Oh Dear, Where Have We Gone?

Sadly, sometimes our regular employment sets us up for failure: failure to provide you with all the gossip and rumors and sometimes even news that you demand. Sadly, Wednesday through Sunday of this week will be one of those times, especially considering that for much of it we will be out of town. So, not being able to keep our ear to the bar and the wind, you may not see anything new here for several days. BUT - if you've got a good scoop, email it to us.

The Talent-Drain Continues with the Departure of Liz Molina

Following in the footsteps of fellow Noise and Smoke organizer Joey Promahoney, Liz Molina has announced that she will be moving to San Antonio on March 11th. Liz, who is now dead to us, is perhaps best known for fronting the tribute bands Lizfits (The Misfits) and Lizifuge (Danzig), as well as the organizing of more than a few shows during her brief but welcome time here in Houston.

As Copy Doctor drives yet another beloved Houstonian away (ATTN Katie Mitchell: Please get a new job somewhere else before it’s too late), we are offered up what has now become a regular series; another consolation prize C-Ya Later Party, this one to take place February 17th at Time Out on Shepherd. Entertainment will include performances by the Urkel Jerks (Black Flag covers done by a band dressed like Urkel) and a final romp in the sheets with The Lizfits.

As for Noise and Smoke, both Liz and Joey have stated that they plan on it being an annual event even despite their not being here, it’s fair to say that it says something both funny and sad about the state of things that they’ll be organizing from other area codes.

PS: Seriously. Liz: congratulations and best wishes

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Update: code is fixed.

Dingleberry of the Night

Congrats to this guy, our Dingleberry of the Night. All decked out in a slick quilted jacket complete with racing stripes on the sleeves, he seriously sharp-elbowed his way to the front of the crowd with beyond-jerk regard for whoever was in his way. While pumping his fist with fratty fury just inches away from an innocent bystanders head, he let it be known to all that there is noting wrong with Christian Slater's haircut from the glory years. Sadly not visible in this picture is the tattoo on his neck, the top of which has been laser removed (though not entirely) and appears to depict a hairless ewok. Please move away, LA is waiting for you.

Visual Aid: Buckingham vs. Hatfield

If you're like us at the Skyline Network, you were fortunate enough to see two world class revealers of riffage friday night, Lindsay Buckingham (formerly of Fleetwood Mac) and Warren Hatfield (currently of Golden Axe). And, if you consumed enough libation (as we did), you might likewise find yourself unable to remember who is who and what is what. To assit, TSN is pleased to present the following visual aid chartographic.

GOSSIP: Shawna, Booking Agent Extraordinaire, Leaves the Proletariat

For nearly as long as there has been a Proletariat, the scintillating Shawna F has been its booking agent, promoter and trusted ear. The list of bands, DJs, club nights, contests, benefits, parties and miscellanea that she is responsible for bringing not only to the club but to the city itself is dwarfed only by the compliments and well wishes that should be paid to her as she turns her attention, full time, to the Diverse Works art space. “It’s going to be really hard to let go of the prolo,” she commented, “but I know they will be fine.” With the SxSw March Madness overflow and summer touring season only months away, no word yet on who may take over the reins or when the men’s toilet might be fixed.

Def Jams: Hearing Aid Benefit @ The Prolo

Ok, so there is a lot of jokes to make here; a music benefit for the hearing impaired; a silent auction; Dizzy Pilot.The long and short of it is, though, is that a guy named Jeremy Trujilo temporarily lost his hearing due to a prank gone bad and was compelled to put something together to raise money for Houston’s Center for Hearing and Speech. Good for him.

The Sunday event, which gets started at six, features a bill with 7 bands, 2 different DJ groups, auctions for art by local artists, raffle prizes, that fajita guy and drink specials. Truth be told, I haven’t even heard of most of these bands, but T&T Music Factory never disappoint when on the decks and this is as good a chance as any to scout out any up and comers to add to your i-list.

Hearing Aid Benefit Show, featuring:
Information Tree, Down from the Clouds, Erin Dance, Dizzy Pilot, Sinews, Shina Rae, Jeff Harms plus DJs T&T Music Factory and Fuzzy Boots.

Sunday January 28^th at The Proletariat. +18. $8 or $6 w/canned good.

