The Austin Cut - Issue #9

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NEW BLOOD

austin's newest rock 'n' roll movers and shakers p.10

something’s gotta give p.4

served

attacKIng austIn
Is a data-drIven polIce force there when you need them? page 6

2 4

The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

Contents LONGHORN BIKES Issue 9 February 2012
Attacking Austin
by Brandon Roberts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is a data-driven police force there when you need them?

6

SALES, SERVICE, PARTS, RENTALS

Fo o d
Served
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Something’s gotta give
by Marie Scott

4

Drink of the Month
21 year old birthday shot!
by Lisa van Dam-Bates

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2308 E. CESAR CHAVEZ 4 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78702 MON-FRI 10-6 SAT 10-3
(512) 542-9505

Music

New Blood: An Interview With Some of Austin’s Newest Rock N’ Roll Movers and Shakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Louis interviews Austin’s Crooked Bangs and Unknown Relatives, and discovers the Camel promo bus
by Louis Fontenot

T h e P o rta l

February 2012 Music List

. . . . . . . . . . .

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COME CHECK US OUT! 1603 SOUTH CONGRESS (NEXT TO HEY CUPCAKE) COME CHECK US OUT! 1603 SOUTH CONGRESS (NEXT TO HEY CUPCAKE) FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @AUSTINFRYBABY -- FRIEND US ON FACEBOOK @FRYBABY FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @AUSTINFRYBABY FRIEND US ON FACEBOOK @FRYBABY

FISH & CHIPS FISH & CHIPS FRIED PICKLES FRIED PICKLES SWEET POTATO FRIES SWEET POTATO FRIES FOOT LONG CORN DOG FOOT LONG CORN DOG POMEGRANATE LEMONADE POMEGRANATE LEMONADE
austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

FRIED MAC N’ CHEESE!

Homemade
Try our

Pasta shells and a blend of four cheeses, deep-fried to perfection then covered in melted cheese.

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Something’S gotta give

Staff
Music

Editor-in-Chief
Brandon Roberts

Managing Editor
Lisa van Dam-Bates Louis Fontenot, Josh Newport

Copy Editors
Nick Longoria, Sara Whitehead

Contributors & Columnists
Marie Scott, Curtis Grey

Cover Art
Zach Taylor

Photographer
Aaron Robertson

Advertising Director
Lisa van Dam-Bates

Advertising Representatives
Jamie Rice, Bobbi Jo Rice

About This Issue

Like the APD in 2007, the Austin Cut has also gone under some restructuring. I hope you like what I consider our continuation down a deeper, darker, more honest path. January was a wicked month. This issue’s feature puts a finalizing point on everything that went down. I hope that it will start a discussion that’ll lead towards brighter times. PS: The original artwork featured on this month’s cover is for sale at Austin Tattoo Company on N. Lamar. Or email him at [email protected] real deal will blow you away!

Writers!

Things really are heating up in this city: murder, crime, psychos, liars, crackheads, cops, and junkies are finally yet another nuisance of daily Austin life. Maybe that’s why we’re going through a golden age of Austin music. We, The Austin Cut, are looking for wild, daring writers to cover it all and get it right because local mainstream and “alternative” media have shown us that they either can’t or won’t. Looking to jump start y’r writing “career”? Are you trying to be the next Hunter S. Thompson? Does your writing need some long-awaited exposure? Looking for that place to push yourself to the next level? Want to get the facts straight for once? Trying to push the bounds of Austin print media? Ready to get paid in drinks? Write with us!

