Songs and the City

Houston is music to the ears of listeners of these 13 songs

"Tighten Up," Archie Bell & the Drells
"La Grange" from "Tres Hombres," ZZ Top
"Home to Houston," Steve Earle
"Houston, TX," from "Born on a Flag Day," Deer Tick
"If You Ever Go To Houston," from "Bob Dylan Together Through Life," Bob Dylan
"Houston Chicks," Doug Sahm
"Fannin Street," Tom Waits

Most great cities have served as inspiration for popular music. New York's been immortalized in more songs than you can imagine, everything from Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train" (which expertly invokes the Big Apple without using any words) to the Ramones' "53rd & 3rd" (which in just over two minutes perfectly captures the seedy underbelly of the city that never sleeps). London, Paris, L.A. - they're all frequent muses for musical artists. For most casual music fans, Houston would never be included in that company. However, the Bayou City boasts a rather impressive canon of songs that use it as a backdrop for its subject matter. Here are 13 (in no particular order) to whet your appetite:

"If You Ever Go to Houston" by Bob Dylan

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Perhaps Bob Dylan shares my view of Houston as the Wild West of large urban centers. On this track he riffs on an old Leadbelly song, warning us to be careful when walking the streets of this fair city: "If you ever go to Houston, better walk right/Keep your hands in your pockets and your gun belt tight/You'll be asking for trouble if you’re looking for a fight/If you ever go to Houston, boy you better walk right." Wait, people walk in Houston?

"Home to Houston" by Steve Earle

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This is a truck driving song for the Bush era. It tells the tale of a soldier in Iraq who drives a truck on a patrol convoy. Scared as hell, he realizes this rig ain't as sexy as the one he drives back home on the open roads of the highway interstates, the narrator makes a promise to God: "With a bulletproof screen on the hood of my truck/And a Bradley on my back door /And I wound her up and shifted her down /And I offered this prayer to my lord/I said 'God get me back home to Houston alive/and I won’t drive a truck anymore.'" Like "Six Days on the Road" and "White Freightliner Blues" before it, Earle's ode to the big rig is a country shuffle that's perfect for the blacktop.

"Fannin Street" by Tom Waits

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An homage of sorts to a Leadbelly song of the same title and subject matter (although the late bluesman's version takes place in Shreveport, Louisiana), Waits sings about leaving home to seek "all the glitter and the roar" on Fannin Street in Houston town. Instead of fame and fortune, he ends up drunk and broke with a belly full of regret: "Give a man gin, give a man cards, give an inch he takes a yard, and I rue the day that I stepped off this train." Last time I checked, there wasn't ever much glitter or roar on the ho-hum north/south thoroughfare, but I guess we can chalk it up to creative license.

"Houston" by Lee Hazlewood

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Dean Martin had a hit with this Lee Hazlewood composition in 1965, but I prefer the version sung by its author, who incidentally, spent his formidable years in Port Neches, about 90 miles due east. The song is about a man who's having a hard time adjusting to the harsh realities of the big city and who longs to return home to Houston: "Well it's lonesome in this big town everybody puts me down/I'm a face without a name just a walkin' in the rain/I'm going back to Houston..."

"Houston, TX" by Deer Tick

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This brand new addition to the growing canon of songs about Houston comes courtesy of Deer Tick, an up and coming alt-country outfit from Providence, Rhode Island (and who counts anchorman, Brian Williams, as a fan). The connection to Houston stems from the fact that before forming Deer Tick, singer-songwriter John McCauley had a contract with a fledgling Houston-based record label to release his debut album, "War Elephants." Not too much about Houston per se, except he comments on how there's no good place in town, but he "feels alright." Oh well, another typical reaction from a Yankee.

"Telephone Road" by Rodney Crowell

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A Grammy Award-winning songwriter and collaborator with Emmylou Harris and Roseanne Cash, Rodney Crowell is somewhat of a legend in country music circles. Born and raised in Houston, Crowell wrote a whole album about his upbringing in the Bayou City. "Telephone Road" is a nostalgic trip down this once lively strip in the southeast part of town: "Barbecue and beer on ice/A salty watermelon slice/At the Little Taste of Paradise/On Telephone Road."

