Universal Talent
From 1961 to 1992, Julioeloy Mesa worked in the Cuban Institute of Cinematic Industry and Art, making movie posters that earned international awards, exhibitions in museums, and even a permanent collection in the Library of Congress. Though he now lives comfortably in Austin, Texas, Mesa’s artistic struggle continues.
About AIDS
The United Nations puts AIDS in the crosshairs.
Record Reviews
Gram Parsons Another Side of This Life, The Lost Recordings 1965-1966 (Sundazed), Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels –The Gram Parsons Anthology (Rhino) There’s been a ruckus in the alt.country community caused by the release of Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels, a 2-CD set that serves as an overview to the work of Gram Parsons. To…
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within 2001, PG-13, 106 min. Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, Narrated by , Voices by Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland, James Wood, Peri Gilpin, Annie Wu, Ving Rhames, Starring . Is it live, or is it Memorex? And does it matter? Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which is yet another…
Second Helpings: National Pizza Chains
Everything you need to know about dining at national pizza chains in this week’s “Second Helpings”
Articulations
Arts companies are pulling in the green, playwright Dan Dietz is on the road again, and the stork delivers a couple of new artists.
Coach’s Corner
The Masters and Wimbledon
Record Reviews
Rev. Gary DavisDemons and Angels: The Ultimate Collection (Shanachie) This 3-CD anthology devoted to Rev. Gary Davis, one of the innovators of the “Piedmont” style of finger-picking blues, is a most curious example of musicology. On one hand, the Reverend was recording as early as 1935, but the set only spans 1958-66. The South Carolina…
The Trumpet of the Swan
The Trumpet of the Swan 2001, G, 75 min. Directed by Richard Rich, Narrated by , Voices by Jason Alexander, Mary Steenburgen, Seth Green, Joe Mantegna, Dee Baker, Starring . Not reviewed at press time. Released in a few cities this spring around the same time as Shrek, this animated feature decided to give up…
Republic Square: A Brief History
A Capsule History of Republic Square
Exhibitionism
Zachary Scott Theatre Center’s musical production of Jelly’s Last Jam doesn’t quite get at the soul of Jelly Roll Morton’s complicated legacy.
The Flavors of Summer
Ah, summer, when the degree of heat and the languor of the hours seems to intensify the flavors and aromas of the bounteous foods available to us. As we do every summer, we requested the food staff to share memories of summer foods and received a delicious bounty in return.
Record Reviews
Tim BuckleyMorning Glory: The Tim Buckley Anthology (Elektra), The Dream Belongs to Me (Manifesto) Singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, who recorded nearly a dozen albums between 1967 and his heroin overdose in 1975, struggled to find his voice in the world, not surviving long enough to truly make his mark, but leaving a legacy of songs that…
The Score
The Score 2001, R, 123 min. Directed by Frank Oz, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett, Gary Farmer, Paul Soles. The possibilities were frightening. No one knew exactly what to expect when Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, and Edward Norton — among the three best,…
The Art of Saving AMOA
Crisis at the Austin Museum of Art: Layoffs, Reorganization, Uncertain Funding
Exhibitionism
Modern chamber pieces by such composers as Leos Janácek, Joseph Jongen, Andre Jolivet, and Harald Genzmer received a good airing at Austin Chamber Music Festival’s Jubilee Jewel concert..
The Flavors of Summer
A Bowl of Independence The first summer after my freshman year in college, I impulsively decided not to go home, but to spend the summer at my university, in Chicago. I had rented an apartment with some friends — the type of apartment that is ubiquitous in Chicago — an old brick railroad flat with…
Record Reviews
Shuggie Otis Inspiration Information (Luaka Bop/Virgin) Had 1974 only known what its Billboard legacy was to be, it might have killed itself, perhaps sparing the world “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” and “Seasons in the Sun.” In 1974, Duke Ellington died, and the Stones lost Mick Taylor and invited young soul virtuoso Shuggie Otis to…
Naked City
Local news this week in Austin.
