Space and the City
Posts tagged By The End of Tonight
YOUR SATURDAY NIGHT MAY FEATURE BONES THAT GROW THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO
Feb 3rd
Misprint: BTEOT is Not Exactly Playing
Let’s just face it, this forthcoming Saturday night is another one of those dream dilemmas, wherein there’s more going on than any amount of club hopping will allow you to take in. Highlights abound. In particular, we’re rather Brubeck on one of the opening acts for the Don Caballero set at The Meridian. Though it’s shown up on posters as being By The End of Tonight (RIP), what’s actually in store is something is something a bit more specific.
Back at the end of ’07, you may recall that we declared an official By The End of Tonight Week wherein we reviewed the 72oz steak worth of releases that the aforementioned had put out that year. Included in the mix were the solo EPs that each member of the band had put out on adorable 3″ CD format. One of the most unusual in that series was by Drummer Jeff Wilson, titled He’s At Home with Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed To. In our review, we described it as follows:
This record totally freaks us out. SHIPOOPIE! It’s like Vern Fonk decided to stop making mind blowing car insurance commercials, bought a four track, and started taping angry school-yard jump-rope and marching band chants, spliced em up, and then played guitar over them. Clicking sticks, smashed up against raunchy bursts of beats. Yet, with its defining characteristic probably being chaos, He’s Home with Bones That Grow the Way They’re Supposed To is unexpectedly, well, listenable.
Totally unexpected, and hard to imagine ever seeing the stage lights, but that’s just what’s happening on Saturday. Performing under the name F%cking Thief, the act features Wilson and local party planner/Sparks advocate/Rapper under the name Balls Deep Jacob Calle and probably some other folks that weren’t mentioned in the email we got. If you were leaning towards the Caballero show, this is reason enough to go ahead and make the love connection. If you hadn’t considered it, well, you might do well to put it back in your deck. If you’ve sort of thrown your hands up in the air due to the overwhelming choices, you may as well just head on over to Big Star Bar where our own ADR will be, yet again, playing records all night at a party for the notorious Walker Twins 30th birthday (shameless plug). DANCE!
ATTN THIS WEEKEND: YOU ARE LIKE A GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Jan 30th
Artist's impression of this weekend.
STEP RIGHT UP TO THE PLEASUREDOME! Oh man. We love that painting. Oh man. We totally were going to sell one of The Skyline Network’s most extreme party call me executive corporate jets and then buy it, but it turns out that it’s not for sale and that sort of thing is frowned upon. But oh man, the guy who painted it has got to have the most epic name ever: Hieronymus Bosch. We used to know a guy who had a snake named that. Should we ever need an Arabian Steed, we’re totally calling it the same thing. This weekend has lots of everything. Hardcore bands. CD release shows. Old favorites playing their first shows in forever. New bands. Bands with new names. Day Shows. Night Shows. Shows in the cities. Shows in the burbs. Shows at Mexican restaurants. We’re totally overwhelmed. Let’s take a crack at it.
FRIDAY
Wild Moccasins @ Cactus Records
SHITYEAHTURDAY COMES A DAY EARLY! Cactus in-stores means 1) Starts at 5:50: HAPPY HOUR SHOW 2)FREE BEER 3)Record Shopping
Fucked Up, Iron Age, The Jonbenét and Black Congress @ Walter’s on Washington
Canadian darlings of whichever wave of hardcore we are currently in the middle of bring their non-1:30 of hate approach to the 713. Fucked Up is a great band for people that find the energy and grit of 80s hardcore endearing, but enjoy things that are a bit more nuanced, teased out and, well, smarter. Rumors abound that The Jonbenet doesn’t have too many more shows under their belt, so catch em while the catching is good. Black Congress will also, finally, but putting out a recording at this show. It’s on cassette. So begineth the next format revision war. (Also, just to clarify, because he has been making the joke pretty much to anyone that would listen, The Skyline’s ADR is not actually in Black Congress, though he continues to attempt to convince the band that he should be).