"Houston is Hot Tonight" by Iggy Pop

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This odd little number off Iggy Pop's 1981 flop, "Party," is a hoot, although there's something bizarrely satisfying about the Detroit mad man working with former Monkees' producer, Tommy Hart, who manned the knobs for this release. But I digress. "Houston is Hot Tonight" is a surreal trip through the Houston of Iggy's imagination, where spacemen and oil barrons trawl the streets: "Bright lights, Houston is hot tonight/Arabian sheiks and money, up in the sky/Now I don`t mind a bloodbath when I've got oil on my breath."

"Houston Chicks" by Doug Sahm

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One of the Lone Star State's true musical heroes, Doug Sahm once proclaimed, "You just can't live in Texas if you don't have a lot of soul." How right he was! A perfect ambassador for the state, his music represents all of the unique flavors and styles found in Texas - blues, country, rock & roll, Western swing, Cajun and Tejano. The Alamo city has "(Is Anybody Going to) San Antone" and the Bayou City has "Houston Chicks," a valentine to the lovely ladies that nurtured him during his time in this great town.

"Houston" by R.E.M.

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One of the better songs from R.E.M.'s 2008 release, "Accelerate", "Houston" features some killer organ blasts and Michael Stipe's usual cryptic lyrics. But it's pretty obvious from the first line that he's talking about Hurricane Katrina: "If the storm doesn't kill me the government will." He goes on to explain how "Houston is filled with promise/Laredo is a beautiful place/Galveston sings like that song that I loved/It's meaning has not been erased." He's dead on about the promise in Houston and he's on target about the bungling of the Katrina response. And as for that song about Galveston he likes, check out the next entry.

"Galveston" by Glen Campbell

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Written by Jimmy Webb, but immortalized by Glen Cambpell, this string-laden country classic is sung by a soldier in combat who is nostalgic for his hometown of Galveston, Texas. While not technically about Houston, everyone knows how closely entwined these two cities are, namely because it's where Houstonians go to frolic in the piss-warm oil slick that is the Gulf of Mexico. Most people who were raised here have fond memories of childhood summers spent on the tar-filled beaches that line the island. The mere thought of hot coastal breezes, Strand-bought saltwater taffy, and meat tenderizer (to heal jellyfish stings) instantly opens the floodgates of nostalgia.

"Spin on a Red Brick Floor" by Nanci Griffith

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Austin might claim to be the "Live Music Capital of the World," but Houston has quite a rich musical history itself, an important part of which centered around the venerable club, Anderson Fair. This tiny red-bricked room nurtured some of country and folk music's best songwriters, including Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Eric Taylor, Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen Jr., and Nanci Griffith. "Spin on a Red Brick Floor" is a love letter to this old haunt, which is still kicking to this day. The best recording of the track is featured on Griffith's live album, "One Fair Summer Evening," which was captured at Anderson Fair back in 1987.

"La Grange" by ZZ Top

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Basically a reworking of the John Lee Hooker track "Boogie Chillen," "La Grange" is a simple blues number from ZZ Top's 1973 record "Tres Hombres." A small town about 100 miles west of Houston, it was the site of the original Chicken Ranch, the legendary brothel that served as the inspiration for "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Undoubtedly it enjoyed some clientele from the Houston area, but the real connection to the city is through local reporter, Marvin Zindler, who busted the story open on a Channel 13 newscast. The Ranch was eventually shut down in August 1973, 68 years after first opening its doors. The song lives on.

"Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & the Drells

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"I'm Archie Bell and the Drells from Houston, Texas. We don't only sing but we dance just as good as we walk. In Houston we just started a new dance called the Tighten Up. This is the music we tighten up with." And so begins one of the grooviest hit singles from the 1960s and a Houston classic.

Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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