THE BIG 4TH ANNIVERSARY NOTES FROM AUSTIN

It's a dull story, but I didn't screen films for AFF this year. I will be covering the festival as always.

The My Gay Movie shorts that Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (AKA Agliff) played in July of this year (including two of my films) did not show at Agliff this year, which was disappointing. Agliff needs to find someone to helm the event and make it as fabulous as it was last year. We've got some interesting queer filmmakers here in town and their stuff needs a forum. I thought about trying to get the job for myself but I don't think I can do it and be objective about the films. I'm just too picky.

Check out my daily coverage of Agliff including in the notes at the bottom of the reviews from Agliff 2003 films.

Check out my daily coverage of Cinematexas 8

The new season at ACAC begins on October 1st. "Lube TV" and "The Lodger Showboat" will be returning. Apparently, Lube is going to have to move to channel 16 again, which is a pain in the ass. It should still be Wednesday nights at 11pm, however. I think the Showboat will remain on Saturday night/Sunday morning at 3am after "Raw Time." I've been working on some interesting stuff for the show including some images from the World Trade Center and 9/11 using the music of Aaron Copeland, Bowie, and others. I've also found some footage of Debby Harry on "The Muppet Show" that I've got to get on.

Hollywood Talks Turkey by Doug McClennan

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

Guide for the Film Fanatic by Danny Perry

Legends of the Silver Screen (The United States Postal Service) by Charles Champlin and Linda Klinger

I just couldn't finish the Tom Wolfe thing. I got 100 pages into it and just couldn't continue. It was really dull and had paragraph after paragraph of descriptions that were so subliminally gay that I began squirming in my seat (and not in a good way).

Hobble - Gods Work

The Oblong boys - Pizzazarama Universe

Bowie - Reality

American Analog Set - The Promise of Love

Shearwater - Everybody Makes Mistake

Ben Lee - Hey You, Yes You

Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs

Ulrich Strauss - Far Away Trains Passing By...

Whew - A lot of good new CD's in my collection. The American Analog Set CD is quite good. The tune "Please Baby Julie Come Home" is the best. This is a song Billy Corgan would hock his "Zero" T-shirt to have recorded. It should be all over radio. The new Ben Lee is good but not as good as "Breathing Tornadoes."

For more on Shearwater, check out http://jound.com/shearwater/main.html

The new Bowie is a continuation of the work he started on "The Buddha of Suburbia." It's not as good as "Hours…" but I think it's better than "Heathen." I really hated the cover of Jonathan Richmond's "Pablo Picasso" the first time I heard it and then loved it every time after that. It is probably my favorite track on the album now. The first song, "New Killer Star" is also good. The last tune, "Bring Me The Disco King" sounds like it may be a "Buddha" outtake. It is also one of my favorites. The only songs I don't really like are "Never Get Old" (wimpy and sounds like it could have been on the "Never Let Me Down" album), the title track and the George Harrison cover, "Try Some, Buy Some" which seems disingenuous.

A review of the new Hobble CD should be up on a separate page by the time you read this.

Apples in Stereo - Strawberryfire

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Jane's Addiction - Just Because

Radiohead - Hail to the Theif

The Ataris - Boys of Summer

Chingy - Right Thurr

50 Cent - At the Club

Ludacris - Act a Fool

Jeff Buckley - Forget Her

Rooney - Its Shakey

Peter Cincotti - The Rainbow Connection

Mike Flowers Pop - Wonderwall

Justin Timberlake - Senorita

In the Dirty City

The Franklin Experiment

Halley

Ethan Durelle (actually from Waco I think)

Shearwater

American Analog Set

Slow Motion Pictures

Shaun Cassidy - Wasp

Jim Grady - Everything Is As It Should Be

Urban Verbs - Urban Verbs

Urban Verbs - Early Damage

Tim Curry - Simplicity

Tim Curry - Read My Lips

Tim Curry - Paradise Garage

Tim Curry - Best of…

The Caroler Singers - Frosty the Snowman

Neil Young - Reactor

Hawaiian Pups - Split Second Percision

Urgh! A Music War Soundtrack

Time Square Soundtrack

Sharp Cuts Compilation

David Van Tiegham - Fait Accompli

Sex and Lucia

Misery

Casper

Boy Meets Boy

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Everwood

The Joe Schmo Show

Will and Grace

Friends

The Simpsons (mainly reruns)

Roseanne reruns on Nick at Night AMN (Austin Music Network) Texas Overnight

Lost in Translation

Anything Else

Cold Creek Manor

Duplex

Under the Tuscan Sun

Cabin Fever

Matchstick Men

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Step into Liquid

Whale Rider

Swimming Pool

Uptown Girls

S.W.A.T.

