Space and the City
Posts tagged The Homopolice
PULL OVER THE INTERNET: SPRING BLOCK PARTY LINEUP WILL MAKE YOU CRAP YOUR PANTS
Jan 29th
ANGELS AND MINISTERS OF GRACE DEFEND US FROM THIS EPIC EVENT!
HOLY CALAMITY! BEATS OF INSANITY! ARE YOU READY FOR THIS! Like adding a mustache to your dasheeki, the folks over at the Free Press have taken the delicious pizza that is their twice annual Westheimer Block Party and have sprinkled a metric ton of fresh grated awesome on top. Stoked. And things are a brewin, here’s a quote from organizer (and Free Press editor) Mr. Omar:
We hope to snowball the block party into a legitimate arts and music festival and marquee event for the city. Ambitious? Yes. Risky? Yes? But we have an undying faith in this city, our community, and the potential for big, wonderful things to happen.
Now, snowballing anything other than snow takes time, effort and most of all money. But how to bring in income from something that has had, traditionally, being free near the core of it’s whipsistentialism? You do it by being smart, which is what the Free Press has done. They’ve kept the day part of the event free, so you still can have big bonanza fun in the sun for $0, but then they’ve added an impressive lineup of evening acts, playing at different venues, that will require (and are worth, in our calculation) buying a wristband to see. Peep the lineup:
Advance wristband sales have already started, get them online here. We’re sure we’ll have lots more to say about this in the run up to the event, including how our efforts to move a conflicting wedding will go. YUS.
ATTN THIS WEEKEND: GET WORD TO THE DJ, TELL EM OAK FORREST IS IN THE HOUSE; PUT THE RECORD ON REPLAY
Jan 23rd
please enjoy this rant.
HEY we just had a revelation. Seriously. We can remember all the time when we were younger how we would see flyers for an afterparty for nearly every big show that came through town. We’re not just talking about the DJ and dance stuff (especially considering there are many well done after-parties in that scene going on all ready) but in rock and roll in general. Why was that? Or rather, why doesn’t that happen here (you guessed it, it wasn’t in this city). Well, for one, we would bet it’s the whole geographic proximity thing. Although, in a sense, that’s kinda bunk because you can catch a ride from Verizon or House of Blues down to someplace like the Mink or Notsuoh or Art Storm with a minimum of effort. What was the name of that club that got siezed by the Feds because it was a front for an X ring? The one with $1 cape cods on Wednesdays? We feel like we maybe went to some parties there. Maybe it’s the fact that no show here is able to end before 1:30 am, and most people don’t want to go to a warehouse that late (since, you know, bars will be closed). Does anyone know what time shows end at House of Blues? Can someone please put together an afterparty for the Andrew Bird date? KTHNX.
FRIDAY
Wild Moccasins CD Release Show with Buxton, Teenage Kicks, DJs ADR and BDM
You can get our full-sentence show and tell about this event from a post earlier this week, but essentially you’re going to get 1) a copy of the cd with your cover, 2) a Homopolice CDr cover of a Wild Moccasins song if you are one of the first 25 to ask for one, 3) a screened poster for the show if you are one of the first 50 in the door, 4)a hand-screened t-shirt with a design only available at this show, if you bring your own t-shirt, 5)Free pizza, 6)Free cupcakes, 7)three super good bands, 8 ) two NEXT LEVEL djs, who have the ability to decide if they want to play ‘Cool it Now’ as a radio single or an extended mix. Party. All Ages.
Grupo Fantasma, Vallejo, Yoko Mono @ Warehouse Live
Sometimes we feel really bad for Yoko Ono. I mean, one minute you’re just some avant garde artist who meets a guy named John, and the next thing you know a bunch of goofball Canadians are writing a song about you and then the bass player from Chango Jackson has done a little twistaroo with it and is now opening up for someone nominated for a Grammy (Grupo Fantasma) or an alt-rock outfit that ~swooon~ all the AEPhi girls liked in college. I mean, you think Yoko herself is hanging out backstage with any Grammy nominees tonight? We’re gonna go ahead and say the the little word written on the ceiling once you climb the ladder and view through the magnifying glass is ‘no.’
