Monday, September 28, 2009

The Moon exhibit at MFA

posted by Free Press Houston @ 3:03 PM


A series of films inspired by or related to the Moon will unroll over the next several weeks at the MFAH in conjunction with the museum’s exhibit The Moon: Houston, Tranquility Base Here, The Eagle Has Landed. (continued)

Friday, September 25, 2009

Danseparc comes to an end....

posted by Free Press Houston @ 10:32 AM


The quintessential Montrose dance party Danseparc will have it's last hurrah after going strong at Numbers for 7+ years. A little history: Danseparc was founded in 2002 by three enterprising young women. The music they played was diverse, reflecting their passion for obscure ‘80s new wave (Visage, Plastic Bertrand), wiry post-punk (A Certain Ratio, Gang of Four), contemporary electropop (Goldfrapp, Hot Chip), and the pop music of their youth (Madonna, ELO). They were among the first in Houston to recognize the burgeoning dance-punk scene, playing The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Le Tigre before they became household names (at least among the indie-rock crowd). It wasn’t so much their technical skills that brought the crowds but rather their obvious love for the music.

Their absence will be huge not only to Danseparcers but to Numbers itself as it was one of the last regular events at the 30 year old club. Hopefully, whoever else steps up to fill the void will consider Numbers as a place to host their shindig...

Interview : Devin the Dude

posted by Free Press Houston @ 8:16 AM

Monday, September 21, 2009

Wayne White: BIG LECTRIC FAN TO KEEP ME COOL WHILE I SLEEP

posted by Free Press Houston @ 9:42 AM


by Shiraz Ahmed

Even if you don't know the name Wayne Wright, you probably know his work. Wright was the creative mind behind Emmy-awards winning puppet design in Pee-Wee's Play House, set design for music videos such as Smashing Pumpkins "Tonight" and Peter Gaberials "Big Time," and numerous other television shows and advertisments. He is an artist of all mediums- from set design to puppetry, cartooning to illustration, oil paintings to bronze sculptures. His work of painting humorous phrases on top of thrift-store lithographs has gained him the auspicious title of "weirdest landscape painter in America."
This September, Wright's intends to call up his history in puppetry, painting, and sculpture, and create an installation at Rice Gallery. The title of the piece, Big Lectric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep, is a homage to country singer George Jones's song, "Ragged but Right." "I was thinking of hot Houston nights before air conditioning and the young Geoge Jones in this city- full of crazy artistic passion and making music history," says Wright. The installation will be a fifteen-foot puppet head resembling a young, flat-topped Jones. It will be sleeping on its side, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling lettering. "It's a roadside attraction, a museum relic of a lost word, and a big weird toy still in its box."
The installation will be available for viewing from Sept 8 - Oct 18 at Rice Gallery.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Another One Bites the Dust

posted by earthwirehead @ 10:39 AM

At 103 years old, it almost seems that the first thing to say about the emergency demolition of the old Savoy Hotel at 1616 Main street is "well, what took so long?" This city usually pulls buildings about as frequently as the 'Sex in the City' girls change shoes or boyfriends, and usually for about as much good reason.

The Savoy's luck ran out when city workers recently discovered that it was literally crumbling as they watched. Plans originally to be announced at last Friday's press conference were for an emergency demolition the following day. A delay in obtaining equipment pushed the demolition to this coming friday.

So...if the only controlled demolition you've ever watch is 9/11 footage, next friday is your lucky day.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Summerfest at The A/V Swap and more!

posted by b.s. @ 8:55 AM


Wrought Park, Video by Sean Carroll Audio by Thousands

filmed mostly at Summerfest, Eleanor Tinsley Park, Co-Lab Artspace in Austin, the joanna Gallery and BOX 13 Artspace.



Johnny and Paul / Flash Yo Grill, Video by Michael Rodriguez Audio by Kanude


Where will you see a country song about Paul Wall and Johnny Dang turned into a love story about hipsters eaten by monsters? Where else but The A/V Swap?



Come check out the Best Of The A/V Swap 2009 tonight at Rice Media Center at 8 pm!

READ MORE

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Ray Hill Interview

posted by Free Press Houston @ 9:19 PM

FPH Omar Afra interviewing Ray Hill from Osker Koronado on Vimeo.

