Space and the City
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HALLOWEEN PARTY PREVIEW: WALTER’S
Oct 28th
WHY does Halloween rule, even as a growns up? PARTIES. And this year is great because that hallowed eve falls on a Friday, leading many in our great town to pull out more stops than a presidential tour bus. We’re so rather IN BLISS about all the options, that we’ve decided to board the Skyline Network Executive Jet and fly to Tulsa tomorrow morning rather than be faced with DECISIONS DECISIONS when the evening finally rolls around. HOWEVER, we shall not depart without giving you some good olde fashion yee haw about each of the Friday events you have to choose from.
So, we’ll start with the pretty UNFUKWITABLE event taking place at Walter’s.

Not only does this show have a great lineup, it’s got plenty of free stuff too. For starters, since this is Halloween, it offers the opportunity for bands to dress up and new acts to get together in the spirit of the season. Dannzig is one of those acts, and you can no doubt guess what they will be playing. The group is made up of members of The Monocles, The Jonbenet and other bands whose names we prolly should have written down. They’ll be headlining. On the opening end is the Young Mammals, all costumed up to revisit their January performance as The Pixies from the Hootenanny. It was aces then. It will be aces now.
Sandwiched in the middle are News on the March, Wild Moccasins and The Monocles playing as themselves. You can’t argue with that creamy filling. Hello. But you know, one of the really fantastic things about this show, what makes it more an event than a good evening, is the 7″ record you get at the door. It’s a split between News on the March and The Monocles, and this is going to be the only time you can pick it up. And each record is HAND STAMPED right there in front of you. Bam. The stamp is tied to the event artwork, but we won’t reveal the surprise. Just know that you’ll walk away with a kick-ass 45 to rock on your MyFirstSony and people who stay home to watch the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown are going to get that little cloud squiggle mess over their heads when they see it.
Doors are at 8pm, and the cost is $8 with a costume, $10 without. There’s a free keg of beer while it lasts, and then stupid cheap drink specials the rest of the night, we are told. If we weren’t in Tulsa, this would prolly be where you could find us disguised as a succubus. You know that there would be a visual school bus pun with that costume, don’t you?
PS – Seems worth mentioning that Danzig is actually in town playing at House of Blues tonight.
MONDAY MORNING OPEN THREAD
Oct 27th
Halloween is this week, on a Friday no less. What are you going as and what are you going to do?
ATTN THIS WEEKEND: WE GOT NOTHIN. NOT EVEN A PICTURE
Oct 24th
HEY. Check out this intro paragraph. We got nothing. Hit it.
FRIDAY
HEALTH, BLACKIE, The McKenzies, The Wiggins, Female Demand, Rusted Shut, the Krinkies @ Notsuoh
The original Health show, from Wednesday, was cancelled due to the rain. But Health stuck around and is now headlining a lumber length bill combining that show with the Rusted Shut event that Notsuoh already had going on. The event kicks off at 8pm and we are assured by the promoter (Mr. Free Press Hisself) that HEALTH will go on before 11:20. So. There you go.
Pierced Arrows, Rustler, Motion Turns it On @ Rudyards
Pierced Arrows hail FROM THE GREAT NORTHWEST and carry for the sound and some of the members of underground favs Dead Moon (so says their MySpace, anyways). Strong as they may be as an incentive to go, lookie right below – RUSTLER is back after an extended break, warming things up with their SCIENCE of instrumental. MTIO!
Mechanical Boy (CD release), Thee Armada, The Last Place You Look, Velora, The Tastydactyls @ Fitzgerald’s
You know, we were all stoked to post the video for Thee Armada’s “Rock Shock and Load”, but it’s been removed from YouTube due to a Copyright Violation?! which just totally makes our morning a whirl of suck because there’s something about that thing that just makes us really happy.
