Eeyore’s 43rd Annual Birthday Party

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THU., APRIL 27, 2006

Here’s an activity that’s not on the schedule out at Circle C: Eeyore’s Birthday Party – not that they don’t appreciate Pooh in the C, surely they do. It’s just unlikely that folks out in the ‘burbs would pay homage to a down-in-the-dumps donkey who mopes around like he just swallowed a shit sandwich. They’re more likely to be on the Tigger bandwagon: The bouncy, dimwitted, overly optimistic, dangerously oblivious, well-meaning closet cokehead who always leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Tigger may seem like a cheap-shot personification of Prez George the Second, but it’s unlikely A.A. Milne had that kind of foresight. The safer bet is that Tigger is a personification of a whole bundle of American traits that Europeans find both lovable and obnoxious – first and foremost our egotism. The wonderful thing about Tigger is that he’s the only one! The same could be said, of course, about Eeyore. The only thing worse than an egotistical, overbearing, thick-headed cheerleader is a black hole of pessimism, depression, and self-loathing like Eeyore. Imagine a whole Circle C full of Eeyores: Time to whip up a big batch of Reverend Jim’s Jonestown party punch. So why Eeyore? Who knows? But it has something to do with hippies – dirty-footed, face-painting, costume-wearing, drum-circling, pot- and patchouli-scented hippies that swarm Pease Park like sugar ants on a lemon drop; hot, sweaty hippie chicks in halter tops; tattooed trustafarians; old, bald hippies percolating Pease porridge in the bottoms of their banana hammocks; dust, feathers, dogs, beer, breasts, butt bags, tie dye, Thai Stick, skin, sunscreen, stilt walkers, crossdressers, jugglers, maypoles, music, and motherfucking mayhem – all free, all day Saturday. If you’re really concerned about Austin’s waning weirdness, you might want to check this deal out before you buy your bumpersticker.

Hell’s Belles with the Addictions

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THU., APRIL 20, 2006

Whether you know it or not, every once in a while you need to rock. That’s right, just like getting your teeth cleaned, your eyes checked, your pap smeared, or your colon scoped, it is essential that you occasionally attend a fist-pumping, hair-throwing rock show, the kind of ear-spanking, cheek-flapping, insanely high SPL hell that flattens the foam in your earplugs, recedes your hairline, and leaves you with a minor heart arrhythmia. It’s not enough to put the Strokes in light rotation in your iTunes. It’s not enough to finger your white iPod’s areola until the volume indicator is a solid blue bar…so high that the neurotic bitch in the next cubicle is driven into a blind fury by irritating ssss ssss ssss from your earbuds. The sad truth is that you can crank those earbuds until your tympanic membranes rupture and bleed, until your white collar of corporate conformity is stained with the red badge of rock & roll rebellion, but it will still never equal the chest-crushing thump of an 18” subwoofer beating you into spiritual submission. You’ll never achieve a truly transformational level of emotional catharsis through a pair of tiny white wires. You need the kind of overwhelming auditory experience that purges your anxieties and fills you with the hot white glow of sensory overload – at least every once in a while. So where can you get that kind of experience this weekend? Antone’s. Saturday night all-girl AC/DC tribute band Hell’s Belles will channel Angus, Malcolm, Cliff, Phil, Bon, and Brian in a retrospective of the Australian supergroup’s legendary career. Big balls? Maybe not, but you can expect a respectable cover thereof. Joining the Belles will be Austin rockers the Addictions and the Quick and the Dead, both of whom feature their own energetic female singers. For those about to rock…without a cock… we salute you!