Interview: Hell City Kings

posted by Free Press Houston @ 1:50 PM


By Omar Afra Photo by Aubrey McCoy

It’s been a minute or 2 since I last saw the Hell City Kings perform their personal blend of scumfuck-garage-punk-rock. Last time was at Westheimer Block Party at about 2PP with sun blazing over their heads outside Numbers. Turns out their lead singer woke up mere minutes before their performance with a stiff hangover and subsequently puked immediately after playing. Definitely bad scheduling on our part. Anyways, HCK have recently put out a new record, have some great shows slated, and are drinking more cheap Lone Star than ever. Christian and Bill tell us all about the Garage-y goodness.

Hell City Kings go hard live. Were you ever afraid you would not be able to capture this energy on a record?

Christian Bakka: We figured the best way to capture the energy was to DO IT LIVE!!! We actually knocked out 17 songs in one day.

Bill Fool: Recording for us is easy. We do the same things we do at a live show. We drink, bring something just in case we get a little tired, turn up loud and just fucking go for it. I think we pulled it off as best as we possibly could.

Who recorded and produced the record?

Christian Bakka: We recorded with Chris Ryan at Dead City Sound. Chris was really easy to work with and we are going into the studio with him again soon. As far as producers go, we don't need anyone to fuck with the songs we write.

Bill Fool: Nobody really uses a producer you know. I don't think most Houston bands need one. Just play the the song the way you wrote and hope you have someone like Chris to record it. He knows exactly what most bands here in Houston are going for. He can pretty much set a band up to sound great without all the fancy shit some knownothing producer would want to use. Producers are for pussy bands like Blue October. Fuck that shit.
Now that you have captured your seminal garage sound, will HCK move on to exploratory jazz or cutesy indie-pop?

Bill Fool: Those sound like fun ideas but I think we will leave that for the rich Indie bands here in town. We are a typical drunk rock n roll band. No use changing up the formula. Maybe tweak it up a bit but nothing too extreme. Look at the Ramones or AC/DC, those bands stuck with the same sound for their whole careers just adding a little bit here and there. They are/were the best and I love them even more for it.

Christian Bakka: Maybe one day we will have to restort to cutesy pop to get laid, but I dont see it happening anytime soon. Besides who ever heard of the cutesy indie pop band that was wasted on Lonestar and Jager. We would have better luck trying folk/reggae/gospel.

You have the scariest vocalist in town. Tell us a fun story about him.

Bill Fool: I've got tons but I guess 1 should suffice. So one time in L.A. we went to see The Dictators at the Troubadour. GFN had a shit load of drinks and was in a great mood. We leave the show and start heading to some chicks place so the boys in our band can maybe get lucky with some of the girls we just met and add some more booze to the liver. Well on the way to the house GFN starts taking is clothes off. We get to a light and he thinks it's time for Chinese fire drill, you know when you get out of the car and run around it real quick and jump back in just before the light turns green, well he does this with nothing on except his sock on a very busy Hollywood blvd. We are all laughing our asses off when someone notices that right behind our car was a cop car. The cop just shook his head in amazement. I mean you need to ask yourself what the fuck would you do if you saw a 6'-2" naked bald guy covered head-to-toe with tattoos, drunk and running circles around a car? Just look the other way is the advice I would give.

Will ya'll PLEASE play the November Block Party?

Bill Fool: Only if we can get a non hangover time slot. It's hard for 5 guys who don't go to bed until the wee hours to actually wake up before noon on the weekend. Just sayin'.

Christian Bakka: Hell Yeah, just let us play in Mangos again so we don't have to burn to death in the Numbers parking lot again.


Hell City Kings play Rudyard’s with Birds of Avalon September 25th.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Official Summer Fest Video by Mark Armes

posted by Free Press Houston @ 7:26 AM

Monday, September 14, 2009

Saturday's Joe Arpaio Protest

posted by Free Press Houston @ 8:43 AM

If you don't know Joe Arpaio, he is the infamous Arizona Sheriff who forces his inmates to wear pink clothes in a desert tent penitentiary. He is one of the country's foremost anti-immigrant activists and an all around Masengil. He made an appearance in Houston over the weekend and it brought out droves of soft and hard racists in support of him. This here video is the beginning of what we will develop into a regular video blog. ( Yeah, peep that new logo with a 'V' in it!)
Now, you will see a man in an Uncle Sam costume appear.. This is FPH copy editor and contributor Harbeer Sandhu posing as an anti-immigrant activist. At one point he urges 'his side' to chant 'remember Sandy Creek' which is an infamous slaughter of indigenous peoples in Arizona. So they jump right in. Sarcasm is lost in this world...