ALSO:
Ben Folds @ Warehouse Live
SATURDAY
Cold War Kids @ Warehouse Live
Everytime we hear this band name we think of Red Dawn and WOLVERINES and then get lost in our thoughts trying to figure out what the name of that mini-series was where some part of the country was part of the Soviet Union but we were so young when we saw it we don’t even know if it might actually just be something we made up or it could have even been a book and this entire last sentence is IMPOSSIBLE to Google. Oh yeah, this band is great too.
Underworld’s Halloween Bash, featuring Asmodeus X, Phase Theory, Negative Impact (CD release), & The Dead Bang @ Numbers
Oh man, everyone should do one Goth-related thing a year, even if it’s as pedestrian as sitting around for an entire evening blaring the crap out of your Bauhaus records or breaking out that terrible Cleopatra Records boxed set you bought for that girl sophomore year of college but never got the nerve to give her because, let’s face it, she was so Goth and you were so square but in retrospect she really wasn’t, it was just that she had a crush on one of the guys in Stabbing Westward. Going to a Goth Halloween party at Numbers (where one of the bands has a record release, no less) is kind of like crushing all those things together and mainlining them with a Steampunk syringe.
ALSO
Herman’s Hermits and The Triumphs @ Stafford Centre
Ladyheat, Electric Attitude, Elaine Greer @ Notsuoh
Spain Colored Orange, Program, Paris Falls @ Rudyard’s
The Horrorpops, Beat Union, 7 Shot Screamers @ The Meridian
Locksley, Hymns @ The Jet Lounge
SUNDAY
Workshop Houston Benefit, featuring Japanther, Killer Dreamer, The American Sharks, The Mathletes, Grrrl Parts, & Fat Tony @ Caroline Collective
We can’t say enough about this bill, or this cause. These are the folks that do Third Ward Bikes, and as if a great touring outfit, a rawkus house party band, and the act with the best entry in the Scene Wikki wasn’t enough, remember that Fat Tony won best underground rapper and the Houston Press Music Awards this year. There’s also a craft fair. Gets started at 4pm. All the details are on the Caroline Collective website.
Rabid Rabbit, A Thousand Cranes @ Walter’s
Rabit Rabbit is described as “ex Electric Set” which is like saying “fellow travelers of Indian Jewelry” which is like saying “this could totally rule.” A Thousand Cranes will drone your mind.
ALSO
Polysics, Jaguar Love and Black Gold @ The Meridian
Crime in Stereo, Polar Bear Club, Broadway Calls, The Swellers @ The Mink
The Offsping @ Verizon Wireless
Rick Springfield @ House of Blues
REVIEW: NO TALK – INVADE IRAN 7″
Oct 23rd
Over the years, we’ve fondly enjoyed the evolution of one Mr. Beau Beasley – whose No Talk nom de rock is KGBeasley – and indeed we were a late comer to his catalog, which no doubt extends backwards further than an F-350 pickup. From the blinding grind of Insect Warfare to the to the light-hearted shredertainment of Torches of Fury to the humidity eviscerating massiveness of Unholy Mountain, very few leatherettes warm our heart like this big smile of a man whose mantra is “do stuff. put out records. repeat.” Already, in the month or so since this 7″ was released, he’s coaxed the entire No Talk cabal along with Chris Ryan (Black Congress) into a fantasia extension of his liner-note credited role: “KGBeasley: Guitar/Vocal/Leather.” The result has been the Homopolice, a noise punk act blindfolded and gagged in the iconography of a violent leather-clad homoeroticism.
Now, we don’t listen to much punk that hasn’t been sugar-coated for our protection, but we do know enough to draw the message parallels between the political songwriting of the (anti-)Reagan era with ATTN NEOCONS: EAT IT flavor of patriotic liberty biscuits that No Talk embodies.
