Weekend Reviews
Supersuckers and the Rev: win-win
Music: Supersuckers/Rev. Horton Heat
Comedy: Latino Comedy Project
Music: Unsane/Rusted Shut
Art: "Tex-Mex Casserole"
Music: James McMurtry
Music: "Song Books"
Music: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
Web posted: May 23, 2005
Before the Supersuckers/Reverend Horton Heat show at Stubb's on Friday, our friend Carrie promised that at some point things would be "rockin' like Dokken." It wasn't during the opening act, New York punks, Murphy's Law, whose set rocked like the Offspring at best.
But the Supersuckers quickly put all of that right. The group out of Tucson proclaims itself the best rock 'n' roll band in the world, and Eddie Spaghetti and his friends weren't talking trash. The Supersuckers strafed us with fast, furious songs laced with country and punk, and our only complaint is that time passed too quickly.
In the interest of journalistic fairness, we must report a deep rift in the group's opinion here. Our camp was enamored, but Carrie and other veteran Supersuckers fans were disappointed. Ellen, sister of Carrie, even made unfavorable comparisons to a wedding band. Opinions reversed for the second half of the show, with those let down by the Supersuckers preferring Reverend Horton Heat.
We would certainly load plenty of the Rev's songs, with their blend of swing, country, punk, spaghetti western score and skank, onto our iPod for a road trip to Sin City. And we also appreciated the fact that, like Eddie Spaghetti, head Heat-er Jim Heath is a charismatic showman. But it was only the Supersuckers set that made us invoke the holy name of Dokken.
— Sarah Lindner
Comedy
PROJECT'S CAMPAIGN TO MAKE YOU LAUGH WORKS
The witty pranksters of Latino Comedy Project leave little out of their sights in their new show "Citizen Quién?" now half-way through a four-week run at the Hideout.
The two dozen sketches ricochet through a long roster of subject matter. And the LCP's usual spot-on sense of timing and snappy writing keeps the ride rocking and ribald.
Worldwide retail conglomerate "Mal-Mart" crushes a one-woman flan vendor out of business. Upwardly mobile Latinos seek sophisticated therapy and drugs when the pressures of being bicultural get too much. President Bush sings a childish song, wishing that more Latinos would join Republican ranks.
Weaving in and out of the different sketches and video parodies of commercials and news shows is the story of "Citizen Quién?" When right-wingers push Congress to allow the foreign-born citizen Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President, they're surprised by Arturo Quintanilla, a Mexican movie-star with a curiously similar rags-to-action-hero-riches story. In video documentary-style segments, Quintanilla's goofball story unravels, from his days as part of a Chiclet-selling cartel to his movie celebrity.
In addition to the new show, the troupe is performing another full-length late night revue, "The Best of Latino Comedy Project," two nights a week.
Together, it makes for a Latino laugh riot.
("Citizen Quién?" continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through June 4. "Best of the Latino Comedy Project" continues at 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through June 4. The Hideout, 617 Congress Ave. $10-$12. 389-0892. www.lcp.org.)
— Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Noise rock
RUSTED SHUT UPSTAGES UNSANE
Noise rock is pure Texas: loud, intense, often funny, smarter than it first seems and occasionally obnoxious. Well, often obnoxious by design, frankly. But its devout fans wouldn't have it any other way. The small room at Emo's became a temple of noise Sunday night when fans came out for a set by legendary New York noise rockers Unsane. Honorary Austinites as much as any New Yorkers can be, the final iteration of Unsane — founding guitarist Chris Spencer, drummer Vinnie Signorelli and bassist Dave Curran — used to play here at the time, and it was a reunion show at Emo's two years ago that prompted the band's current reunion.
Young, local noise merchants These Men Are Liars opened the concert. Their screaming pound resembled the sort of classic, early '90s buzzsaw howl the Minneapolis record label Amphetamine Reptile made infamous. So far, so good.