Friday, September 11, 2009

Hot Lixx Huluhan: The world's greatest air guitarist

posted by Free Press Houston @ 11:04 AM

It's an honor to say that this guy is my friend. While some bands try to push their records and still have to make their own fliers to promote their shows Hot Lixx Huluhan (Not to beconfused with Hot Lips Houlihan) here is
traveling the world, jamming stadiums, and laughing at every guitarist in the face.
Hot Lixx Huluhan is the one greatest air guitarists in the world. Placing first place last year in the world championships and this year placing in second Hot Lixx is the raddest guy on Earth.


FP: People train to be boxers, magicians, skateboarders, and swimmers. You challenged the world through air guitar.
How did it feel to be the greatest air guitarist in the world.

HL: My favorite part was being recognized as a world citizen as opposed to an “American”. I also liked the part where people both respected and laughed at me. That’s having my cake and eating it too.

FP: This year you placed in second place now making you the 2nd best air guitarist in the world. Do you feel stripped away now that the belt now belongs to France.

HL: The way things turned out was poetic. I have been ‘battling’ Ocean for four years now – he wins, I win, he wins, I win…so for both of us to tie, on the world stage, for 2nd place is pretty awesome. I mean, if you’re gonna go down then 2nd place is a pretty good place to drop. And the Frenchman was, in the words of the secretary from Ferris Bueller, a righteous dude. I was proud to pass along my crown to him.

FP: USA's Spark bingin' William Ocean followed at 2nd place. What has USA been drinking to gain such high scores in the AGWC?

HL: I think the U.S. has a very expressive style. An eastern European competitor once told me American routines are like Hollywood blockbusters – always too much stuff going on. He may be correct but I think it helps to have extra showmanship when you are one of 20 people trying to make an impression. Everyone at the world level is exceptional at the craft so to stick out sometimes takes more umph – hence the bombasticity, or “American style.”

FP:What is the thought process of choosing your song that you perform during the preliminary rounds.

HL:Personally, I like songs that are mid-tempo but a little ahead of the beat and aggressive. Something a little uncomfortable but perhaps…intriguing? Also, I like songs that promote awkward sexuality.

FP:And what about your uniforms.

HL:While this is at times my job (how sweet is that???!!) I have no uniform.

FP:As of late there is a new competitive sport called Air Sex. With your knowledge in the air world how do you feel if you pulled a Michael Jordan
and went on to another sport such as Air Sex.

HL:If there is one thing competitive air guitarists can laugh at it is the air sex community.

FP:Now being a female performing air sex you get to perform reach arounds and blow jobs which makes the performance more visual other than a
you air fucking a girl. Would you keep it straight or would you go guy on guy.

HL:I’d probably incorporate some sort of fart erotica. Does anyone in the air sex world just pretend to sit at a computer and masturbate? I’d do that.

FP:I see that a lot of air guitarist all have their "tricks" while you on the other hand like to just perform your song with no gimmicks.
You master your songs to a T without stunts and tricks. Is this part of your package or will we see tricks in the future.

HL:First I would like to thank you for inquiring about my package. While it plays only a small part in my routines (ooo, pun not intended), it is not the centerpiece like it can be for many other air wankers. The trick to air guitaring is make it somehow look like you’re NOT masturbating. I try ‘tricks’ from time to time but they don’t always work so I use them sparingly. One year I broke a fake bottle over my head. The pictures looked good and the crowd seemed to enjoy it but I still lost (to Ocean). Then next year in Des Moines a kid named Joseph of Airemethia broke an actual New Castle bottle over his head and I felt like such a poser. Tricks are cool but I’m more into themes now. Like Tetrad or Awesome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6RI7UwkAYQ), those guys make characters and just run with them with no regard for cool. I LOVE that!

