Cover Story
Static Between Stations
The American Analog Set at 10: end of part one
Serenity Premiere
Serenity Premiere The premiere of the new film by the creator of Buffy the vampire Slayer and Angel will be held in the fitting surroundings of an abandoned Old West town near Austin. (Tickets are free to purchasers of a Fantastic Fest film badge or VIP pass by Friday.) See www.drafthouse.com for details.
Texas Platters
A Kerrville 2005 New Folk finalist, Jim Keaveny is as DIY as folk music gets. From his hand-written bio to a summer spent busking in Europe, he lives close to the ground, and his third CD, A Boot Stomping (Blue Bonnet), simply reinforces his stance. Keaveny re-creates a sound akin to early Dylan or the…
The Hightower Report
Where’s W.? Not on the Gulf Coast; and ‘Thou shalt not kill’ slips evangelist’s mind
Book Reviews
Walter Mosley fans will want to pick up his latest Easy Rawlins mystery, ‘Cinnamon Kiss,’ right away
An Unfinished Life
An Unfinished Life never transcends its simple storyline to charter original ground, but it’s the kind of movie you can’t fault too terribly much, primarily because its heart seems to be in the right place.
A Decade’s Lessons
Top 10 things I’ve learned from 10 years in the AmAnSet
Texas Platters
LomitaStress Echo Lomita’s nine-song debut plays out like a deep-fried dark night of the soul. The Austin quintet’s gritty concoction of tripped-out twang, whiskey-bent trash rock, and Idiot-era Iggy Pop emerges almost fully fanged. The Pavement-flavored “I Got a Feeling” starts Stress Echo out on a jagged pop precipice that could go either way before…
Back to the Grind House
On the occasion of QT 6, an ode to the demented poetry of triple bills in iniquitous theatres
Book Reviews
It’s hard to say if the memoir is rigged with more booby traps than any other genre, but it sure seems that way
The Baxter
Director Showalter (Comedy Central’s Stella) misses a terrific opportunity to pull back the curtain on “the other guy” – the Baxter is the lead man’s second fiddle in your standard romantic comedy – and ends up making a pretty good case for why the sad sack never gets the girl.
American Analog Set Reviewed
American Analog SetSet Free (Arts & Crafts) Recorded in three cities over more than a year and witness to the demise of a beloved indie imprint and the band’s longtime studio, Set Free is the mostly Austin-based quintet’s sixth album, not counting a B-sides gather-all, and it shimmers and sulks, adding a rich dimension to…
Texas Platters
The LiftersTexa$ Tra$h (Killingbird) Combining the sneering no-futurism of Social Distortion with the balls-out Southern rock affectations of Black Oak Arkansas ain’t blazing new trails, but Austin’s Lifters manage to make the formula come alive in all its skyward-fisted glory. The quartet pays homage to classic country with a cowpunk cover of Merle Haggard’s “Mama…
Days of de la Iglesia
Sept. 21-28, Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
Page Two: President Know-Nothing
President Know-Nothing
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
A character study of a young man torn between disparate career paths as either an enforcer for his slumlord father or a virtuoso pianist, is underserved by its prosaic realism and adds little to the original.
Sweet Home Edinburgh
Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble on living in the past
Texas Platters
The TombstonesTwang From the Grave (Saustex Media) Long before Stevie Tombstone arrived in Austin, his mid-Eighties psychobilly outfit the Tombstones tore through Atlanta like a tornado through Waffle House. Though the Tombstones’ distinctively ghoulish bent assured they’d never attain the mass appeal of the Georgia Satellites, songs like “Jailhouse Tattoo” and “No Body” continue to…
SXSW Accepting Submissions
Filmmakers of all shapes, sizes, stripes, makes, models, genres, durations, ages, backgrounds, creeds, colors, and technologies, come forth
Letters at 3AM
To blame disasters like the Twin Towers and New Orleans on a few perpetrators is to ignore the greater disasters that are the foundation upon which the developed world lives: our attempts to hold on to an unsustainable way of life
5×2
Ozon’s film begins at the end and leads backward over the slow death of a couple’s marital bliss, but even while we’re flipping through the snapshots of two people’s disenchantment with each other, it never feels tawdry or excessive or, for that matter, very interesting.
Texas Platters
Charlie SextonCruel and Gentle Things (Back Porch/EMI) When the Vaughan Brothers share guitar secrets with you before you hit your teens, and you jam with the Stones before getting your driver license, folks tend to expect a lot. Which is what Charlie Sexton delivered in 1995’s under-the-radar Under the Wishing Tree. Why the hiatus? Because…
Texas Platters
The Midgetmen High Life The second album from these Austin slop-punk mavens can’t replicate the beery charms of 2002’s Pool Party Emergency. Without departed vocalist Keith Shepherd around to keep the band’s Twin/Tone-inspired roar on track, High Life disintegrates into a spiraling muddle of unevenness. You can hear closing time conviction trying to bust through…
Film News
What does Katrina mean for the Texas film industry? Plus, bidding goodbye to the Austin actress with the most beautiful eyes, Tomi Barrett.
