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Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Willie’s Fourth of July Picnic coming to Selma
It’s back in Texas! Willie Nelson’s publicist has confirmed that this year’s Fourth of July Picnic is happening at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, about 61 miles south of Austin.
Willie, Merle Haggard, Ray Price and David Allan Coe are early confirmations. We’ll give you more names as they come in. Check with willienelson.com for news on when tickets will be available.
Last year’s Picnic was held in supposedly cooler Washington state, but temperatures topped 100 degrees.
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15th season of ‘Unplugged at the Grove’
Has it really been 15 years? KGSR’s wildly popular “Unplugged” series at the Shady Grove (the restaurant, not the recently vacated trailer park) kicks up again next Thursday, April 10. He’s the first part of the season.
All shows are free and space available:
April 10: The Gourds, the Gougers
April 17: Ruthie Foster, Aimee Bobruk
April 24: Seth Walker, Suzanna Choffel
May 1: South Austin Jug Band, Jason Eady
May 8: Band of Heathens, Josh Grider
May 15: Ray Wylie Hubbard, Liz & Lincoln
May 22: Derailers
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Suzanna Choffel is a Fenom!
Congrats to Austin songwriter Suzanna Choffel, who has won $10,000 in the “FameCast:Fenom” online competition. The video for winning song “Hey Mister” (above) was filmed at ME Television.
Here’s Suzanna’s My Space page with upcoming show info. If she has many more like “Hey Mister,” she’s one to watch.
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Shaver case still open
The passing of April 1 means that it’s been a year since Billy Joe Shaver shot a fellow bar patron in the face in Lorena, just south of Waco. Shaver was charged with aggravated assault and possession of a firearm in a prohibited place, but the McLennan County grand jury still haven’t decided whether or not to press the charges in court.
“It’s still open and active,” the clerk of the district attorney’s office said Wednesday.
Shaver is currently on tour in the UK. His next Austin show is May 9 at the Cactus.
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Kanye Travel Ventures?
I’m completely perplexed. Kanye West has a travel site. A floating flash-animated blimp on kanyeuniversecity.com invites readers to “fly away with Kanye.” At first we thought it was a hoax, a late April Fool’s day gotcha. I mean, a Kanye shopping site, now that’s something that would make perfect sense (dude clearly loves his designer duds), but travel?
However, my co-worker Lee managed to find an incredibly affordable Austin to Seattle roundtrip ticket for $198 ($224 including taxes and fees) on the somewhat buggy site. Apparently, he’s trying to capitalize on his massive international fan base to buoy this new venture. Stranger things have happened.
Closer to home, there are still plenty of tickets available for Kanye’s April 30 Erwin Center show, which also features Rihanna, Lupe Fiasco and N.E.R.D. I can’t wait.
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CD Review: R.E.M. “Accelerate”
“Accelerate” (Warner Bros.)
The “back to basics” album is a rite of passage for rockers closer to 50 than 25. Neil Young’s 1990 album “Ragged Glory” made him Pearl Jam’s peer at the age of 45. U2’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” reunited the band with the soaring sound of its youth as the band members hovered around 40. Sonic Youth’s 2006 “Rather Ripped” features the band’s strongest songs-qua-songs in years; lead Sonic Thurston Moore was 48 then.
“Accelerate” falls into this category, 11 songs stuffed into 34 minutes made by guys in their mid-to-late-40s who have been playing in this band the majority of their lives. It’s full of Peter Buck’s all-time fuzziest riffs, Mike Mills’ simplest bass lines and Michael Stipe yelping about talking points he’s resisted, TV he’s fed up with and critics he’s disputed. Or something.
It’s not just the band’s first rockin’ album in years, it’s also the first rocker since surreally underrated drummer Bill Berry left the band in 1997. The loss was instantly felt. R.E.M.’s subsequent albums “Up” (1998), “Reveal” (2000) and the nearly-band-destroying “Around the Sun” (2004) tried to fill the gap with session guys, drum machines and oblique songcraft. (“Accelerate” employs road drummer Bill Rieflin and he’s a pro.) Fans and critics weren’t buying it (literally, in the case of “Around the Sun,” which sold about 250,000 copies).
