‘A tank of regular and a pipe of premium, please’
San Antonio Lightning readers probably recognize the signature punny headline up there, which arrived in my inbox this a.m. R.G. Griffing and his crew have a new post up about a local Valero store that’s selling pipes — “near the ‘munchie aisles.'” According to the story, San Antonio-based Fortune 500 company Valero asked the store,…
Til the Casket Drops
Til the Casket Drops Composer: Clipse Conductor: Clipse Label: Columbia Release Date: 2009-12-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The Thornton siblings return with the follow-up to 2006’s critically acclaimed second disc, Hell Hath No Fury, but fail to match its fire. Blame for the wait — after their last long-delayed album — may lie with the…
BlakRoc
BlakRoc Composer: BlakRoc Conductor: BlakRoc Label: Blakroc Release Date: 2009-12-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Let’s be honest: When the Black Keys echo through a big set of speakers, hip-hop is the furthest thing from your mind. Their soulful rock helped define modern blues. The Keys’ Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach capitalize on the framework of…
Just Like You
Just Like You Composer: Allison Iraheta Conductor: Allison Iraheta Label: 19/Jive Release Date: 2009-12-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording What 16-year-old Allison Iraheta brought to the most recent season of American Idol was rock-chick spunk, a goofy teen countenance, a fondness for hair products, and the husky, Marlboro-stained belt of a singer three times her age.…
Nine
Nine Director: Rob Marshall Screenwriter: Rob Marshall Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Stacie ‘Fergie’ Ferguson and Judi Dench Release Date: 2009-12-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Film Let’s pretend for just a second that I’m not a braying jackass, and that I knew, going into Rob Marshall’s glittery and stylish Nine…
Smart ass-kicker
Brawn backs up brains in the modern ‘Sherlock Holmes’
Tagine dreams
Travels with Frenchie
Ivy League
Release Date: 2009-12-30 A mere three weeks after opening, IVY Rooftop has become the place to be seen in Stone Oak. In a neighborhood with almost too many nightlife options, IVY has caught on like wildfire. Owner Terrin Fuhrmann has created an upscale playground that attracts a Gossip Girl-meets-Entourage-style crowd for drinking, dancing, and lounging…
The Sound & The Fury
If you still haven’t made plans for New Year’s Eve and are beginning to freak out, there’s hope: The father-son jazz team of George (bass) and Aaron Prado (piano, back from NY) will be alternating sets with the Hank Harrison Trio at the Boardwalk Bistro (4011 Broadway, 5 p.m.-1 a.m.; reservations at (210) 824-0100). Also,…
The Naughty Aughts
Sure, the aughts were fraught with heretofore unimaginable perils: terror attacks, hurricanes, American-administered torture, new viruses, newspapers and buildings and the economy collapsing, nuclear Iran, Punk’d. The national gap between rich and poor widened as rapidly and dramatically as our national waistline, while reality TV spawned a new league of useless celebrity, some of whom…
Gay Musik Rools
I’ll come right out and say it: The best damn thing to happen in pop music in the past decade is queerification. Now, I’ll open the umbrella pretty wide; gay men, lesbians, the transgendered, the queer-identified, the gender-queer, and their comrades together have opened pop music outwards, have absorbed and inflected a bewilderingly huge arrray…
The Evolution Grid, 1999-2009
SOME THINGS MADE US BETTER OR WORSE, OTHERS JUST MADE US AVERAGE Click on the image below to download the full pdf version of The Evolution Grid, 1999-2009
The Gay Place
The Mormons hate us. Maine won’t have us. California would like us to be more like their Mexican immigrants — just fix my hair, keep my home looking sharp, and shut the hell up about this “rights” business. It’s not easy being “fabulous” in a world of sinking economies, spiteful splinter groups, religious dogmatism, and…
Aughts Artsplosion
Click on the image below to download the full pdf version of Aughts Artsplosion: A Timeline
What Aught to Wear
The reality show Project Runway has proven a couple of interesting points since it began in 2004. First, the show’s popularity demonstrates that the fashion world has officially penetrated the American psyche. Second, coming up with innovative ideas is not easy. The fashion world claims to have “seen everything.” The music industry claims to have…
A Low, Dishonest Decade
Clocks and calendars are awkward measures of human eras. What we call the 1930s began on October 29, 1929, and did not end until December 7, 1941. Whatever we choose to call the first decade of the twentieth-first century (the aughts? the 00s? the zeros?), it was defined by the collective trauma of September 11, 2001.…
