On the Street
Letters (to the OTS Penthouse Suite) A longtime reader from Austin sent this cryptic video. There was no description. The words in the video speaks for itself but ultimately raise several questions. The video is completely safe for work, as long as you work out at sea, as a prison guard, or as a Division…
On the Street
Letters (to the OTS Penthouse Suite) A longtime reader from Austin sent this cryptic video. There was no description. The words in the video speaks for itself but ultimately raise several questions. The video is completely safe for work, as long as you work out at sea, as a prison guard, or as a…
Odelay (Deluxe Edition)
Odelay (Deluxe Edition) Composer: Beck Conductor: Beck Label: Geffen/Universal Release Date: 2008-02-13 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock Prior to Odelay’s 1996 release, Los Angeleno Beck Hansen was an unlikely one-hit wonder with a crit-friendly, Dylan-esque backstory, a major-label deal, evocative, wholesale lyrical obfuscation, and a perpetual deer-in-the-headlights expression that…
The Heads Sits Upside Down on the Top of the Head
The Heads Sits Upside Down on the Top of the Head Composer: Buttercup Conductor: Buttercup Label: Bedlamb Release Date: 2008-02-13 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: EP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock When Buttercup plotted their three-EPs-in-a-year crusade to bring extreme productivity back to music, The Head Sits Upside Down on the Top of the Head…
ArtBall 2008
Release Date: 2008-02-13 The Artist Foundation of San Antonio transforms the Municipal Auditorium into a brilliant setting as the backdrop for an evening of fundraising for San Antonio artists. Colorful ice sculptures, 80’s boogie music by the only sanctioned Blues Brothers tribute band, and fabulous cuisine by the RK Group is just the beginning —…
SA Jazz Workshop Valentine’s Day Concert
Release Date: 2008-02-13 What to do after dinner and drinks for two? In the spirit of the holiday, the S.A. Jazz Workshop (full disclosure: project of the Current’s Chuck Kerr) will explore the themes of love and romance with straight-ahead and modern jazz at Luna. They’ll be performing original music as well as the classic…
Devil Doll w. Turbo 350
Release Date: 2008-02-13 Weaving tales of sex and sorrow, pleasure and pain, Devil Doll is the epitome of the punk-rock torch singer your father warned you about. The doll is Colleen Duffy, who was raised on Elvis Presley and Joan Jett, and anything goes onstage. Duffy set out to put the sex back into rock…
Conscious Hip-Hop Show w. The Word Association, Notes, Mnolo, Greg & the doomsday device, & DJ Scuba Gooding Sr.
Release Date: 2008-02-13 Experimental electronica and conscious hip-hop reigns with Mnolo, a local producer who’s collaborated with many regional MCs. His lineup includes The Word Association, a hip-hop collective of eight; Notes, a local soulful MC; Greg & the Doomsday Device, boasting a successful electric mayhem night in San Marcos; and local hip-hop artist DJ…
The James Hand Band w. The Texas Sapphires
Release Date: 2008-02-13 James Hand has been filling Texas dancehalls and honky tonks with his traditional County and Western swing for more than 40 years, remaining one of the genre’s secret treasures. He’s experienced so many of life’s joys and hard knocks — and possesses such a talent for making music out of it —…
LA Guns & Black Rose Garden
Release Date: 2008-02-13 L.A. Guns got their start on Sunset Strip over 15 years ago, and their early looks labled them a “hair band.” Despite the music’s more aggravated punk spunk and blue-hued bravado, they never received the accolades they deserve. Their new release, Waking the Dead, furthers the band’s classic rock and blues vibe…
Service Industry CD Release w. Grant Hart, Snowbyrd, & Grand Champeen
Release Date: 2008-02-13 The Austin-based power-pop sextet Service Industry, who take their name from all the ‘little’ people who wait on us, are back again with their second helping of great pop sensibility and straight-up rock with sophomore effort Limited Coverage. This new set, not as overtly antisocial as their debut, still packs plenty of…
Service Industry CD Release w. Grant Hart, Snowbyrd, & Grand Champeen
Release Date: 2008-02-13 In a way, Grant Hart is to Hüsker Dü what Gene Clark is to the Byrds. Clark wrote many of the Byrds’ best original tunes (“I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better,” “She Don’t Care About Time”), but was unjustly overshadowed by granny-glasses-wearing guitarist Roger McGuinn – to the point where McGuinn got…
Texas Music Coalition Open Meeting
Release Date: 2008-02-13 James Hand has been filling Texas dancehalls and honky tonks with his traditional County and Western swing for more than 40 years, remaining one of the genre’s secret treasures. He’s experienced so many of life’s joys and hard knocks — and possesses such a talent for making music out of it —…
SA Jazz Workshop
Release Date: 2008-02-13 What to do after dinner and drinks for two? In the spirit of the holiday, the S.A. Jazz Workshop (full disclosure: project of the Current’s Chuck Kerr) will explore the themes of love and romance with straight-ahead and modern jazz at Luna. They’ll be performing original music as well as the classic…
James Hand
Release Date: 2008-02-13 James Hand has been filling Texas dancehalls and honky tonks with his traditional County and Western swing for more than 40 years, remaining one of the genre’s secret treasures. He’s experienced so many of life’s joys and hard knocks — and possesses such a talent for making music out of it —…
