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Monday, December 15, 2008
Review: Aasim Holiday Party at Red 7
If performances from six groundbreaking local bands, a slew of requisite Austin fashionistas, and a drunken half-naked Santa Claus are your type of thing, I hope you were at the Aasim Holiday Party at Red 7 on Saturday night. The show, which boasted a roster of old-to-new school local acts such as Glorium, … And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Those Peabodys, the Black, Diagonals and Ume, was a belated birthday party for Aasim Syed, a local photographer.
In recent years, Syed evolved into a bit of a local house party legend by hosting all out rock-fests with intimate performances by Austin “it” bands. “All the bands that played were friends,” Syed says, “like the Black, Brothers and Sisters, Voxtrot, Black Angels, A Tiger Named Lovesick, and others.”
Last year, in an effort to cut down on some carpet cleaning (and presumably remain in good standing with his neighbors), Syed moved the yearly bash to the Beauty Bar for a packed show featuring DJ sets and a performance by Aaron Blount of A Tiger Named Lovesick. When August rolled around earlier this year and his annual birthday fiesta didn’t materialize, the photographer confessed that he “still had the strong desire to throw a full-on bash before the year was over.”
And what better way to celebrate one’s belated birthday and the holiday season, than to organize a veritable festival of Austin music royalty, bring a notorious local act to its original lineup, and commission a virtually defunct South Texas band to play an album they released a decade ago?
Sure, the promise of witnessing Trail of Dead — Conrad Keely, Jason Reece, and Kevin Allen — as a three-piece was draw enough for many of the audience. But for much of the crowd, the real meat and potatoes of the Holiday Party was the incredibly rare opportunity to see a performance by mythical San Antonio avant-gardists Glorium. The five-piece, who formed in 1991, seldom perform since relocating to different cities nearly 10 years ago.
“Glorium has played shows few and far between,” says vocalist Paul Streckfus, “because initially we all lived in different cities, beginning around 1998. We would play out when we could all get together.” In fact, the group has performed publicly less than 10 times since releasing their 1998 album “Close Your Eyes,” which they played in its entirety on Saturday.
The album, recorded in Streckfus’ attic and in an East Austin studio, released to mixed reviews and has since been relegated to the bowels of virtual music obscurity. Lucky for the band, Austin music lovers feed on such obscurity and view witnessing a group like Glorium perform tantamount to discovering a unicorn.
Track-for-track, Paul Streckfus wriggled and balanced on the edge of the stage while the rest of Glorium traced the ambient and driving overlapping melodies of “Close Your Eyes.” With the help of tight arrangements from drummer Juan Miguel Ramos, guitarists Linus Streckfus and Ernest Salaz (who is also member to I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness), and bassist Jorge Lara, the band sailed through renditions of crowd shakers such as “Doomsday Kiss” and “Moonbeam King,” making one fact dreadfully clear: After all these years, audiences still love Glorium.
So much so that it’s a wonder why the group hasn’t released an album since 2004’s “Fantasmas.” According to vocalist Streckfus, the band isn’t “recording new material right now,” though he’s quick to add that his new band, Kingdom of Suicide Lovers, is recording an album, as is I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness.
Though Glorium might have toiled over old material on Saturday night, Austin’s wonder-band Trail of Dead had plenty new pieces to share. The three-piece, with Keely and Reece rotating singing, drumming and guitar duties, played loads of work off their recently released EP “Festival Thyme,” as well as songs from an untitled upcoming full-length.
Other highlights from the Holiday Party included an early performance by the utterly brilliant pop-country musings of the Black, who released the six-song EP “Donna” in summer 2007. The foursome, fronted by the ever-smiling vocalist, guitarist and pianist David Longoria, filled the back patio of Red 7 and even prompted a couple of brave souls (OK, maybe just Aasim and a friend) to spastically jerk and hop about during the raucous renditions of songs such as “Eshu Blues” and “Little Hits.”
This town may have its fair share of garage-country acts but nobody does it like the Black. Their idea of country is the echoed guitar chord, the whoosh and slap of a drum, a lovelorn whine on the microphone and a slick pearl-snap button-down shirt. The Black’s music has a firm finger ton Austin’s pulse. Judging by his Holiday Party, so does Aasim Syed.
The event was a complete success. One knows that they’ve scored a hit when anyone — let alone a dude in a Santa Claus suit — climbs atop the bar at last call and proceeds to get naked.
