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Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 31

Location:
Austin, Texas
Issue Date:
Page:
31
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Album shows breadth of Sir Douglas' blues ill 1 'It sounds better than Eric Clapton's says Sahm, before premiering the Last Real Texas Blues Band at Antone's i A i I I ---7 I ''f I i 4 I "miv I i i ('ZZrj 1 With an album slated for release in three weeks and a national tour threatened, the Last Real Texas Blues Band launched itself Saturday night at the last real Texas blues bar. The band represents the bluesy incarnation of Sir Douglas Sahm, and Antone's has long been where he struts his most soulful stuff. Carrying the unwieldy title The Last Real Texas Blues Band Featuring Doug Sahm, the album is a successor to Sahm's 1988 Juke Box Music on the Antone's label. Less consistent and polished than its predecessor, it Don McLeese 4. available only to members of the band's fan club, included with February copies for subscibers to Propaganda.

Additional copies have been distributed among the music press with the request to enjoy but not write about it which Island Records understands is the surest way to get some ink (but which also likely means that more copies than otherwise will be floating through collectors' channels). Easier to find if you know where to look is a new album from Los Lobos titled Papa's Dream, a children's story with plenty of music narrated by "Papa" Lalo Guerrero. The bilingual fable finds Papa and band returing to Mexico for his 80th birthday on a "Wooly Bully" blimp. In addition to a raucous rendition of that Sam the Sham staple, the band performs La Bamba in a couple of arrangements, some new originals and Mexican folk "tunes. Released through the Music For Little People division of Warner the album will likely be shelved in the children's music bins though it shares plenty in spirit with the band's "adult" recordings (after all, the Kiko mas-terwork was also something of a children's fable).

For Lobos it represents a good excuse to have, some kids or at least borrow some. In the studio: Ian Moore is recording his second Capricorn album in San Francisco, with Mark Howard (engineer from the Daniel LanoisMalcolm Burn camp) producing. "It's definitely different," said Moore of the progression from the first album to the second, which is slated for May 21 release. "It's a lot heavier, and it's a lot lighter. I'm willing to take a tangent further, and I'm not playing by anybody else's rules.

"I want the Meters to be able to listen to this and go, 'This is and then I want Dylan to go, 'Wow, I really like the and then I want Stevie Wonder I want all; these people that I respect to think it's a good record." Doug Sahm's high school yearbook photo decorates the cover of his new CD, The Last Real Texas Blues Band Featuring Doug Sahm. A more recent shot illustrates Sahm's continuing fondness for sunglasses. and the Texas Tornados. Before the show, Sahm described his latest musical move with characteristic understatement: "It sounds better than Eric Clapton's record," he said. "I mean, he's a great guitarist and everything, but he doesn't have that Texas rhythm section.

He oughta come down here and be my second guitarist." Keep one, lose one: Though earlier indications were that Austin's Watermelon label would be losing Monte Warden and Alejandro Escovedo, the latest word is that Warden will be staying with the label while Escovedo will be leaving. Over the past year, both artists recorded demos financed by major labels, but Capitol decided to pass on Warden, and In-terscope did likewise with Escovedo. So Escovedo is expected to sign with Rykodisc, who began working with him on last year's True Believers reissue. "I think they're planning on announcing it at South by Southwest," said Escovedo, who hQpes mixes live recordings from Antone's in '88 with more recent studio sessions that capture the same raw immediacy. (The verisimilitude of the live tracks includes Sahm shouting for more vocal in his monitor and ordering a round of drinks for the band.) Though the selections hit the predictable touchstones Lowell Fulson, Bobby "Blue" Bland, T-Bone Walker Sahm's expansive conception of blues extends to everything from a revival of the Jive Bombers' Bad Boy novelty to a chicken-fried rendition of the standard When I Fall in Love.

As on the album, Saturday's lineup found Sahm flanked by a three-man horn section led by tenor titan Rocky Morales and the dual keyboards of Sauce Gonzalez on Hammond and Augie Meyers on upright piano. Though Derek O'Brien and Denny Freeman provide stalwart guitar on the album, one of Saturday's treats was the chance to hear Sahm play more bandstand guitar in one night than he might in a year's worth of touring with the Sir Douglas Quintet showcase at the Ritz on March 16 is likely to feature Webb Wilder, the Silos, Hamilton Pool (Iain Matthews, Mark Hallman and Michael Fracasso), Steve Young and Katy Moffatt most of whom once had their profiles raised through major-label promotion, but have since found refuge with the Austin indie. Album alternatives: A couple of favorite bands have recently issued albums of sorts through other than conventional channels. On Melon: Remixes for Propaganda, U2 offers remixed versions of material from Achtung Baby and Zooropa that is occasionally so radically deconstructed that the original can be difficult to recognize. Sometimes all that remains is a familiar guitar riff (Mysterious Ways) or vocal falsetto (Lemon), set to new rhythms, arrangements and melodies.

Fans of drummer Larry Mullen Jr. might suspect that he has been replaced by a tape loop. The nine-cut, dance-rave disc is den had appeared headed for California's HighTone indie, before determining that the contractual move would be cost-prohibitive. "It made more sense for me to stay with Watermelon than what it would have cost to get out of the deal," said Warden. "It's like you don't know how much you're wanted until you almost go somewhere else." "We're glad to be doing another album with him, because we really liked the first one," said Geissler.

