Results tagged “phoenix”

Austin Bat Cave, a non-profit writing and tutoring center for kids, recently hosted a Writing About Music workshop led by Austinist music writers. Students wrote reviews of several songs and performed interviews, with some students posing as musicians. We're so proud of the budding rock journalists that we decided to share some of the work from these little geniuses. Enjoy!

When festivalgoers look back on the Friday of ACL Fest 2009, we suspect they'll remember it less for the performances than for the fact that this was undoubtedly the most pleasant day to attend the festival in recent memory. The crowds flowed in steadily through the day, making the park easy to navigate until around 5 or 6 pm. Food lines were fairly sedate until the dinner hour, when (as always) they got a little crazy. The new lawn at Zilker was beautiful and wasn't kicking up a speck of dust, making the air notably easier to breathe. And the weather! The breezy, low-80's temperatures had everyone in an amiable mood for the day of performances, which made it easier to accept that original headliners Beastie Boys weren't on the bill due to a saddening cancer scare.

Let's spare ourselves too much talk of bands that have been around the block for a decade or more, and take a look at some bands we may still be talking about ten years from now. Some you may have heard, some you may have heard of, and some this weekend may provide the perfect opportunity to discover for the first time. Basically, if we had to come up with a list of two acts every day that you absolutely must check out, especially those that are still mired in those not-standing-room-only (and potentially right up-close) daytime slots, this could be the list.

A full decade into their careers, Versailles, France group Phoenix have hit a career high point with the release of this year's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. A concise, catchy blend of the potential they've always shown, the record was crafted over an extended period of time, and it shows. Songs like "Lizstomania", "1901", and "Girlfriend" mix a modern production sheen (courtesy of Philippe Zdar of Cassius) with melodies that are completely unafraid of going pop. The results aren't exactly indie, yet given the lack of American radio outlets for this type of thing, Phoenix are a pop-rock band in an era where there simply aren't many contemporaries for them.

Hey everybody, we're giving away two tickets to the Liars/No Age show at the Mohawk on Saturday! Winners are also invited to a late Happy Hour (8-8:30) with Liars before the show. Details and concert entry form after the jump...but first, backstory:

One big, serious film; one adventure doc; a couple soft life-changers; a Steve Carell comedy. All in all, a fine mix for the first real weekend of fall. Reservation Road: Mark Ruffalo and Joaquin Phoenix star as a man who hits a boy with his car, and the father of that boy. Ruffalo's character feels the guilt grow as Phoenix slowly freaks out. Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox are winning the World Series and the...

While the West Coast leads the pack, it's no surprise that Austin has ranked 7th in a national survey ranking organic food consumption. In fact, the study looked at local organic juggernaut Whole Foods Market, finding "Organics consumers are 272% more likely than the average consumer to have shopped Whole Foods during the past week." According to the survey, the top local markets for organics consumers are: 1. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, CA 2. Seattle/Tacoma, WA...

Like an accidental tourist, Terry George stumbled into filmmaking while penning a semi-autobiographical stage play with scribe partner Jim Sheridan about a failed prison break. Stemming from that first true-story collaboration, he has continued as both a writer and director, chronicling the triumph of the human spirit, and helping to catapult injustices in Ireland and the heinous genocide in Rwanda into our national consciousness with the critically acclaimed Hotel Rwanda. In conjunction with the regional...

Reservation Road I Dir. Terry George Friday, October 12th, 7:30pm Paramount Theatre It could happen to any of us. Running late and in a dizzied hurry, distracted by cell phones, radios, possibly a conversation that we had earlier in the day, and unexpectedly a single moment changes the course of our lives. In his adaptation of the John Burnham Schwartz novel Reservation Road, Writer/Director Terry George dissects the lives of two men whose destinies are...