Pirate Jane
Pirate legends, it seems, are the last bastion of childhood, the stuff of imagination for all ages, Margaret Moser writes. And the faces behind the fierceness were not necessarily men.
The Flavors of Summer
Farewell Fix One day left in Austin, and I wake up from fitful sleep craving only one thing: flatbread. A few blocks down the road, I know I can score a fix at any of a million mom-and-pop taquerias. It’s still pretty early in the morning, so I can choose from my regular order (one…
Record Reviews
Bootsy CollinsGlory B Da Funk’s on Me — The Bootsy Collins Anthology (Rhino) The two main signposts for contemporary funk, James Brown and George Clinton, both set their foundations with the string-popping antics of Bootsy Collins. Don’t think this flamboyant bassist was just a rhythm machine to the stars, however. His own LPs for Warner…
Naked City
Ecology Action workers strike in response to changes within the organization, including the firing of a customer service specialist who helped organize the company’s union, implemented by its new executive director.
Postscripts
Austin literary agent Jim Hornfischer hasn’t been sleeping. He’s taking the bar at the end of the month, he and his wife have three children, and he recently founded his own agency, Hornfischer Literary Management, Inc., after eight years with The Literary Group, an agency headquartered in New York known for handling celebrity books.
The Flavors of Summer
Black Diamonds A long time ago, we bought the Black Diamond, big, round, and dark green, from the H.E.Butt grocery store down Fredericksburg Road (“Fred Road” we called it, as we knew it well — it was our route to everywhere) a ways toward San Antonio. It snuggled on the back seat by my side,…
Record Reviews
Marvin GayeWhat’s Going On Deluxe Edition (Motown)Bob Marley & the WailersCatch a Fire Deluxe Edition (Island) Including 2-CD reconfigurations of both Blind Faith’s ballyhooed debut and ultimate Bic flicker Frampton Comes Alive, the Universal label’s Deluxe Edition series functions at dual purposes: regenerating catalog revue and recasting seminal LPs in expansive new ways. Both come…
Naked City
Local environmentalists and other activists begin discussing how to respond to the Navy’s proposal to use land in South Texas as a bombing range.
Readings
Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley Little, Brown, 312 pp., $24.95 Paris Minton, the wizened narrator of Walter Mosley’s new mystery, says he isn’t bitter when the cops come nosing around his used bookstore just itching to arrest him for some phantom infraction. It’s October, 1954, in L.A., and Paris knows that being singled out was…
Tomato Season
My relationship with tomatoes is a passionate one.
Record Reviews
Gregory IsaacsMr. Isaacs (Blood & Fire) If you want a clue as to where Gregory Isaacs earned his esteemed moniker as reggae’s “Cool Ruler,” look no further than this terrific reissue of primo rockers-era, politically conscious roots music. Unlike the toothless mediocrity he continues to release on a regular basis to this day, Mr. Isaacs…
Naked City
Despite a recent chastening by the Texas Legislature, the scandal-plaguedTexas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is stonewalling on an open records request by a nonprofit developers’ group.
Readings
Paradise by Larry McMurtry Simon & Schuster, 159 pp., $24 On board the Aranui, a freighter out of Tahiti, watching deckhands handle tight cables, Larry McMurtry confesses that he is leery of taut lines, having at 15 seen an oil field worker decapitated when a line snapped. This memory serves as a metaphor for this…
The Flavors of Summer
Catching Blue Crabs I’ve been thinking about crabs for weeks. Could this be astrological, considering that yet another Cancerian birthday is just around the corner? Or is it that crabs, like me, never approach their goals directly, but sideways, pretending they’re really headed somewhere else? Nah, I don’t think so. It’s about food. It’s always…
Record Reviews
Thelonious Monk The Columbia Years, 1962-1968(Columbia/Legacy), Monk in Tokyo (Columbia/Legacy), Live at the Jazz Workshop Complete (Columbia/Legacy) Thelonious Monk was such a genius musician that anything he recorded is worth having. That said, some of his recordings are more significant than others. His Blue Note discs are most important, followed by his Prestige, Riverside, and…
The Hightower Lowdown
CEO pay surges, George W. recycles at the Pentagon, & Tom DeLay quacks like Daffy Duck.