T.S.O.L., Black President, Bark Hard, Blackmarket Syndicate @ The Meridian
Looking for some slightly more conventional hardcore? You can’t get much more back-to-the-source than TSOL (True Sounds of Liberty – gawd we love how Hardcore bands sound so much TUFFER when they switch to acronyms), who got together way back in 1978 in Huntington Beach, CA. Though over the years, TSOL slowly evolved into a band with no original members and a noticible slide into metal, this lineup includes all surviving original members hopefully rocking their goth/horror-core referencing flavor of hardcore’s exciting first round in he pit.
Hell City Kings, American Fangs (EP release), Arcane Flowers and The Back Alley Sluts @ Rudyard’s
Hell City Kings (H.C.K.?) and American Fang especially are just straight up hard rocking bands that don’t need any of that hyphenated balloney. Combining elements of punk, glam and whiskey, both are acts that are going to make it especially difficult for you to remain at your table munching on French Fries and sipping on a small batch pint. “Duke,” from the ‘Fangs EP that comes out tonight is already in the running for The 2009 Skyline 50.
Tax the Wolf, Wearehalfnelson, Ellypseas @ Aztekas
Remember when there used to be that Shu Latif DJed dance party at Azteka’s called Cherry Bomb? And when The Gossip played there and The Red and White? It seemed like Westheimer might finally be getting an eatery-based venue to be the next Oven. Well, we’re not really sure what happened, but there hasn’t been much going on there in the years that followed. Tax the Wolf (who used to be called Wolves at the Door) have put a stop to that putting a stop to things. They just put out a live EP (free on their MySpace), and we’re far too tired to take a crack at what their sound is other to say other than the songs have lots of great rushing Brooklyn guitars without being particularly derivative, and totally hit us like a cup of coffee when they occasionally veer crazily into prog rock territory. (Note that the poster for this show originally said Gold Sounds were playing too, which, unfortunately, was a mis-communication. Turns out they are working on a new album and can’t make it. So that’s kinda good news).
Come See My Dead Person, Wino Vino @ Last Concert Cafe
A big ass band with violins, mandolin, banjos, guitars and all the fixings, Come See my Dead Person is a solid up and comer for people who enjoy refreshing takes on Americana like those done locally by Sideshow Tramps or Listen Listen or, more famously, by Bruce Springsteen on that one CD that still rules us so hard, but with a good dose of horror-swing murder balladry thrown in there. Horror-swing. That’s our new favorite genre.
Drop Trio @ Avant Garden
Though they used to be a weekly fixture here in the city, as Houston Calling pointed out, they haven’t been around much lately. If you’re into the idea of seeing some live jazz, but haven’t before and don’t really know where to begin, this would definitely be our recommendation as their approach is both accessible and interesting. They are most assuredly not the ‘smooth’ kind of stuff you hear on 95.7 FM (The Wave).
Dremnt The End, The Last Place You Look, Awaken From Falling @ The Scout Bar
We’ve been told that The Last Place You Look completely packed out Warehouse Live last weekend for their CD release show. If you’re down south (or looking to make the drive) and are BIG UPS on screamo, this is the show for you.
SATURDAY
Secret Shows Presents: The Mathletes, Sings, Time Machine Veterans, Guitars, Sew What and Sad Gorila
As previously reported, the weekly Saturday Secret Show at the Shady Tavern is no more, but true to his word organizer Broman has transformed the event into a secret of a different kind, where the bands are known but the location itself cloaked in mystery. That is, unless you email secretsaturdayshows@gmail.com to get the time and place. Pretty good lineup, and though we have to rush through this to go get some donuts before we are due in the office, we can tell you that this is (we thing) the first outing for TIme Machine Veterans, which includes members of By the End of Tonight, Buxton, News on the March, Wild Moccasins, Young Mammals, Giant Princess and the Mathletes. Oh, and a guy named Ike who somehow made it into this blue ribbon indie supergoup based on this own merits, so he must be a pretty kickass dude. This is an early show, and featured BBQ! So email em for the info NOW.