A-Side “Invade Iran” cuts a playful jingoism, fighting wars we don’t know the reason for and leaving blood on foreign sands “till the oil is in our hands.” No Talk is right that America can’t really get enough petroleum, and we’re not just talking about our own Hummerzine. The entire lifestyle of all of us is built on hydrocarbons right down to the plastic polybag and black vinyl of the record itself. And, in mocking agreement with the same notion that somehow Drill Baby Drill is the answer to securing America’s future prosperity, the song gets all imperative form of the verb on the need to invade Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Iran. (Note to any neocon think tankers who will still have enough of a paycheck in two weeks to afford looking at the internet, these are all terrible countries to invade for their oil. There are much lower hanging fruit that we could get with a better cost/payout ratio and indeed most of them we wouldn’t even have to invade – we could use the CIA.)
Speaking of which, there’s not much guesswork in what’s going on in B-side “Fear the CIA.” Now, we think we it’s pretty fair to be wary of any three-letter combination that is responsible for bringing the phrase “Extraordinary Rendition” into our collective lexicon. However, we’ve always had a soft spot in our heart for the way, in the 50s and 60s, our spooks used to send Dizzie Gillispie and The State Department Band to foreign capitals as a distraction to orchestrate coups. International intrigue just isn’t that classy anymore. Nowadays, they’d prolly try and hoodwink the President of Yemen with Kid Rock and Toby Keith.
No Talk’s lyrics are blunt, more machete than scalpel, and the music matches. It has that signature Chris Ryan/Dead City Sound (er) sound – guttural and dark; heavy and fast, dragging the fullness of the production along at a clip that most punks don’t really have the chops or the inclination to attempt (the ridiculous greased lightning guitar solo in CIA, for example). There’s something else pretty unique about this record too, atleast in our experience: it’s actually political. Granted, you could write this whole thing off as manufactured tongue-in-cheek role-playing, but this is some of the only local music worth its placard that we’ve come across in years that makes so overt a criticism of the direction our country is headed, especially pure pith poem towards the government itself. There are exceptions of course, like Lennie Briscoe’s “I am An American” and Hollywood Black’s Crooked Shepherd EP, but given the general direction of our nation and the fairly ubiquitous liberalism (or atleast anti-Bushism) of the local scene as a whole, it is sort of startling/dissapointing that the Baby Boomers of all people (you know, the folks whose parents went to the Moon and won World War Two, while they on the other-hand invented the SUV and pills to make your dick hard) continue to show us up when it comes to political consciousness and music. Sucks doesn’t it? Kind of the opposite of No Talk. Recommended.
Fortunately, No Talk isn’t just a one night stand in the dark corner of Mary’s or a presidential pre-emption Doctrine that sputtered out after a single invasion. Though this 7″ in particular is already sold out, this week’s Grey Ghost is a generous allotment of recordings by the band (as always, Grey Ghost recordings are a measly $2 and are available for a single week only at Domy Books). There is also alleged to be a second 7″ in their near future. Don’t wait for us to review it when it comes out – go buy it.
UPDATE: The next No Talk 7″ is available NOW. There are only ten copies, all at Sound Exchange. GO. NOW.
WE LOVE U: WE GIVE YOU FREE TICKETS
Oct 22nd
Hey that storm knocked out our Internet, so we’re posting from our phone. Yes, we share a single phone. Weaksauce like Comcast. But we’ll tell you what isn’t watered down – our love for you and your ears. That’s why we’re giving away a set of tickets to see Polysics, Jaguar Love and Black Gold at the Meridian Sunday night. Plus, Black Gold is throwing in a copy of their Tragedy and Legacy ep. Stoked. Were we not typing this on a keyboard the size of a matchbook, we would even post the video for their jam “Chicago.”
To get in on the drawing, fire off an email with your first and last name to adifferentryan at gmail dot com. Hurry up – contest ends Thursday at four! Party.
HURRAH RETURN OF INTERWEB! Here’s that video we were talking about, which we think Ramon Medina (Linus Pauling Quartet, Free Press) will find more Herzoggian than Koyaanisqatsiesque.
UPDATE: The contest has closed! Congrats to our winner!