Readings
What’s Come Over You? Stories by Marian Thurm Delphinium Books, 224 pp., $23 It’s clear that Marian Thurm spends a great deal of her time eavesdropping. Her stories are filled with comments she must have overheard, and a varied cast of characters that she might have bumped into on the streets of her home, New…
Food-o-File
A capacity crowd of family, friends, and fans packed Book Woman last Friday night to celebrate the paperback release of Austin author Karen Stolz’s delightful first novel, World of Pies.
Record Reviews
Art PepperThe Hollywood All-Star Sessions (Galaxy) With the first American release of the sessions that make up this 5-CD box set, alto saxophonist Art Pepper displays the brilliant playing that characterized his astounding comeback in the last years of his life. To pigeonhole Pepper as just another “cool school” West Coast jazz musician is to…
A Thang Between Two Wise Guys
Back in their salad days at the University of Texas, where they met some seven years ago, Leon Mandel and Andy Fischer — forever after shorthanded to “Leon and Andy” — bonded in a college comedy troupe. There, they began to hit on the particular brand of inspired insanity that would define their later work.…
Local Bestsellers
Local bestsellers are based on recent sales at Austin bookstores selected to reflect varied reading interests.
Heat
My 12th summer my best friend abandoned me. She twisted her straw-colored hair up into a bun and held it there, pledging to write from her grandmother’s in Ponca City. I imagined our pink, strawberry-scented stationery like twin exotic birds flying across the dirty plains of Oklahoma. That summer it topped 100 degrees 10 days…
Record Reviews
Neu! (Astralwerks), Neu! 2 (Astralwerks), Neu! 75 (Astralwerks) Stereolab fans of the world unite! For the first time ever, the “Jenny Ondioline” basement tapes and the Switched On unreleased demos are available domestically. Sort of. The droning, stop-start bliss-groove that defined Stereolab on 18-minute flagship “Jenny Ondioline” and other early work was actually pioneered by…
Charting America
Filmmaker James Benning typifies the avant-garde tradition and will be on hand to present his film, Los, as part of the Austin Film Society’s series, “Expanding Cinema: Fifty Years of Avant-Garde Cinema.”
Page Two
Summer’s hot again.
Fast Train to Hicksville
Reissuing the Rosetta Stone of alt.countrypolitan
Record Reviews
Blue Öyster CultSecret Treaties (Columbia/Legacy), Agents of Fortune (Columbia/Legacy) A New York band trying to follow in the bootsteps of British metallers like Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult bore one very significant difference. Where most metal bands were far removed from the critics’ community, if not actively at war with them, BÖC was always “in”…
Structuralist, Collagist, and Surrealist Film: The Poetics of Avant-Garde Cinema
Austin Scottish Rite Theater 207 W. 18th Street Free Admission Wednesday, July 18, 7:30pm The 1940s and 1950s Aviary (1955) D: Joseph Cornell. (5 min.) A Legend for Fountains (1957-1970) D: Joseph Cornell. (10 min.) Nymphlights (c.1957) D: Joseph Cornell. (8 min.) Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) D: Maya Deren. (15 min.) The Potted Psalm…
Public Notice
Church & State. As different as night / day, dog / cat, and chocolate / peanut butter. And in the U.S., supposedly as separate as oil / vinegar. What’s really going on here?
Dancing About Architecture
Antone’s Anniversary off to a bumpy start, and the same goes for local CD outlets.