MV & EE, The Linus Pauling Quartet, Wols @ Rudyard’s
MV&EE’s music combines Appalachian folk, Indian ragas, and post-psychedelic experimentalism. It’s a duo at the core that collaborates with an ever-expanding group of musicians to create a sound even their wiki page describes as ‘drugged’. One of those members was J Mascis. Nuff said. Linus Pauling Quartet combines old dudes, heavy psychedelicia, and not playing a very often. Wols hasn’t played a show since their last gig at the Proletariat, due to creative core Ayme being overseas. Last time out she was joined by Mlee Marie (Hearts of Animals) and Will Adams (The Ka-Nives) as her backing band and it was absolutely excellence in freak folk.
Sugar Hill Gang, Whodini, Slick Rick, MC Lyte, & Kurtis Blow @ Arena Theatre
Like we need to tell you why this show is crucial to your being human. If Black Sheep or Big Daddy Kane was on this bill we’d have to tell everyone else playing tonight SBT.
Ume (CD release), Bring Back the Guns, Woozyhelmet @ Walter’s
The reviews that have been trickling in for former 713ers Ume’s newest joint have been practically glowing, and we have little doubt considering how they’ve taken a sound that was already pretty awesome and done SOMETHING to it to make their most recent batch of Houston excursions among the best show’s we can ever remember them putting on. Bring Back the Guns haven’t done a set since the first half of last year, and considering that bassist Shaggy is about to go participate in a NASA bedrest study, don’t look for there to be another chance to catch them for a while. The wooz opens. It says it right up there.
Hank The Destruction Moose, Drawback, The Flood, Rusted Shut, Nancy Silva Project, Focusyn @ Fitzgerald’s
Thurston Moore <3 RUSTED SHUT.
SUPERBOWL SUNDAY
The Caprolites, BLACKIE, sIngs, Trainwreck Albania, Giant Princess, Cop Warmth, The Sporatics @ Omar’s House (5109 Eula Ave., Pasadena)
Pasadena Day Show! DO IT! Starts at 2pm. Special One Time Only Reunion by The Sporatics. BYOB. Nachos provided.
REVIEW: MOTION TURNS IT ON – LIVE AT THE SOUTHPAW
Aug 7th
Now here’s something we don’t enjoy everyday – a live album. When we were growing up, no doubt influenced by what appeared to be the relative ease with which Primus and the Beach Boys were able to capture the essence of themselves on Suck on This and Beach Boys Party!, respectively, it seemed like a live recording was the way to go. Why even bother with studio trickery! Just show up, plug in, rock out and dub it onto tape! Frankly our views were more hardened by de Schmog’s Fairy Tale, which we, to this day, will swear an oath to blog is a better sounding version of the band than any of their studio recordings. Oh youth.
Fairy Tale, we later learned (aka, when reading the liner notes), had some post-show work done in the studio. And it turns out Beach Boys Party! wasn’t live at all, recorded entirely at a studio, a gimmick cooked up by Brian Wilson himself. Oh yeah, and we liked Primus. Now older, and listening to Rattle and Hum with significantly less frequency, we’ve come to view the live recording as a junior partner to the subtler and more satisfying craft of multi-track recording. Granted there are exceptions, like Spiritualized’s epic Royal Albert Hall and Nirvana’s catalog deconstructing Unplugged in New York, but for the most part they just come off as half baked; something thrown out there by a record label to maintain brand awareness while their hit machine struggles to compose its next opus. Rarely if ever, afterall, can the entire sensory experience of a concert be re-created by a feast only for the ears.
Doubly so for “local” live albums (again, Fairy Tale being an obvious exception). Frequently, they’re a bad microphone in the audience or recorded directly from the sound-board, neither one being particularly good source mater from which to construct a decent final mix. MySpace is littered with live recordings of local bands that sound so awful it boggles the mind people would put them up there for others to hear. Sure, its great to be stoked about your music and what to put it out there for people to hear, but good biscuits and gravy from AAA Cafe, have a little respect for the shape your art is in. So, with all that on record, you might be just as suprised as we were at how Burt Reynolds as Malone Motion Turns it On’s new Live at the Southpaw EP is (note: Burt Reynolds as Malone kicks ass).