But then: Rusted Shut. This amazing Houston quartet has been clearing rooms, sinuses and earwax for nearly 20 years. Sporting a deeply hideous guitar tone, good-natured misanthropy (sample song title: "Kill Kill Kill") and a vibe of chaos manipulation, Rusted Shut has made Austin its home away from home. We love them and we love to have our hair reparted by them. Someone give them a weekly happy-hour gig, please.
The evening's only true disappointment was Unsane tour mates the Blackfire Revelation, whose overdriven, guitar-drums blues-sludge never quite moved or swung (even sludge should swing if the blues are involved). Now, following Rusted Shut is a tall order for anyone, but Revelation's set simply dragged — overloud, overlong and oversold.
Unsane was greeted like Ulysses returning to Greece, and the band obliged with a powerful, gnarly set. Still, the evening belonged to Rusted Shut. I'm really not kidding about that residency, folks. Just think of the tagline: "Rusted Shut brings you Austin's unhappiest hour."
— Joe Gross
Art
WORK, LIKE ITS EXHIBIT SPACE, A COLLABORATION
Is it a gallery, studio or boutique? Flux, located on the ground floor of Austin's still-new Pedernales Lofts, is actually a bit of all three. Jewelry designer Lisa Crowder fills the retail space with an array of creations including jewelry, accessories, handbags and furniture by local designers. She also promotes visual artists, allowing them to showcase their work at this upscale Eastside address.
Flux's current offering,"Tex-Mex Casserole," is an exhibition of mostly collaborative paintings and mixed-media works by Dennis Hodges and Brandon Petree. Based in San Marcos, Hodges and Petree make big paintings full of imaginative and somewhat grotesque figures (Hodges) interspersed with colorful stripes, graphic type, and more customary comic strip-style characters (Petree). Combinations of mass media and propaganda references as well as abstract motifs, pack these paintings — so much so, they often seem impenetrable. No space is left unused. Sometimes "found" commercial signs are recycled as frames. In "Gatos Negros," two large heads in ominous black gas masks hover amidst targets, stenciled variations of the initials "SS," bubbles, stripes, dots, drips, and blobs of blue and army green hues. Which artist is behind which painted element can be unclear. Like Flux's identity, these collaborative works reflect multiple perspectives, different aesthetics, and yet complementary artistic voices.
("Tex-Mex Casserole" continues 11 a.m.-6:00 p.m., Wednesdays-Saturdays through June 25, Pedernales Lofts, 2401 E. Sixth St., 320-0753.)
— Erin Keever
Americana
MCMURTRY COOKS A GOOD TALE, LIKE HIS POP
It took James McMurtry's song about the "North Texas/ Southern Oklahoma, crystal-methamphetamine industry" to get the folks at Jovita's dancing out their dinner beans.
"Strap them kids in/Give 'em a lil' bit of vodka, in a Cherry Coke ..."
"Choctaw Bingo" is McMurtry's signature cut, a short story galloped like long-distance Dylan minus the metaphors. McMurtry threw it out there the way he did all the others: nonchalant yet spot-on, and with a take-it-or-leave-it snarl befitting his backwoods uniform of camouflage ball cap resting backwards atop vines of frizzy curlicues, oversized T-shirt, undersized jeans and black cowboy boots.
"He cooks that crystal meth cuz his shine don't sell/You know he likes that money, he don't mind the smell."
McMurtry and his Heartless Bastards (Warren Zevon look-alike Ronnie Johnson on bass and Daren Hess on drums) jammed with the brotherhood of men who have shared shots in the kitchen, and to see them in this setting — an intimate, neon-drenched, makeshift dance hall — is to want them never to aspire to the big time. It'll only take them away from the real-life "smoking, drinking, live forever" characters who inspire them. (Like father, like son: novelist Larry McMurtry also keeps it real by continuing to live in his blip of a hometown, Archer City, the backdrop for his work "The Last Picture Show.")