13th Annual Austin Reggae Festival

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THU., APRIL 13, 2006

Easter: The Sybil of holidays. Do you celebrate the pastel color-schemed ode to the ovum, the fuzzy chicked, furry bunnied festival of rebirth? Or, do you observe the more macabre offering of the resurrection of Christ, which happily though it may end, is a gauntlet so bloody and violent that it just barely makes eternal life look like a decent payoff. Props to the Romans for bringing a savagely deranged creativity to capital punishment that has yet to be equaled on so large a scale. Given the choice, it’s no wonder most people paint eggs. Imagine rolling down the Easter aisle at HEB filling up your Easter basket with crowns of thorns, scourges, and crucifixion nails – sounds like the kind of holiday you might conveniently forget one year and then never … uh … resurrect. Fortunately, the early Christians were smart enough not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. They hitched their Debbie Downer of a resurrection holiday to an ancient pagan festival called Eastre, which celebrated the return of spring. Thus, a perfectly understandable springtime celebration became the confusing, mixed up mutant of a holiday that it is today. So how should you celebrate Easter? Well, if you’re too old to get excited about collecting pastel-painted eggs, you might want to change your color scheme to something a little more irie, say red, green, and yellow for instance. Those colors should be in relative abundance down at Auditorium Shores this weekend for the 13th Annual Austin Reggae Festival. Formerly known as the “Bob Marley Festival,” the Austin Reggae Festival features reggae music from both local and national acts as well food, ethic crafts, drum circles, and the occasional unsanctioned waft of ganja smoke, without which a reggae festival can’t be officially festive.

Urban Music Festival

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THU., APRIL 6, 2006

Austin needs another music festival about as much as Dallas needs another chain restaurant; as much as Houston needs another refinery; as much as San Antonio needs another pro sports arena. We sure don’t need another music festival, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t support one. Austinites are huge chumps for anyone with the wherewithal to rent some park space and erect some stage scaffolding. It doesn’t matter that the headlining act is the musical equivalent of Gary Coleman/Danny Bonaduce/Jamie Farr and the openers sideline in Chapman Motor ads; it’s really more about giving the cultural hoi polloi a few hundred square yards of dusty terra to work their stuff – ideally shirtless or halter-topped, glistening with a bronze patina of sweat, sunblock, and pulverized caliche; clutching the warm, backwash remains of a light beer, and ripping off a deafening two-finger whistle whenever the guitarist goes into one of those masturbatory diddly-diddly riffs. Who says the only talent is on the stage? Still, if you’re one of those rare Austinites who hasn’t experienced the sublime catharsis of music fandom, maybe Austin hasn’t been playing your tune. This weekend the tune will get a little funkier – not just because the Texas Relays will be bringing more than 40,000 African-Americans to Austin from all across the state and nation, but because in conjunction with them, Austin will host its first-ever Urban Music Festival, an outdoor concert at Auditorium Shores featuring Chaka Khan, Ray Parker Jr., Michael Henderson, members of Parliament Funkadelic and the Brothers Johnson, rapper/singer/actor/BET host Ray J, and comedian Joe Torry, as well as local artists like Blue Mist, Bavu Blakes, Les and the Funk Mob, Nook, and All U Need. Rest assured that if the Relays don’t keep you busy, the UMF will.

Joe Nichols At Rodeo Austin

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THU., MARCH 30, 2006

News flash for the CMT crowd: Lil’ Bow Wow is no longer Lil’, he’s just Bow Wow. Woof! He’s all growed up. Doesn’t matter. You missed him anyway. He blew up the Tuesday headliner spot this week at Rodeo Austin, aka.the Star of Texas Rodeo. Nice change. Rodeo Austin feels homier … plus they knocked five whole syllables off the name. Nobody hates syllables more than cowboys. Cowboys, like cavemen, are notoriously conservative with syllables. Maybe it’s because they talk slowly and don’t want to spend all day flapping their yaps. Rappers, on the other hand, are all about the syllables. The more the merrier. Sometimes they use so many syllables they run out of words and have to freestyle with syllables alone … sort of like Mel Tillis without the music. So kudos then, to Rodeo Austin for extending a hand across the cultural chasm and pulling Bow Wow a little closer to the cowboy way. Of course, Rodeo Austin isn’t the first to tap into the goldmine of cross-cultural marketing; it’s been working for NASCAR too. For some time now they’ve been successfully pimping motorsports to urbanites in the Northeast – people who still think Copenhagen is the Capital of Denmark. Maybe this is what Clinton was talking about when he said we need to expand the definition of “us.” Great idea. With the success of Brokeback Mountain, a natural next step would be “Rainbow Rodeo” night. Really, what’s a few more dudes in tight Wranglers? Speaking of dudes in tight jeans, this Friday country heartthrob Joe Nichols brings plays the rodeo’s arena stage. You might know Joe from hit songs like “Size Matters” and “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.” If you don’t, you’re probably not into country music, but you might be into a guy who looks like Matt Dillon’s hotter younger brother.

