Sort Of A Homecoming

Does The Woodlands really hold a legit claim on Arcade Fire & Win Butler?

Does the Woodlands hold a rightful claim on Win Butler?
Arcade Fire at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Wednesday

Yes, we're all excited that Arcade Fire is playing the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion Wednesday night. And, yes, it's exciting that lead singer Win Butler spent his "formative years" growing up in that community which makes this — to borrow a title from a beloved U2 anthem — A Sort of Homecoming.

But it's time all of the greater Houston area suck on the bitter pill of reality for a moment and come to grips with a very real truth: Arcade Fire is not a band from The Woodlands.

It is not even a Texas band. It is not even an American band and anyone saying anything to the contrary must also accept the equally preposterous notion that country icon Willie Nelson hails from Vancouver, Wash., or that Madonna is British.

My point: Just because an artist spent a chunk of time in an area does not make all that artist's past or future or past accomplishments the possession of that region. If that starts being the standard, then we're going to have to start rewriting a lot of history books.

(Although, in the case of Madonna, I'd be willing to trade the Brits the last 20 years of her career for say ... The Kinks? Hell, I'll even throw in Justin Bieber and his entire career if they promise to take Simon Cowell back permanently.)

While it is true that singer Butler, 31, lived in The Woodlands for a time in his youth, it is equally true that he was born in Truckee, Calif., and that by the time he was 15, he was attending a boarding school in New Hampshire that boasts former U.S. President Franklin Pierce and U.S. Senator Daniel Webster as alumni. After that, Butler spent time at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, N.Y. and McGill University in Montreal before Arcade Fire was finally set ablaze in 2003.

Surely, it makes no sense to have The Woodlands, Truckee, Yonkers, Montreal, The Pierce Presidential Library and the sailors who once proudly served on the USS Daniel Webster all claiming Arcade Fire for their own.

In cases of artistic ownership, Rock Music Law states (and I quote from this fictional tomb): The city in which the band/artist first met success is the city that shall claim rightful ownership over said artist/band. All others are E Pluribus Posers.

In other words, Arcade Fire is a band that hails from Montreal. In Canada.

The good news is that they are a kick ass band that hails from Montreal and just because they are not from here does not mean that they don't deserve a homecoming-type welcome when they take the Woodlands' shed stage. The band has been an "alt rock" and college radio darling for the nearly seven years since its debut album, Funeral, came out. In the time of disposal entertainment, that's a hell of a long time to keep working the fringe.

The genuine vulnerability and soul-searching of Funeral was somewhat unexpected in an era of contrived emotions and over-produced harmonies and earned it a rep as a new millennium classic from critics at Rolling Stone, Spin and many other long-revered music journal periodicals. The Arcade Fire albums that have followed have been similarly well-received.

In 2007, its sophomore album Neon Bible debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 (Sorry, Woodlands: It debuted at No. 1 in Canada) and the most recent album, The Suburbs, took the top spot (both in U.S. and Canada) and has sold over a half-million copies domestically in nine months.

The Suburbs also won album of the year at the Grammys in February.

In the perverted, singles-only world of iTunes rock, Arcade Fire is still a band that knows how to deliver an entire record, complete with story arc, depth and breadth of emotions. No doubt, these same elements will become even more palpable live on stage and that should make it a favorite of every rock 'n' roll lovin' kid (or kid at heart) regardless of where the band calls home.

Arcade Fire

7:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

Tickets: $40

unspecified

cult classic

Performer John Cameron Mitchell celebrate 25 years of Hedwig at Houston show

Courtesy of John Cameron Mitchell

Hedwin and the Angry Inch will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2026.

Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the 2001 cult queer musical and directorial debut of veteran stage actor John Cameron Mitchell. First debuting in Sundance before hitting theaters later that summer, Hedwig (based on the 1998 off-Broadway play Mitchell co-wrote and starred in) became a favorite for those who like their rock musicals anarchic and androgynous.

Mitchell will be celebrating Hedwig’s anniversary early – right here in Houston. This Sunday, December 28, the film will be shown at legendary Montrose club Numbers, and Mitchell will be there for a live director’s commentary and a post-screening live performance. The screening is one part of a day-long event for Mitchell, who will be teaching a sold-out master class at Cafe Brasil later that day.

Local nonprofit Arthouse Houston reached out to Mitchell about revisiting Hedwig in H-Town. “I got good buddies from there,” the El Paso-born military brat, 62, tells CultureMap during a Zoom call from his New Orleans home. “My friend Amber Martin, who's from the area and who I’ve sung and DJed with for many, many years, is coming – especially for this. She used to go to Numbers as a kid. My friend Jonathan Caouette, who directed the film Tarnation, lives there. He used to go to Visions in the '80s. So, it's kind of fun to come to an old, classic club and show the film, do some songs, hang around, and do a drunk live director's commentary – or maybe stoned, depending on my feelings that day.”

John Cameron Mitchell will perform at Numbers this Sunday, December 28.Courtesy of John Cameron Mitchell

For Mitchell, revisiting Hedwig takes him back to a simpler time, when an actor/playwright could get a film about a gay, East German rocker whose signature song is about his botched sex reassignment surgery (now you know where “angry inch” comes from) financed and distributed by a major studio. Even though Hedwig flopped in theaters, it would eventually gain a cult following. Mitchell would follow it up with an even more provocative film, the 2005 ensemble comedy Shortbus, which featured actors engaging in graphic, unsimulated sex.

“That was the last golden age of independent film in the U.S.,” he says. “It was the '90s and 2000s, which pretty much ended at the financial collapse of 2006, which coincided with the rise of the streamers, which really put the final nail in the coffin for independent film as we know it in terms of it being a viable commercial thing. So, a lot of people made fewer films. They had to have more stars. They had to have more Oscar gloss. And the habit of going to see the best-reviewed film that week just because the critics were telling you went away, of course.”

MItchell still does the acting thing from time-to-time – in February, he’ll take over as Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s Broadway drag hit Oh Mary!. But, these days, he;s been teaching master classes and film courses at various colleges (like his “Problemagic Cinema” course at the University of Michigan).

Along with teaching them film history, he encourages his students to take things – whether it’s a film they want to make or a movement they want to start – in their own hands. “I'm telling my students it's like this: now is the time to create a new kind of underground film, and other things,” he says. “The big question, of course, is how do you get them out there? How do you monetize them so there can be more? I can't quite answer that, but I also know that when corporations abandon a certain form, that's the time to step up and take it back.”

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