ALSO
The Caprolites, Battle Rifle and 50-50 @ The White Swan
KRS One @ The Meridian
SATURDAY
Leave Your Genre at the Door 2: Grandfather Child, Fat Tony, Satin Hooks, Heptic Skeptic, Nosaprise, Perseph-One and News on the March @ Fitzgeralds
YUS! We always love it when there are shows we like at Fitz. We love that place. Sue us. This second installment of Leave Your Genre at The Door features a hunk a hunk a burning indie rock and rap, including many of our favorites. As a heads up Grandfather Child, a project featuring Lucas G (Satin Hooks) and Ryan Chavez (Panic in Detroit) is playing, not Sad Gorilla (Lucas solo) as has been seen promoted in most places. BONUS: LSPS (the band formerly known as Lone Star Porn Star) is headlining the show upstairs, and that should be fun.
Saturday is also an evening of many many ‘events’, including Downtown Pavilion for the HYPA Fire + Ice Gala featuring Glasnost, Houston Music Revival, featuring Memphis May Fire, Runner Runner, Before…There Was Rosalyn, Driver F, Scarlett O’Hara, A Kid Named Thompson, Visceral, Otenki, Novista, Skyscrapers Walk Among Us, Love She Wrote, Bonnie Blue and Set It Off @ The Meridian and Houston Press Artopia, featuring Sideshow Tramps, Karina Nistal, Arthur Yoria, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, Travesty Dance Group, & more @ Winter Street Studios
Wana keep it on the noise tip? be sure to hit up Future Blondes, Venison Whirled, Concrete Violin, Kairos and Amputee @ Notsuoh
SHAMELESS PLUG: OUR OWN ADR DJS THE WILD MOCCASINS RELEASE SHOW!
Jan 21st
SHAMELESS! We’ll we’re shameless when it comes to loving you. We’ll do anything you want us to. We’ll do anything at all. Yes, it’s true. That’s why we’re very pleased to let you know that The Skyline Network’s in-office/studio/Hummerzine DJ ADR (aka DJ Under Warranty aka DJ JUMPING OUT OF PLANES INTO FIRE) will be playing music before, between and after the bands at Friday’s Wild Moccasins EP release show. Joining him on the decks will be friend of the Skyline Mr. benjamindavismurphy (Bright Men of Learning, aka DJ Lawn Care).
But wait sham Wow fans, there’s more.
Just days ago, the vaunted (and alleged fellow SXSW Showcase designess) Homopolice recorded a cover of a Wild Moccasins song, and will be giving away copies of it on CDr at the show, just look for the dudes in leather. Seriously. But that won’t be the only thing you’ll walk away with. Remember that your cover for the evening includes a copy of Microscopic Metronomes, and that free pizza and cupcakes will be available as long as they last (so get there early, like when doors open at 8. You don’t want to miss any of adr or bdm’s sweet jams now do you?).
And just announced, if you bring a shirt, the Moccasins will do a free screen of their new shirt design, which will only be available at this show (for all the t-shirt collectors out there). So, ya know, bring a shirt, $7, big pockets (or a purse) and we’ll see you Friday at 8. Party.
PS: BUXTON AND TEENAGE KICKS ARE PLAYING TOO. You know it should be easy for a man who’s strong, To say hes sorry or admit when hes wrong. We’ve never lost anything we’ve ever missed, but we’ve never been in love like this.
REVIEW: THE HOMOPOLICE – KTRU ASS INVASION (GREY GHOST #65)
Jan 7th
You must confess your own sins first, and this we do freely. There was a time, only a few years but a million markers by other, weightier (though less journalistic) measurements that we were rather firm in our stance that bands like The Homopolice were what was wrong with music in Houston. A side project of a side project. The offspring of greater momentum. Part of a twisted man-weave of people who recycled one another into new projects. Slapdash in composition and execution with an fetischisement for the fringe. Songcraft that could barely hold water, let alone cut a fine jib. A study in not studying. A lack of practice in practice. So close were we to declaring ourselves exile from this nonsense and making for pastures where there were sonic textile more akin to those we were making that we moved to a small, questionable efficiency and plowed away money for Williamsburgh. But something kept us here, though nearly all our dearest plowed the field for us and waited with open arms and couches a short flight away.