After a month of guesswork, the ACL Fest lineup is here. And it's quite a good one. While the wild speculation of headliners like Neil Young and Stevie Wonder once again proved false, the key items one sees this year are depth and balance. Having spent yesterday looking over the roster, we have the following observations on the 2007 edition of ACL. The Good: A Great Top 10. Had you told us that we'd...

THURSDAY [10] music • Learning Secrets with Ramesh (Voxtrot), Ben Craven + Co at Whisky Bar music • Rock of Ages Cover Show with Preserve the Sound (50s), Consider the Source (60s), Seaflea (70s), Promisebreakers (80s), Say Hello to the Angels (90s) at Emo's music • The Postmarks, Shuttle Debris, Raleign at Stubb's music • Future Clouds & Radar at Waterloo Records (5pm, Free) music • Moonhangers, Love Gone Cold, Salvia Family Band, Shot Gun...

Tig Notaro is hilarious. But you already knew that. Maybe you saw her in this season's most heralded breakout TV comedy, the Sarah Silverman Program. Or perhaps you watched her perform stand-up in Austin in October with the Crackpot Comedy Tour. You may have even caught a glimpse of her on Jimmy Kimmel Live, season 4 of Last Comic Standing, Dog Bites Man, or Comedy Central's Premium Blend. And it's possible that you simply...

Here's the skinny on what's new at End of an Ear and Waterloo today: ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead So Divided (Interscope) So Divided might sound divided to your tender and oh-so-spoiled by Austin scene-drenched ears, but the third major-label release from the hometown favorites doesn't appear to be divided enough to disrupt. Epics interspersed with New Pornographers-ish pop treats, multi-influential backdrops and lots and lots of atmosphere make...

FRIDAY [22] music • Rogue Wave, Jason Collett at The Parish Room ® music • The Gossip, Mika Miko, Swan Island at Emo's ® music • Rockland Eagles, The Colour, The Shys, The Fall Collection at Emo's music • Kissinger, Driver F, Seaflea at Stubb's music • Brent Fariss / Bill Thompson CD release at End of an Ear (6pm) music • Sybil, As the Phoenix Rises, Smokin' Gun, Wax Dart and Andice at...

We're having a yard sale today so I can raise a little extra spending money before I head down to Austin next week (I'm already doing well, and I've been calculating how many crunchy chicken cones I can now buy at the festival). But I thought I should run inside between customers to give you your daily dose of ACL previews. Remember you can check out the full list of previews on my ACL...

There is much to report this week surrounding the Zilker Park-sized dust oven that is ACL Fest. The big news is that a ridiculous number of 'official' ACL aftershow concerts has been announced. Many of the fest's acts will take over all of our club venues immediately after the big show ends each night. All tickets go onsale tomorrow at 10am, except for Sufjan Stevens, which is already onsale. This means that either (a)...

Last summer, a community radio DJ from Nashville set out to accomplish the unthinkable: she was going to profile every single band scheduled to play at Austin City Limits on her mp3 blog. We followed her progress ever since she contacted us about the Herculean endeavor; mostly, we just wanted to see at what point she'd finally throw in the towel and say, by god, enough. She did, of course, finish the entire roster. This...

Old Spice today released its Fifth Annual Top-100 Sweatiest Cities List, with Austin coming in seventh place. Overall, Texas has the dubious distinction as being the sweatiest state in the country, with six cities -- Dallas, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Waco -- all among the Top 10. The rankings are based on the amount of sweat a person of "average height and weight" would produce from walking around for an hour in...

Like most attendees, our biggest frustration with last year's Austin City Limits Festival was the wretched dust cloud blanketing Zilker Park after the first day. With tens of thousands of people milling about and the daytime highs between 98-107 degrees, everything was worsened by the fact that the park was already suffering from drought-like conditions. But not anymore, if Capital Sports and Entertainment (CSE) and its massive coffers have anything to say about it. Perhaps...

