Bullet the Blue Sky
• Sightings of MTV’s Real World cast and crew have become as common as glimpses of Elvis on the Drag once were, but instead of boozing and brawling in local bars, they merely filmed a special command performance by Moonlight Towers at Club de Ville last Tuesday. The scruffy, over-30 audience of band friends and family was likely the least MTV-friendly in history, but the kids did a fine job on both sides of the stage. Towers’ new CD should be out in a matter of weeks.
• In yet another example of the Austin Police Department’s utter cluelessness toward the community east of I-35, an officer e-mailed “Burn Baby Burn” to his colleagues as popular African-American nightspot Midtown Live went up in flames Friday night. The message was then broadcast on local TV news outlets. No one was hurt in the blaze, which started when a restroom ventilator fan shorted out, but damage was estimated at more than $1 million. Club owners have promised to rebuild; APD is investigating the unseemly message, which likely means another “written reprimand.”
• Monster-metal auteur Rob Zombie has tapped Austin’s Jesse Dayton to score his latest horror opus, The Devil’s Rejects, after the singer’s actor buddy Lew Temple, who appears in Rejects, passed Zombie a copy of the Beaumont native’s Country Soul Brother. The film, scheduled for a summer release, is set in the 1970s and has a hillbilly/white-trash theme. “Tell the suits we got that covered!” writes Dayton in his newsletter.
• New local label Chicken Ranch Records is planning a Johnny Cash tribute album for late summer, with proceeds going to the Handsome Joel Safe Ride Foundation. (The drunken driver who caused Joel’s death accepted a 13-year sentence last week.) Johnny would have been 73 Saturday, and the Transgressors and Ghost of Chris Black help celebrate at the Longbranch Inn.
• Onetime Blues Traveler frontman John Popper, in town recording, joined Left Coast jam band Particle for an impromptu set Friday at La Zona Rosa after opener Drums & Tuba canceled. As an encore, he got up with Lubbock transplants Love County Monday night at the Saxon Pub, and is expected to join Bob Schneider there this Monday.
• Anyone frozen out of Austin Collins‘ sold-out CD release last Friday at Stubb’s should try again Tuesday at Jovita’s, where the rising young singer-songwriter plays from 8-10pm.
• Chronicle writer Jay Trachtenberg remembers soul-jazz pioneer Jimmy Smith, who thrilled many a local organ player over the years and passed away Feb. 8 at age 79 from natural causes: “Until Smith came along in the 1950s, the organ was seldom used in jazz. Single-handedly, through his seminal Blue Note albums, Smith took the Hammond B-3 out of the musical backwaters. He was one of those rare musicians to whom everyone who followed is indebted to his innovations.”
This article appears in February 25 • 2005.