all that jazz

Beloved Houston patio bar celebrates 10 years with live jazz album

Houston beer garden Axelrad is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week with a bevy of events. They will also have some new merchandise that gives people a taste of what happens during one of the bar’s most popular recurring events.

Live at Axelrad, Jazz Wednesdays, a collection of live performances from various local jazz artists who’ve played the venue’s weekly jazz concert, will be released this Saturday, April 19. At 1 pm, Axelrad will throw an album release party over at Cactus Music, where it will have vinyl copies for sale as well as a live performance from Marlon Simon Jazz Trio. Simon’s Latin Jazz Quintet has two tracks on Live, which also has exuberant, electric jazz sets from Houston Ensemble, Woody Witt Quintet, Darrell Lavigne Quartet, and Mark Simmons, Jr. Quartet.

An initial run of 150 albums will be on sale at Cactus for $25. It will also be available on the Axelrad website for $30. Those who prefer a digital experience will find the album on Spotify.

Credit for the idea goes to Bill “Daddio” Large, the father of Axelrad co-owner Monte Large. “He is, I think, probably the most frequent customer we have on Jazz Wednesdays,” says the junior Large. “He probably missed only a handful in the whole 10 years we've been open. At one point in time, he just asked me, ‘Do you guys record this stuff? This is fabulous music. You should record it.’ And a light bulb went off for me and I was like, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’”

Large got with frequent collaborator/music agency Wonky Power in going over the hours of recorded footage and finding the most worthy selections. “I invited my dad over and we sat in the studio with [Wonky Power co-founder] Mario [Rodriguez] and we just listened for the entire day, pretty much, of the songs that we had narrowed down,” he remembers.

As for Axelrad’s anniversary festivities, things will kick off on Friday night with all-night live performances from Los Yesterdays, the Gabriella Martinez Selena Tribute, Chicano Boulevard, and DJ Rose. The following day will have family-friendly activities, face painters, a vendor market, and a stilt walker, along with live performances from Bardo of Chicano Batman, Urban Heat, Corey Henry & the Treme Funktet, DJ Rubi, and DJ Jean Paul Tiblier.

While Axelrad the watering hole has been in business for a decade, the building itself has been around for the past 100 years. (Retrospect Coffee Bar, located next to Axelrad, started out in 1921 as one of the city’s first Gulf stations.) What once began as a grocery store owned and operated by the Axelrad family back in the 1920s is now a two-story, hammock-covered, all-purpose space where people can down libations, listen to live music, take yoga classes, buy some trinkets, snap up LPs and DVDs at its monthly record shop, etc.

“We really just try to embrace and support the community,” says co-owner Adam Brackman. “You know, we've been there during challenging times in the city. When a lot of people don’t have power, we're open for people to come charge phones. We do fundraisers. We have a charity and non-profit each month that we partner up with and give a certain percentage of sales from a specialty cocktail. When we created Axelrad, we wanted to make it be a place that we wanted to go to, with things like having an affordable drink, having live music with no cover, and affordable beers.

“There’s something called a ‘third place’ that we often reference,” adds Brackman. “It's not your home and it's not your work, but it's that place you're going to go to and have conversations with your friends, go on a first date, celebrate occasions. We hope that people see us in that, you know.”

Live at Axelrad: Jazz Wednesdays Album Tracklist

1. The Great Awakening
ft. Houston Ensemble
Composed by Armen Movsesyan
Performed by Chad Wesselkamper, Armen Movsesyan, Cory Wilson, and Sam Knight

Photo by Tommy Middleton

Axelrad is celebrating its 10th anniversary this weekend.

2. Mi Nina
ft. Marlon Simon Latin Jazz Quintet
Composed by Marlon Simon
Performed by Marlon Simon, Felix Alonso, Jose Miguel, Ernesto Vega, and Rhumer Mora

3. #9
ft. Woody Witt Quintet
Composed by David Craig
Performed by Woody Witt, Mike Wheeler, Andrew Lienhard, David Craig, and Memo Reza

4. DC Blues
ft. Darrell Lavigne Quartet
Composed by Darrell Lavigne
Performed by Darrell Lavigne, Tim Ruiz, Tito Hernandez, and Vernon Daniels

5. My Brothers Keeper
ft. Mark Simmons Jr.
Composed and performed by Mark Simmons Jr., Jordan Bush, and Marwan Ghonima

6. Drume Negrita
ft. Marlon Simon Latin Jazz Quintet
Composed by Eliseo Grenet
Arrangement by Ernesto Vega
Performed by Marlon Simon, Felix Alonso, Jose Miguel, Ernesto Vega, and Rhumer Mora

music record cocktails concerts

Movie review

Messy Frankenstein movie The Bride! stitches camp and confusion

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride!.

The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.

Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.

After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.

It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.

One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.

Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.

Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.

Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.

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The Bride! is now playing in theaters.

movies film maggie gyllenhaal annette bening christian bale jessie buckley peter sarsgaard penélope cruz movie review