Pounding breakers open into the now classic rock funnel cresting on Top 40 radio a month prior to Ronald Reagan’s first presidential innauguration on Jan. 20, 1980.
Your love is like a tidal wave
Spinning over my head
Drowning me in your promises
Better left unsaid
What a “Heartbreaker” – dream maker, love taker. A foxy cover of John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s pleading indiscretions, “I Need a Lover,” followed on both LP and FM radio, melting further fire and ice off this petite firestarter from Brooklyn named Patricia Mae Andrzejewski. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” Trish.
On the new Pat Benatar, Ultimate Collection (Capital/EMI), disc one cements its unlikely progression of 1980s perfection on the third track, with the deliciously noir-lite title cut to “Heartbreaker” sponsor and debut album, In the Heat of the Night. Benatar’s trademark come-on/back off materializes out of the shadows of femme fatality as hot and bothered as Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People.
In the heat of the night
When you know it ain’t right
But you do what you want to do
You do what you feel
No one can feel like you
In Heat of the Night shook down a seven, “Heartbreaker” and the tousled tag-team of “If You Think You Know How to Love Me” and “We Live for Love” through “Rated X,” but only one other neon number surrendered its secrets under duress. The sole aural celluloid personally missed from this otherwise Ultimate Collection. A tune that unknowingly fueled the Chronicle’s sci-fi issue this week as irrefutably as one of the genre’s Mount Rushmore men, Arthur C. Clarke.
It’s science fiction week here at the Chronicle, which means, musically, we’ve digested enough Theremin, Moog, and Bowie to last us the rest of the year. You expect to find a decent dose of sci-fi musing in electronica, prog, and, odd as it may seem at first listen, hip-hop, but country and folk music are surely planted in a bit more solid ground. Well, as Randy Travis mused on his debut album, Storms of Life, “There may be factories on the moon, and farming out in space … but there’ll always be a honky-tonk somewhere.”
In trying to scrounge up some good country music sci-fi odes (and that is one mighty thin crop unless you stretch to include the Handsome Family’s fantastic “Tesla’s Hotel Room” or George Jones’ God-awful “High-Tech Redneck”), I stumbled across a little-known but fervent subgenre of folk called filk. It’s not surprising that folk and sci-fi/fantasy epics would go hand-in-hand – after all, the Holy Modal Rounders proved any burnt-out hippie could pick up a guitar to write ridiculous songs and find an audience – but filk is something different altogether.
This week, a collection of local musicians geek out about sci-fi. Here's Brothers and Sisters bassist David Morgan's short list of favorite contemporary sci-fi novels:
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Stephenson always packs an insane amount of ideas in his stories. The Diamond Age is set in a not-too-distant future full of nanotechnology, in which nations have given way to "tribes" or micronations. Like most Stephenson books, it's almost impossible to give a brief storyline but let's just say it follows a girl who grows up to lead a "Mouse Army" of young Chinese girls, an engineer who spends years as part of a hive-mind sex-cult human computer, and a technology specialist and hacker turned evil tribe leader named Dr. X.
Distraction by Bruce Sterling
A political thriller set in a near-future dystopia. The United States still exists but as a much looser confederation. A top political operative and genetic researcher fight for control of a research facility against a Huey Long-type Louisiana governor. The world that Sterling creates is recognizable as having grown out of our own if we let some of our own less-than-admirable societal instincts run wild.
Singularity Sky/Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross
Nominated for a Hugo Award in each of the last four years, Charles Stross is one of the most accomplished of the newest wave of writers. These two novels are set in the same fictional post-singularity universe (a singularity being the hypothetical point at which technology progresses so quickly that human society is irrevocably altered), in which an entity, probably a human-created Artificial Intelligence, has scattered humanity across the galaxy for its own mysterious ends. These books are part spy story, part space opera, and part exploration of what life after the singularity might be like.
“Don’t tell me about a band after it plays, tell me about it before.”
The reader had a point when he wrote me after a column on the Dead Pyrates last year, except that sometimes the most visceral live experience is the most recent. Isn’t that what you want to express? But here ya go, dear reader: the Dead Pyrates Society meets tonight at Lamberts.
They’re old-school classic rockers, each and every one cut and chiseled in Texas bands all over the musical map. They call themselves “17th Century Rock and Roll,” though if Keith Richards had been from Texas and had taken over Bad Company in 1974, that’s a close approximation to their crash, twang, and thunder.
