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    Rock 'n Rodeo All Night

    No risk with KISS: Glam metal group revs up RodeoHouston with energized show

    Michael D. Clark
    Mar 16, 2011 | 6:45 am

     Alright RodeoHouston... You wanted the best, you got the best!

    Over the past 70 years Houston's annual rodeo has welcomed rock acts from Elvis Presley to Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Earlier this week Kid Rock nearly blew the Reliant Stadium retractable roof open with a performance that may have looked a little country, but was definitely rock n' roll.

     

    Never, however, has any band stepped onto the mobile rodeo stage covered in white make-up, sweat, brimstone and sensuality like American glam metal icons KISS did Tuesday night.

     

    "How you doing, Houston?," shrieked KISS lead singer Paul Stanley as he introduced a one hour, 12-song set of glam metal the likes of which RodeoHouston had never seen.

     

    Not since rapper LL Cool J back in 2003 can I remember a time when the usually conservative, family-oriented Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo executive committee put themselves out on such a limb. If ever there was a band that epitomized the legacy of the "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" lifestyle, it's KISS.

     

    The risk paid off.

     

    Their hit-laden set spanned the beginning with opening two-year old single "Modern Day Delilah" and working into hey-day anthems "Shout It Out Loud" and "Love Gun." Gene Simmons doesn't get much credit for his vocals, but his guttural deliveries of "Dr. Love" and "I Love It Loud" were highlights.

     

    Stanley seemed a little thrown by the rodeo stage and distance from crowd. After not getting the sing-along response he was looking for to begin "I Was Made For Loving You" he seemed to forget the lyrics. He finally got his bearings for "Lick It Up.

     

     

    I had my doubts that a band known for a stage arsenal of pyrotechnics and wires that allowed Stanley and Simmons to fly around the stage like kabuki bats could be scaled down for rodeo and still work. Their ability to unleash hell on stage with smoke, fire, flaming projectiles and Simmons' disgustingly long blood-spitting tongue is part of what makes a KISS show a KISS show.

     

    It did.

     
     
     

    In addition to tighter, energized versions of KISS standards like "Detroit Rock City," the reinvigorated musicians brought back lesser-known (but no less loved) favorites like "Crazy Crazy Nights." Even more impressive, they have recorded new material, like two-year old album Sonic Boom, that has enhanced their discography. Another new KISS album is expected later this year.

     
     
     

    Together for 37 years, KISS was a rock radio hit machine throughout the '70s and '80s but took much of the '90s off. Since reuniting a little more than a decade ago they have been quite businesslike. In fact something quite unexpected has happened in recent years: They started caring about the music again.

     
     

    After making the tough decisions to part ways with original (but troubled) guitarist Ace Frehley and contentious drummer Peter Criss in favor of Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer, respectively, things really started clicking into place for the reunited KISS.

     

    The latter-day KISS has left old vices behind and concentrates solely on entertaining. This new direction made them a perfect, yet unlikely fit for RodeoHouston.

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    Art on the Prairie

    The roots of Lone Star art: William Reaves unearths the Texas modernistlandscape

    Steven Devadanam
    Mar 31, 2011 | 4:40 pm
    • Richard Stout, "Evenings Fall," 1967
    • David Adickes, "Three Men on a Beach," 1953
    • Jack Boynton, "Inland Lights," 1956
    • Emma Richardson Cherry, "Southern Morning," c. 1930

    This month's editorial series, True Grit: Houston Style, has sought to answer to what extent Houston embraces its Texas roots. To investigate how Houston artists have come to terms with their state's landscape, we went to William Reaves Fine Art, a gallery whose mission is to define modernism in Texas.

    "We opened the gallery to convey a story about the evolution of modernism in our state," says the gallery's owner, William Reaves. He pinpoints Houston as the "birthplace" of Texas modernism for the community's willingness to display abstract works in museums and support award-winning artists as early as the 1930s. Artist-teachers like Emma Richardson Cherry and Ella McNeil Davidson had means to travel internationally and cultivated a generation of informed local artists like Robert Preusser and Frank Dolejska in the 1920s and '30s via institutions like the Art League and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

    Reaves notes that much ink has been spilt chronicling the first half of the 20th century in Texas art, but it was not until after World War II that the region received the necessary influx of knowledgeable artists to create an enduring community. Several local artists who stayed in Europe after the war brought back global influences. Paris was briefly home to a creative Texan expat culture, inculcating such minds as Herb Meers and David Adickes, who studied under the lionized Cubist painter Fernand Léger.

    "This sort of French-looking, Texas cubist school that they created when they returned was very different from the bluebonnets people were used to seeing," says Reaves.

    As the 1950s progressed, Houston became a "hotbed" for non-representational art, led by figures like Jack Boynton and Richard Stout (whose work from the era will be on view in an exhibition opening Friday). "A lot of this stuff from the '50s is new again because it's been kind of squirreled away in closets for awhile," says Reaves. "It comes off as fresh because there's a kinship with contemporary artists."

    No doubt that international currents increasingly flowed into the local art mix, but did Houston artists ever completely turn their back on the Texas landscape?

    "My impression is that it's a blend," says the gallery owner, citing Richard Stout as an example of an artist who has studied under other masters and blended that style with an impression of the state. Explains Reaves,

     

    He paints in an expressionist style and has been informed by a lot of different artists over time. In addition, he was an art professor at UH for 25 years, so he's very aware of what's going on internationally. But Richard is also from Beaumont and his work almost always sees a landscape influence — a lot of coastal plains and rich atmosphere. Yet it is painted in a way that is informed by a lot of important artists from the New York School."

    Similarly, Boynton and McKie Trotter presented work at New York galleries, yet their respective reductive landscapes and abstract expressionist works evince a horizon line evocative of the wide skies and flatness of Texas.

    In truth, the link between Houston artists and their Texas roots is not a black-and-white issue. But to some extent, the answer is embedded in the cadre of works on view at William Reaves Fine Art. More than simply display and distribute artworks, the gallery presents curated thematic exhibitions that are accompanied by robust physical and online catalogues derived from research conducted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Hirsch Library.

    "The gestalt of what we're trying to do," says Reaves, "is trace a history of Texas art that may have been overlooked, but at its zenith, there's this beautiful, vital modernism."

     The exhibitions Lone Star Modernism: A Celebration of Mid-Century Texas Art and Richard Stout: The Early Years open Friday, with a reception April 9, 5 - 8 p.m. A gallery talk will be held April 30 from 2 - 4 p.m. Both exhibitions are on view through May 7.

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