SWINGS, SINGS, AND GUITAR SLINGS
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (Courtesy photo) Louisiana-born, Texas-raised legend does more than sing the blues Houston, Texas, 1947. Texas-born pioneer of the electrified blues guitar T-Bone Walker is the star attraction at entrepreneur Don Robey’s garishly named Bronze Peacock Dinner Club, frequent home to such touring acts as Ruth Brown and Louis Jordan. But T-Bone…
GROWING PAINS
Lloyd Barnes, president of Huntleigh Park Residents’ Association, stands at the intersection of Hollyspring and Susanwood on the city’s East Side. The intersection would become an entrance into a controversial multi-family development. Barnes and the neighborhood association oppose plans for two new housing subdivisions on the East Side. Photo by Mark Greenberg East Side…
WAINWRIGHT STUFF
Rufus Wainwright (Courtesy photo) When Rufus Wainwright emerged with his self-titled debut album in 1998, he felt like an inspired anachronism: a young, Canadian Randy Newman with an angel’s honeyed pipes, blessed/cursed with the audacity to think he could scale the operatic heights of Bizet or Verdi. Poses, Wainwright’s 2001 followup, was a pained…
BUS (DIS)SERVICE
Maria Arelleano (center) and Jackie Ortiz (right), exit a VIA bus at the intersection of Huebner Road and N.W. Military Hwy. The women, who have worked as housekeepers on the city’s North Side for over a decade, have to take three buses to get to this intersection where their employers pick them up for…
SOUND AND THE FURY
a week on the scene DON’T SAVE THE DATE After tagging its concert dates for 2003-04 at the Majestic Theater, the San Antonio Symphony, which cancelled its upcoming performance season due to financial crises, recently announced that it will release most of them back into the wild – reserving some dates in the spring for…
THE BAREST BONES
It would be nice if songwriter Joe Henry, who won a Grammy for last year’s Solomon Burke masterpiece Don’t Give Up On Me, were finally breaking into the mainstream. More likely, his ideas will seep into the marketplace of sound like those of other artists – Daniel Lanois, T-Bone Burnett, Brian Eno – who…
ALL EARS
OTHERWORLDLY VOICES Some voices are so compelling they win us over no matter what language they sing. Cesaria Evora has one of those – a buttery, delicate but strong alto that would be entrancing in the harshest tongue but is positively hypnotic when spilling out the soft consonants and gentle cadences of Portuguese. Evora comes…
THE ART OF WOMAN
A detail of Analia Segal’s work (Courtesy photo) Finesilver Gallery features ‘Feminizing Forms?,’ featuring artists Analia Segal and Ethel Shipton “Art is form struggling to wake from the nightmare of nature,” Camille Paglia writes in Sexual Personae, her successful bid to become persona non grata on Mars and Venus. Like that often misunderstood work,…
ARTIFACTS
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene A slew of visual artist international residency programs have upcoming application deadlines. The Nordic Institute for Contemporary Arts is accepting applications for its 2004 Media Arts Residency Program, MEDIA AiR. The NIFCA has residencies available in Tallinn, Estonia; Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Latvia; Bergen, Norway; Stockholm, Sweden;…
WOODY ALLEN FINDS A PLACE TO PARK
Jason Biggs portrays an aspiring comic writer in Woody Allen’s Anything Else. (Courtesy photo) ‘Anything Else’ is another brilliant maniac movie One of the miracles of studio movies is how drivers in Manhattan always find an empty parking space. About two-thirds of the way through Anything Else, David Dobel sits in his red Porsche…
NEW REVIEWS
Matchstick Men Dir. Ridley Scott; writ. Nicholas Griffin, Ted Griffin, based on a novel by Eric Garcia; feat. Nicholas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Alison Lohman, Bruce McGill (PG-13) Like Tony Shalhoub’s Monk, the TV detective whose multiple phobias handicap him in everything but solving crimes, Nicholas Cage’s Roy is a master grifter when not incapacitated by…
Armchair Cinephile
Live in concert Johnny Cash: A Concert Behind Prison Walls Marvin Gaye: Live in Montreux 1980 Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind (Eagle Vision) Heartworn Highways (Catfish Entertainment) Paul Weller Live (Yep Roc) The Legend Lives On: A Tribute to Bill Monroe (Koch Vision Entertainment) New Order 316 (Rhino) God is in the House…
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Once Upon a Time in the West Dir. Sergio Leone; writ. Leone & Sergio Donati; feat. Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti, Woody Strode, Jack Elam (PG-13) Next Tuesday marks the end of this summer’s Texas Public Radio “Cinema Tuesdays” series, and it is as good a time as any to…
RECENT REVIEWS
American Splendor Dir. Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini; writ. Berman, Pulcini, Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner; feat. Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, James Urbaniak, Earl Billings, Judah Friedlander, Pekar, Brabner (R) Early on, the filmmakers capture the precise vibe of some of comic illustrator Harvey Pekar’s best-known scenes. But Berman and Pulcini aren’t only interested in dramatizing…
