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Thursday, June 19, 2008
Weekend Picks: Primitive rock, aggressive garage and beloved REK
Friday: Times New Viking at Emo’s. This Ohio trio moved to biggish indie Matador Records with their latest album, ‘Rip it Off,’ and somehow got noisier and more primitive. With Austinites When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Ume and amazing Mexican band Los Llamarada. 10 p.m. $8. —-Joe Gross
Friday: Robert Earl Keen at Stubb’s BBQ.There’s a short list of artists genuinely beloved in Austin. Willie Nelson is of course at the top. Keen has to be up there —- people just adore the guy. With Austin’s Band of Heathens. 7 p.m. $30 advance, $33 day of show. —- J.G.
Friday: Move Something 7 at the Whisky Bar. Chicken George returns to Whisky Bar for another installment of his ongoing turntable extravaganza designed with one aim and one aim only, to make you move. Whisky Bar regular DJ Tats will join CG to rock the party on 4 turntables. No cover. —-Deborah Sengupta Stith
Saturday: Red Dons at Emo’s. A wonderfully varied bill here, the kind one wishes would happen more often in Austin. The headliners play aggressive garage rock. With noise-pop oddballs Psychedelic Horse(expletive), spare and driving Portland trio the Estranged, Austin garage rockers the Hex Dispensers, Australians Fabulous Diamonds and Austin hardcore kids Deskonocidos. 8 p.m. —-J.G.
Saturday: An Arabian Night at the Enchanted Forest. The artsy folk of the Enchanted Forest open the wooded compound for an evening of belly dance, fire dance, world groove and more benefiting KOOP Radio. The culinary goddesses of Ararat will be on hand to serve Middle Eastern fusion cuisine. $15 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. (includes Ararat buffet), $10 8:30 p.m. to close. —-D.S.S.
Saturday: Horse + Donkey at the Hole in the Wall. A CD release party for this frantic Austin trio’s newest album, ‘Dreams.’ With Yellow Fever and Basic. 10 p.m. —- J.G.
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Shearwater to open for Coldplay
Austin’s own Shearwater is opening for Coldplay on several dates this July.
Shearwater plays with Mr. Gwenyth Paltrow and his pals July 14 and 15 at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, Calif., July 18 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif. and July 19 at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas, Nev.
As noted on the Matador Records’s blog, Shearwater’s set from last Sunday night in DC was taped by NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and can be heard here.
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Review: Merle Haggard at the Paramount Theatre
At 72, Merle Haggard is at the standing-ovation-just-for-being-alive stage of his career. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We should all be so lucky. And so talented. And have four Telecasters plucking out some of the best country songs ever written whenever we hit the stage. (Is there any doubt that the Telecaster is the most important instrument in country music history? Fiddle? Dobro? Nah. The Fender Telecaster has tamed more wild men than the Colt .45.)
Wednesday’s show at the Paramount was a sit-down affair, the audience full of folks who looked to be Merle lifers, hardcore country fans and fans of hardcore country. A smattering of hipsters and younger folks peppered the crowd, but most of the folks there were alive when “Okie from Muskogee” was a genuine response to a counter-culture that didn’t really realize just how real Merle was. (Word to Gram Parsons, who wanted Haggard to produce an album — Haggard said no to the rich-kid hippie, which somehow increases Merle’s cool factor by about a thousand.)
After a few brief openers, Merle, wearing high-waisted jeans and a long sleeve purple T-shirt walked out, strapped on his Tele and got down to business. His effortlessly professional eight-piece band was pure honky-tonk, but included keys, pedal steel and saxophone, which lent the songs an urban, R&B-ish feel that reminded just how universal they sound. These songs were about gangsta before hip-hop existed, country noir about lonesome fugitives and drunks whom the bottle has let down. Johnny Cash sang about “Folsom Prison Blues,” but Haggard lived them — no wonder his cover of it sounded so perfect.
His love songs never sound all that sincere if only that he never sounds all that broken up about them. Of course “That’s the Way Love Goes” — only music will never let you down. And his politics have become so baffling over the years that “The Fighting Side of Me” seems more like a tune for the fans than profession of faith.
But he can still sell a hard luck story as well or better than anyone. And when he sings “The wrinkles in my forehead show the miles I’ve put behind me/ They continue to remind how fast I’m growin’ old/ Guess I’ll die with this fever in my soul,” you believe every word.
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