Eight is Enough to fill our lives with KISS!

Choice clips from the hit ABC-TV series Eight is Enough set to the music of the hottest band in the world...KISS! Does it get any better than that?

Chariots of Funk

I finished the second night of SXSW watching the Bar-Kays funk it up at the Memphis music showcase. They covered everything from "Soul Finger" through "Freakshow on the Dance Floor" before I ducked out to beat the drunks home. It was an altogether solid revue, though I missed hearing "Son of Shaft."

Speaking of, here's a related aside from a short interview I did with original Bar-Kays bassist James Alexander that ran in Thursday's Chron SXSW daily edition. By the time I got done covering the 1967 plane crash that killed Otis Redding and four members of the Bar-Kays, I knew I wouldn't have room for this. I still think it's a great story, though:.

As Isaac Hayes’ longtime backing band, it makes perfect sense that the Bar-Kays first significant hit after “Soul Finger” was “Son of Shaft.” The mostly-instrumental “answer” record was a Top 10 R&B hit in 1972. Their elongated performance of the song was a highlight of 1972’s Wattstax festival.

If the Bar-Kays had their way, though, that performance in front of over 100,000 at L.A. Memorial Coliseum would’ve been even more spectacular.

“We were like little bad kids,” says bassist James Alexander. “We always wanted to do something dramatic to draw attention to us rather than other people. So we wanted to ride out on the field with some horses and chariots. You know, like Chariots of Fire or something like that.”

According to the liner notes of 2007’s Wattstax box set, Bar-Kays producer Allen Jones went so far as to call a movie studio to arrange for the rental of horses and chariots.

“To be quite honest with you, Isaac Hayes found out about it and then said we couldn’t do that,” Alexander laughs. “Because that would’ve upstaged everybody. Nobody would’ve been able to come in behind that.

“We’re coming out there with all this white on and on some chariots? And then we run up on the stage and turn it out?”

As it was, you’d be hard-pressed to pick a more electric single moment in the Wattstax film than when Bar-Kays vocalist Larry Dodson stoically approaches the microphone, raises his fringe-draped arms and screams, “I’m the son of a baaad…!”

If you've never seen this clip before, watch it now:

Now entering SXSW

After tying up a bunch of loose ends at work this afternoon, I'm finally ready to dive headfirst into SXSW.

I always get a bit lethargic before SXSW starts. I think it's my body doing the nut-gathering thing. Many years ago, I was able to cover SXSW showcases, play 2-3 gigs and still show up at my government job from 8 to 5. I didn't do all of those things particularly well, mind you, but I did do them. Even with the graying temples, this week's schedule should be much more manageable.

Tomorrow I'll be covering the Jarvis Cocker panel on song lyrics at the Convention Center before heading out to review showcase sets from French post-punks Bogart and the Addictives and former Cramps/Gun Club/Nick Cave guitarist Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds. I'm still trying to figure out everything in between.

Our feature presentation

I can't count the number of times I was dropped off at a multiplex cinema as a child to watch a matinee that was preceded by the now-defunct General Cinema Corporation's "projector dots" jingle. Sure it's simple, but nearly three decades after they quit using this 1977 clip, I sometimes hear its ear-wormy jingle in my head when I can't sleep.

Here's a history of General Cinema from Pleasant Family Shopping via MetaFilter.

Sixth grade reunion party

Kate and I went to Houston last weekend so I could attend a reunion of my sixth grade class in the bar at Palace Bowling Lanes on Bellaire Blvd.

Clockwise from the left in the photo above are my classmates Israel Rodriguez, Gayle Carlisle, Steve Amaya, yours truly, Rose St. Andry, Shean Valentine and Shawn Stevenson. I'm rather proud of myself for not having reflexively flipped the bird like I did in a similar photo taken at our sixth grade graduation party.

Sixth grade reunions aren’t exactly common, but neither was our class. In fact, we were the last sixth grade class to graduate from Horn Elementary School 28 years ago this May.

I’m not sure why the Houston Independent School District moved sixth graders from elementary to middle school in 1981. It probably had to do with overcrowding, but maybe they were looking to consolidate budding adolescent mischief under one roof. Perched precariously between childhood and teenhood, my sixth grade class constituted a force of fun-loving insolence that manifested itself in both mudfights and spin the bottle.