Global Warning
I was going to call this the decade that Global Warming finally sunk in. The N’Aughties have been declared the warmest decade on record, and our dearly departing 2009 is expected to go down as the fifth hottest year known to mankind. South Texas just pulled out of one of the most punishing droughts of…
Dear Uncle Mat
I finally did it. After concluding that every single guy I knew had at one time or another dated other girlfriends of mine (a common problem in San Antonio, I suspect) … I broke down and entered the online dating pool. But that’s not what I’m writing about, that’s actually going pretty well. But now I’m going on…
Ravaged by Consumption
As recently as 2003, I went without regular recourse to a bottle of Parker-rated wine. I still shopped with a mental calculator at the “cheap” H-E-B, which was exhausting and emotionally grinding with kids in tow, but that 5 cents here and there does add up. Six madhouse years later, I feel a sense of…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): One of my favorite landscape painters makes a livable wage from selling her art. She has had many gallery showings and has garnered much critical acclaim. That’s the good news. The bad news is that she feels obligated to keep churning out more landscape paintings — even when her muse nudges…
The Decade in Pop Music
The aughts will inspire no generation-defining Stones vs. Beatles debates, or, more likely, the arguments will just be really, embarrassingly lame. Fall Out Boy vs. Coldplay? No thanks. Gucci Mane vs. Soulja Boy? Get out of here. Sufjan Stevens vs. Conor Oberst? Who the hell invited you in the first place? As a music critic,…
¡Ask a Mexican!
SPECIAL YEAR-END EDICIÓN Dear Mexican: Why in the hell does everything have to be in English and Spanish? I ride the bus/train to work (not because I must, but because it’s more efficient) and every time someone requests to stop, you hear “Stop Requested,” then this parrar bullshit! Not to mention the schools are packed…
Drink your Fellini
Let’s pretend for just a second that I’m not a braying jackass, and that I knew, going into Rob Marshall’s glittery and stylish Nine that it’s based at least indirectly upon Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. (You know: as opposed to, say, walking in blind `an advantage in some instances, a veritable saucer of cranky scorpions…
Affordable New Year fizz: prosecco
Fun, fresh, and food-friendly, prosecco, a product of northeastern Italy’s Veneto region, gets grudging respect at best from many wine wonks. As recently as 1988, Sotheby’s World Wine Encyclopedia called these seductive sparklers, made in the pressurized bulk (Charmat) method from the prosecco grape, “fizzy white wines that have large bubbles and a coarse, dull…
A(nother) Year of Infamy
In the QueQue’s book, 2009 will go down as the year the right thing often happened for the wrong reasons — not unlike a Coen brothers’ script. Space is at a premium in this special holiday edition (enjoy our look at the Naughty Aughts, beginning page 11), so without further ado, 10 of the year’s…
A study in Scarlett
A hardcore, head-banging band named Scarlett O’Hara, whose members range in age from 17 to 21, sport matching haircuts, and come from, of all places, McAllen, has a lot to prove, and 19-year-old singer-guitarist René López knows it. Talking on the phone from his home in Edinburg, López bets that, “If we tell half the…
White Light, reheated
Whether it was at Taco Land on a Saturday night or the Ellis Bean on First Friday, you might remember catching the White Heat, an energetic, four-piece outfit cranking out some of the hippest raw power produced by any local band at the turn of the century. The Heat evolved from two other favorite San…
Live & Local
Tongue Tied Lightning’s self-titled debut (see “Aural Pleasure,” August 19, 2009 for our review) is musically dense, stacked with three-pronged guitar arrangements, pianos, fiddles, mouth harps, etc. Tonight, they’ve got two guitarists and a marimba player onstage. To be more specific, Aaron Patterson and Andrew Moreland are multitasking, splitting percussion duties between them. Patterson kicks…
When Hollywood runs out of ideas..there’s always the ’80s
I just about choked on my popcorn when I saw the latest trailer for yet another Reagan-Era remake destined to manifest itself in 2010. What is this obsession with â??80s movies? Several movies from the time of spandex and Rubik’s cubes are either already in post-production or set to film as we speak. So let’s…
â??Climategate’ spillover: A confession to our loyal readers
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com It is with deep pain in my heart that I write to you today to confess my transgressions. Some of you are familiar with the allegations that have been made in past years â?? that I have been downplaying or exaggerating key elements of climate-change science. While I’ve long denied such accusations,…