Southpaw Jones’ First Annual 29th Birthday & CD Release

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THU., MARCH 23, 2006

Here’s a dirty, filthy, shameful little secret: Austin is lousy with poets – not the free-versing, in your face, theatrically emotive, gangsta-gesticulating slam poets. They’ve already outed themselves. They’re upfront about their embarrassing little literary obsession. No, more insidious and pervasive are the poets who attempt to deny the intrinsic dorkiness of their craft by disguising it as something cooler: music. They call themselves songwriters. It’s no wonder. Historically, poets don’t get much for their efforts except poverty and misery. You can bet your ass that America’s current Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, doesn’t have iced-out bling and a sick crib with a boom boom room like Big Boi from OutKast. More than likely he’s shivering in a mud hut on the windswept plains of Nebraska scrawling arthritic elegies to rusty, abandoned farm equipment, hoping his Pulitzer pays for a few more months of precious propane. That’s, as Sinatra sang, the “top of the heap” of the poetic world, and he probably can’t even afford Bono’s deli tray. It’s no surprise then that songwriters are notoriously cagey about owning up to being word geeks, but they are – word geeks in the worst way. While the rest of the literary world abandoned rhymed verse about a century ago, songwriters keep hammering it out ad nauseam. For a lot of songwriters, music is the lipstick on the pig of shamelessly bad poetry, but occasionally you find a songwriter who is a brilliant synthesis of musician and word geek, who within the strict framework of structured verse and musical meter manages to transcend both. Southpaw Jones is one of those songwriters, and he is celebrating his First Annual 29th Birthday tonight at the Cactus Cafe with Erin Condo, the Ginn Sisters, Spike Gillespie, Jon Greene, Matt the Electrician, Seela, Bill Passalaqua, and others. Poets? Songwriters? You decide.

SXSW Free Concert with Spoon & Echo & the Bunnymen

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THU., MARCH 16, 2006

You may not feel it yet, but it’s on. You might be tooling around Pflugerville in your honeydipper truck, hoovering up porta-potty turds and listening to Tom Petty 8-tracks, but down here in the bowels of the city, the SXSW shit has hit the fans. There’s music all over the goddamned place: Sidewalks, trailers, parking lots, back yards, restaurants, coffee shops … it’s only a matter of time before some earnest group of aspiring musicians starts serenading badge-holders in the Hilton crapper … talk about a captive audience … plus the great acoustics. Peers will get to hear condensed radio tracks, and pooers will get the extended club mixes. On the way out the door, lucky listeners will receive breath mints with the band’s logo, a shot of cologne, and a press kit. “Have a nice day Mr. Mottola, and don’t forget the Crotch Rockets’ unofficial showcase 9:30am Sunday morning at the Jiffy Lube on Ben White. They’re totally gonna ROCK, plus you get 15% off your oil change.” Yes, it’s Springtime in Austin, and music is in the air. Well, music and the smell of nervous sweat and desperation. Nowhere else in the world are so many people trying so hard to be loved and trying so hard not to show it. No doubt SXSW is a depraved scene, but anytime art and commerce engage in such a shameless clusterfuck, there’s bound to be a little ugliness. The beauty of it all is that ultimately, music lovers still get the most out of SXSW. Yes, the badge-holders pretty much have the run of the place, but there’s more than enough musical spillover to keep everyone happy. For instance, tonight at Auditorium Shores, SXSW throws a bone to the badgeless with a free concert featuring Mr. Lif, Blackalicious, Music Awards sweepers Spoon, and Eighties post-punkers Echo & the Bunnymen. If these four acts ever share the same stage again, it won’t be on this earth.