Our first-year teacher, Miss Collins, did her best to keep us in line and we did our best to drive her crazy. She actually had to blow a coach’s whistle in the classroom to get us to shut up. Even so, if the principal or the teacher next door tried to call Miss Collins’ teaching ability into question, we would collectively defend her (and ourselves, by extension).

I learned a lot of life lessons in sixth grade that proved to be more valuable than most anything you’d pull out of the Texas edition of a public school textbook. Perhaps most importantly, we got to grow into ourselves together. For me, that meant having a rare sense of belonging. At the end of the year, I knew we’d had something special and fleeting even though I couldn't have defined melancholy.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because about 15 of us showed up in the Palace Lanes’ bar on Saturday for our Facebook-facilitated reunion. It was great fun to see everyone again. My only regret was not getting to see some of my classmates who arrived after Kate and I left.

I believe Miss Collins stopped teaching after that year, but I wish she could've seen us catching up and talking about the old times on Saturday.

A peek inside the Michael Ochs Archives

Here's a quick interview I did with photo archivist Michael Ochs for the Chron's first SXSW issue (scroll all the way down). You may not know the name Michael Ochs, but if you've purchased any reissues on on Rhino Records in the past three decades, you've seen images from Ochs' collection. He'll be presenting at the SXSW Music Festival on Friday, March 20.

Ochs, whose brother was the late protest singer Phil Ochs, was an interesting guy to interview. I've always appreciated the completist mindset that drives people like him to do what they do. He also relayed a great story about the Lennon Sisters of Lawrence Welk Show fame (sort of).

Dillard's abandoning Highland Mall

No one who has been to Highland Mall recently will be surprised to learn that Dillard’s is closing its store there. Coupled with J.C. Penney’s exit in 2006, this leaves Macy’s as Highland Mall’s sole anchor tenant.

Despite its close proximity to where I live and work, I cannot recall the last time I shopped at that Dillard’s. I think it was about the time “Who Let the Dogs Out?” began infesting our nation’s sports arenas.

Driving by the new MetroRail station across Airport Blvd. from Highland Mall yesterday, I noticed the signage read “Highland,” not “Highland Mall.” Whatever else Capital Metro might screw up with the commuter rail launch, at least we won’t have to pay to have “Mall” scraped off those signs when they implode that dying shell of retail.

I gotta take a Nixon

Kliph Nesteroff posted this captioned 10-minute rant from disgraced former President Richard Nixon concerning Archie Bunker and homosexuality on WFMU's awesome Beware of the Blog yesterday.

It's clear early on that Tricky Dick does not approve of either All in the Family or homosexuality. Aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman can barely get a word in edgewise.

At the end, Nixon expresses faith in his administration due to its honesty and intelligence. Now that he's safely dead, it's sort of funny to hear what a raving lunatic the man could be when he got going.

Burritos and roller coasters

The NASCAR Cafe at the decidedly downmarket Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas has a sporting proposition the younger man in me finds more than a little enticing (cue up Rocky theme).

Earlier this week, the cafe started selling a 2-foot, 6-pound burrito called "The Bomb." If you manage to finish this $19.95 behemoth, they'll comp it and give you two free unlimited ride passes for the Sahara's roller coaster, which goes frontwards, backwards and upside-down. They also give you a keepsake T-shirt that says you "Conquered the Bomb." The AP story doesn't say if there's a limit on how long you get to finish the burrito or how long you get unlimited roller coaster rides.

However, if you fail to finish "The Bomb" burrito, they make you take a photo wearing an extra small pink T-shirt that says "Weenie," which is still kind of honorable in its own special way.

It was 90 degrees here today

Good garsh, it was 90 degrees here today. And a rare lunch date with Kate at Central Market was nearly sullied when a bird pooped dangerously close to my sandwich. After examining the splatter pattern, I decided to go ahead and finish my sandwich because I didn't think a traceable amount of poop could have hit my sandwich. Even if it did, I wasn't about to go buy another sandwich because I'm cheap. And I'm hot, because good garsh, it was 90 degrees here today.

The Big Rich's last rodeo?

