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

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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