Relatively recent Weekly feature subjectMayyrh Records –– like its weird Seattle/Fort Worth brethren, Indian Casino Records –– is forging ahead with new releases, soul-destroying bottom lines and days and nights of Top Ramen be damned. The label run by Zanzibar Snails’ Nevada Hill and Michael Chamy has just released three handmade limited edition CDs/DVDrs –– all three feature screen-printed designs by noted graphic designer/artist Hill and are packaged in vellum sleeves. One of the releases is Age of Disinformation, 45 minutes of live experimental improv by a one-time North Texas supergroup of vocalist Aaron Gonzalez (Yells at Eels, Akkolyte), analog patch synthist Jon Teague (drummer for The Great Tyrant, and the defunct yet still vital Yeti), guitarist Kenny Withrow (Tidbits, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians), and several other participants. Another release is D & N 2, the full-length, wool-packaged (no kidding) debut from Hill and occasional Snail David Lee Price. The third Mayyrh release is the Snails’ Journey Into Amazing Caves, a CD/DVD double featuring visuals by Price and the kind of aural mind-blowery that not long ago caught the attention of the estimable U.K. magazine Wire and allowed for the Snails to sit in with Black Flag’s Greg Ginn. Copies are available locally at Good Records in Dallas, Recycled Books in Denton, and, if you’re in Austin, End of an Ear; online via Mayyrh’s website.
Zanzibar Snails next recording will be out soon on New York’s Tape Drift Records.
It's a beautiful day in the NeighborHOOF if you're Ryan Thomas Becker
Though he’s not technically a Fort Worthian, RTB2 –– the nom de rock of Dentonite singer-songwriter Ryan Thomas Becker –– plays the 817 enough and has worked with enough 817 artists (Eaton Lake Tonics, The Missile Men) to earn the much sought-after distinction of Honorary Cowtowner and Occasional Subject of Steely, Poetic Fort Worth Weekly Critics’ Pens. RTB2 has a new album coming out –– via perhaps Dallas’ most experimental, progressive manufacturers and distributors of fine indie rock, Gutterth –– and based on a couple of tracks streamed here, Neighborhoof stands to go down as an incontestable contemporary of such regional gems as Dove Hunter’s The Southern Unknown, Centro-matic’s Fort Recovery, and Telegraph Canyon’s The Tide and The Current. Though the fickle mainstream consciousness has yet to render a verdict on Telegraph’s latest –– the album just came out –– Dove Hunter’s and Centro’s burned bright for a few minutes before vanishing in poofs of unintelligible metaphors, obscure references, and four-and-a-half stars. (Has there been any quantitative assessment of commercial response to the positive review of The Theater Fire’s most recent album in Pitchfork, that tastemaking media outlet to best all other tastemakers? Just curious.)
An equally ominous fate is hot on Neighborhoof’s, uh, heels –– there just might not be enough of a critical mass of Dentonites and other art history majors in North Texas to propel the LP out of the region, into the ears of national power brokers, and onto the iPods of hipsters in Brooklyn, Berkeley, and Seattle. Let’s hope I’m dead wrong. The blocky, fuzzed-out but jangly, Nirvana-esque riff that intros “Seek Fire, Anime Kids” tumbles out of an amp whose head no doubt has been punctured by a screwdriver or some other stabby implement. All angry riffage, splashy/stomping drums, treble, and Becker’s bullet-mic’d voice, “Seek Fire” is a ditty but a grungy, catchy one. Don’t ask me what it’s about. The creepily titled “Where Your Father Didn’t Go” is a swaying, “Earth Angel”-ic, 1950s-style let’s-not-dance-too-close-in-the-gym ballad erected upon plink-plink-plinking piano, rim shots, and moaning violin that alternates between accompanying the 88s in unison and responding to Becker’s plaintive calls. I don’t want to know what the song is about. Then there’s the trés Beck-ian “Praying Matas”: lots of squealing and wheezing synths, dainty Casio beats, and a chorus of oooh-OOOH-oooh. Sample some RTB2 on Sunday at Hailey’s (122 Mulberry St, Denton, 940-323-1160), when he with some backing musos shares a bill with Generationals and the F-Dub’s Burning Hotels.
The Fort Worth premiere of filmmaker Tom Huckabee’s early short The Death Of Jim Morrison is at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday at The Butterfly Connection, 2812 Race St.
The movie is about the demise of Doors frontman Jim Morrison.
Ticket price: $10. For more info, call 323-868-5639.
Huckabee created the movie in the late 1970s while attending film school at the University of Texas at Austin. The movie’s violence and drugs stirred up aruckus at its original Austin screening way back when, as noted in this Fort Worth Weeklycover story on Huckabee.
Channel 8 came out with an interesting report today about the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) summoning gas drilling executives down to Austin and cracking the whip. Seems the state has finally decided to regulate an industry that has run rampant for years.