Absolutely no idea
Improvisational musicians tend to lead double or triple lives. Many of them play in fairly traditional rock bands by night and conduct workshops or teach music at schools during the day. But their true passion, the one that they can’t shake, is exploring the possibilities of pure sound and creating music on the fly. Of…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Sax and clarinet master John Magaldi has been one of San Antonio’s leading health-insurance advocates for local musicians, and his Prime Time Jazz Orchestra will perform a benefit show for two in-need local jazz musicians, Ron Wilkins and Mike Pittsley ,at Blue Star Brewing Company (1414 S. Alamo) Friday, February 15. “I don’t know what…
Skin, deep
“There are two things in life which are dependable: the delights of the flesh and the delights of literature.” — Vivian Wu as Nagiko in The Pillow Book Alamo Heights resident Krystal Lynn has found a way to combine the intimacy of touch and the inspiration of the written word in her own style. Add…
Sublime tour guides
Wátina Andy Palacio (Cumbancha/ Stonetree) World-music fans were saddened last month by the untimely death of Andy Palacio, who was only 47 and had spent this decade campaigning to spread awareness of the Garífuna culture, which descended from African slaves shipwrecked in the Caribbean in 1635. His last record, Wátina (Cumbancha/Stonetree), drew rapturous reviews in…
ARTIFACTS
February is special for so many reasons … first of all, football is officially over, which paves the way for Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, and of course, Black History Month. Don’t think we forgot, in fact — we’ve been keeping tabs of all events thanks to sablackhistory.com. This helpful site also provides a forum to…
Playback
Here’s a quick question: What is the most ignominious debacle in the history of the Grammy Awards? Is it Elvis Costello losing out to Taste of Honey for Best New Artist, or Metallica getting piccolo-whipped by Jethro Tull for Best Metal Album? (No, Milli Vanilla doesn’t count, you bastards.) As a closet admirer of the…
Two farces walk into a bar …
As the showbiz adage goes, ya gotta have a gimmick, and the Vexler serves up a twofer with its double bill of classic British farces. Peter Schaffer’s Black Comedy and Michael Frayn’s Chinamen subvert theatrical norms for humorous effect; and while neither play could fill out an evening on its lonesome, together they offer a…
No such thing as a free kitten
D’Anne Trethan’s love is as innocent as any child’s — and it’s as single-minded as an 18-wheeler facing down a stingy traffic light. For decades, the object of that passion has been the neglected and abandoned cats of San Antonio. During that time, she has collected, treated, de-sexed, and adopted out the strays. As she…
Straight Shooter
Shark-Man #1 Words and art by Steve Pugh $3.50, 32 pages (Image) Just when ne’er-do-wells thought it was safe to get back in the water, Shark-Man’s returned to … to what exactly? Beats me. I hardly know the dude and, like my grandma says, “If a man’s wearing gloves made of metal-cutting shark’s teeth, there’s…
Laundering instructions for all your fine washables
Rinse cycle The jefe of the Texas House of Representatives is in hot water this week over vicarious $50,000 contributions to Craddick D campaigns — in alleged violation of a state law that prohibits candidates for speaker from buying seats through the ballot box. Watchdog group Texans for Public Justice (the proverbial thorn in the…
Home on the Range
Not long ago, I hooked up with a few mom friends for dinner, and things went so swimmingly that we decided to meet up on a monthly basis. My husband, while not philosophically opposed to my right to a little social interaction sans children, seemed less than thrilled about my burgeoning girls’ night out (the…
They’ve got issues
If you search for the words “legislation,” “policy,” and “substance” in the past year’s campaign coverage, what turns up is a pile of articles mostly lamenting their absence. While the media has certainly been derelict in its analysis of what the candidates have actually done, beneath this negligence lies a dirty little secret: Candidates don’t…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: My parents were Greeks who legally immigrated to the United States in 1920. When it became harder for Greeks to immigrate, they began to jump ship in New York. My father referred to them as “bananas — fresh off the boat,” but it was mostly an affectionate name. The Greek community took care of them and…
Parking lots are the answer
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, made the first serious examination of energy conservation in the United States back in 1971. Last night, he told San Antonio residents at the Witte Museum that his most recent research suggests San Anto can not only do without nuclear power — but…
Clothes-minded
Believe it or not, I’m not really much of a product person. With clothes, what you see is pretty much what you get. Blouses don’t come with “10-percent thinner arms” promised on the sleeve. But I’ve found skin, hair, and face-care products very rarely live up to their claims, and out of a desperate need to…
Annals of Internet Dating, Part III
Welcome to the third installment on finding love and happiness online. In the previous two columns I discussed selecting a site, posting pictures, and writing your profile. Now it is time to go live and find a date or a mate. Once you have looked around and read some profiles, hopefully you will have discovered…
