End of Silence

Red River will be lousy with 90’s rock aficionados and purveyors tonight, both local and national. We’ve got The New Year and Shellac at Emo’s and Sons of Hercules and Jesus Christ Superfly at Beerland.

The New Year is the most recent project from the Kadane brothers of mid-late 90’s act, Bedhead, whose three albums were recently re-released by Touch N Go, but were originally released on Austinite King Coffey’s awesome Trance Syndicate label. This is Shellac’s first appearance in Texas. Rumor is that Steve Albini hates playing the South. I’m still kicking myself for missing a chance to see them in 1995 in NYC, so this is my chance to redeem myself. They haven’t released anything new since 2000’s 1000 Hurts, but no matter. I’ll be interested to see if there’s new stuff mixed in with material from that and the two previous albums, At Action Park and Terraform.

It’s a 15 year anniversary show for Jesus Christ Superfly. The Sons of Hercules have been around for roughly the same amount of time with various line up changes, though the Sons have had the current line-up for quite some time. I’m not sure who’s in JCS at this point, but I’ll probably stop by after the Shellac show as it appears it’s going off early, 10pm for The New Year and 11pm for Shellac. Is Steve still drumming for them?

We can all compare how many pounds and wrinkles we’ve added since the Cannibal Club days. Who’s with me?

Anybody that knows me knows that I’m not the biggest sports nut. I casually follow the Dallas Mavericks and may catch a game or two here and there for sports other than basketball, but that’s about it.

However, with the Mavericks in the NBA Finals for the first time ever and World Cup starting up tomorrow, I’m in sports mode for the next couple of weeks (sorry, Spurs fans). Unfortunately, I’ve got to go to a rehearsal dinner tonight, so I’m DVR’ing the Mavs-Heat game. Shhh! I don’t want to hear it! I’m watching it later.

World Cup can be entertaining, especially as the teams are narrowed down. We’re getting the usual assurances that the U.S. team has improved and they’ll do better this time, but I have a hard time believing they’ll make it out of their bracket with the Czech Republic and Italy to get past. You can check out the schedule here, complete with nifty local time converter.

So where do you go to watch the big game? The consensus seems to be Ringers on Colorado between 4th and 5th although I’ve never been in there. What about The Warehouse? For World Cup in particular, it seems like Irish or English Pubs will also be hopping. Fado? What about the Ale House in the alley behind Old Pecan St. Cafe on Sixth?

Yes, fellow Austinites, it’s National Day of Slayer.

As you can see, I’m appropriately assaulting my co-workers with some of their fine musical stylings. I was hoping to find that at least one member of the Austin Alamo Drafthouse empire appropriately commemorating the occasion and Alamo Lakecreek is the only one showing the proper reverence.

In addition to that crap re-make of The Omen (trust me, go rent the original instead, though I must commend the casting of David Thewlis in the part originally played by David Warner), they’ve got a special screening of The Exorcist at 7:30pm tonight. Alamo South Lamar gets a pass because they’re hosting Dionysium tonight, coincidentally this marks two years for the monthly gathering of the hoi polloi.

P.S. Can somebody brave enough to endure the re-make tell me how they handle Damien’s birthday? It’s 6/6/66 in the original, so it sort of worked out with the release of the movie in 1976. Sort of. I can’t see how they’ll pull anything like that off in this one unless they set it in 2012 or something and, if they do, are there any flying cars?