There is something, after all, about this place that makes the comp title I Hate it Here I Never Want to Leave not just prescient towards the evolution of our own attitude, but part of the very bumperstickered hook that held us home. After moving from a mere observer to inside the shark tank, we became to love bands because they were like this. Not because they were slapdash, but because they embodied an attitude of “Hey lets do a thing and get it out there. Right now.” Does it really matter that someone has ideas enough to bridge several projects, even if some of those projects might have done better just as ideas? It’s fun. Who cares. If people don’t like it, they won’t respond to it, and we’re doing it for us anyways. Like we really want to cross the thermocline between fun and work with this. Like we ever expect to tour and be pro about it.
That The Homopolice’s shows regularly descend into a testosterone leather-sweat baccanalia of homoerotic fantasia, GLARP (Gay Live Action Role Playing), headstock-wrecking abandon, and general male disrobament (audience and band alike) may be all the success that they care for. That people, people they know and count among their friends, absolutely loose their mind in pure fun – well we think we could all count that as a success. And that so many people here find success like that, success that is only about themselves on the stage and the people right in the front row (care less even for the wallflowers in the back!), and don’t give a damn about if everything is worked out and worked on and practiced made perfect, well that’s why we hate it here and never want to leave.
This duo of tracks is from The Homopolice’s recent live set on KTRU’s local show Mutant Hardcore Flower Hour, recorded right into the sound board John Sear’s 4-track just as it went out on the air, in all its hairy imperfect glory. It includes their psychedelic punk original “Violent Homosexual” and a cover of “Learn to Hate in the 80s” by Dallas punk Bobby Soxx (in his one and only solo recording; he usually fronted a band called The Teenage Queers). It’s just as visceral as having them in front of you, though it wouldn’t be much of hazard to say its no substitute. Word on the street is that they’ve got at least studio release in their future, and while we look forward to inevitable discipline that a proper recording will bring to what they’re doing, we’re very conscious that that is a lasting hangover of the old us. As it is with us now, the gay devil may care.
NOISE! SMOKE! FIRE! DISCO!
Nov 12th
If you thought TWOTENANNY was fun, you’re right. Indeed, the only reason there won’t be a third is because Bring Back the Guns has patently refused to perform in it as ELECTRIC SIX, which is the second greatest band of all time after SPACEHOG. So THANK THE MAKER that there are some folks out there putting on real deal music festivals that don’t hinge on Matt Brownlie’s broken collar bone intransigence. We’re talking specifically about Noise and Smoke, the most wicked of things this way coming on Saturday. The whole big party takes over both Dean’s and Notsuoh on Saturday night and promises to rule like a measuring tape with a built in level and scratchpad. Let’s peep some bullet points that you simply must know:
- The Mydolls are playing. This seminal new-wave band from our very own streets hasn’t played together since Ronald Regan was president. There will be people at this show drinking beers who weren’t even born when they threw it in the last time around. That’s epic. We cannot overstate how big a deal it is that they are playing and more than we can apologize for landing the Skyline Most Extreme Party Call Me Executive Jet on the light rail track Saturday night in an attempt to get back from Vegas in time to see them.
- Cover is 8 dollars (nine if you pick up advance tickets at Sound Exchange). But you should take 30+. That way, you can pick up one of the hand-screened Noise and Smoke posters made by Liz Molina and Mydolls t-shirt by Anna Garza. Don’t expect either of them to be available after this show. Actually, don’t expect either of them to be available much longer after doors open.
- The Homopolice are playing. Is there a hotter band than the Homopolice right now? ALREADY in Houston Press. ALREADY sporting exclusive tracks on Houston’s Most Hated. ALREADY wearing enough leather to make a canoe. And best we can tell, they have yet to play more than 15 minutes or so in a row.HAUTE.
- The lineup: Brutal. A skilled matching of some of the most fun and visceral music in the city (Born Liars, Teenage Kicks) with some of the most challenging and outsider (Balaclavas).
EPIC. CRASH INTO YOU THERE.
