Growing pains
Neko Case Elvis Costello The Pixies In its third year, the ACL Music Festival continues to adjust to its massive popularity In this era of misbegotten musical festivals, the rare successes seem to offer a clear message: Isolate a narrow, impassioned demographic and give them exactly what they want. It’s a strategy that’s worked with…
Sound and the Fury
Neko Case Elvis Costello The Pixies A week on the scene Sol sacrifice Sexto Sol singer/keyboardist Sam Villela has spent most of this year in Iraq, fulfilling his commitments as an active-duty member of the U.S. Army Reserves. But this month, Villela gets a two-week break from his Iraqi duties to join his family for…
Prime time
East Side ready to reap rewards from EZ bonds On April 4, 1988, the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, three white men threw a can of white paint onto the King statue at the intersection of New Braunfels Avenue and East Houston Street. The Martin Luther King Jr. statue stands in the…
Burden of dreams
Burden Brothers: loud, fast, and spontaneous. Veterans of the Toadies and Rev. Horton Heat hook up and make arena-rock without apology Vaden Todd Lewis and Tim DeLaughter don’t have much in common artistically. As the leader of the Toadies, Lewis specialized in dark, spleen-venting assaults like “I Come From the Water” and the surprise 1995…
High tension
To residents’ dismay, CPS board approves route for transmission lines The shades were pulled. The room was cool. The conversation, muffled. “It’s a little like coming to a funeral,” noted a woman to her friend across the aisle. “‘Why are you there? To put it to rest?'” On September 10 the City Public Service Board…
Doing the collapse
Guided By Voices leader Bob Pollard recently explained his decision to bust up his band this way: He’d been waiting for years to make a perfect album, and now that he’d finally pulled it off, it was the ideal time to bring down the curtain. Half Smiles of the Decomposed, reportedly the band’s final studio…
News : Dark chapter continues with ‘Express-News’
Could it be time for Jim Crow to submit his resignation? The San Antonio Express-News has never publicly announced it, but Jim Crow seems to be one of that newspaper’s editorial writers. Case in point: Crow penned an unsigned editorial last week that claims City Hall’s history has just passed a “dark chapter,” referring to…
Lone Flatlander
Jimmie Dale Gilmore You get used to waiting if you’re a Jimmie Dale Gilmore fan. Look at this list of release dates for his latest solo albums, and see if you determine a pattern: 1991, 1993, 1996, 2000. By that reckoning, his next release ought to be next year, but I for one am not…
The up-and-comers
Actor Billy Muñoz at Jump-Start Performance Company. Executive Director Steve Bailey says Muñoz shows promise on stage and in the lighting box. (Photos by Mark Greenberg) New talent grows in the bright lights of San Antonio’s theaters Though San Antonio is infamous for losing its homegrown theater talent to the bright lights of the big…
Armchair Cinephile
Long live slack One of the coolest, and in its way most influential, of all Texas movies, Richard Linklater’s Slacker (Criterion Collection) has taken its sweet time getting to DVD shelves. And while associating the film with laziness misses the point, it’s easy to imagine some of its inhabitants having misgivings about the format: “I…
Actor’s Equity 101
Is union membership a panacea or a pain in the ass for the city’s performers? Actor’s Equity is a national labor union founded in 1913 as the first American actor union. Equity’s jurisdiction covers actors and stage managers in the professional theater. What Equity isn’t is a synonym for “professional” or even “quality” work. Pick…
Una triste noticia
Tristísima entre tanta noticia triste ha sido la que apareció no hace mucho en los periódicos de San Antonio: el cierre de la Librería Valenzuela apenas un año después de haberse inaugurado. Triste sobre toda noticia porque representa el fracaso de un ideal y la pérdida de una entidad cultural que, en su pequeña medida…
It’s not over ’til the fat lady sings
The San Antonio Lyric Opera’s 2004-05 season includes special effects for the scene in which Don Giovanni is dragged into hell’s maw (June 17-19). San Antonio’s Lyric Opera returns from the brink grander than ever “Ihave a lot of ambitions,” says Mark Richter, director of the San Antonio Lyric Opera. It’s a statement few who…
Word on the street
News and notes from San Antonio’s literary scene Felicitaciones! Kudos to Diane Gonzales Bertrand, who has been receiving much praise for My Pal, Victor/Mi amigo, Victor, her latest bilingual childrens’ book about a friendship between two boys. Most recently it was honored as September’s book of the month from area Barnes & Noble stores. The…
Talking shop with John Sayles
Danny Huston, son of the legendary John Huston, is a redeemed muckraker up against the wall and a crooked political ring in Silver City. Chris Cooper plays a Dubya double named Dickie Pilager in John Sayles’ Silver City. Indie film icon John Sayles toured through Texas in June to attend the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies…
What can brown do for you?
“We need a day without a Mexican in California. That way they can miss us,” said filmmaker Yareli Arizmendi when she was struck by the inspiration for her film. Yareli Arizmendi confronts immigration issues head-on in ‘A Day Without a Mexican’ In the mid-1990s, husband-and-wife filmmaking team Yareli Arizmendi and Sergio Arau found themselves in…
Long time gone
Former Kansas City Black Panther leader Pete O’Neal and his wife Charlotte reminisce over memorabilia in their home-in-exile in Tanzania. Black Panther Pete O’Neal reflects on his exile in Africa In 1970, Pete O’Neal, the outspoken, confrontational founder of the Kansas City Black Panther Party, left the United States and went into exile following his…
New reviews and special screenings
Tim Robbins searches for Samantha Morton, a violator of Code 46, in a virus-and memory-warped fog. Code 46 Dir. Michael Winterbottom; writ. Frank Cottrell Boyce; feat. Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Togo Igawa, Nabil Elouhabi, Jonathan Ibbotson (R) Would you have trouble imagining a world in which cloning raged so out of hand that prospective co-procreators…
Mideast meets west
Lamb gormeh sabzi, tahdig, and a glass of St. Francis wine at Shiraz Persian restaurant. Shiraz’ Persian feasts combines cuisines from the Old and New Worlds There are those who contend that the roots of Mexican cuisine are not all they might seem. Think medieval Persia, specifically Baghdad, and the Islamic occupation of Spain. The…
All You Can Eat
A customer enjoys a late lunch at Sip. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Recently opened: Culver’s Restaurant, 5836 DeZavala, features signature menu items including a butterburger and frozen custard. The butterburger is made from 100 percent U.S. beef sandwiched between two lightly buttered, toasted buns. The frozen…
The lovely legume
CUTLINE (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Loaded with protein, the bean is a vegetarian staple It happens eventually. Vegetarians, shyly asking the waiter that the bacon be left off their salads, are outed in front of their meat-eating dinner companions, who, recoiling, swipe their greasy bibs over their mouths to hide their embarrassment. After the meat-eaters…
