Posts Tagged by Listening
Fist City
| February 26, 2010 | Filled under Blog, Video |
Each Thursday for the Houston Press Music Blog, Craigers and I do a joint column called He Said She Said where we pick our ten favorite songs on a certain subject. We’ve written about first dates, New Year’s resolutions and music from the Oughts*. This week the Houston Rodeo comes to town, probably the biggest rodeo in the universe, and so we looked at our favorite country music by women.
Here’s mine.
Here’s his:
My god. Fist City is an awesome song.
Warpaint
| February 23, 2010 | Filled under Video |
Saw their first two songs at Walter’s tonight after the Kinky Friedman show at Mucky Duck. Had to come home to do school work and work work. But they were awesome. I’m sold.
Whine & Grine
| February 17, 2010 | Filled under Photo Album |
So I was mistaken in my last post. The photog did take a lot of pics of English Beat, and you can see them in a slideshow on the Houston Press website. Sorry Marco.
English Beat of my heart
| February 16, 2010 | Filled under Blog, Video |
I’ve read fellow music writers (including some of my colleagues) write about the feeling of hearing a musical legend or infatuation play a certain favorite song, and feeling so content with the experience that they knew if they died on the way home they’d die happy. I’ve never really had that feeling before, either in earnest or in jest, but now I think I know what they mean.
Sunday night I covered The English Beat for The Houston Press, or more specifically, Dave Wakeling performing English Beat songs with a bunch of people who weren’t originally in The Beat. But no matter. He still sounded exactly like he did in 1980, he was saucy and snarky on stage, and it was a very, very good time. I’m kind of sad the photog apparently didn’t get any good photos of Wakeling so I could show you the enormous beer belly he’s now sporting.
As I say in the review, they only had three studio albums, and they played almost 20 songs, so they had plenty of room for all their hits. About halfway through the show they played “Save It For Later,” a timeless pop song with a crazy catchy opening hook, and for some reason I was unexpectedly moved by hearing that song live and in person.
Unexpectedly moved.
I can’t figure out why, either. It’s not exactly one of my all-time favorite songs, and it’s not an especially emotional song either. I wasn’t even ALIVE when The Beat recorded that song. Something ethereal just happened. Maybe I was thinking how lucky I’ve been these last six months to get to write about what I love, or how happy I was CLH was there with me instead of staying at home since he had to work early the next morning. Or maybe it was something else, I don’t know, but for the first time at a show I literally thought to myself, okay, we can go home now. I can die happy.
It’s just that I love music so very, very much.
Mesmerizing
| February 4, 2010 | Filled under Video |
If you look too long it will completely hypnotize you.
I started something
| February 3, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
There’s been a lot of lament lately for Houston’s concert-goers and their extremely bad manners. Of particular offense is a crowd’s collective tendency to TALK AT FULL VOLUME during a show. This is especially annoying when the talkers are right in front of the stage, taking up space that someone who is there to actually see the band might enjoy in their stead.
Sunday I saw Girls at Walters and reviewed the show for the Houston Press. In my review I wrote about how, in spite of a few idiots in the crowd, overall the audience was extremely receptive (to steal a phrase) and the synergistic feedback was awesome.
When this conversation first hit critical mass this summer, the resounding comment was “If people are misbehaving, call them out.” This is easy to say in retrospect but half the time the jackass is engaging in jackassery with a side dish of publuc intoxication, and I don;t know about you, but I’m not about to get my nose broken just because someone’s being a little annoying.
That said… I was at Girls and their first few songs were pretty mellow. And there was a couple behind me, a dude and a chick, and while they were debating whether baby-faced guitarist Ryan Lynch was male or female (“Because, why would they be called Girls if there wasn’t a girl in the band?” “I’m telling you, it’s not a girl.” “But what is it is? Maybe it’s just a butchy girl.”) I was beginning to silently seethe. As I worked up the courage to tell the to HOLY SHIT STFU then went outside for a smoke break and I was treated to four minutes of silence. But then they came back, and the chick was actually trying to TALK OVER THE BAND. So I turned to them, all nicely, and said, “Hey! Which band are you guys here to see?”
The guy replied, “Girls…”
“Really?! Me too! And it would be awesome if you didn’t talk over their entire set.”
The guy had a kind of sheepish look on his face, and he apologized profusely, while I just turned back to my notes and camera and tried very stealthily to control my nervous shaking, since I am usually a person who avoids confrontation at all costs, even to the point of making my own self uncomfortable. But after that they were SO TOTALLY COOL and graceful and they stopped talking and the guy even asked who I wrote for and all was copacetic man.
So. Moral of the story is that sometimes calling someone out works in your favor. I’m just glad I wasn’t stabbed or shot in the Walter’s parking lot after the show.