Labels:

Ahhhh.... Push It

posted by b.s. @ 8:23 AM

Photobucket
Untitled (Sisyphean Task), 2009

by Divya Murthy

While Devin the Dude performed on the main stage at Summerfest, Frank Olson, Johnny DiBlasi and Matt Keller were attracting a significant audience toiling away in the sweltering heat. While festival-goers tuned in, turned on and dropped out, at the top of the hill Olson and Keller endlessly repeated a performance piece referencing the unyielding absurdity of an endless chore... READ MORE

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Reasonable Doubts Revisited: Reassessing 9/11 in the Obama Era

posted by Free Press Houston @ 9:46 AM


By M. Martin
Image by Tim Dorsey


“...Skepticism is a two-­edge sword. The same attitude that can lead to a suspicion of fringe theories can lead to a suspicion of orthodoxy as well....”
­Ted Schultz, The Fringes of Reason (1989)

Two years ago, I used that quote as the lead paragraph of an article entitled "Reasonable Doubts About The Demon in the Basement: A Skeptic's Assessment of 9/11". Two years further away from the actual event and almost a year into the first post-9/11 U.S. presidency, I felt it appropriate to re-examine my words and thoughts...and see what, if anything, had changed. I continue to approach this subject as both a skeptic and as an agnostic. This is an approach guaranteed to generate scorn from virtually all camps that have a perceived stake in the matter, as well as a certain awkwardness with those, who like our current president, would vastly prefer to simply "move on". Move on... and let all of the incredibly unlikely events of the Bush Era recede into history.

The only problem with that is that in many ways we haven't left the Bush Era. Some of the worst changes wrought upon our society over the last eight years have essentially become permanent and institutionalized. The hope that our current president would bring us back from the brink of absolute corporatist fascism has not yet been proven entirely vain-- but any prospect that candidate Barack Obama's rhetoric on the subject of "change" might be matched by President Obama's policies now seems distant and futile. The disturbingly Teutonic notion of the American "Homeland" is apparently as firmly entrenched in our language as The Department of Homeland Security is within our government. Ideas like warrantless and unsupervised domestic government spying or the indefinite detention of people who are somehow "too dangerous" to receive fair trial have become as familiar as they are contemptible. And at the heart of it all: the atrocity used to justify all the atrocities inflicted upon themselves by a once-free people--unexamined and too sacred to think about-- remains 9/11.

Two years ago, my thesis was fairly simple: that there were too many coincidences, too little untampered evidence, and too much convenience to take the official narrative of the events of September 11 2001 at face value. Further, I felt that any actual criminal investigation acting on the classic formula of "means, motive, and opportunity" would find it very difficult to exclude elements within our then-government from suspicion. Nothing that has occurred in the last two years has particularly invalidated the thesis or the suspicions. To the contrary, there is a slow and steady accumulation of evidence and informed analysis that makes the official narrative ever more difficult to accept. At the same time, there is a troubling lack of evidence regarding key pieces of the official narrative, evidence that should have emerged in the last eight years and has not.

Writing about the inconsistencies in evidence either for or against the official 9/11 narrative is beyond the scope of this article. The information is out there; anyone who wants to can google it in a heartbeat. The problem is that no one wants to. The purpose of this piece is to suggest that maybe you should.

What troubles me the most is how very little has actually changed. We are six months into a transfer of administrations and change of majority parties... and not a single Bush-Era official secrets act of substance has been overturned. To the contrary, there is growing evidence that the current administration is willing to keep the secrets of their predecessors at almost any cost. Among those detainees who President Obama regards as "too dangerous" to ever be tried or released are alleged 9/11 conspirators, many of whom supplied torture-extracted testimony (which, of course, remains secret) to the 9/11 Commission. These people are not comic book super-villains; they are as mortal as you or I and (apparently) permanently sequestered in the most secure prison system in the world. Is the supposed "danger" they pose what they might do... or what they might say in a fair and public trial?

And what of The President's unwillingness to consider the possibility of investigating far less speculative misdeeds on the part of the Bush Administration? More evidence mounts daily that there were indeed war crimes committed. Under both International Law and the U.S. Constitution, the current administration has a legal obligation (never mind the blazingly obvious moral obligation) to investigate what happened, if only to make sure that it cannot happen again. It is not enough for Barack Obama to merely say that "we do not torture" and express a willingness to move on. To do so is to implicitly acknowledge the concept of an Imperial Presidency in which-- like any other monarchy-- laws proceed from the man who holds the office and may change at whim with the man.