The Italian Job

9/30-10/5 - Grease (live) - Paramount

10/2 - Trans Am - Emos

10/2 - Lisa Marie Presley - Stubbs

10/4 - Kissinger - Red Eyed Fly

10/4 - Zykos - Emo's

10/4 - Ray Wylie Hubbard - Cactus Cafe

10/6 - Interpol - Stubbs

10/6 - Those Peabodys - Emo's

10/9-10/16 - Austin Film Festival

10/10 - Pocket Fish R Men - 710

10/10 - Ian Moore - The Parish

10/16 - Shonen Knife - Emos

10/18 - Johnny Lang - Backyard

10/18 - Chomsky - Austin Music Hall

10/20 - All American Rejects - Stubbs

10/25 - Spoon - Emo's

10/29 - Rasputina - Stubbs

10/29 and 10/30 - Explosions in the Sky - The Parish

11/14 - Blue Man Group - VW Amphitheater

11/15 - American Analog Set - The Parish

11/15 - Cheap Trick - Stubbs

11/22 - Gibby Haynes - Back Room

11/28 - Pretty Girls Make Graves - Emo's

12/5 - Vicki Lawrence & Mama - Paramount

12/26-1/4/04 - Tuna Christmas - Paramount

2004

3/12 thru 3/20 - SXSW Film Festival

3/22 - Momix - Paramount

4/13-4/18 - The Odd Couple w/ Barbara Eden - Paramount

4/27-5/2 - Stomp - Paramount

6/2-6/27 - Two Pianos Four Hands - State Theater

8/5-9/12 - Keepin' It Weird - Zach Scott

1. Hot Starlet Action

2. Manual Release

3. Porn Star Substitute

4. Shank (probably already been used somewhere)

5. C-Biskit (must be a hip hop band or perhaps a rapper named M.C. Biscuit)

God, I knew that I hadn't written a "Notes from Austin" in a while but when I got to looking at some notes I took for the column, some of them seemed like events that happened a long time ago. I'll try to cover everything as best as can.

Manatee was playing with Kissinger and a few other bands at Red Eyed Fly, so I went there first. Hobble was headlining some sort of punk Bar-B-Q at Flamingo Cantina. Oriah had offered to put me on the guest list, so at least I didn't have to pay cover twice on this night.

At Red Eyed Fly, a band called Slow Motion Pictures was playing when I got to the club. They were pretty good but I only got to hear a couple of their songs. I'd like to see them do a full set sometime.

The next band up was Latham, a pretentious and horrid band that is best described as what would happen if Geddy Lee played for Less than Jake. They weren't so much a band as they were a cliché with guitar, bass and drums. They said they were from Houston. Here's hoping they stay there. (http://www.lathamrocks.com/)

There were a plethora of cute young boys abounding, as is the usual case at a Manatee show (there are cute young girls too but who notices?) Anyway, I wondered how this younger crowd would relate to Kissinger, since they are a band made up of guys over 25, which was not the case with all the other bands on the bill. Regardless of age, Kissinger had young fans crowding the stage to hear their set. The band started the set with the favorite, "Rock 'n' Roll Asshole" and were unrelenting with the sonic assault during the rest of their set. Even when they played news songs like "Certain Girl" (about a Czech prostitute), they rocked. (http://www.kissingertheband.com/)

It was getting late in the evening so I headed to Flamingo. As I passed in front of Elysium, there was a girl standing by a bus trying to get people to go in and see some artwork. You could see inside and it was much like a little traveling art gallery, which was cool, but I didn't take time to stop. I was still hoping I could get over to see Hobble and then run back to catch Manatee.

Got to Flamingo and saw Oriah. He had to run over to Casino's to talk to Gene and Tom and this is about when I realized that I wouldn't get back over to see Manatee. On stage at Flamingo was Everything's Gone Green, a dismal little two piece that had obviously overdosed on Neil Young records. The guitarist sang in a nasal whine like Young while the drummer's best asset was his ensemble, which included an ascot and cowboy hat. Thankfully, they didn't play much longer but the three of four songs I had to endure almost had me running for the door.

Oriah came back and we chatted. He was wearing his checked Vans belt and wristband and a cute girl with a similar bracelet came up and said hello to us. She said her name was Sarah and she introduced us to her male pal Todd. I think we could have hooked up with them and had a four-way had Oriah been into it.

