
DEA agents do their best impression of the Grinch this month by carrying out a string of medi-pot dispensary raids and by denying a group of American Indians the ability to grow and sell industrial hemp
After a Fashion
Stephen’s Big Western Adventure poses a big western dilemma: Do Capri pants go with the squash-blossom necklace?
Best Ofs
NirvanaSliver: The Best of the Box (Geffen) Even bootleggers will find these 75 minutes among the most depressing ever associated with music industry warhorse slogan “best of.” Eighteen of Sliver’s 22 demos, etc. went unreleased until last year’s 3-CD rarities/outtakes box, With the Lights Out, its trio of “new” tracks well camouflaged by the prehistoric…
‘Texas Monthly’ Story Irks Tort Reform Group
Texans for Lawsuit Reform fighting mad at ‘Texas Monthly’ over tort reform story
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Some believe the Rapture will happen on 06/06/06. (Perhaps because it didn’t happen on 06/06/66?) According to www.exodus2006.com, 2006 is the year indicated by an angel to the prophet Daniel for the “time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations” (Daniel 12:1) – the same words used by Jesus in…
TCB
Warming Up Music and sports seemed to cross paths a lot this year, most tragically in San Antonio when Ramiro “Ram” Ayala, owner of storied punk club Tacoland, was murdered hours after the Spurs won the NBA championship. Eighty miles up I-35, a UT student who’d allegedly dismembered one of his classmates monopolized the media…
Best Ofs
Richard HellSpurts: The Richard Hell Story (Rhino) Spurts proves Richard Hell’s influence and importance on early punk rock. Spanning his entire career – the Neon Boys, Television, the Heartbreakers, and Voidoids – high points include a 1974 live version of “Blank Generation” from CBGB, an early demo of “Love Comes in Spurts” from 1973, and…
Human Services Privatizer Stumbles Again
Accenture loses another contract in Colorado, but keeps doing business in Texas
Day Trips
Nothing seems to recharge the batteries like relaxing in a rocking chair on the front porch of a cottage surrounded by sounds of nature
Best Ofs
Beastie BoysSolid Gold Hits (Capitol) With only three songs not found on 1999’s career-spanner The Sounds of Science, the Beastie’s latest is for newbies only. Trimming the fat down to the 15 essential singles to date, Solid Gold sifts through the classics, “Sabotage” to “Brass Monkey,” while proving NYC’s hip-hop innovators have become frozen in…
Point Austin: Blame It on Grandpa
In search of heroes and villains over AMD
The Common Law
Are Texas Drunk Driving Laws Tough Enough?
Cam King
Had Tobe Hooper not chosen Cam King’s “Circuit Queen” for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Marcia Ball might never have picked the song for her Capitol Records debut in 1978. Two years after being hailed for his country compositions, the New Mexico-by-way-of-Texas guitarist-songwriter put down his acoustic guitar, plugged in an electric, and founded the…
Best Ofs
Snoop DoggThe Best of Snoop Dogg (Capitol) Nizzle from Death Row – thanks, Suge – and no “Drop It Like It’s Hot” because that’s Geffen’s. Here instead is Snoop’s seldom-plumbed Middle Period, the No Limit years through 2002’s Paid the Cost to Be Da Bo$$. More than a half-decade of creative meandering and steadily improving…
The Hightower Report
Take Cheney away; and IBM’s plans for the middle class
To Your Health
Does fish oil work as well as Tricor to reduce triglycerides associated with diabetes?
Luv Doc Recommends: New Year’s Eve Spectacular with the White Ghost Shivers and the Small Stars
New Year’s Eve is pure bullshit, start to finish. It’s hype stacked on hype stacked on hype … ad infinitum. Not even Vegas blows as much smoke up the collective ass. Scratch that … not even the White House press secretary … well, you get the idea. One arbitrary digit flips and the whole world’s…
