Reviews

Good prevails at bash for Trixi of Satan's Cheerleaders

By Adam Longley
July 22, 2004

I've heard of Christmas in July, but Halloween? Although that wasn't quite the reason for the gathering at Emo's on Friday, I would be willing to bet that all the costume shops in town are now restocking their supplies of black cosmetics and fishnet tights.

Friday night, hundreds of Austin's most colorful (as in skin ink) characters turned out to support Trixi Stix of Satan's Cheerleaders, who can no longer perform due to a spinal injury from a car accident. In order to help their fallen sister with her surgery expenses, the Cheerleaders did something decidedly unsatanic: They threw a benefit concert at Emo's.

Photo by Ha Lam for AA-S Buster Crash, top, of the Flametrick Subs was rockin' for Trixi Stix, as was Dr. Jacqueline Hyde of Satan's Cheerleaders, Friday at Emo's.

But before the rest of the rock, everyone in attendance got a quick taste of the Cheerleaders' dramatic range as they performed a short skit with the completely green Lizard Man, who was teamed with Satan himself to take out the Cheerleaders for their newfound compassion and kindness. Although the performance was clearly ill-rehearsed, it was redeemed when the Cheerleaders tricked Lizard Man into a straitjacket and took a flaming sledgehammer to a cinderblock resting in his lap.

As it turns out, all the fire, pain and ultimate perseverance of the Cheerleaders were a fitting opening for the Subs, who brought their usual intensity and cryptic crooning to the main stage. After a knocking out a few quick numbers, lead singer Buster Crash dedicated "What Makes a Good Girl Go Bad" Trixi's way and played plenty of other tunes that legitimized their psycho-billy label. Bassist Lefty DeMarco and his demonic mid-performance stare might have looked the most evil of anyone all night.

Guitarist Clem Hoot was never more appreciated than on a fitting cover of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' "Little Red Riding Hood," as his bluesy touch on the guitar bridged an otherwise spacious gap between the two genres.

And to top it off, headliner and model Masuimi Max performed with her only props: a bedsheet, two shimmering silver pasties and three gallon-sized containers of whole milk. By night's end, I swore that I've never heard the phrase, "Dude, that's insane!" uttered so many times by so many people.

Art

GRADS MAKE OLD STYLES NEW AGAIN

With a pair of exhibits featuring work by graduate art students organized by graduate art history students, the past few summers have been fertile at Creative Research Laboratory, the off-campus alt-gallery run by the University of Texas' Department of Art and Art History.

This summer's first exhibit is "Threads," a curatorial project of five students who selected eight artists whose works, the curators surmise, in some way quote or refer to art history or pull traditional media into new directions.

Some do so in more intriguing ways than others. Jason Buchanan creates huge charcoal drawings that suggest sweeping 19th-century landscapes. But that's intriguingly all they do: just imply with their fleeting shapes and lines in black and white.

Christy Black clearly identifies with 17th- and 18th-century printmakers, in style at least, but prefers her own quirky subjects. Her tiny etchings are exquisite in their craft, but instead of orderly still lifes and landscapes, they are bizarre arrangements of creepy stuffed animals or fantastical creatures in strange settings.

Both Katalin Hausel and Jade Walker represent what Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz has rightly called the New Craftiness -- the fondness for working and reworking materials so that the hand -- or the craft -- of the artist is always present in finished work. Walker's "Cinched" is about a dozen amoebalike, child-sized stuffed shapes made of stitched-together men's ties. Some twisted, some alert, some sensuously splayed, Walker's chorus of quotidian-clad creatures delights. Hausel applies craftiness to canvas, messing with the swooping vibrantly colored lines she paints by embroidering portions of them, ends of threads dangling suggestively down. Unfortunately, Hausel adds letters and parts of words to her composition and the effect ends up ham-fisted. Her graceful painted and sewn whorls are plenty pretty, and effective, on their own.

("Threads" continues noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays through July 31, Creative Research Laboratory, 2832 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., free, 322-2099.)
-- Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

Music

MARRIED, WITH PIANOS: THE TURGEONS

The Duo Turgeon, the husband-and-wife two-piano ensemble of Edward and Anne Louise Turgeon, in a return visit to the Helm Fine Arts Center, displayed the same cultured and closely matched tone that was noted in July 2003. Saturday's program, sponsored by the Austin Chamber Music Festival, also brought some surprisingly appealing compositions and brilliant pianism.

The opening Concerto in C Major for two claviers by Bach, despite the Turgeons' body language, sounded careful and unexciting, as though they didn't want to be caught having fun. Mendelssohn's Andante and Allegro for piano four-hands produced dazzling sounds like trails of sparks; the one thing lacking was a fiery forte to make it really marvelous.

Each half of the program ended with an invocation of Latin dances. First was William Bolcom's "Recuerdos" from 1991, a three-movement suite full of the sheer delight and flashes of musical wit. Later came the version for two pianos of Astor Piazzolla's "Le Grand Tango," composed in 1982. The combination of refined compositional craft and the sultry mood of the tango was intoxicating.