Their veteran confidence draws from the members’ myriad credentials, such as stints and recordings with Bob Dylan, Spirit, Keith Moon, Jo Jo Gunne, Paul Rogers, Robert Palmer, and an eye-popping list of 1960s Texas garage bands and musicians including Krackerjack, Slip of the Wrist, Gary Myrick, Smiley, Max Pageant, Tribe, Jack Morgan, and Bucky Ballard. I’m on enough music chat forums to know Joe Kennedy, Jimmie Randall, Mark Hamilton, and John Staehely each deserve a chapter in that big book of Texas rock.
Check their wicked “The Eyes of Texas” on MySpace and imagine that boom within Lamberts fine acoustics, where they drop anchor with instro-twangmasters 3 Balls of Fire.
“Sometimes rock forgets where it comes from,” the Pyrates like to say. “Consider this a reminder.”
This Saturday at the Parish, the second installment of groups formed from this summer's Girls Rock Camp Austin, hosted by Rosie Flores! $5 suggested donation, which goes to benefit the Camp, plus a silent auction including items signed by Loretta Lynn, the Donnas, and more. Plus other awesome things like massages, music lessons, mail art lessons! Doors at noon, bands start at 1pm.
Commander ?uestlove. What about Lt. Rhymes? Dr. Booty Brown? With the exception of the Neptunes and André 3Gs, there’s not much opportunity to see hip-hop’s interstellar fanatics get down on the extra-terrestrial tip outside of the studio. They’ll stamp it on their work, but even the guys living in Houston take little public interest in the happenings over at the Johnson Space Center.
Which is why we thank the once-good intentions of MTV for the music video. Through them we’ve seen “Mo Money, Mo Problems” put Puffy and Mase in spacesuits and Missy Elliott shot into orbit with “Sock It to Me.” Those who thought Method Man would have been perfectly cast in Apollo 13 can check him maneuvering through a spaceship in “Judgment Day.”
Here are a few more in honor of our Sci-Fi issue. See "Mothership Connection" for more.
Mick Jones puts it best. “His style was totally original,” the Clash guitarist says, “and so was his presence.” One of last year’s most critically lauded bio pics, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (Legacy), has just been released on DVD. Director and longtime friend Julian Temple details the singer’s life from childhood to his death in 2002 by using Strummer’s own words, taken from his popular BBC radio show, as well as interviews with dozens of friends (Bono, Joe Ely, Johnny Depp, Martin Scorsese, John Cusack, members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers), family members, and lesser known close acquaintances. The results are one of the great music documentaries of all time.
It’s a deeply engaging glimpse into a man of many contradictions, one who was loved for his creativity, unadorned passion for life, and doing what was right. A complex story for sure, yet Temple does a remarkable job presenting it in a way that is straightforward, while capturing Strummer’s boundless spirit.
OMG, doesn't it seem like everyone's riding a scooter these days? The folks over at KOOP think it's a good idea, especially since gas is going to be a trazillion dollars a gallon by the end of the summer. Sunday at the United States Art Authority, the station raffles off a sweet scooter from Scooter Revolution, as well as one year of free rentals at I Luv Video, an improv class at ColdTowne, and a gift certificate to SpiderHouse. The Bellfuries, La Snacks, Peel, and Foot Foot provide the live music, starting at 4pm. Purchase raffle tickets on KOOP's website, or pay $5 at the door.
Tonight at Beauty Bar, a decidedly different vibe and a delightfully weird show with a few bands from the Shdwply Records roster. Baltimore's Teeth Mountain scrapes off trance-inducing psych-percussion plaque; Gary War sounds an awful lot like Ariel Pink; and the Super Vacations play sublimely witchy psych rock.
Just to sweep the obvious off the table: Yes, the Krayolas are from San Antonio and bear the city’s definitive musical imprint but they’re much, much more. Yes, they were a New Wave-ier product of S.A.’s first punk scene, the one that was anointed by the Sex Pistols’ appearance there. No, the Krayolas are not the Red Krayola that featured Mayo Thompson.
(What many people don’t realize is that the 1978 Sex Pistols show was a major victory in the ongoing, uncampaigned battle between musical rivals Austin and San Antonio that gets refueled every generation, usually with no understanding whatsoever of what came before. For example, a 1969 poster for a Sunday afternoon concert at Sunken Gardens Theatre pictured the state of Texas as a beaming, doting mother and her two sons Austin and San Antonio, the former dressed in hippie glory and the latter duded up a la Doug Sahm on the Rolling Stone cover. Austin always had the cool but San Antonio had the dark heart. Maybe I’m rambling. I was all of 15, torched on acid at that show, and bouncing through a largely unmonitored life, so new and fresh that three hours of music imprinted it forever. It seems remarkable now that a concert could be a life-changing step from one level of understanding to the next. I swear I will find that poster.)