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Review: Ice Cube at Mohawk
Like Will Smith on a smaller scale, Ice Cube doesn’t have to rap to pay the bills. A riveting presence in “Boyz n the Hood,” he seemed destined to take himself way too seriously in issue films or lousy actions flicks. Instead, wisely, he’s established himself as a viable comic actor in comedies such as “Friday” and Barbershop” and family fare such as “Are We There Yet?”
But unlike Smith, he’s also one of the most charismatic, galvanizing rappers who ever lived. His group, N.W.A., formed when he was just in his teens, shifted the balance of power in hip-hop from the East to West coast for nearly a decade. Dude has some game.
And it was on display Sunday night at the Mohawk. Considering the controversy surrounding the opening act Trick Trick, it was a little disappointing to see a nice chunk of the crowd present for Trick Trick’s set, even if there were scattered boos. (Many of us wished he could have rapped to an empty room, even if that would have meant missing the excellent local act Gerald G.) That said, Trick Trick’s beats were classic West Coast thunder-funk, spare, bone-rattling bass and lots of gun sound effects. He also won over the crowd with a “(Expletive) Oklahoma” chant regarding the BCS standings.
Like many rappers of a certain age, Cube is essentially working a nostalgia circuit, playing club-sized rooms where he once commanded stadiums. No matter, the man is still riveting. And has a much deeper catalog than you might remember.
He opened with the comparatively obscure “Natural Born Killaz,” a 1995 single that reunited him with N.W.A. producer Dr. Dre. and segued into “Hello” (“I started this gangsta (expletive) and this is the (expletive) thanks I get!”). Deeper cuts such as “Why We Thugs” alternated with bigger hits: “Check Yo’ Self,” “Bow Down,” “Good Day” and “Bop Gun” got huge reactions.
But nothing like the N.W.A. set, which saw hundreds of (mostly white) arms frantically waving and jumping up and down to “Gangsta Gangsta” and “Straight Outta Compton.”
This is why N.W.A. were “the world’s most dangerous group.” Not the songs about the police, not the chatter about life in the Los Angeles ghetto. Ice Cube’s music changed lives, the majority of whom were white, because the majority of people in the country were white. Along with the rest of the hip-hop generation, they smashed open racial barriers that older Americans didn’t even know existed. Why do you think we have a black president coming into office?
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The Skunks play Continental Club Dec. 26
Austin’s first punk band, the Skunks, play their annual reunion shindig at the Continental Club Dec. 26. The Ugly Beats and Chili Cold Blood open.
Make sure to tell Skunks bassist Jesse Sublett about the extent to which their version of Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” sounds like the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner.” He just loves that.
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Review: AC/DC in San Antonio
A trainload of heavy guitars rumbled into San Antonio’s AT&T Center Friday when AC/DC conducted a rock ‘n’ roll thrill ride that shook the crowd all night long.
Back after eight long years and playing to a capacity audience of nearly 15,000 (many wearing flickering red devil horns that glowed to the rafters), hard rock’s legendary mischief-makers opened with “Rock ‘N’ Roll Train” from the chart-topping, new album “Black Ice.”
With a derailed locomotive lodged into the backdrop and video screens flashing animated flames, girls and railroad imagery, singer Brian Johnson barreled on stage in a sleeveless work shirt and low-tipped cap.
Looking like a steelworker at happy hour and mustering his indestructible cigarette rasp, the grinning, wild-eyed Johnson was in strained, but surprisingly strong voice considering his long-abused 61-year-old pipes should now be rusted shut. By second song, “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be,” Johnson gleefully prowled the catwalk making special efforts to shake mitts with youngsters hoisted forward by excited fathers.
Guitarist Angus Young, now 53, is balding and slightly less prone to violent neck-snapping, but still does the duck walk to frenzied effect. In various states of undress, his trademark schoolboy uniform now makes him look more like a naughty professor than saucy brat. Stripped to his shorts during “The Jack,” Young and AC/DC reveled as unsuspecting women in the crowd were randomly implicated on overhead video screens as the song’s trampy subject.
Backed by guitar-playing brother Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams and cig-smoking drummer Phil Rudd, the iconic guitarist and roughneck singer jack hammered such crowd-pleasing classics as “Back in Black,” “Dirty Deeds,” “Thunderstruck,” “Shoot to Thrill,” “Hell’s Bells,” “Let There Be Rock,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “TNT,” “Whole Lotta Rosie” and fiery, cannon-blasting encores “Highway to Hell” and “For Those About to Rock.”
Still electric after 33 years, AC/DC delivered a hell of a jolt.
Note: Opening act, the Answer, was rendered unseen and unheard because of a $15 parking fee ambush that necessitated a retreat to an ATM. Buyer beware.
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