"They (Warden and manager Mike Crowley) basically took a whole year to find a major-label deal, and it just didn't happen." The paradox of Watermelon's position is that the better it does by its artists, the more attractive those artists potentially become to labels with greater resources. "As an indie label, we are a farm team for the major labels, and there's nothing that we can do about it," said Geissler. Then again, the talent flows both ways. ThC label's South by Southwest to begin recording in April. "It's the one label that wanted me for who I was, without any intention of changing what I do.

They have the resources to put albums in the stores and create press and advertising, and they've had a good track record with Sugar and Morphine." "I think it's good for everybody involved," said Watermelon's Heinz Geissler of Escovedo's label switch. "We'really did everything we could for Alejandro, and he just didn't have the success that his albums warranted." His performance Thursday at the Cactus Cafe anticipates a month's tour through the Southwest and up the California coast, and will likely be his last Austin appearance until his annual South by Southwest finale. As for Warden, he'll be starting sessions March 1 for his next Watermelon release, which he hopes to have available in time for a tour beginning in late spring. After failing to land a major-label deal, War Music celebrates black heritage will debut, a program produced by Dave Pre-witt that features two complete performances i0t Austin Music Network Cramps still love trash and rockabilly CI The Austin Music Network presents Austin and Texas music mixed with some of the latest national music on Austin Cable Vision Channel 15 each night beginning at 10. Tonight on The Solo Sessions at 10:30 p.m.

is the debut of the second of two sets taped in the studio Dec. 13 featuring an acoustic solo performance by Alejandro Escovedo. Tomorrow from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. is a showcase spotlighting African American musicians from Texas, as the first installment of AMN's Black Heritage Month Celebration.

Included will be videos and live performances by Albert Collins, W.C. Clark, Kevin Gant, Grey Ghost Orchestra, Michael E. Johnson the Killer Bees, Sho featuring Willie E.R. Shorts, J.W. Davis the East-side Horns, Lady the Jazz Players, T.D.

Bell the New Cadillacs, Queen Esther, Mad Flava, Big Mike, Del, Papa Chuck and Big Mellow. Friday at 10:30 p.m., Milla: The Divine Comedy Live! taped in Austin last year. Milla Jovovich is a 13 year-old singersongwriter who was born in Kiev, Ukraine. A child model and actor, she's appeared in two feature films: Dazed and Confused (filmed in Austin) and Chaplin. Her first album, The Divine Comedy, was released last year on SBK Records.

Monday at 10:30 p.m., AMN's new weekly program Check This Action spotlights upcoming action on Austin's club scen9, touring bands, music news and birthdays. Viewers can enter a contest to win one of five free copies of Siouxsee and the Banshees' new CD, The Rapture, which won't be available in stores until Feb. 14. One viewer will win the band's entire catalog on CD and a home video. 9w.

Tl (HI I 1 whattdo yo iwanpacK I 8 i i i i i i i 1 v- i 1 --LAxf- 1 IN extra large, excellent, entertainment. At Liberty Lunch on Friday are psychobilly punkers the Cramps, clockwise from top left, Harry Drumdini, Slim Chance, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. By Fred Shuster Los Angeles Daily News LOS ANGELES Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of the veteran punk-rockabilly band the Cramps call themselves soul mates. Even their initial meeting in the mid-'70s bears the mark of destiny. "I was hitchhiking in Sacramento (Calif.) when Lux picked me up," Ivy tells it.

"Hitchhiking was common back then. It wasn't that weird or dangerous, at least on the surface. It's not something I'd do today or suggest anybody do today But that's really how we met. I know it sounds like some kind of made-up story." The couple shared an affection for trash culture and started the rockabilly-based Cramps in New York in 1977, quickly becoming a cult favorite at CBGB's and other Big Apple punk clubs. Using primitive Southern rock 'n' roll as a jumping-off point, Interior (Erick Purkhiser) and Ivy (Kirsty Wallace) devised a deranged blend of surf, horror-movie punk-rock sounds dubbed psy-chobilly.

The Cramps song titles tell the story: Human Fly, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Zombie Dance, Voodoo Idol, Bikini Girls With Machine Guns, Goo Goo Muck, bathed in echo and delivered by Interior's living-dead howl. "When we started, we said we wouldn't change our sound unless we wanted to," Ivy says from Northern California, tn the midst of a tour that brings the band to Liberty Lunch on Friday. "We would encounter people who wanted us to add more guitar or beef up the drums or get backup singers If you go The Cramps .1 and Harry Drumdini (drums) are finding on their first tour in several years that shows are selling out at venues in Vancouver, British Columbia, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and Ivy's hometown of Sacramento. "I love touring, especially in America," Ivy says. "It's easier to travel here than in Europe, and there's more to it America is beautiful, and there's so much more variety from town to town.

"We're record collectors. We buy books and things, and it's great to find little junk stores everywhere. "Rockabilly is still our primary inspiration," she continued. "It was $angerous music played by dange'fous people. That much hasn't changed." ifT! in When: 10 p.m.

Friday Where: Liberty Lunch Tickets: $12 advance; $13 door Information: 477-0461 or change the material. We never wanted that sort of relationship, and it did narrow our choices." Still, the Cramps managed to release about a dozen albums and compilations on a series of small labels over the past 16 years. The quartet has a new album, Flame-Job (tiedicine), out now. The Cramps Interior (vocals), Ivy (guitar), Slim Chance (bass) mi.

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About Austin American-Statesman Archive

Pages Available:
2,714,819
Years Available:
1871-2018