The next band at Flamingo was The Yuppie Pricks, a silly band that wears tennis outfits and sing songs about being rich and yuppie. They're pretty much like the Pocket Fish R Men but only with one idea. The lead singer batted dollar bills into the audience with his tennis racquet that was affixed to his microphone with some black electrical tape. He tried to be funny by giving an audience member some money and a silver tray to get him a "Scotch and soda" but the whole thing backfired when the guy couldn't handle the tray and spilled the entire drink down the front of another guy's shirt. It was just sad.

Some of the Yuppie Pricks songs include "The Donkey Show," "Black Tuesday" (about the stock market crash), "Coke Party" and a reworking of the Sex Pistol's "Anarchy in the U.K." called "Prosperity in the USA." In it, they change the line "I want to be in anarchy" to "I want to be a yuppie."

After this one-joke band, Hobble took the stage and did an incendiary show as is their wont. At one point, some drunk guy got up on stage and tried to get on a mic but Oriah and Mike pushed him back into the crowd. It was a bit tense for a second.

"Either SHIT it out or SPIT it out; you've got what I paid for!"

One night my mom and my niece, who is 18, went down to 6th Street and looked for a bar that would accept that my mom was my niece's mother. Finally some girls out grifting for Spiro's said we could go in. We had a few drinks and relaxed but when a young, college-aged couple sat near us in one of the back room and acted like they were about to have oral sex with one and other, I decided it was time to get mom out of there.

We went to Barton Springs and swam on one afternoon and had a really good time. This place had to be the cruisiest place in town in the 70's when young half naked boys and older leeches must have hooked up continuously in the bathrooms. Now, we old leeches are reduced to simply eyeballing all the wonderful eye candy. The hottest boy of the day was a wet little hoodlum whose shorts rode so low that you could see pretty much the top half of the wet, black cotton briefs (with gray waistband) he had on underneath his low-hanging trunks. I had much drool to clean up after seeing that.

After Barton Springs, I took my nephew Eli and my roomie Amanda in my car and headed back to the hotel. We stopped by Sandy's to get frozen custard (which my nephews love), and sat at the back at a picnic table and as I sat down, I noticed someone had carved the name of my late friend Luke Revely Stokman in the wooden table-top. This is Luke's full name and if he didn't carve it here, then one of his friends surely did. Whoever the "culprit" was, the table now stands as a sort of monument to the lasting impression Luke made on Austin and the people who knew him.

I got some cash and headed to the shuttle bus pick-up area on 14th and Trinity. I parked a few blocks away and followed the crowd. We got on a bus almost immediately and were at Zilker Park by 3:05. There were no lines to buy tickets but the signs said "$35" which pissed me off. I thought about arguing the point but didn't want to miss Kweller. As anal and perfectly run as the shuttle bus was, I figured Kweller would start at precisely 3:30. I was right.

There were a ton of cute boys and girls at the Heineken stage and as soon as the band quit playing at the stage across the field, Kweller and his band came out and waved. Ben told us that since it was the last date on the "Sha Sha World Tour," they would be playing the entire CD from start to finish in order. The crowd went wild. First Ben played a new song with only an acoustic guitar as his accompaniment called "On My Way." The song talks about how Ben gets in a fight with someone and uses "karate" that he "learned in Japan."

The chorus of the song says something like, "I never thought I'd ever kill someone, but I'm on my way." The second verse tells of him making friends with another boy and the chorus then says, "I never thought I'd have a friend before, but I'm on my way." It's a cool song.

As he promised, Ben and his band proceeded to work through all 11 songs on the "Sha Sha" CD including rockers like "Wasted and Ready," "Commerce, TX" and "No Reason" and touching ballads like "Family Tree" and "Lizzie." The song "Falling," which is probably Ben's best known tune since it's on the "Mr. Deeds" soundtrack (the only good thing I can think of to say about that film) rounded out the set. On his way out and, speaking for his entourage, Ben told his audience that "We love you" and waved and left the stage. It was an awesome set and worth every penny. Kweller is so adorable and has such a wonderful soul, his music is so fresh and honest, it is easy to fall in love with him.

Ben's website, http://www.benkweller.com/, says that he'll be heading into the studio to record a new album in October. Meanwhile, the four song EP that he recorded with Ben Lee and Ben Folds after their amazing tour through Australia will be released in December. Kweller and his cohorts are simply calling the project "The Bens" (also the name of the tour) and one can only hope that we get to see some dates of this collaboration in the States in 2004.