Record Reviews
Judas PriestBritish Steel (Columbia/Legacy), Point of Entry (Columbia/Legacy), Screaming for Vengeance (Columbia/Legacy), Defenders of the Faith (Columbia/Legacy) You’d never suspect it from Judas Priest’s upcoming Atlantic Records dud Demolition, but the English fivepiece was once the Stones to Black Sabbath’s Beatles in the realm of modern metal. Like Ozzy & Co., Priest emerged from the…
Short Cuts
Cinemaker gets jiggy wit it.
Mr. Smarty Pants
Gives you more of what you want when what you had is all gone. Trivially speaking, that is.
Record Reviews
RamonesRamones (Warner Archives/Rhino), Leave Home (Warner Archives/Rhino), Rocket to Russia (Warner Archives/Rhino), Road to Ruin (Warner Archives/Rhino) It’s now accepted as common knowledge that the Ramones kicked off the slow-burning punk revolution, saving greater rock & roll from the flatulent bacchanal it had become in the mid-Seventies. Yet beneath Johnny’s chainsaw guitar, Dee Dee’s hoarse…
Record Reviews
INXSShine Like It Does: The Anthology 1979-1997 (Atlantic/Rhino) In 1988, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence observed in Rolling Stone that INXS, U2, and R.E.M. were the only true bands capable of cracking the Top 40. Unfortunately, the Seattle-spawned tide of self-loathing was just around the corner, and this shift in musical tastes was apparently no deterrent…
Video Reviews
Spacey is irresistibly sexy in this film adaptation of John Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; the film has an excellent cast and a certain charm, but suffers from a fatally flawed script.
Day Trips
There’s drupelets a-plenty at the Bella Vista Ranch pick-your-own fruit farm.
Record Reviews
Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire & Beyond (Rhino) What hath Lenny Kaye wrought? In 1972, the critic/musician released Nuggets, a watershed 2-LP collection of Sixties psychedelic treasures that brought garage-rock aficionados crawling out of their dusty closets in true Dawn of the Dead fashion. His compilation spawned countless offspring (Pebbles, Rubble), and…
Vision of a New Republic
Plans for the Revitalization of Republic Square
Video Reviews
An intelligent script and tightly realized tension eventually fizzle with an anticlimactic ending; still, Cause for Alarm is an interesting little “B” noir.
After a Fashion
Our Style Avatar discovers J-Rock at Momoko, just in time for their upcoming Summer Fashion Show.
Record Reviews
The Kinks BBC Sessions 1964-1977 (Sanctuary) The Kinks’ fabulous BBC sessions have finally surfaced after years of rumors, dodgy-sounding boots, and promises; this 2-CD set’s many delays are reflected in its 1996 copyright date. In the early Sixties, the BBC was the only place for British kids to hear pop music on the radio. There…
Legally Blonde
Legally Blonde 2001, PG-13, 96 min. D: Robert Luketic; with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Coolidge, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair. Clueless and Dick gave the dumb-blonde tradition (think Sandra Dee) new life in the Nineties, showing some sharp social and political comedy gleaming out at the roots. Legally Blonde isn’t nearly as smart — no talons underneath…
Other People’s Trash
Belinda Acosta argues why your trash TV is no better than her trash TV.
To Your Health
Out of the blue my eight-month-old son has begun having seizures. We thought he was going to die, but thankfully, DilantinTM has stopped the seizures. What is causing this, and is there anything else I can do to control them?
Record Reviews
Buffalo Springfield Boxed Set (Rhino) Few American groups of the Sixties possessed as much talent as Buffalo Springfield. Formed in 1966, the band initially comprised guitarist/songwriters Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay, with drummer Dewey Martin and bassist Bruce Palmer, who was later replaced by Jim Messina. The group embodied the spirit of L.A.…
Boys to Men
Boys to Men 2001, NR, 75 min. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . No, it’s not a documentary explaining everything you need to know about the recent, and seemingly inexplicable, boy-band phenomenon. Instead, Boys to Men is a compilation of four short films by different directors that have been grouped…