A very real argument could at one time been made that Obama had decided to bargain away accountability for the previous administration in return for the minority party's cooperation in an agenda of social reform. If that was ever the case, it was a poor bargain and certainly one that is null and void at this point--now that Obama is all but burned in effigy by ranting mobs encouraged and endorsed by that minority party. If Obama continues to push back on investigation of Bush-Era abuses, it is only because he has decided, for whatever reason, to become an accomplish after the fact to those abuses.

For anyone who remains skeptical on the previous administration's role in 9/11, it is all to easy to imagine that the ultimate reason for Obama's stonewalling is a clear understanding of just how far even a superficial investigation of Bush-Era criminality might go. Obama ran on the promise of being a reformer on the level of an FDR and a transformative figure on the level of Reagan. While he has certainly been a disappointment to progressives so far, it remains obvious that he intends to pursue a fairly sweeping agenda--one that would only be sidetracked by a full accounting of the Bush Era and that would likely be stopped cold by any sort of wide-scale re-assessment of 9/11. The fracture lines in this country have been made very obvious by the heated debate over healthcare. Wide-scale revelations of complicity in the 9/11 attacks by actors in the previous administration could set into motion acrimony that would make the current disputes look like a lover's spat.

Of course, it's not gonna happen. Even as The President is doing everything he can to kick this particular can of worms as far down the road as possible, American mass-media-driven culture is making sure that within another two years, it pretty much won't matter. It won't matter that ongoing analysis of what little evidence remains of the World Trade Center collapse shows signs of thermite combustion, or that there remains no conclusive photographic evidence of the plane that apparently struck the Pentagon, or that the 9/11 commission itself cannot explain the picture-perfect controlled-demolition collapse of WTC Building 7. It won't matter because none of this is ever going to make it onto a major network newscast or website, except possibly to be taken out of context, marginalized, or mocked.

It won't matter because every break room on every floor of the office building where I carry out my day-job activities sports a wide-screen TV, almost all of which are tuned to Fox News or CNN... and such has been the case with every major corporation I've worked for in the last ten years. It won't matter, because we've already been informed that progressives who suspect Bush of war crimes are exactly equal to rednecks who think Obama was born in Kenya--and we don't want to look foolish now, do we? This country is held together by hypnosis and consumerism, and the only reason John Carpenter's They Live qualifies as science fiction is that (as far as I know) the people responsible for the hypnosis aren't skull-headed aliens...but they might as well be. It doesn't matter what really happened on 9/11 or who was responsible...because knowing those things isn't going to pay for a new game console or a new car or the cool new smart phone we've all been told we have to have.

So....why does it even matter to me, at least enough to write this article? Why should it matter to you, the hypothetical reader? I guess in my case it's because I take it personally when people assume I'm a moron. Perhaps also because I'm just barely old enough to remember when this country was a better place... and probably too old to live long enough to see any real change for the better. If you're reading this and you're part of this paper's core demographic, you should care because you're being handed a shit sandwich called your future... and because--just maybe--if enough of you wake up and get pissed off, you might have some slim hope of living long enough to be something other than a very small part in a very large machine of worldwide corporate feudalism.

Also, writing this piece is, for me, something in the way of debt repayment...or maybe paying forward. You see, for years I didn't think about any of this. The Enron collapse, subsequent recession, and correspondent erosion in the IT job sector gave me plenty to think about in the years following 9/11. I fully understood that the Bush Administration was exploiting the living hell out of a national tragedy, but it never occurred to me that they might've engineered the damn thing in the first place--at least, not until I read a 9/11 skeptic piece in this paper...and had something of an epiphany.

That epiphany was that I had been lied, had not realized it, and had not even considered the possibility. And I am very far from being some starry-eyed defender of the status quo. I watched the Watergate hearings on TV after school, watched Ollie North peddle bullshit under oath in his country's uniform, and watched Bill Clinton lie about trivial sexual escapades and get crucified for it. I didn't buy the excuses for Gulf War 1 or 2, much less the lies trotted out as excuses. Yet somehow, this particular lie had managed to stay below my personal radar. I don't even remember the article or who wrote it, but I am very grateful to them--and to Free Press Houston.

I have no pet theory of "what really happened" I'm trying to advance. I just know that what I'm being told by government and mainstream media seems very much like a lie. All I am asking of you, the reader, is to consider the possibility that you are being lied to... and not just about 9/11.