Just think about all those critics who used to get ridiculed at Fort Worth city hall for complaining about the toxic pollution being spewed from drilling sites into neighborhoods. Fort Worth wasn’t interested in doing studies on the emissions. City officials just wanted to drill as hard and fast as they could. People who complained got shushed or ignored.
When other folks around the state began studying the emissions, they – surprise! – found toxic pollution.
Now TCEQ is asking for more emissions controls.
And, as Fort Worth Weekly has noted before (most recently in this week’s Turkeys edition) Fort Worth officials led by Mayor Mike “The Gasfather” Moncrief are reportedly expressing shock about this toxic crap. (How can someone be surprised about something that’s been obvious and continually discussed for the past several years?)
Moncrief says he and his gang of waterboys have a new “top priority” — identifying the impacts of gas drilling “on the health and safety of our citizens,” he said.
Uh, aren’t y’all the ones who hooked up the hose, closed the garage door, and started up the car in the first place?
Indian Casino Records is forging ahead with new releases, even though the Seattle-based label with strong Fort Worth ties has been punched in the gut by the depressed, borderline angry economy. “Still swimmin’ in the red but looking ahead,” said Casino honcho, sole employee, and Seattlean-via-Haltom City John Frum, whose label was the subject of a Weekly cover story several months ago. On tap for February is The Return of HellDamnCrap, a compilation CD referencing another Fort Worth indie label but one that’s long defunct. More than a dozen bands –– most from the 817 –– are contributing tracks, including Drug Mountain; PFFFFT!; The Me-Thinks; Eyes, Wings, and Many Other Things; Rapid Chair; One-Fingered Fist; Andy Gassaway (a.k.a. Jimmy Andrews); Transient Songs; Shotgun Messenger; Gordo’s Birthday; Napoleon Complex; Vorvon; and Mr. Houston’s Project. There’s room for two more tracks, Frum says. If you’re in a band and are interested in contributing, contact Frum at jack@indiancasinorecords.com.
Here’s the video for Eyes, Wings, and Many Other Things’ “Sled Dogs’ Annual Revenge” off the Fort Worth band’s 2008 album Tonsils, Toes, and Everyone Knows on Indian Casino.
The Fort Worth stage meets world literature this weekend as Pantagleize Theatre Company offers a very rare production of Irish playwright Sean O’Casey’s 1949 ”Cock A Doodle Dandy.” It’s an elegantly crude fairy tale of sexual repression and frisky fowl that stars – to quote Brad Pitt in “Fight Club” – “a nice big cock.” O’Casey has been largely forgotten except by scholars and theater cultists, which is a shame. He was a nuanced political thinker with a poet’s ear for shimmering Irish vernacular. He could, as someone once said, find the pretty pony hidden beneath the big pile of horseshit and give both their due.
O’Casey’s plays attracted two of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers early in their careers. Alfred Hitchcock adapted ”Juno and the Paycock” (1930) to become his second “talkie” and something of an experiment for the entire fledgling British studio system. John Ford, Irish American to the bone, shot O’Casey’s ”The Plough and the Stars” in 1936. It dramatized the 1916 Easter Uprising and tried to explain to U.S. audiences the divided soul of Ireland – fighting alongside England in WWI while preparing underground to fight its oppression at home.
Being typically Irish, O’Casey was endlessly quotable. My favorites are “I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible” and “Money does not make you happy but it quiets the nerves.”
If you've seen the depicted guitar anywhere other than on Automorrow frontman Ben Napier's body, let the band know.
On Sat., Nov. 14, two guitars belonging to the local band Automorrow were stolen outside The Grotto on University Drive by the West 7th Street corridor. One is a cream-colored Washburn electric with a single cutaway body and black pick-guard in a rectangular case. The other is an Epiphone acoustic with a Seymour-Duncan pickup mounted to the body in a black hard case. If returned, the band says, no questions will be asked. Contact the band via its MySpace page.
Restaurants that charge high-dollar for meals get panicky during recessions. Maybe that explains Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House “Get Friscy” ad campaign.
This morning, I was looking at the September 2009 edition of Fort Worth Texas, the glossy magazine that cheerleads for our fair city. Page 81 sports a Del Frisco’s ad depicting two couples in fancy clothing, sharing a table, eating lobster, drinking wine, and apparently getting primed for some post-dinner date-swapping.
Boing! (That sound effect referred to a fork falling off the table; get your minds out of the gutter, people.)
The ad depicts one of the women giving her date a forkload of lobster. But underneath the table, you see that she has kicked off a shoe and is playing footsie with the other man, who is smiling at his own date with loving devotion.
Maybe it’s easier to sell $100 steak dinners if you offer a French dessert — the ménage à trois pudding.