Before Omaha became the indie hub of Conor Oberst and Saddle Creek, its greatest export was the enigmatic singer-songwriter Simon Joyner. Since his 1993 debut, Room Temperature, Joyner's songs have delivered dark, melancholy visions that conjure equal parts Dylan and Cohen with the ramshackle solemnity of contemporaries like Vic Chestnutt and Lambchop. Though championed by John Peel and cited as a seminal influence to some of today's most important artists (it's impossible not hear his voice in Bright Eyes' volatile and vulnerable style), Joyner has largely remained unknown beyond the underground.
2006's Skeleton Blues (Jagjaguwar) was perhaps Joyner's most accomplished album to date, balancing a subtle and literate tone with the fuller arrangements of his band, the Fallen Men. This year's reissue of 1994's The Cowardly Traveler Pays His Toll by Oberst's Team Love label best emphasizes Joyner's place in the canon of Nineties lo-fi songwriters like John Darnielle, Bill Callahan, and Will Oldham. Upon first hearing Cowardly Traveler, John Peel played the entire album straight through on his radio show, a distinction granted only one other time in Peel's 30-year run: Dylan's Desire.
It's been more than a decade since Joyner performed in Texas, but tonight he plays a last minute show at the Natrix Natrix house in South Austin (3222 John Campbell's Trail). With Cowardly Traveler in mind, there is perhaps no better setting to see Joyner perform than in the garage space of the local cassette tape label. The show is slated to begin at 8pm with openers Caleb Fraid from Houston and local longtime Joyner cohort Lonnie Eugene Methe.
Faceless Werewolves return from a two-week tour to play their homecoming Saturday at Beerland, as well as drop some hot, hot vinyl copies of latest Super Secret release Pardon Me, Are Those Your Claws On My Back?
Also thumping: 1960s Mod Dance Party with the Ugly Beats at Beauty Bar and Cartright, Coma in Algiers, and Cry Blood Apache at the Scoot Inn on Friday. Art and music orgy Everyone Knows Everyone 6 takes over Mohawk and Club de Ville on Saturday.
Sunday, come out to the United States Art Authority and support three local improv troupes who've been accepted to the Del Close Marathon in NYC. Bands performing the benefit include Pataphysics, a reunited Sexy Finger Champs, Nasty Clan, the Pelicks, and Alexander's Dark Band. Plus: a tater tot-eating competition!
Last October, as Annie Lennox bewitched SMU’s McFarlin Memorial Auditorium in Dallas, one of her national and generational music peers humored at least one autograph hound while watching transfixed from the sixth row. Seems George Michael splits his time between Metroplex largesse, London courts, and Los Angeles with his Big D boyfriend, gallery owner Kenny Goss.
“Hey neighbors, how’s it going?” the former Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou asked his über demonstrative Lone Star townies Sunday night at the American Airlines Center. “Thanks again. This is like coming home.”
Three songs (“Fast Love,” Wham’s “I’m Your Man,” and “Father Figure”) into an almost three-hour cascade of nostalgia set against a skyscraping, Kanye West-like video backdrop, Michael had already succeeding in regressing back to an era where the wars were still cold and sexuality a hot-topic.
Breathable fabric, perfect for dips in the hot tub
For about $700, you could wake up next weekend donning the Godfather of Soul’s embroidered purple silk pajamas. After legal wrangling between warring camps of his estate, Christie’s is set to auction off the personal belongings of James Brown on Thursday. Sadly, the collection won’t be part of the Graceland-styled mansion some of his heirs are advocating, but instead will be pawned off to pay for legal costs resulting from a messy and contested estate.
It turns out (surprise!) Brown had a whole mess of jumpsuits. They come in a rainbow of colors, some wool, some denim, and some polyester. Nine of them have the capital letters S-E-X stitched across the midsection. Looking to redecorate? Nothing shouts “Good gawd!” like JB’s metallic green vinyl sofa set. Austin bands can add some soul to their lineup with the Godfather’s original Hammond B3 organ, expected to fetch between $10,000-$15,000. The most puzzling lot, listed simply as “hair supplies,” includes a pile of hair rollers, picks, and combs, 11 cans of hairspray, and a Polaroid of a shirtless JB sporting curlers. Cost? That one is priceless.