Yo la tenga started on the opposite stage and I walked over and watched their set. It was very laid back. In the middle of it, a guy came up to me and said, "Can I ask a favor dude." I was at the festival on my own and totally feeling self-conscious and my antenna went haywire, but I said, "Sure" to the guy.

He was an older guy, a bit younger than me but obviously "of age."

"I left my I.D. at home and they won't sell me a beer, can you help me out?" I went over and got us two Heinekens (the only decent beer they were selling) and gave him one. (He had given me money). He asked me if Austin was "conservative" and I said, "Sometimes." His name was Chris and he was from New Orleans. He had been at the festival for two days and was really excited about having seen String Cheeses Incident on Friday.

He asked me if I got high and I again said "Sometimes."

"Do you want a dose?" he asked and, not being sure exactly what this meant, I politely declined. He thanked me again for getting the beer and we went our separate ways. I continued to enjoy Yo la tenga. Their last song was a 10 minute seemingly improved "call and answer" song where a singer kept singing about nuclear war and the other two members of the band repeated whatever he sang. This got amusing when he starting singing about "getting your ass blown off" and "being assless" and such and the "back-up singers" repeated his silly phrases.

After Tenga, I decided to walk around and hang out and check out the festival while I waited an hour for Ween to play. The lines to buy beer and to piss in the Port-O-Potties were never long but the food lines were 20 to 30 deep. This was too much for me, so I continued to drink on an empty stomach and got pretty drunk. By the time Ween played, I was pretty toasty.

One of the shitty things about a General Admission festival is that people walk and stop to congregate wherever they want. During one of Kweller's more quiet tunes, a group of sorostitutes stood next to me and talked and laughed and called other people on their cell phones. Annoying bitches. This reminded me of the loud stupid cunts at the American Analog Set show I saw at Mercury@Jazz a few weeks ago.

(More side notes: 1) A lady wrote a letter to the editor about this exact subject in the September 26th "Austin Chronicle" that says everything I want to say here but in a nicer tone and 2) Merrcury@Jazz is now called The Parish for some stupid reason.)

Anyway, during Ween, which was incredible fun, people kept walking in and out of the standing crowd and they consistently bugged the shit out of me. When a guy almost knocked me over getting by, I called him an asshole. He had his hands loaded with nachos and hot dogs and I knew he wouldn't start a fight with me after waiting 45 minutes to buy his stupid food. I was really mad but I looked over at the cute boy who had been standing next to me during most of the set and suddenly smiled and laughed and he smiled back in the cutest grin imaginable and gave me a high five. (He was really cute and I'd been trying to figure out a way to acknowledge his presence since he showed up. The guy in front of me, a cute boy with a bubble butt, also kept rubbing his ass on my crotch during the Ween set as he moved to the music. Okay, I love General Admission!)

After Ween's set, I was pretty drunk and tired and the place was really getting crowded and it was another hour until R.E.M. was due to play. I walked over to the other stage and a female performer was singing with just an acoustic guitar but the bleedover from the other stage nearly drowned her out. I started to get a headache.

I decided to head home. I went to catch a shuttle bus and realized I hadn't looked into how to get back home when checking out the ACL Fest's website, only how to get there. Luckily, there were some signs, so I just followed the crowd. It seemed there was a long line to get into the Festival going in the opposite direction.

To make a long, frustrating and pissy story short, I walked forever before I finally found someone who told me that the long line which I though was people going in to the fest for R.E.M. was actually people waiting to get on the shuttle bus and go home. Once I found it, the line moved quickly but they put me on a bus with standing room only with absolutely no warning about this and I had to stand up for the 15 minute bus ride back to Trinity. I was furious. When the bus stopped and opened doors, I immediately got off and found myself at 17th street. No one else got off and the bus continued and I realized I was fucked and had to walk over 6 blocks to get back to my car.

Talk about pissed-off! They sure made it easy to get to the Austin City Limits Music Festival and to get drunk, but it wasn't easy to get home and it wasn't easy to get fed.

(http://www.aclfestival.com/index.html)

For some reason the showing was packed to capacity. It was awfully crowded for a 9 o'clock show on a Thursday evening.

I noticed this time that since I knew some of the things Andy Goldsworthy was trying to say, the film's biggest impact was his art - the visuals. It almost made me want to see a cut of the film with no dialogue, narration or interviews, just the visuals. The film is that beautiful and means that much.