Track from Dudes we Do Not Know: Vast Massive Satellite – The Host

Vast Massive Satellite hasn’t, until tonight, ever played a show. This in spite of their being together, in one form or another, for nine years, during most of which tapes were mailed and eventually bytes were FTPed. Then in August of last year Jason and Marigold Clark found themselves in Austin, with drummer Kelly Minnis just a few hours away in College Station. For most of the past five months, the trio has been in the studio, putting down enough recordings for a 2007 release schedule that includes 2 full lengths and an EP(!).

The Host is one of those tracks, the title track of the EP put out this month on their own Lemontree imprint. The tune has the heady pace and under-control vocals of a Copper Blue-era Sugar track, with thin lines of raspberry synth frosting draped on top to make the confection complete. It never steps more than a few degrees out of the steady RPM of a sandcrawler making her way across a redstone plateau. Its a harkening break from all the build and climax let-down stop and go reprise that's been on the top of my playlist lately. Sign of good things to come, for sure.

Stream: Vast Massive Satellite – The Host

See Live: Friday, January 26 @ Notsuoh w/Joel Mercado, the Scattered Pages

Show Preview and Comment: Vanilla Ice

Tonight at Rocbar (to which I have never gone and can make no comment on, other than to claim you are “Houston’s only true Rock and Roll Club” surely makes you not) there is a free show starring none other than the long disparaged Vanilla Ice. In the pantheon of LOLstalgic live music opportunities, I can’t quite think of anything closer to the top than one by His Vanilla Majesty. Indeed, several years ago, similarly motivated, I purchased a $5 ticket to see Mr. Ice at the open again closed again Bob Popular on Austin’s 6^th street. When, after hours of reassurance by club managers that he would be there soon, Vanilla finally phoned to say he was not coming, the drunk, sweaty, overcapacity crowd got, well, destructive. I had never seen riot police in Austin before, and never felt quite so good to be on the other side of them once I finally squeezed my way out. So yes – Vanilla Ice, or rather his failure to appear, caused a riot. That, my friends, is Extreme.

That concept, the Extreme, is one that is pervasive thru out Vanilla’s career – he has stuck to it beyond fads and fashions, before the dream and after the nightmare of superstardom. Indeed, his desire to be associated with that concept has its roots in his earliest days and played a pointed role in his rapid slide from relevance to irreverence.

Something that Mr. Van Winkle picked up on early on, earlier than most MCs, was the need for a backstory – an official biography that constructed him as the organic result of a set of experiences rather than a self (or corporate) created pop star. As part of this personal history was a claim that Ice was a national Motocross Champion of some sort – a claim aligning him with an Extreme sport over five years before the first X-Games and certainly long before the Extreme Sports cable TV channel. A signature lyric, impossible to forget, and one that includes the title of his debut album: ‘To the Extreme, I rock a mic like a vandal.”

And if you think about it – if you can remove the ruining ridicule that time’s perspective has equipped us with, in 1990, Vanilla Ice was doing some rather extreme things: he sold millions of records by rapping over a Queen sample; he incorporated the fashion of glam and disco into a genre whose worship of pauperistic street fashion was already a sham; he broke perhaps the last remaining color boundary in pop music. And then – it started to crumble; and of all things, the edges around his parachute started to fray fastest when the portion of his bio that claimed he was a motocross champ were revealed to be fictitious – the Extreme that was the ramp beneath his wheels suddenly became the brick on his back.

Granted, the public is fickle. Even with his back-story intact, Ice may never have made another hit record. Actually, most assuredly he would not have. If we’ve learned anything about second acts in American pop music life, they usually involve a pairing of two talents. But one thing you’ll notice about Extreme sports: none of them are team events. Who knows if a Vanila Ice/Jimmy Jams collaboration might have been the Timberland/Timberlake of their day – Van Winkle’s embrace of Extreme simply would not have allowed it.

To be Extreme is to do your own thing. And, as his appearance on VH1’s Remaking clearly illustrated, Mr. Ice refuses to heed any advice, assistance or creative input from beyond the Extremely narrow options that he himself has had a hand in. Some might say that to appear on such a program and refuse to take advantage of it is the height of bone-headed douchieness, but they forget that to open oneself up to the latest and greatest and then decline to embrace it is the opposite of what is known as ‘selling out.’

So, I suppose, there will be many of us there at the show tonight for, well, laughs. To watch someone who once performed for tens of thousands shake it, for free, to hundreds. And as we bitch and moan with every new and previously unheard new song (which, I have heard, are of the Extreme rap-rock variety), we shouldn’t loose sight of the fact that it is us, and not him, who have failed to move on. Afterall, even if, by some chance, 50 Cent, Slayer, Danzig and TuPac were all at the show tonight – only Ice could make the claim that he was banned from MTV’s studios for life. Extreme.