Setting aside the production pitfalls of live recordings for a minute, it actually makes more sense for MTIO to make a live album than almost any other band in town. During the year of the INSTRUMENTAL MADNESS of our lord that was 2007, you could generally wheat and chaff the various vocal-eschewing acts around town with a few simple descriptors. Blades are the guys with the mathy time signatures and angular riffs; By the End of Tonight are the guys who can’t write a song with fewer than one thousand parts; Co-Pilot found the part of outer space that has lots of clouds; Rustler builds slow and steady to shredertaining metal heights; Golden Axe WILL MELT YOUR FACE; MTIO are looser and more improvisational. That right there is why Live at the Southpaw works so well.
Their debut outing, Rima, though a fine piece of work, froze their songs into a static, repeatable artifact. So while we enjoyed it, we felt it wasn’t as ‘genuine’ as the band was live, when it felt like anything could happen and their songs a stack of Mad Libs waiting for whatever outside influences might make one outing so distinct from another. Here, like a rock solid jazz quartet doing its thing in black and white photography cool, the songs are freer, and the improvisations more organic than the could be in a studio where second takes are allowed. “Satelightening”, a track on both, clocks in a full three minutes longer here than on Rima. And granted, while anytime you put something to tape you run the risk of making it definitive, the effect here is making us want to head out the door to their next show and see what noun, verb and adjective they throw in this time.
Motion Turns it On’s Live at the Southpaw is available at record stores around town and, starting yesterday, via digital download from iTunes and their MySpace (careful Mac users, you cannot download SNOCAP songs, but you won’t figure that out until after you pay for them). Party.
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALMOST NO-ONE!
Jul 31st
Weeeell, the results are in from the 2008 Houston Press Music Awards, and while there were some winners in the scene we all breathe and love, we have to say that our enthusiasm for the results is tempered. Be it voter apathy or competitive categories splitting the Hands_Up vote, it looks like that the sector of the city long regarded as being the most into that rock and roll music walked away with little more than its back beat and a post-showcase hangover. HIGHTLIGHTS:
Best New Act: The Tontons
Grand Opening, Grand Closing as the band is set to go for an extended period without doing much of anything while vocalist Asli Omar is out of town. Catch their smoky picnic table blues Friday at Fitz, Saturday at the Secret Show Festival, or next week at a few shows in Savannah Georgia.
Best Drummer: Shane Lauder (Sideshow Tramps/Born Liars)
Good to see the Liars getting some recognition (but it wouldn’t be going out on a limb to say that he won because of the words “sideshow” and “tramps.” Real talk, their recent release (among others) makes us think there should be a Best 7 Inch category next years. Actually scratch that, we are saving it for our annual awards.
Best Experimental: Studemont Project
Jandek snubbed again, and, as if UGK sweeping the Album, Song and Musicians of the year categories was not hint enough, we are all reminded that H-Town is a Rap Town, so notions of what constitutes “experimental music” varies widely.
Best Indie Rock: Spain Colored Orange
Ok dudes. Real talk. It’s time for the album to come out.
Best Keyboard Player: Gilbert Alfaro (Spain Colored Orange)
Hey dude. Real talk. It’s time for you to drop that album on us.
Best Tribute Band: Beetle
Beetle freaking rules and if you are thinking to yourself “gee, I really could use some wholesome fun on a Thursday early evening” then you clearly have not been to their FREE weekly Happy Hour gigs at the Continental. Epic. Yes, we were so shut out of the awards this year that we are digressing into the Tribute category.
Best Unclassifiable Band: Black Math Experiment
Hahah, pulled out of a nearly month-long retirement to both play a nominating showcase and then collect an award. For serious, though, BME’s fans have voted them at the top of every contest they have ever been up for (remember when they were elected to open for The Misfits?). ATTN OTHER BANDS – are the people who come to your shows that stoked about you?
Best Metal: Golden Axe
Agreed
Best New Club: Boondocks
We still haven’t quite figured out what all the hate is about this place. They have freaking free BBQ on Sundays, a photo booth and an upstairs. FREE BBQ SUNDAYS. Plus, $0 shows atleast once a week and a cheap as plastic Happy Hour. Oh, and the staff are all LORDS OF WHIPS. Although real talk, they got to do something about that late afternoon sun on the patio. Totally killing their scene.