Then ask yourself if you're OK with that.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

King Kong or Manny Shaquiao?

posted by Mills-McCoin @ 7:51 PM


There’s nothing “real” about Reality Television. Nothing. It’s scripted; and worse for your health than smoking cigarettes. The only (and by God, I mean ONLY) TV show worth watching to quench your reality TV thirst is “SHAQ VS.”! Holy hellfire, I’m not kidding. You will chuckle chuckle chuckle your ass off.

My suggestion is for you to watch Shaq (self-proclaimed “Manny Shaquiao”) take on Oscar de la Hoya, who actually comes out of retirement for this particular shenanigan. The tale of the tape alone is hysterical. Shaq- seven feet & one inch. De la Hoya- five feet & ten inches. That’s a 16 inch difference. Shaq weighs 325 lbs. De la Hoya weighs less than I do.

Click here to watch

Electric Lazyland : Electric Cars in Houston and a response by Rick Ehrlich of Houston Electric Car

posted by Free Press Houston @ 11:18 AM


by Alex Wukman

Erik Ibarra walks into Coffee Groundz on a Saturday morning in his customary black polo embroidered with the Rev Houston logo and a ball cap. Ibarra and his brother, Justin Jones, started Rev Houston in April 2008--the same month that Ibarra and his brother Sean Ibarra accepted a settlement from Harris County.
In 2004 the brothers sued the county and the sheriff’s department, stating that their civil rights were violated when sheriff’s deputies stormed their home, arrested them and seized film after they photographed a deputy during a drug raid at a neighbor’s home. The suit was settled for $1.7 million.
Ibarra says that he was attending a sports event when he saw electric shuttles (they look like stretch golf carts) and became inspired, so he and Jones decided to start a company transporting people through downtown and midtown for tips. They went before Mayor Bill White and City Council to explain what they were doing.
“The mayor said ‘We look forward to permitting you. We think that plug in electric cars are the wave of the future,’” says Ibarra.
Six weeks after Rev Houston started, though, they received a ticket for operating a taxi without a license. Ibarra feels that the city has cowed to pressure from the taxi companies.
“Taxi companies feel that that we are such a threat that we have to be ticketed,” says Ibarra as he takes a sip from his coffee, “but the last thing we wanted to do when we started this company was compete with cabs.”
Raymond Turner, president of Yellow Cab Houston, states that he and his company have not put undue pressure on the city to ticket Ibarra.
“All we’ve done is ask the city to enforce existing ordinance, these vehicles are clearly vehicles for hire,” says Turner. Since Ibarra is running a company that hires out vehicles, he should be held to the same standard as any other taxi company. “The ordinance requires things like a sign on the top, a meter and doors,” says Turner.
None of Ibarra’s electric cars have signs marking them as taxis; nor do they have meters, or even doors. Ibarra feels that they don’t need meters because they don’t charge their riders a fare--they only accept tips. Not everybody agrees with him, though. Tina Paez, the city’s Deputy Director of Administration and Regulatory Affairs told the Houston Chronicle that since Rev Houston’s drivers accept tips, they are taxis and fall under the taxi ordinance.
The ordinance also requires that taxi cabs have fire extinguishers, something Ibarra finds ridiculous.
“We don’t even have any flammable fuel onboard,” says Ibarra.
Turner isn’t concerned with the fact that Ibarra’s drivers use electric cars, he just wants them to follow the rules.
“We’re not out trying to make life difficult for people, [but] the Rev Houston vehicles look like taxi cabs to us and to the city,” says Turner. Since the city has decided to regulate the taxi cab industry they need to regulate every taxi vehicle—electric or not. To Turner, the issue isn’t about the city favoring big businesses over small or not encouraging green vehicles; it’s about being equal under the law. “If the city is going to take this position that they are going to regulate this industry they have to regulate the entire industry.”
Ibarra counters that being equal under the law isn’t possible when the system is set against you. Ibarra stated that getting a taxi permit in Houston is difficult, because the permit price isn’t sent by the city, it is set by the cab companies. The barriers to entry are too high to start a cab company,. Turner is unconvinced.