Manual Release: Exponential gets listed; Mojoe, Egshan schedule shows
We’re gonna pretend it’s the new year already, so I can introduce you to a new feature I’m trying out in which I just shut the hell up and give the local musicians a chance to promote themselves without all my “critiquing” and “being a total douchebag” getting in the way. If you want your…
Food stamps, food poisoning, and the charity of cannibalism
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Albert Gomez was born in San Antonio nearly 50 years ago. He worked as a maintenance man, warehouse worker, and truck driver before going on disability with bipolar depression and other ailments. He is one of thousands in the state that have been backlogged by State Health Services Department for consideration of…
Odessey & Oracle Revisited DVD
Odessey & Oracle Revisited DVD Composer: The Zombies Conductor: The Zombies Label: MVD Visual Release Date: 2009-12-29 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The Zombies’ 1968 psych-pop masterpiece Odessey & Oracle was a commercial flop that disillusioned and dissolved the band. Then, 18 months after the group disbanded, “Time of the Season” became a worldwide hit. It…
It’s Complicated
Critic’s Pick It’s Complicated Director: Nancy Meyers Screenwriter: Nancy Meyers Cast: Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin Release Date: 2009-12-29 Rated: R Genre: Film Writer-director Nancy Meyers specializes in the postmenopausal romantic comedy, in which a 50-ish woman, living in a gorgeous home, revives her flagging sexuality via an awkward liaison with an inappropriate man.…
Puttin on the Ritz w/ the Devil Bunnies Burlesque Show
Release Date: 2009-12-29 For those of us who miss the days of bygone clubs like Changez and Phazez, Industry is the perfect spot to take a trip down memory lane. Industry specializes in, well, industrial music, with an emphasis on ’80s bands like Front 242 and Depeche Mode as well as newcomers like the Presets.…
The Rosies Award Show & Gala
Release Date: 2009-12-29 Regardless of what anyone thinks about the performances at the Rose Theatre, they’re winning awards. The fact that they’re basically giving the awards to themselves somehow doesn’t surprise us. Although Chris Manley and Jessie Rose’s quirky, original productions have received mixed reviews (doesn’t everything?), the Rose’s first-ever theatrical season added a welcome…
28th Annual New Year’s Day SA Punkfest
Release Date: 2009-12-29 Why not ring in the new year in a sweaty mosh pit? Tony Chainsaw’s yearly event attracts acts from all over Texas and beyond. Dead Reckoning and Slowly Truth Dies (both from Austin) are on the bill along with the Bent Gents, the Deceased, Nuklear Fishsticks, F.A.T.M.D., Squid Row, Our Corpse Destroyed,…
Nothing More w/ Oso Closo, the Crisis, Fareview, & the Northern
Release Date: 2009-12-29 SA’s Nothing More has collected quite a few legitimate awards in the last couple of years. Out of 13,000 bands, Nothing More won the Warped Tour Battle of the Bands in 2007. The previous year, Clear Channel named them “Best Alternative Rock Band” at the Texas Buzz Awards. Their performances take inspiration…
Grand Opening: SaaTea Lounge
Release Date: 2009-12-29 SaaTea Lounge takes its name from a Hindi word meaning “friendship” and aims to create a cozy environment for like-minded folks to gather and learn from one another. During their official grand opening, guests can learn about yoga (1pm), mycology (the study of fungi) and how it can “save the world” (2…
Celebrate San Antonio
Release Date: 2009-12-29 According to Priceline.com, downtown SA is the 34th best place to spend New Year’s Eve (we’re somehow right up there with Sydney and L.A.). Additionally, the yearly Celebrate San Antonio event claims to be the largest free New Year’s Eve celebration in Texas. An anticipated 250,000 will have plenty of options once…
The Eternal Flame
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-12-29 Love in the time of cholera had nothing on love in the time just before the Black Death decimated Europe’s population. You can enjoy the sounds of medieval passion and affection Tuesday at Bernardus’s only scheduled 2010 San Antonio concert. Countertenor Jay White of Chanticleer and early music strings specialist…
Sisters Morales
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-12-29 Maybe this sounds like a self-contradictory statement, but describing your band as the “female Los Lobos” takes some juevos muy grande, so when the Sisters Morales describe their sound as such, it should tell you at least as much about their attitudes as it does the sort of music they…