Best Live Music Venue: Warehouse Live
Considering the number of defuncts (or nearly) to win and be nominated this year, we cannot believe that the Engine Room did not win.
Best Record Store: Cactus Records
Gotta say it, we never liked the old Cactus. Never did it for us, not really sure why. We like what the new one is doing in a big way. So even though Sound Exchange cannot be beat for the local selection, we dig heavy on this place now.
Best Equipment Store: Guitar Center
I hope the higher-ups at Guitar Center Corporate know that Levi Johnson has done more to ingratiate their brand to Houston musicians than all the radio spots and glossy direct mails they can produce combined. One aces as Mata dude with a love for music and musicians (and great taste in it too – now on our check-out list due to his recommendation: World’s Most Dangerous) did more for them than Evan’s Music City having an in-venue banner at every place where a vote was cast Sunday.
Best Radio Station: KPFT
Not even by a long shot. Although there are notable exceptions, the quality of programming at KPFT continues to spiral to new identity politics-driven lows. If you think nothing makes your blood boil more than the way Ed Mayberry pronounces “business”, spend a little time listening to this station.
Best Local Label: Mia Kat Empire
Buxton, Hollywood Black and others make up their roster. Serious props are due for beating out more nationally known outfits like Swisha House or Rap-A-Lot.
CONDOLENCES TO:
Fatal Flying Guilloteens and Indian Jewelry, who both lost in four categories each; Arthur Yoria and Buxton who walked away 0 for 3; Hearts of Animals, Sharks and Sailors and Scattered Pages who were likewise shut out of their two-each nominations; and Balaclavas, Bring Back the Guns, By The End of Tonight, Hell City Kings, Insect Warfare, Jana Hunter, The Literary Greats, The Mathletes, Penny Royal, Something Fierce, Two Star Symphony and Whorehound who each blew their one shot at fame. Better Luck Next Year.
Real talk: Thats a long list of talent and a helluva good impression of our record collection. What was your biggest suprise or upset?
ANDEW WK CANCELS BUT EPIC WAREHOUSE PARTY STILL A GO
Jul 2nd
If you’re like us, then you’ve no doubt been more than a little stoked about this shin-dig behind this poster:
I mean, not only does it feature one of our favorite mic shunning outfits, Octopus Project, but it isn’t just a coincidence that that young man’s vomit spells out Andrew WK. If we freaked out any more about how solid the local lineup was, we would probably be accused of pandering. Well, unfortunately for folks who were just about the writing in green, the following message was posted on andrewwk.com this evening:
I’m very sorry that the Houston show fell through. We did our best to salvage it, but the opportunity vanished. I’ll come back to Houston soon and the party will be better than ever. We were advised by some of the show organizers that their original plans had fallen through, and in their opinion, we should cancel, rather than show up and not be able to play.
I was sincerely looking forward to seeing many familiar faces and old friends, and I’ve been deeply frustrated by this turn of events. It wasn’t meant to be this time, but there will be a next time, and it will be great.
Bummer. All fears of a burning warehouse jokes set aside, the party is still happening and still as solid a way to spend your Saturday as we might imagine. Words from party organizer Jacob Calle:
we are all ubber bummed. Trust me. [co-organizer] Eric [iheartyou productions] and I have thought of everything and can not get Andrew to change his mind. The party is still going to happen and will be [d]ucking amazing. We encourage all to bring BBQ pits or bring your hotdogs and tailgate it with others. There are going to be a [poop] load of people.
Ok, we added the duck sounds, but you get the idea, and we have to say we agree. That’s still one helluva lineup. Note that, according to our sources, there will also be ice cream and free Sparks, which makes it two consumables better than Rudyards. For everyone going, note that the show has an early start time and, though the party will go till 4 am, the bands will be over by ten (Octopus Project now headlining). The Skyline Network Glitteratti gang will be there, so be sure you look good.