One thing confuses me. The woman playing footsie is wearing a black stiletto heel on her left foot. Her right foot is bare, and she is using her toes to rub the other man’s leg. But there is no spare shoe lying under the table. She either entered the restaurant missing a shoe (doubtful, since she looks fairly affluent and could surely afford to buy two shoes at a time), or she kicked off her shoe with such adulterous zeal that it flew across the room and impaled another diner.
I had to double-check the sky last night. There were no fiery horses stampeding from above. No dragons spewing pestilence. This dude gave nary a peep.
I suspected that the ordination of Susan Slaughter as Fort Worth’s first female Episcopal priest yesterday afternoon would prompt such a non-apocalypse. This is not to detract from Slaughter’s milestone – a former speech pathologist, teacher, deacon, and a grandmother, she seems more than qualified. Congrats to all.
Poor Bishop Iker and his fold – they still believe they’ve magically transported themselves to Argentina and a less woman-friendly diocese. Normally, I’d say: Et’s-lay ust-jay umor-hay em-thay. But they want their righteous ideological split without the painful sacrifice of title and property, hence the imminent legal disputes.
Of course, they’ve still got The Gayz to kick around, but not forever. If Iker et al continue to deny qualified people the chance to serve their religious communities because of Iker’s “deeply held convictions” — well, Mick and Keith and the boys offer a reminder of what the universe eventually forces such stubborn people to do.
As first reported on Blotch, the Oscar-winning Coen brothers (No Country For Old Men; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Fargo; The Big Lebowski) will be holding open auditions tomorrow (Saturday) at Billy Bob’s (2520 Rodeo Plaza in the Stockyards, 817-624-7117) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for a white girl between the ages of 12 and 16 for the lead role in the brothers’ forthcoming remake of John Wayne’s 1969 Western True Grit. The plot revolves around Mattie, a tough, hardscrabble girl who hires two U.S. marshals to avenge her father’s death. For the audition, no acting experience is required. Each auditioner is encouraged to bring a current photo and only one family member. Filming will begin in spring 2010. Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Jeff Bridges are already onboard.
One of HearSay’s favorite new(-ish) 817 bands, The Noble Chocolatiers, have effected something of a local coup. Though they don’t play much and really don’t ingratiate themselves with the local scene and/or scenesters, ’dem chocolate-manufacturing noblemen will be opening for hot-shit Brooklynites Bishop Allen and brand-Nubian Darwin Deez at Lola’s Saloon-Sixth (2736 W 6th St, in the W 7th St corridor, 817-877-0666) on Saturday. Tix are $10.
Also on Saturday, catch two outré Fort Worth acts at Lola’s Saloon-Stockyards (105 W Exchange Av, 817-386-5008): Stooges tribute act Stoogeaphilia and cowpunks –– and Fort Worth Weekly Music Awards winners for best new act –– The Dangits.
Tonight (Friday) in the Stockyards, at White Elephant Saloon (106 E Exchange Av, 817-624-9712), it’s Fort Worth Texas Music purveyor extraordinaire Stephen Pointer and his band.
On Sunday, one of Fort Worth’s most traditional C&W bands, 100 Damned Guns, opens for Wichita’s Split Lip Rayfield and Dallas’ The O’s at Granada Theater (3524 Greenville Av, Dallas, 214-826-1885).
So Rufus Wainwright is playing Bass Hall (555 Commerce St, Sundance Square, 817-212-4280) on Saturday. When his eponymous debut came out in 1998, I thought, “Holy shit. This is the best, most lush, most awesome orchestral pop music I’ve ever heard,” closely edging out select tracks from Bjork’s Debut. Then all the sudden, Rufus shelved his piano for a guitar and traded in his penchant for epic Broadway-ish melodies for simple, repetitive choruses, and, though I’ve tried, I can’t get back on the Rufus Bus. As of now, he’ll go down in my book as one of the biggest disappointments of the past 20 years. What a shame. Anyway, tix are $21-75.
In Dallas on Saturday, you’ve got another supremely promising outfit, Sweden’s Peter Bjorn and John*, with El Perro del Mar at House of Blues (2200 N Lamar St, 214-373-8000). Tix are $18-40.
*Not only is the PJ&J video below cool as hell and unlike anything you’ve probably ever seen before, the song is awesome –– totally catchy and danceable –– and unlike anything you’ve probably ever heard before. It’s all arty and hip but not pretentious. The sequencing of the footage of the Japanese greasers’ dance moves occasionally matches the song’s tempo, heightening the overall surreality quotient –– not only are Japanese greasers dancing in the street, your brain says to itself, but they’re dancing to a giddily plodding song anchored by a chorus sung by what sounds like a children’s choir. Pretty badass stuff. I wish more artists flipped wigs as effectively and often as PB&J.
“Do this thing, this type of thing / Put a little money in this type of thing / I got nothing to worry about / I got nothing to worry about.”
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