GRAVE DIGGERS
Barely a minute into The New Romance, the sophomore release from Seattle art-punk quintet Pretty Girls Make Graves, singer Andrea Zollo lays down her mantra. Over her band’s pulsating groove, she repeatedly howls, “Make it electric” – following that demand by explaining – “I’ve got to know I’m still alive.” Over the course of…
NO SHAME
District 5 City Councilwoman Patti Radle addresses the issue of domestic violence at recent meeting at Our Lady of the Lake University. There were more than 9,700 reports of domestic violence assaults in San Antonio last year. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Help is there for family violence victims Margie urged everyone in City Council…
RE-ENTERING THE WU
1995 was a good year for commercial rap. Tupac Shakur dropped his most sincere – and arguably his greatest – album, Me Against the World, while behind bars. Mobb Deep redefined street rhymes with “Shook One Pt II,” and Premier released his most slept-on album via Group Home’s Livin Proof. 1995 was also the…
SOUND AND THE FURY
a week on the scene CULTURE SOUND AFFECTS Culture Sound Records has just released the first 12-inch single from Assasyn Dynasty’s upcoming LP Classified, and it is mad impressive. Produced by Jaz Infinite and executive produced by Mr. Wondarime, the disc features “Sacrifice” on Side A, and “Vaccination” on Side B. Each is a piano-and-strings-driven…
ALMS FOR THE CONFLICTED
Visage Artist Michael Velliquette constructs silhouettes of self-identity The Doppelgänger is a fiend of myth, an apparitional double that, according to folklore, attacks and consumes its human look-alike unless destroyed on first contact. San Antonio-based artist Michael Velliquette takes this dark phenomenon and flips it on its ass, churning out a campy, lighthearted body…
ALL EARS
A PSYCHEDELIC ROBERT EARL? Have all those ya-hooing frat boys who follow Robert Earl Keen around finally moved on from Lone Star and Copenhagen to LSD? You gotta wonder, and that’s not only because the singer’s new Farm Fresh Onions features cover art that is alternately groovy, color-shifted, and chicken-scratch scrawled, with a John Deere-sized…
ARTIFACTS
Visage (detail), at Three Walls gallery, through October 31. News and notes from the San Antonio art scene Three Walls Gallery wants to go astray – to the Stray Show, that is. A prestigious, invitation-only annual exhibit, the Stray Show runs concurrent with Art Chicago at the Navy Pier. San Antonio’s artist-run Three Walls…
A PIOUS JEW LOSES HIS EARLOCKS
Mendy (Oren Rehany) and Sasha (Tchelet Semel) in The Holy Land (Courtesy photo) Exploring an Israeli conflict within the soul of a young kosher The Holy Land, whose title oozes with irony, begins with an image of the burning of an Israeli flag. “Men in the Middle East are primitive and stupid,” observes a…
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL ENTERTAINMENT
Miles Massey (George Clooney) and Marilyn Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty (Courtesy photo) The Coen Brothers do it again – super-sexy Hollywood style Über-Hollywooder Catherine Zeta-Jones in the cast. A screenplay that came to them second-hand. A trailer that looks like an assembly-line romantic comedy fairytale. Have the Coen Brothers…
UNCIVIL PROCEEDINGS
Left to right: Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman) points his finger at Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman) (Courtesy photo) ‘Runaway Jury’ takes a three-way battle of wits and runs with it In lawyer-author John Grisham’s 1996 runaway bestseller Runaway Jury, a big tobacco company is the defendant in a product liability trial. By 2003, legal judgments…
Armchair Cinephile
LOW BUDGETS, CASTING COUCHES, AND KILLER FISH The Roger Corman Classics Collection (New Concorde) The Howling (MGM) Return of the Secaucus 7 (MGM) Blue Car (Miramax) The Day of the Dolphin (Home Vision Entertainment) The Hunted (Paramount) It is a little hard not to snicker at the title of the new box set called…
RECENT REVIEWS
Kill Bill The members of the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad look over their former colleague and latest victim, The Bride, in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume One. (Courtesy photo) Dir. & writ. Quentin Tarantino; feat. Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Sonny Chiba, Julie Dreyfus, David Carradine (R) The movie follows…
CONTINENTAL DRIFT
Waitress Helen Jalomo serves a plate of Tacos Norteño to Sergio Castilleja (right) – the self proclamed “Jared” of the Continental Lunchroom – as fellow probation department employees Tony Zermeno (left), Roland Lankford (2nd from right), and Kurt Goslin (top right), look on. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Downtown restaurant a pedestrian diner’s delight Long…
‘RESTAURANT’ REALITY
The man, the brand: Rocco DiSpirito (Courtesy photo) The waiting is the hardest part “Hel-lo, my name is Stev-en. I’m going to be your wait-er this eve-ning. Press one if you would like a mar-ti-ni. Press two if you would like a mer-lot …. ” So went the stand- up act of a chef…
GOD ROCK
Newsboy: The driving force of Festival Con Dios (Courtesy photo) Festival Con Dios spotlights the conflicted subculture of Christian music Festival Con Dios travels from town to town in a portable stadium, with a hydraulic stage that can be reconstructed in only four hours. In a way, the logistics of Festival Con Dios -…
CAUGHT IN A TRAP
Because of code violations and construction problems, Springview South was half-empty until recently. Last year, more than 20 residents of other public housing developments received letters approving transfers to Springview. To date, none of the residents has been allowed to move in. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) A year ago, public housing residents were promised…
ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS
Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience, by Greg Tate (Lawrence Hill Books) In his thin, but fascinating Jimi Hendrix primer, Greg Tate makes sense of White America’s favorite Black artist Twelve years ago, Greg Tate’s amazing Flyboy in the Buttermilk raised the bar for b-boy manifestos, music journalism, and cultural criticism. Intellectual,…