READ ON>>>

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Interview: Mike Hardin

posted by Free Press Houston @ 10:17 AM


By Omar Afra Photo by Mitch Cantu


Every city should have a Mike Hardin. The frontman for Roky Moon and Bolt and member of American Sharks dabbles in everything and constantly finds ways to push his personal envelope. His glam-laden songwriting for Roky Moon and Bolt draws from the likes of Bowie and T Rex yet is unmistakably Houston. What that means, I am not sure, but they have being playing many a show to much acclaim and played a jaw dropping set at Summer Fest. Hardin has a cornacopia of clutchness planned for the near future including a rock opera, a split 7 inch, and a rumored performance on the rooftop of the Mink. Hardin honored us with an interview and gave us the scoop on it all.


Is this a collective songwriting process or are you the Joseph Stalin of Bolt?

Well I write all of the songs but BOLT arranges their own parts. They basically take the shell of song that I present to them and help me make it not not suck! We make a hell of a team!

Is Five Dollar Fame about someone in particular? Can I have her number?

Five Dollar Fame is about a character I call the lioness. She is a beautiful but trashy celebrity model that is hopelessly addicted to drugs and fame. Oh, and sex and money of course. She is one of the main characters in the rock opera I am working on. You may not have her number because she is mine.
I heard rumors that ya'll and Chase Hamblin may release a 7 Inch together. Is this true and is it possible to have a more effeminate combination?

I would absolutely love to do a Chase Hamblin split. I just want to find someone to put it out because I don't have any money...BUT I also see many more amazing things that we can do together. Maybe he would be down with the idea of a split where I write the song he plays and he writes the song I play. Maybe just to man it up a little we will hold an arm wrestling competition to win free copies of the record!
Standard regurgitated question: Who are your favorite Houston bands?

BENJAMIN WESLEY! Love him, he rules. Chase Hamblin, for sure. Elaine Greer, Passengers, Ghost Town Electric, anything Bryan Jackson is doing! Springfield Riots, News on the March and Grandfather Child! Muhhamidali and Guitars, Tha Fucking Transmissions.

So you sound Glam but you don't look Glam. When can we expect some mascara and eye shadow?

I think we have decided not to go the makeup route but I would expect a little something special coming soon...Chad is cookin' up some ideas.
Fill in the blanks: Houston is the music capital of the universe because ____ has more ___ than a ___ has ____.

Aaron Echegaray has more soul than a KFC has grease!

Tell us about the Rock Opera you're working on.

The rock opera I am working on is going to be a sci-fi love story adventure. We are doing a couple of different splits but we also want to do our own record and I wanted to do something special. I feel like I am writing the some of the best music of my life and I felt just doing a regular album was something I had already done before and I want this to stand out and be an experience that sticks in peoples' minds for a long time. The piece that I am arranging right now is the beginning of a what I think will be a three part series. I don't want to go too much into the story right now but it will be all about the lioness and this man Avery and how they find each other and how they help each other to grow by relying on the love they share. Meanwhile there are space battles, sex, plenty of drugs and of course rock n' roll all around them and they are met with a series of challenges and they must rely on one another to get through it all. This will not however be soft and lofty. This, as any good rock opera should be, will be littered with screaming guitar solos and huge riffs, thank you Aaron Echegaray, and Jeoaf's signature beat the shit out of the drums thump. Then I want to do an actual stage show when it is complete. With costumes and set designs and stuff, get extra musician to help. Maybe even a string section! I was thinking of trying to convince the guys at the Mink to let us do it on the roof. Maybe clear the back parking lot and have the stage on the edge of the roof....we'll see...

Does it involve boobies?

Yes it involves boobies. TONS of boobies!

What is next for Roky Moon and Bolt: Slow Demise, Blaze of Glory, or Public Shame?

BLAZE OF GLORY!!!! Had I picked anything else Cassie would have quit the band I'm sure (believe it or not she is the wild one of us!)

Monday, September 7, 2009

Prince Rama of Ayodhya, Lord Jeff, B L A C K I E, and A Thousand Cranes 9/14/09

posted by Ramon Medina - LP4 @ 3:09 PM

More promo video weirdness from a thousand cranes this time plugging Prince Rama of Ayodhya, Lord Jeff, B L A C K I E, and A Thousand Cranes on September 14th at Mango's.


Friday, September 4, 2009

WatchWatch ListenListen

posted by Ramon Medina - LP4 @ 6:55 AM

ListenListen's "On the Water" is a pretty cool song. I wonder what would happen if the lads made a video for it? Well, wonder no more! They have! Check it out in the Music Section. (link)