The peak of the evening, however, was the Suite No. 1 for two pianos by Rachmaninoff. Despite coming from early in Rachmaninoff's compositional career, the first three of the four movements sounded fully mature, with the composer's familiar chromatically rich harmonies, self-consciously emotional moods and his unique combination of intricately pianistic writing and long, singing lines. The fourth movement, portraying the bells heard on Russian Easter morning (with what sounded like a nod to the bells from the Coronation Scene in "Boris Godunov"), had more clang than emotion. The performers, clearly in control of all aspects of the style, in the first three movements painted richly colored pictures in sound.
-- David Mead

Music

GIANTS STILL SWELL AFTER THE 'FLOOD'

If "Flood" represented the high-water mark for They Might Be Giants, their fans have not forgotten the signature 1990 album, nor the group's other early songs, responding joyously to selections such as "Birdhouse in Your Soul" at Stubb's on Friday. Yet the duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh, with steady support on drums, bass and guitar, dipped rarely into their 1980s songbook, emphasizing rather the later, dancier material and several cuts from their recently released CD, "The Spine." The crowd at the sweltering outdoor stage reflected the band's strange journey from experimental polka punk twosome to near-pop-star status to children's music heroes and, now, yet another smart band with a weirdly unique sound. Toddlers, geezers, scenesters and the inevitable nodes of social-science nerds responded glowingly to the group's adenoidal vocals, head-scratcher lyrics and infectious rhythms.

Generous samples from the Giants new album, such as "Experimental Film" and "Bastard Wants to Hit Me," proved that Linnell and Flansburgh have not lost their comically existential song-writing faculties. Unfortunately, the crucial lyrics, which contain coy references to various forms of intoxication, were sometimes lost in a mushy amplification, and the rich, brassy arrangements for the album were not fully realized on stage. The band glowed. The audience glowed. And, despite a lack of development in the program, it appears the Giants can still please a healthy niche in the music-loving community.
-- Michael Barnes

Art

IN BLACK AND WHITE OR COLOR AT F8

"Summertime Hues" at F8 Gallery juxtaposes the colorful work of two painters, Jennifer Balkan and Nathan Jensen, with black and white photographs by Richard D. Griffin, Sarah Lowe and David Verba. Despite the lack of any apparent stylistic or conceptual thread, for the causal gallerygoer, this show offers varying degrees of visual allure.

Newcomer Jennifer Balkan's impressionistic paintings, especially her seemingly cinematic "In Transit" series, are provocative. They involve the same female character carrying a small pink suitcase poised near railroad tracks, implying a hidden narrative. Having earned a doctorate in sociology, Balkan began taking painting classes in 2001 and says she is interested in the psychological impact her art has on its audience. (Cindy Sherman in paint?)

Nathan Jensen, an animator who contributed to Richard Linklater's film "Waking Life," creates irregularly shaped canvases onto which he paints distorted figures, image echoing form. While the process of making painting three-dimensional is intriguing, I left wondering whether some of his subject matter, mainly clowns, is intentionally clichéd.

David Verba's photos document abandoned sites from the American West. Old cars, empty buildings and deteriorating signs take on nostalgic significance. These photos are nicely printed and well composed. Similarly, Sarah Lowe's photos are accomplished compositions capturing quiet moments, although her images focus on people, rather than places. Fans of life study photographs may enjoy Richard Griffin's work, but I felt it failed to offer anything really new. (Read: black and white photos of female nudes in unusual settings and improbable positions.)

("Summertime Hues" runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays through July 31 at f8 Gallery, 1137 W. Sixth St., 480-0242.)
-- Erin Keever

Music

ON THE ROAD WITH MENDELSSOHN

FREDERICKSBURG -- The San Antonio-based Cactus Pear Music Festival brought its "road show" to the Methodist Church here Friday, a program organized around doubles featuring the Octet in E-flat for strings by Felix Mendelssohn. A good performance of this lightning bolt from the 16-year-old Mendelssohn still sounds like a miracle a little more than 175 years after its composition.

Friday's excellent performance, led by artistic director and violinist Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, employed a seating arrangement that put the second pair of violins and the second viola across the arc from the first. With this setup and a nice helping of restraint, not only were the accompanying figures kept in the background, but there was also an unusual richness in the inner melodic lines. A single artistic quibble is that the second movement, marked Andante (Italian for "going"), was almost as agitated as the other three movements, instead of being a melancholy yet relaxed interlude.

The first half of the program began with the Suite for Two Cellos and Piano by Gian Carlo Menotti, composed for Gregor Piatigorsky's 70th birthday in 1973. There was plenty of the vocal lyricism so familiar from "Amahl and the Night Visitors," but this was mixed with a more vigorous mood in which the cellos chased each other athletically. Only the strings of notes in the final movement sounded uninspired. Cellists Anthony Ross and Beth Rapier made a beautifully matched pair, while pianist Kristin Roach was a full partner with the cellists.

Violinists Peter Otto and Amy Oshiro provided a delightful and dazzling fireworks display with an arrangement for two violins of a movement from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," Stéphane Grappelli's treatment of "Tiger Rag" and Pablo de Sarasate's "Navarra." I journeyed to Fredericksburg for the Mendelssohn, but the lively music-making all evening proved to be more than worth the drive.
-- David Mead