SXSW Film Screening of Darkon

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WED., MARCH 8, 2006

You might want to layer up, it’s about to get cool. That’s right, the glamour train of SXSW 2006 arrives this Friday as thousands of unrepentant hipsters from all over the world descend on Austin to revel in our “realness.” Sure, the pressure of having to be real all the time is a bit intimidating. Every once in a while you want to just relax and be fake; slip into the comfortable persona of someone you’re not, but during SXSW your realness has to be on 24/7, so look sharp. Wait a minute … scratch that. You may want to go with something a little grubbier – not some sort of pretentious, faux-skanky alt-rocker look, but a genuinely wack, just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-going-to-get-coffee-and-breakfast-tacos look. Don’t put too much effort into it, but try something frumpy like Old Navy jammy bottoms (ideally with a wildlife theme and an improvised ventilation hole in the gluteal region) fuzzy socks from Target, a pair of bright purple Crocs and a beer-stained T-shirt that says “Kiss Me I’m Irish.” Feel free to improvise, but what you’re aiming for is the kind of postcard-back-to-Monaco “realness” that causes trendy types to convulse in envy; the kind of “realness” that has them scrambling for their Blackberries so they can text-message their PAs about the local fauna. Also, remember to smile and say “thanks,” and hold the door open. Force yourself to be a decent human being. That way, Austin will seem so “real” it’s almost “unreal” … sort of like a reality themepark. If by Saturday, you’re overdosing on reality, you can heal yourself at the Austin Convention Center by attending the 6:45pm SXSW screening of Darkon, a documentary about a full-contact medieval fantasy war-gaming group that has been escaping reality in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area since 1985. Eight dollars gets you in unless the badge-holders overrun the place, which is a real possibility, so bring a sense of irony.

Ain’t Misbehavin’ Reunion Show

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WED., MARCH 1, 2006

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” It’s impossible to know for sure, but when Langston Hughes penned the preceding lines, he probably wasn’t talking about aging musicians. Surely he had heavier shit to deal with. Nonetheless, regardless of his intentions, Hughes pretty much nailed it. Somewhere along the line the aging musician realizes that he no longer sounds like a California Raisin, he actually looks like one. Growing older isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s especially hard on the narcissistic. Do you think Mick Jagger likes it when the groupies tell him to leave his leather pants on because they’re the only smooth skin on his body? That has to be a sock in the groin. Seriously … regardless of how much Viagra he’s taking. Sadly for most geezerockers, all the hoary hair throwing and the arthritically gnarled devil horns are just a pro forma paean to the glory days. They aren’t expecting to be swarmed by a backstage bevy of post-menopausal hot flashers. They’ve opened up their catalogue of motivations to a brand new page – the one without the lingerie models. The cold hard truth of the music biz is that if you qualify for an AARP card, it’s freakishly unlikely you’re going to blow up and hit the big time. Either you’re already there or you’re doing it purely for love, and love is where all the truly good stuff comes from. Well, love and Maui. Besides, just because the baby boomers are wearing a different type of diaper these days doesn’t mean their chops have gone to shit. Most can tear it up better now than they did when they were dazed and confused. For instance, this Saturday at Antone’s, Austin jazz/bebop/doo-wop band Ain’t Misbehavin’ plays its third reunion show since the band broke up in 1979. Twenty-seven years is a lot of down time, but they’ve been busy polishing their five-part harmonies, mastering their instruments, and putting together a show that would impress Fats himself.

The Pleasurecraft

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Month: February 2019