We're sure it's already marked on your calendars, so it probably isn't necessary to remind you that today heralds International Respect For Chickens Day. In keeping with the other causes being celebrated this month at Austinist, we would like to shed some light on this little-known holiday and illuminate some of the more charismatic chickens that have graced our time. Numbering somewhere near 24 million and counting, chickens are by far the most populous...

Austin Business Journal reported today that, according to rankings published in the latest issue of Business 2.0, Austin comes out in fourth place in terms of projected job growth, among major cities with a population of over 1 million. Their findings, culled from government-collected data and the findings of international research company Global Insight Inc., further predict an astounding 24.7 percent growth in our local job market for the next decade. What's to account...

Cy, the one-eyed-kitten was sold to a museum that promotes the theory of creationism. The Lost World Museum opens later this year in Phoenix, Arizona and promises to house a regular freak show. French President Jacques Chirac was influenced by the protests of the young people across the country and has recalled his proposition for employment laws. In Canada, some bodies of suspected members of the Bandidos Biker Gang were found outside of Ontario....

The Star of Texas Rodeo starts its two week run today at the Exposition Center. A propane truck overturned in Lockhart yesterday. The weather is to blame for the faulty SAT scores scanned here in town. Now we have a 10,000 Maniacs song stuck in our head. Did we need another reason not to visit Oklahoma? Their House has approved the Academic Freedom Act, which leaves it up to the teacher to decide which...

It's Tuesday, which means that your local DVD shop has several shiny new titles on the shelf. This week's biggest entry is James Mangold's Walk The Line, a Johnny Cash biopic in the mold of Ray that is up for five Oscars this weekend. The film wisely steers clear of a wide-scope biography, and instead concentrates on Cash's romance with second wife June Carter, his early music career at Sun Records, and his struggles...

Oh, God. Might San Antonio play host to the 2008 Republican National Convention? In a press release issued today by the RNC, 31 cities across the country were chosen as preliminary contenders to host the next convention, two years from now. Each is required to submit an application proving that they can meet such requirements as: Main Convention Area: Facility capable of seating at least 20,500 persons, including the convention floor with seating for...

Austin City Limits is pretty nifty, we'll admit. But let's face it: the lineup for Coachella, ACL's glammed-up West Coast sibling in the desiccated wastelands near Joshua Tree, has all but reigned supreme these last few years. And this year, they're at it again; earlier this week they announced the full roster for the two-day festival, to be headlined this year by Depeche Mode (huzzah!) and ... Tool (huh?). The entire lineup: Saturday, April...

Ahhh, it’s that time of year again – can you smell the celebrity sweat in the air? Oscar time, baby! The 78th annual Academy Awards will air March 5 on ABC. Plan your party now: gather your friends together, don your Oscar de la Renta (that was kind of a pun, see?), break out the Dom Perignon Andre and the brie, place your bets and watch the magic unfold. The absolute best part about...

The annual Men's Fitness survey of America's Fittest and Fattest Cities just came out again, and lo and behold, Austin remains among the top 25 of the former. Austinist is hardly surprised by these findings: on our once-yearly morning traipse around Town Lake this morning we exchanged pleasantries with dozens of fellow runners, all no doubt preparing for February's orgiastic Freescale Marathon. And just last week our spiffy and intimidating-as-hell gym, 5th and Lamar's...

Not many people know this, but one of Friedrich Nietzsche's favorite reads was "The Laws of Manu," an ancient Indian text which foretold the rise of an Argentine guard who would be instrumental to the success of the San Antonio Spurs in the 2005 Western Conference Finals, not to mention very handsome. Some Brahmin scholars believe these prophesies have been realized in the person of Manu Ginobili (above left), who led the Spurs' offense on Monday, scoring 28 points off the Phoenix Suns.

In 1990 or 1991, Austinist’s older brother won a Pizza Hut-sponsored sweepstakes. He got to be the ballboy at an upcoming Spurs home game, and came back with a whole raft of Spurs autographs. There was, however, one missing. David Robinson, Danny said, had declined to sign the basketball because he had to “rest his thumb.”