Info: Vanilla Ice live at Rocbar Thurday, January 25th. Free. Doors at 8pm.

Spain Colored Orange, Paris Falls, The Kimonos to Play Sandblast Rally

March's Sandblast Rally, which is expected to draw scooter nerds from across the Lone Star state for a weekend of riding in Galveston, is set to include Spain Colored Orange, Paris Falls and The Kimonos on the bill for their Saturday night entertainment. From its perilous pier-perch over the Gulf of Mexico, The Balinese Room, whose stage was once graced by luminaries such as Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, will soon be home to pretty much every band who might once have counted Erica Meowcifer as a member.

No doubt, SCO bassist and beard farmer Stephen Burnett had something to do with their being on the bill, himself being the owner of a number of scooters over the years, some of which are even rumored to have run. Uninterestingly enough, Burnett was once the bass player for The Kimonos, whose live shows have become as rare as the sushi rolls that no doubt kept me from going to work today. Rounding out the bill is fellow Rhodes scholars Paris Falls, who are forever dear to us for a note multi-instrumentalist Jennifer Brown left in a shared practice space asking if we might do a better job of keeping the floor clean so she could walk around bare footed "ya know, tiger style." Adorable.

More Info: Sandblast Rally

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Cryptic Deformation vs. Dethro Skull

Ok granted, once something is on YouTube, it's hardly exclusive. But deep from within the Skyline Network's hard drive we are pleased to be able to finally bring you this footage, shot at the epic battle between Dethro Skull and Cryptic Deformation that took place last year at Sound Exchange. Brutal.

Golden Axe to Record, Go on Hiatus

Friday's Golden Axe show at Rudyards will be the shredessential duo's last live gig for quite some time, according to a post on the band's blog. Warren, the Weilder of the Wooden Warrior Wand, will be going on tour with Valient Thorr this spring and our heros of hermes plan to do some recording before he leaves. That leaves time for the opus alone, and sadly not much for the stage.

As for the studio, no details as yet as to where/with who they will be recording and whether or not they plan to remake some of the smokers from the old Torches of Fury cd that they still perform live. You'll know when we know.

Also on the bill this Friday are The Jonx, whose new record No Turn Jonx Red is apparently so good that they have to keep it behind the glass at Sound Exchange. Seriously, it's kept behind glass. Also on the $5 lineup is 500 Megatons of Boogie.

Everyone you Know to play Noise and Smoke Fest

The weekend before you and your mates will be trying to figure out how to foist one another over the wall at Stubbs, Emos and other SXSW venues for which you will not have the proper credentials, the two day Noise and Smoke festival will be underway here in Houston. For an insultingly low $8/day, you’ll spend Friday (at Notsuoh) and Saturday (at Walter’s The Axiom) seeing just about every act in Houston not signed to French Kiss records. From the cryptically entertaining Cop Warmth to the Pitchfork Mix-tape appearing Indian Jewelry to an apparently drummer-only incarnation of God’s Temple of Family Deliverance, the weekend promises to be an all out race to the finish for livers and eardrums alike. Lineup time:

Friday, March 9th – Notsuoh
Ume, The Ka-Nives, Satin Hooks, Bring Back the Guns, Finally Punk, Jana Hunter, Eat Grapes and Cop Warmth

Saturday, March 10th – Walter’s on Washington The Axiom
Indian Jewelry, Something Fierce, Skullening, God’s Temple of Family Deliverance, The Wiggins, Blades and The Dimes The Sporatics.

Update: word now coming from festival co-organizer and recent brain-drain encourager Joey Promahoney that Noise and Smoke will not only be an annual event, larger in size and scope, but that they anticipate it will include other, smaller, events during the year as well.