After a Fashion
Stephen remembers Biscuit and tells you where to get a great hair cut for a great cause
Texas Platters
VoxtrotEmo’s, Sept. 9 Remember the exuberance of leaping on the moon walk when you were knee-high? Or the sense of adventure involved in jumping into the pit of plastic, malformed balls at Chuck E. Cheese’s? Hold onto that memory, and transfer it to the inside stage at Emo’s on Friday. That might seem like a…
Second Wind
As the Katrina crisis subsides, the small victories and the larger questions persist
DVD Watch
‘Poor Bela,’ Boris Karloff once lamented to an interviewer who asked him about his old rival. ‘He was his own worst enemy.’
About AIDS
As thousands of Katrina’s victims arrive in Central Texas, HIV/AIDS service organizations are prepared to see that the needs of HIV-positive evacuees are met.
Texas Platters
Freddie Steady 5 Freddie Steady Go! (Fat Pete) The Freddie Steady 5 are basically what remains after the breakup of Freddie Krc’s long-running locals, Shakin’ Apostles. Freddie Steady Go!, their first release, is subtitled “16 cool covers of timeless Texas Rock & Roll,” but cool obviously means something different to Krc and friends than it…
Cheney in Austin
Yes, it’s a joke
TV Eye
Next week is a big week in network TV
To Your Health
How do ‘thrifty genes’ influence weight gain?
Texas Platters
Things That Go Pop! Aside from lip-syncing, the real legacy of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was infamously “raving” endorsements. When it came down to pop music, those kids just wanted to dance. Things That Go Pop!’s eponymous debut LP pulls the local pop-post-punk quartet out of the garage and onto the dance floor. As evidenced…
Hurricane Kids Hit Austin Schools
AISD promises to meet evacuees’ needs
Dance Fever
With Hot September Flurries, a corps of Austin choreographers burn up the Blue all month long
The Common Law
Avoid new consumer scams and identity theft tactics
Texas Platters
Palaxy TracksTwelve Rooms (Peek-a-Boo) After the moody Cedarland, this was to be Palaxy Tracks’ big rock album, a return to the masterful pedal-fests of 2001’s The Long Wind Down, before the band left Austin for Chicago. Not bloody likely. The rollicking drums of “Speech With Animals” are but a red herring, obscuring the opening chapter…
Who Is Mr. Roberts?
Hearings begin for Supreme Court nomination
The Pork Chop Wars: Big Enough to Tell the Story
With her new ‘performance novel,’ Laurie Carlos can finally tell her family’s story with the epic, operatic form it deserves
Day Trips
The East Texas Arboretum in Athens uses flowers and landscaped gardens as a gateway into the rugged beauty of the hardwood forest along Walnut Creek
TCB
The gumbo’s spilled over into the chili
Texas Platters
FishboyLittle D (Business Deal) Fishboy’s Web site describes them best: Theirs is a feeling akin to when a rainbow passes out puppies to everyone, and that feeling is bottled and then given to smart apes to drink for 25 days. Fishboy is Eric Michener, a young Denton fellow who, along with bandmates Slapbracelet, Sweatpants, and…
Capital Metro’s Labor Woes Continue
Accusations fly from union of illegal interference in negotiations
‘The Border Radio Show’: Blast From the Past
In The Border Radio Show, a stellar cast of Lone Star artists revive the days when radio towers south of the Rio Grande filled the airwaves with revival meetings, wild product pitches, and all kinds of music.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Runaways, lobbyists, philosophers, and Pablo Picasso
Generous Depth, Marginalized Meaning
Previewing Cinematexas 10
Texas Platters
Austin City Limits Music Festival 2004(Rhino) Let’s return to the days of heat and dust and sweat and huge crowds of half-naked bodies. Those three days from last September in Zilker Park when Austin really did become the Live Music Capital of the World. Distilling the 130 bands and eight stages from last year’s ACL…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
The Windy Side of the Law: Bard for the Defense
You can experience the connection between the law and literature by attending ‘The Windy Side of the Law: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night’
Soccer Watch
The Horns move into the Top 25 and the European Champions league kicks off
Oops!
In last week’s issue, two photos were incorrectly credited. The picture of Mayor Wynn juggling on p.26 was supplied by the mayor’s office, and the photo on p.68 of volunteers loading Katrina relief items was taken by John Anderson.