CRITICAL Darling
I’m not there. At the Current. Look, it’s not forever, just a few more days. I’m in Los Angeles (or I will be, I’ve written ahead of myself; who knows if I made it?) at a theater-writing fellowship, star-watching (one of my smug early-bird fellow fellows has already e-nounced that she peeped Russell Crowe and…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Happy Valentine Daze, Aries! After meditating about what advice would be most useful for your love life during the rest of 2008, I decided on this observation from 17th-century philosopher Sir Francis Bacon: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” In other words, you should…
Live by the screen, love by the screen
Every now and then I get the feeling that romantic comedies might be, well, a little unrealistic. No fucking way, you’re thinking, movies would never lie to us! Excellent point, and normally I would agree with you. There’s just one little problem … couples in movies don’t have issues, they have obstacles. Most movie romances…
Liquid gold
The candlelight dinner — let’s face it in the cold light of MasterCard bills — doesn’t produce the return on investment that it used to, back when dimmers and amber sconces weren’t a staple in every Fleming’s chain and going out to eat wasn’t simply the sum of overbooked life plus hungry family. So, nice,…
Tough love in Jerusalem
The seventh-annual edition of the San Antonio Jewish Film Festival, screening at the San Antonio Museum of Art February 16-21, surpasses its predecessors in range and artistry. It opens with Nina’s Home, the astonishing story of a Frenchwoman who set about providing a haven for children orphaned and traumatized by the Holocaust. It includes a…
Amuse-BOUCHE
“We might just blow it off, the calculations, and just drive,” said Bistro Vatel chef-owner Damien Watel, who’s in Mexico this week with Gore Design Completion’s Jerry Gore for the four-day, thousand-mile Del Golfo Al Pacifico road rally from Veracruz to Acapulco, with a scenic stop in Cuernavaca. On the street in SA this week:…
Spittin’ Game
Burnout Paradise (EA) Xbox 360 $59.99 Strangely enough, Burnout Paradise isn’t a video game about Austin (rimshot), but the latest entry in the ever kick-ass Burnout series. The fast action and slow-motion car crashes of past games have kept drunk people at my house for countless hours of late-night fun over the years, but EA…
A night on another town
One might wonder what to expect from new drinkeries called Chicago Bar and New York Bar, but it appears the owners — who named previous ventures Babcock and Broadway after their respective streets, are simply upping the thematic ante. I headed out with friends on a weeknight to compare the new Northside bars, only realizing…
Small favors
Um, all that stuff we said in my last post about the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission being populated by closeted, goat-sucking, vampyric creeps, well that may or may not be exactly right. Just a week after state, local, and national citizens groups started filing legal complaints with the agency, the NRC did a grand and…
New World second labels
The Judgment of Paris, as the infamous 1976 competition has come to be called, proved to the world that California wines could not only stand up to the French, but that they could beat them blind. The competition kick-started the California wine industry and established an instant, American wine aristocracy. Among the winners thus anointed…
… and the poets mourn
It brings much sadness to announce the death of San Antonio-born poet and hero raúlsalinas. Last night he passed on and left his mark on not only the Chicano poetry movement but the many causes he fought for. As his site labeled him “the Cockroach poet,” he paved the way for poets set out on…
Small favors
Um, all that stuff we said in my last post about the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission being populated by closeted, goat-sucking, vampyric creeps, well that may or may not be exactly right. Just a week after state, local, and national citizens groups started filing legal complaints with the agency, the NRC did a grand and…
An open letter to SA’s CIA
January 30, 2008 Shelley Grieshaber Culinary Institute of America, San Antonio 312 Pearl Parkway Building C San Antonio, TX 78215 Dear Shelley Grieshaber, Congratulations on the recent changes! I’m excited the cooking school is now officially affiliated with the Culinary Institute of America. And the new program dedicated to Latin American cuisine should help establish a great…
… and the poets mourn
It brings much sadness to announce the death of San Antonio-born poet and hero raúlsalinas. Last night he passed on and left his mark on not only the Chicano poetry movement but the many causes he fought for. As his site labeled him “the Cockroach poet,” he paved the way for poets set out on…
NRC-Saw
Frustrating those who question the wisdom of expanding the South Texas Nuclear Project, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted the application to build and operated two new nukes at the Matagorda site. That is, they accepted the application despite finding major gaps in it that have frozen the review process. While that may delay the…
NRC-Saw
Frustrating those who question the wisdom of expanding the South Texas Nuclear Project, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted the application to build and operated two new nukes at the Matagorda site. That is, they accepted the application despite finding major gaps in it that have frozen the review process. While that may delay the…