Vanity Fair correspondent Bryan Burrough just published a book called The Big Rich that dissects the sordid-yet-unmistakably colorful influence of Texas oilmen like H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison on American politics. I wanted to go Burrough's in-store at Bookpeople a few weeks back, but happy hour ran long that day. Here's a juicy little excerpt involving J. Edgar Hoover, Joan Crawford and lots of alcohol.

In a related Washington Post editorial published last Sunday, Burrough suggests the end of the second Bush era marks the end of Texas' political dominance, at least for the time being.

Even though I live in a city that would not be a real city without LBJ's oil-fueled rise to power and subsequent pork barrel Colorado River dam projects, I'm sorta glad to see Texas get some comeuppance in Washington for promoting a culture of bend-over-for-business politics that left America looking a lot like Jett Rink drunkenly babbling at the hotel ballroom podium in Giant.

Photo from Everett Collection

Touch and Go exits distribution business

Bad music news out of Chicago today as Touch and Go Records announced the shuttering of its manufacturing and distribution arm. The label itself will continue, but an untold number of employees will be laid off and Touch and Go-distributed labels such as Merge, Drag City, Kill Rock Stars and Estrus will have to find new ways to manufacture and distribute their products.

During the 80s and 90s, Touch and Go distribution was key to helping many smaller indie upstarts achieve enough cachet to get into more record stores, receive more college radio airplay and send their acts on European tours. For fledgling indie bands trying to build a following through shoestring tours, getting on a label with Touch and Go distribution or (gasp) Touch and Go itself was a vaunted goal.

Trance Syndicate, the Austin-based noise rock imprint started by Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey in 1990, was one such label until the Surfers sued Touch and Go to retain their back catalog. I interviewed Coffey in 1998 when Trance shut down and he still had nice things to say about Touch and Go owner Corey Rusk despite the lawsuit. Many consider Touch and Go to be a model operation in its reconciliation of punk spirit and music business reality.

"I guess maybe one of the reasons that we have made it this long is that I'm a very responsible personality, and things weigh heavily on me," Rusk told Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis in 2006. "If something is not getting done or I feel like a situation is not being handled right, it bothers me. I take the responsibility of accounting to and paying our bands on time and properly as my highest priority, and it's one of the things I've prided myself on through our whole existence. The world of indie labels that we live in is constantly full of horror stories of 'I never got paid for that record.'"

UT executive pay jumped as tuition climbed

Check out this AP analysis in today's Houston Chronicle showing how the pay of UT executives increased 30 percent or more between 2004 and 2008. During the same time frame, tuition and fees at UT climbed 57 percent, thanks largely to the Texas Legislature's 2003 decision to deregulate tuition.

I have two degrees from UT, but when they decided it was more important to be a university for the elite than a university for the people of Texas, I decided to stop donating to them.

Greetings from the Golden Triangle

I took a day trip to Beaumont yesterday to meet with local public health stakeholders and discuss ways of responding to an increase in the number of syphilis cases there.

There's no easy way to get to the "Golden Triangle" from Austin. You can't fly direct and driving straight through often means being delayed by Houston traffic. I split the difference by flying Southwest to Hobby Airport and driving the rest of the way with staff from our regional office in Houston.

On final approach into Hobby, I noticed every fourth or fifth house still had a blue tarp covering roof damage from Hurricane Ike. Beaumont was still recovering from Hurricane Rita when Ike showed up, so blue tarps are pretty ubiquitous there, too. Aside from insurance delays and fly-by-night contractors, I imagine a lot of families in Southeast Texas have more pressing needs than a hole in the roof right now.

The other thing I noticed was the piss-poor condition of IH-10 between Houston and Beaumont. Between road construction and the claustrophobic four-lane Trinity River bridge, it may be the single scariest stretch of highway in the state right now.

From the Grass Roots to "The Office"

What's better than a useless tidbit of music trivia? How about a useless music/TV trivia tidbit combo?

Yesterday, my pal Kent B. hipped me to the fact that Creed Bratton, the actor who plays skeezy old-timer "Creed Bratton" on The Office (U.S. version), was the lead guitarist for the Grass Roots during their glory days.

Not quite able to wrap my mind around that, I went to You Tube and found this clip of Jimmy Durante introducing the Grass Roots playing their 1967 hit, "Let's Live for Today." I'm pretty sure the clip is taken from The Hollywood Palace. Sure enough, when the band gets to the bridge, you'll see Bratton playing the hook.