Texas Platters
Mingo Fishtrap Yesterday (Manor Productions) A waft of déjà vu hovers after spinning Mingo Fishtrap’s new platter. Songs hit right from the get-go, like a friend of a friend you immediately dig after meeting. It’s clear this funky Austin octet has a deep affinity for the title’s alluded-to musical greats – Stevie Wonder, Tower of…
City Hammers Out Budget, Crosses Fingers for Katrina Evacuee Reimbursements
2005-06 money is ready to spend
Doug Rauss: In Memoriam
Remembering Doug Rauss, a dedicated arts patron and volunteer for several Austin theatre companies, who died Wednesday, Aug. 31
Y Mess With a Good Thing?
A new approach out in Oak Hill
Texas Platters
Wayne SuttonWalking Disaster It’s a coincidence that Wayne Sutton’s sophomore solo effort Walking Disaster invokes New Orleans as it does on “St. Louis’ Balcony” and contains an unintentional hurricane reference in “Nothin’ Short of Disaster,” yet there they are, timely as they are eerie. His shining achievement for Walking Disaster is not simply in creating…
Newton Executed: No Relief
On Wednesday, Frances Newton became the first black woman to be executed in the state since the Civil War
Comic Relief, Katrina-Style
Ron ‘Tater Salad’ White will headline an all-star comedy concert to benefit the American Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Derrickson’s film, based on a real event in which a priest was charged with negligent homicide because of a death that occurred during an exorcism, flirts with relevance and assorted hot-button topics but fails to amount to much more than an overlong exercise in Jesuit Theosophy 101, played against the backdrop of Law & Order.
Nutty Brown Cafe
Your first impression on walking into the Nutty Brown Cafe is that this place must have been here when the cattlemen were still using the Chisholm Trail
Texas Platters
Bear & the Essentials Two Time Fool Anyone who reads liner notes and production credits knows instantaneously what a Billy Horton-produced album will sound like. Horton, and the acts he works with, re-create a musical palette that goes back a half-century to Sun Studios and those who followed in Sam Phillips’ footprints. Whether that sound…
Union Visit Livens Up CAMPO Meeting
Picture Cap Metro with a big bull’s-eye painted on it.
Arts Review
In his impressive solo show, ‘The Evidence of Silence Broken,’ spoken word performer Zell Miller III wears his heart, his mind, and his very soul on his sleeve
The Man
Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy have starred in bigger stinkers, but this wheezing comedy may herald the death knell of the interracial buddy-cop farce.
Flip’s Satellite Cafe
A textbook definition of ‘tucked into a corner’ is the only apt description of the location of Flip’s Satellite Cafe, a southwest Austin offshoot of the Barton Springs mainstay
Texas Platters
the Brew Rumba Caliente The Brew is an Austin institution. The brothers Rodriguez moved here from Brownsville some 25 years ago and carved out a distinctive niche for themselves where flamenco rock, jazz fusion, and salsa picante blend together. Their fourth album, and the first in several years, is a mixed bag but at its…
Cinematexas’ Political Arm
Film festival’s radical approach extends to politics, too.
Arts Review
Scottish Rite Children’s Theater makes its stage version of E.B. White’s ‘Charlotte’s Web’ bright and stimulating with lively interaction and fine performances
Just Like Heaven
This romantic comedy about a winsome, charming ghost and the man who loves her sidesteps abundant potential clichés through sheer dint of the acting skills on display.
Food-o-File
Making it a little bit easier for the Big Easy; plus, an Event Menu filled to burstin’
Texas Platters
Marshall StylerThe Twilight Concertos (ESM) Chances are, Marshall Styler’s name doesn’t ring any bells, unless you were a habitué of Donn’s Depot in the early Nineties or spend time at the Hilton downtown, where he plays weekly. You might spy his Christmas album for sale at the Famous Christmas Store up on I-35 or hear…
Point Austin: Senator Farewell
Gonzalo Barrientos steps down from his place as the people’s senator
Arts Review
The Austin debut of Italian performer Ennio Marchetto was something of a disappointment, but his energetic display did provide 70 minutes of mindless fun
Lord of War
Gattaca writer-director Andrew Niccol shines his usual cynicism on the subject of gunrunning in his new film, a strange amalgam of compelling visuals and fascinating vocational details forged with deep moral ambivalence and often hollow didacticism.
Luv Doc Recommends: Sixth Street for Bourbon Street Benefit Concert
Most people have mixed emotions about New Orleans and that’s OK. New Orleans is a pretty mixed-up place, and not just because it’s currently stewing in a dark, swirling roux of floodwater, sewage, and petrochemicals – a pungent brew that probably makes the vomit stains of Bourbon Street seem like the tulip fields of Netherlands…