They’ve never really been able to shake the impression that R.E.M. became a project band the minute Berry left, three guys making records that never seem like cash-ins (they probably would have been less experimental if they were) and playing tours that fans enjoy. Now the music and the band seems utterly denuded of the myth that once powered both. Listening to “Accelerate,” it’s tough to remember that they were once the most influential (and reviled and discussed and imitated) band in the American underground.
One can forgive Buck from reaching into the old-trick bag (“Hollow Man” could be from anywhere in their career), but it really doesn’t help that for a lead singer, Stipe is an excellent movie producer. His voice is kind of shot, that famous mumble and keen replaced with a small, emotionally flattened bleat. He sounds like he can barely keep up with the mach-speed “Living Well is the Best Revenge” and “Spernatural Superserious.” Even the post-Katrina ballad “Houston” sounds weak, and all that fuzz and pluck and Jackknife Lee’s dense production can’t cover for him. And can’t cover for the fact that this sounds like another project from three guys who used to be in R.E.M. I’m sure the tour will be fine.
(Michael Stipe of R.E.M. performs at last month’s SXSW festival. Photo by Jay Janner/American-Statesman)
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1985: USA For Africa tops the charts
If you want to see the exact low point of Bette Midler’s career, watch the “We Are the World” video. They had my girl down there in the corner next to LaToya; La Bette got less screen time than Dan Aykroyd. And she had an “I give up” haircut. Now she’s playing the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace for millions a month. What a comeback!
Did you remember that Willie Nelson was in WATW? Yeah, he sang between Dionne Warwick and Al Jarreau. Check it out. It’s that rare post-‘73 ponytail-less period.
Best part of WATW: Cyndi Lauper, no doubt. Ray Charles was pretty great, too.
Worst part: the thumb’s up at the end by Lionel Richie. Completely gratuitious IATW hand gesture just for attention.
Oh, yeah, a point, a point. Why are we recalling WATW (spoofed so brilliantly by Jimmy Kimmel and Ben Affleck- you’ll have to find that one yourself)? Twenty-three years ago today, “We Are the World” was the number one song in the country. Check back next week when we acknowlege the 23rd anniversary of when the world officially became sick of it. It’s one of the few smash hits that never gets played on oldies radio.
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Escovedo, SCOTS: Paradise found
Tuesday at the Continental Club. This is the kind of night when Austin earns its reputation, when there is no opener and headliner, but just two bands out to blow you away. First up is Alejandro Escovedo, soon to be the subject of a documentary by Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme. The house is perfectly “load card” full, which is to say it’s at about 90% capacity.
Looking more like a rock star than he has since his True Believers days, Escovedo starts playing a rhythm of relentless pursuit on his electric guitar, then lead guitarist David Pulkingham flies into the fray on “Always a Friend,” from the upcoming album “Real Animal.” It’s stunningly powerful, but there’s also a melodic thrust. Clara the back bartender comes out from behind her beer bucket to dance at the side of the stage and it’s 1986 again.
The basic gtr/gtr/bs/drms lineup follows with “Everybody Loves Me,” drummer Hector Munoz crashing beautifully, like a Jaguar through a showroom window. “I Was Drunk” was a little long and “Rosalie” entirely unnecessary, but the new songs sounded great, especially “Sensitive Boys,” a song inspired by brother Javier, and “Sister Lost Soul.” So glad Escovedo has returned to rock ‘n’ roll after his reflective “Hand of the Father” period.
The set ended with a furious “Castanets,” Escovedo still having something to prove, and then an encore of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger,” with members of Southern Culture on the Skids rocking out on the side of the stage.
The amazing SCOTS, with Rick Miller’s nasty guitar leads setting the pace, came out swinging on the first of a five-night stand. The Continental is the band’s home away from North Carolina and they just ooze confidence. As always, Mary Huffman was the bassist you could see and hear all night, bringing a B-52s vibe with her version of “The Real Nitty Gritty” and just generally supplying the cool to go with Miller’s scorch.
I first saw these guys at SXSW around 1990 and then saw them every chance I could for the next five years. But it’s been awhile and I wasn’t sure they’d do it for me any more. But SCOTS is better than ever. They can pack a groove like Jerry Reed fronting vintage Creedence, with Bo Diddley’s maracas man on the side.
I didn’t stay for the fried chicken segment of the show (“8-Piece Box”). It was Tuesday well after midnight and people, I was rocked out. On the way home I had to laugh and wonder what was happening in Nashville, in Seattle, in New York or L.A. on Tuesday night.