I'm surprised the writers haven't worked Bratton's past into the show more. Especially with rich source material such as this chestnut from his official bio:

Creed had an infamous acid trip on stage at the Fillmore with concert promoter Bill Graham screaming at him ...and him dropping his pants and strolling casually off stage...where he proceeded to lecture to all who would listen on the meaning of life....and of course Creed's habit of running naked through small towns next to the tour bus on bets from the band.

Alaska Airlines coming to Austin

Some surprising airline news today. Despite our nation’s assy economic climate, Alaska Airlines will launch service to Austin with a daily nonstop to Seattle on Aug. 3, which is a great time to get the hell out of Austin.

I’ll be glad to see Alaska’s Eskimo tail livery in these parts, but I think they’ll have a rough time making an Austin-Seattle nonstop work. American couldn’t do it before the economy tanked even with the hook of OneWorld miles.

The Peenbeets on the MySpace

In the interest of preserving the ephemeral detritus of my musical "career," I spent a good portion of today creating a Peenbeets MySpace page. I still need to get some photos up there, but the jukebox is up and running. Any time you want to hear "I Remember Joe," we've got you covered.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's 6:00 p.m. and I need to stop rambling about my dead band and get out of my pajamas.

Only the lonely?

After being asked repeatedly when she was going to give her daughter a sibling, Nataly Kogan wrote an essay that has now been picked up by Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog in The New York Times.

I've often heard people say you're depriving your child by not giving him or her a sibling. As an only child myself, I could interpret such a comment as an subtle indictment of my parents, but I don't. That's because almost every person I've heard lamenting the fate of only children grew up with one or more siblings they don't despise. They think about a world in which those siblings don't exist and it feels empty.

Fortunately for me, I've never felt "alone" or otherwise deprived by not having a sibling. I enjoyed the time I had to play by myself as a child. In our efforts to be "good citizens," I think we tend to overrate the benefits of companionship while understating those of solitude. Whether I had one child or six, I wouldn't want to raise kids that weren't okay with their own company.

Some people say only children tend to be selfish and antisocial. I would agree that only children may need extra adjustment time when they start interacting with other kids, but there's something to be said for the extra interaction only children get with adults. Parents who are keyed into this are likely to take steps to mitigate such challenges. To the extent that I can be a raving arsehole, I doubt the presence of a sibling would've done much to change that.

Which isn't to say I didn't sometimes wish for a guardian angel-type sibling to help me navigate the waters of adolescence. If I could've ordered up a sister willing to set me up with her hot friends, I would've, but who's to say fate would've acted in my favor? I could've just as easily wound up with a bullying older brother who beat the shit out of me for sport.

Either way, I don't feel deprived by what I don't long for.

The fellas serving the tables

There's a telling little tidbit in Chron reporter Richard Whittaker's recap of the Texas Public Policy Foundation's annual Policy Orientation for the Texas Legislature, held last week at the Four Seasons.

The Austin-based conservative think tank's opening lunch featured a debate between onetime Reaganomics architect Arthur Laffer and Center for Immigration Studies director Mark Krikorian over whether the U.S. should close its borders to foreign workers.

According to Whittaker, "Krikorian argued that immigration only imports more 'working poor' ('Just look at the fellas serving the tables here,' he told the diners) and that low-skill jobs could be filled by 'ex-cons, recovering addicts, [and] the disabled.'"

I suspect this Krikorian guy has never worked in food service before. Otherwise, he would know better than to lip off like that in front of the help. That's just begging to have your rubber chicken molested.

Click here for the full story.

Down with the sickness

Kate and I have been holed up at home for the past two days with a nasty stomach bug. I'll spare you the graphic details, other than to say I've never been happier to live in a house with two bathrooms.

Thankfully, the bug appears to be on a slow wane at this point. Unless the city is paralyzed by icy roads, I expect we'll both be back on the chain gang tomorrow morning.

This is the first time I've ever been laid out concurrently with someone else. Kate quipped that we were morphing into the bedridden grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Despite feeling rotten, it's been kind of nice to muddle through this alongside her. Maybe there's something to that "sickness and health" thing.