CTRL+C; CTRL+V: "Future festivals will more likely not be in a bar setting. ex. Outdoors, a larger hall, or possibly in the middle of nowhere. In addition to the festival, Noise and Smoke will be hosting smaller events, for example, we will be announcing a show seperate from the festival very soon"


More Info: Noise and Smoke Festival

SHOW! Birds of Avalon, Lady Hawk and Castanets

The time has come for the annual Mid March Live Music Binge – where kids in vans try to get some extra scratch in by visiting Houston before or after this SxSw nonsense. Announced today was a free show at The Proletariat, Tuesday March 13th, including Birds of Avalon, Ladyhawk, Saturday Looks Good to Me and The Castanets. In particular, I’m looking forward to the ghost-trail ambi-folk of the Castanets, the secrets of whose haunted saloon soundscapes should be a little less oblique when seen live. While I can’t speak for Saturday or Birds, Ladyhawk is on my to-see list if for nothing else than the pinto-bean gospel of “War”.

edit: Thanks to Delaney for catching the fact that the 13th is a Tuesday, not a Monday

Mods & Rockers Rally

Turns out that, the same weekend (March 3-4) as the Sandblast Rally in Galveston, there is a vintage Euro bike and scooter rally in Dallas. Though there aren't much details on the event's MySpace page, what is clear is this event is not intended for plastic shell (and presumably more modern metal) scoots. Truth be told, I can't even figure out how much this costs, what that includes, where the meetup is, or what activities take place during the weekend.

Regarding Weathermen

1) When in highschool, thanks to my repeated tardiness in returning those reply cards from the BMG CD Club, I was the surprise owner of Rage Against the Machine's self titled debut. At the time, the mix of overtly political rap with heavy and fast riffage made the disc a welcome addition to Helmet and the few other records living on the angry shelf of my music library. While the smash-the-state lyrics, speed and aggression were just the sort of dance partner that my so much male teenage suburban silliness required, the liner notes' declaration that no electronic synthesis was used in the recording of the album jibed well with my grunge-infused notion of what was authentic music. More than punk or hip-hop, the rap-rock album that sailed a thousand ships was the soundtrack to anger in daddy's car. I knew every note and, significantly for someone who doesn't pay much attention to lyrics, I knew every word.

Being as immediate, universal and, well, dumb as they were, I also understood the meaning behind all of them (contrasted to the Beastie Boys, many of whose similes, though equally juvenile, remain cloaked from my understanding). There was, however, one simile on that record of the burning Buddhist that I did not understand, and that was "Gotta get it, gotta get it together, man / like a muthafuckin weatherman." At the time I was vaguely aware of some group of radicals from the 60s called The Weathermen, and I assumed this was about them somehow, though it wasn't clear what it meant. However, to this day, I sometimes catch myself repeating that mantra whenever a meteorologist makes a bad call. Now, mellowed and aged like a Kentucky barrel, I wonder if, perhaps, Mr. De La Rocha was simply taking a two second break from all that indignant rage to bitch about some unpredicted rain.

2) In Austin, while employed in the newsroom of the local CBS affiliate, I worked with a few meteorologists. Unlike the other on-air talent, or certainly anyone else employed by the newsroom who suffered the slings and arrows of an open-concept workplace, the weatherman had a large room to themselves, with low light and a quiver of computers, printers, monitors and other equipment. In particular I remember a dot matrix printer that was connected to a national weather service network of some sort. A series of tones would pierce the akward silence of the room-into-which-you-are-not-allowed-to-venture, rousing the age-stained white plastic to life for a few brief moments before returning to its dreams of a time when ribbon cartridges were plentiful. In the hierarchy of people who take themselves seriously in the newsroom, no one you see on the air was ever at the top. But, in the upper-ranks of the people-whose-dry-cleaning-is-managed-by-the-station subset, weathermen were or are near the pinnacle. How seriously, after-all, can you be if you are able to maintain your composure while listening to the third knucklehead mom in a week cry about her unattended non-swimming little child drowning in the pool she confused for a baby sitter. Is that really news? Not having children, a pool or a complete lack of parenting skills, does this really apply to me?

Weathermen, on the other hand, know that the news and predictions they relate are applicable to everyone within the sound of their voice. One in particular, I recall, handled himself with the sort of gravitas that could never be applicable to anyone who did a sweeps-week undercover expose on strippers breaking the 3-foot rule. The weathermen at the station had access to an incredible amount of resources, and their importance in the overall ratings picture plays that out – what other personality or subject has three separate appearances in a newscast?

3) The Weathermen in Houston are sensationalists like none I have ever known or seen. They have taken erring on the side of hysteria to new levels of LOL. Even in the face of what must be several hundreds of thousands of strong, recent memories of being stuck on the highway for 12 hours fleeing a storm that didn't arrive, I find myself in a nearly empty office, having made my commute on nearly empty roads. Oh havoc, my herald of Stronmaus, when you speak with brow furrowed, how we do listen.