As a chronicler of the marginalized and defender of the disenfranchised, McMurtry is wont to criticize those who penalize, even if one of his songs lurks on their presidential iPod. Take his new single, "We Can't Make It Here," which is available for download at jamesmcmurtry.com: master of horror Stephen King wrote that it "may be the best American protest song since (Dylan's) 'Masters of War.' Love it or hate it, you'll never forget it."
Winding down with "No More Buffalo," a song about destruction in its various forms, a nearby woman was similarly affected by McMurtry, as demonstrated by her comment: "There's just something about him that makes you feel good."
— Michael Hoinski
Modern music
TAKE A PAGE FROM 'SONG BOOKS'
The Austin New Music Co-op's presentation of John Cage's experimental "Song Books" Saturday evening led spectators to wonder: What exactly is a song? And if, in such a context, the idea of a "song" becomes something cosmically all-embracing, is there something for a critic to review?
The short answer is "yes," particularly if you're going to charge people money to come in and share the room with you. Theoretically, you could present yourself saying, "I am standing here doing nothing, and this is my song." But do you expect an audience to hang around for that? Happily, none of the presentations got that irritating.
Brandon Young, one of the vocalists and the artistic organizer of the event, placed five vocalists paired with five electronic musicians around a good-sized but ugly and uncomfortable concrete room at the AMLI Downtown apartments. All five teams worked simultaneously. In the most interesting presentations, considerable creativity and artistry were displayed.
Young was entertaining as he seemed to be singing in French, but was rapidly switching between amusing high-and low-pitched character voices and postures. A second young man sang a melody setting Thoreau's famous quotation, "The best government is no government at all," but also later played a delicate percussion duet with his electronics partner. My favorite pair selected 36 songs, photocopied them, with an enlarged line portrait of Thoreau distributed on the backs of the sheets, and pasted them on the wall. Each of the men rolled a die, and the numbers that came up determined which of the 36 songs on the wall would be turned over and performed. Sadly, there isn't room to describe some of the clever and fascinating "songs" that they devised. Theirs was a John Cage performance well worth seeing.
— David Mead
Afrobeat
ANTIBALAS FINDS THE BEAT AND GOES WITH IT
The great songwriter/producer/music theorist Brian Eno has been quoted saying: "There were three great beats in the '70s: Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, James Brown's funk and Klaus Dinger's Neu-beat." As with so many things, Eno was right on the money. Dinger invented the pocka-Chicka-pocka-Chicka "motorik" rhythm that drove German Krautrock, while Brown's precision-tooled beats became the root integer of hip-hop.
And then there was Fela. An African musician whose life was changed by James just like the rest of us, the Nigerian band leader took both Brown's funk and his acknowledgment back to Africa, where he used them to create the sputtering, locomotive jazz/funk/highlife groove called "Afrobeat." Wedding postcolonial rage to some of the greatest party music of all time created a juggernaut of hope and power, a music of resistance to, as Fela put it in one of his classic jams, "sorrow, tears and blood." The man was beaten by the military, went to prison, married 27 women, ran for office, declared his commune independent from Nigeria and died from AIDS-related complications in 1997. No, they do not make them like Fela anymore.
Which is why it's not surprising to come across the occasional American act copping Fela's vibe, and the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra is the best of them. This Brooklyn zoo was a smash at the last Austin City Limits Festival, but within the friendly confines of the Parish, they were a stone cold revelation of Afrobeat, Latin jazz and soul. After a jammy set of hardcore Latin funk by the Grupo Fantasma sub-groupo Brownout, Antibalas ("bulletproof") took the stage like an army taking a hill. Over wave after wave of keys, horns, percussion, and guitar, Nigerian native Duke Amayo took lead vocal duties, leading the call-and-response chants and slogans that drive the massive, multiethnic band. Even without the heat wave, the Parish boiled over into sweaty polyrhythms, the crowd overtaken by an ecstatic peace. Show of the year? Only if you like dancing through your shoes.
— Joe Gross