It was really good to see all these folks again and it made me miss hanging out with them. We're older and more subdued now but the group is still filled with a lot of fun and interesting people. Trish is traveling a lot in her work which has something to do with archeology, to a certain degree. Bob lives in Houston now and Dan in Oklahoma, so it's a treat when they make it down. Bunny is some sort of research scientist and still working on his degree. It's crazy.

Matt brought all of us a copy of The Oblong Boys' CD "Pizzazarama Universe." (This is one of the bands that Matt is in with Patrick Healy). They made a thousand copies and they come in 4 colors with 4 different photos enclosed. It's really good and squawky and fun.

Matt showed us two entries in "The Austin Chronicle" "Best of 2003" issue that had to do with Patrick, who is also part of our circle of friends and Matt's cohort in The Lube TV Arkestra. Patrick is not only a member of these bands and others, he's also an an actor and all around weirdo artist (he does many thing with a group called How and Why). The Chronicle highlighted that his children's band called "The Telephone Company" were named as Best Performance Art for Kids as well as discussed a guerrilla art society that he takes part in called the Elevator Art Club (named Most Dada Art Collective). The Elevator Art Club actually do guerrilla installations in elevators around town (usually in corporate buildings or parking garages). As the Chronicle mentions, "The general viewing audience is limited to whomever happens to come in to the elevator before the cleaning crew."

We watched the 100th Episode of Lube TV, since some people there hadn't had a chance to see it yet, and it felt good to hang out with all these old friends and see John Christensen on TV. It felt right.

I have only listened to the Oblong Boys' CD a couple times but I do like it. I've only got to see them live once (at Le Privilege) and the sound system was so horrible, it didn't work out very well. The CD is crisper and cleaner and you can actually understand some of the (absurdist) lyrics. This isn't the kind of stuff you're ever going to hear on the radio, which is a shame, but it is crazy, goofy, eclectic and fun.

The "Proper Gander" alternative comics newspaper here in Austin gave the CD a shitty review and said they were a rehash of Devo, which is a wild over-simplification of what the Oblong Boys do. Sure, the devonic influence is obvious here but so are a many other musical stimuli that have had an effect on these young men. (They Might Be Giants, Roxy Music, Eno, Talking Heads, Mark Mothersbaugh's solo work, The Residents, cartoon songs, and a million weirdo bands that even I have not heard of come immediately to mind).

Meanwhile, The Austin Chronicle was wise enough to understand what the Boys were up to and gave them a very good and on-target write up.

The Boys were wise to select "Allegorical Ankle" as the CD's opener as it is indeed their best and most accessible song. "Don't Go Bald" quickly follows to remind us that the band is not above humor. This is a band that is often as silly as it is puzzling.

So far my favorites on the CD are "A.D.S." (Truly their most original work), "Godzilla!" "Life is Meaningless," "F.B.I." (because it mentions Andy Warhol) and "Dopre Pa Do" which precedes "Fellini-esque" by several tracks and keeps it from being the most absurdist song on the CD.

Yes, the band can be too cacophonous and odd at times as well. Songs like "Rip Your Head Off" and "Division of Us 4" seemed designed more to annoy than entertain. But nothing really stops the Oblong Boys from being fun and that fun is infectious.

(By the way, there is an unlisted bonus track at #16 on the CD).

Also check out:

http://www.howandwhy.org/oblong.html

http://www.instinctorecords.com

Hobble took the stage a little before 1am and proceeded to once again perform at well above acceptable expectations. I budgeted my energy for their usual 35-minute set but the band played for nearly an hour leaving me sweaty, worn out and with my head sufficiently banged for several days. In addition to almost all the songs on their new CD, Hobble performed old faves like "8 Track Tape," "Suicidal Blunder" and ended with the classic "Backwards DJ."

The crowd was blown away and there were a ton of people there. This seemed like the biggest show they've ever done. I even had to wait in line to get into the show. And the club was abuzz, inside and out, with people extolling the greatness of the band.

(Side note: Oriah told me that he and his longtime girlfriend Holly have broken up. Perhaps she couldn't stand the adoring males and females who continue fawn all over the rock star at every performance.)

I ran into a friend of Oriah's named Patricia that he introduced to me when 107.7 The End did a show with Kissinger at SXSW. The End is now toast and Patti hocked in her gig with the station when they went Tejano. Now, she works for Austin Music Network and even got Oriah on one of their many locally produced shows to promote the gig and the new CD.

Peace and chicken grease!

Lodger2003

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