Last month I asked you guys to vote. The poll options were black and white and represented opposite ends of the spectrum with hardly any grey area. These options were not ideal, but I wanted to know if the kind of people that write blogs about how annoying tipping is made up the majority in Austin. I don’t think they do. It seems that 37% of people would rather tip and be responsible for server wages. The majority, 63% of people, would rather not be responsible for server wages even if they have to pay more for a meal. Although in my black and white poll this means that they would rather not tip, I think it’s important to include the commentary that accompanied some of the votes. This commentary was made anonymously, and I think it reflects a third option that was not presented in the ballot. “There is more than just tipping and paying more for a meal or tipping to pay the server. I just came back from a culture where tipping is nearly non-existent. And no it was not a third world country, servers make a regular wage anywhere from 7-15$ an hour and actually their food isn’t more expensive at all. Just like the US food price depends on what type of restaurant you are going to. I’m not sure how this tipping culture came into being but it doesn’t seem to be necessary at all. Probably just an excuse to get the customer to take care of more than they really should in the first place.” This comment really makes sense to me. In some states, restaurants have to pay a full minimum wage to servers, yet they don’t raise menu prices (I looked at regional menus for national restaurant chains such as Applebee’s and Chili’s). Menu prices and options for national chains are the same in Texas where servers make only $2.13 an hour as they are in San Francisco where servers make $10.24 an hour (highest minimum wage of 2012, so far...). This illustrates that although they probably prefer not to, these chains still find business profitable while paying their servers a decent minimum wage. Maybe if restaurants in Austin had to pay their servers $7.25 an hour it would cut into their profit margins. But I don’t think it would put very many places out of business, even if menu prices stayed the same. Another response was: “The point is that the establishment should be responsible for wages. If I had to pay more, I’d probably still tip. Allowing the employer to pay decreased wages decreases the employer’s value of the employee. The employer/employee relationship only works for both parties when there is mutual respect.” I don’t think this could be more true. If I went to a super overpriced restaurant (as if I could afford that), I would still tip. Menu prices don’t always deter tipping; in fact, they sometimes enhance it. I think that for the most part, people like to tip for a job well done. It’s the responsibility of tipping when service is sub-par that ticks people (including myself ) off. The issue really comes down to whether or not it’s okay for employers to pay less for labor just because money is being given later on down the line. Because of the Texan system, I feel that I’ve lost the true spirit of tipping. A banker of mine told me (while processing my

by Marie Scott

Drink of the Month
21 year old birthday Shot!
by Lisa van Dam-Bates
21st birthday shot:

measly restaurant paycheck) that she quit waitressing when they started taxing her tips. She said that a tip was supposed to be a very personal “thank you” from a customer, that she considered tips a perk of waiting tables, not part of her wages. I think I’d enjoy tipping more if I knew that it was appreciated instead of expected. Last weekend I helped out my friend at her food trailer. I’ve worked there, although somewhat infrequently, for about six months. My friend and her mother run it together, so when one goes out of town, I fill in. I love everything about working in the trailer, but I think my favorite thing about this particular foodservice gig is the customer interactions coupled with a tip jar. Not because I’m making a butt-load of tips, but because the people who do tip, want to. Most people don’t feel obligated to tip like they do in a restaurant. They tip for exceptional service or perhaps for the stimulating conversation. There’s no minimum percentage that makes me happy, it’s the smile and drop of a dollar bill in the jar that I really love. When I say “thank you” I mean it, I’m not cursing an outdated 12% under my breath. My friend and her mother pay me well, so it’s not like I need the tips to make hanging out with them and eating free food worth my while. Tips in this situation are nice, but not at all necessary. So why would I subject myself to a regular restaurant job if I could have trailer life instead? In Washington I worked in full service restaurants (with full bars) because I was quickly climbing the foodservice food chain. I never would have worked in a taco truck because I made SO much more money at a crappy Mexican restaurant. But if I compare a busy Saturday at my friend’s trailer to a busy Saturday night at El Meson (the worst imaginable way to spend a Saturday night), monetarily speaking, it’s about the same. The only difference being that at the trailer I had fun, ate dinner for free, and socialized with my nice “boss,” and at El Meson I had to kiss some (seriously dumb) ass, went home starving, and almost died of a stress-induced heart attack. So what’s the real reason I don’t quit waiting tables to call names through a window? There aren’t enough positions or hours. A restaurant relies on a large network of waiters, bartenders, bussers, cooks, and dishwashers. There are plenty of shifts to go around and plenty of restaurants to work for. But at my friend’s trailer, and I’m assuming this is pretty standard, they only need two people at a time to serve a never-ending line of customers. Factor in that if it’s raining you can kiss your business for the day goodbye, and that once it’s cold and dark out it’s pretty much time to close, my friend and her mother rarely need help running their business. I think something about Austin’s system needs to change. Maybe we can get City Hall to increase the minimum wage for servers (that’s how San Francisco made it happen). Maybe we can go on strike and somehow put every single restaurant out of business, then all get jobs at friends’ food trailers instead. Whatever we do, I think we should try to fix the system instead of just growing out of it and leaving the broken remains for the next generation’s high schoolers and college dropouts.

Contact
E-Mail
[email protected]

The Austin Cut
1712 E. Riverside Dr., Box 56 Austin, Texas 78741 4 The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

Recently, my friend Steven Campos (heyyy baby!) turned 21 years old. As is customary on this most special of days, we took him down to dirty 6th for some free birthday drinks with the intention of getting him totally shitfaced. We succeeded. Steven drank numerous drinks that he does not recall, almost got in a fist fight with a deaf guy that flipped him off (for not buying a button), somehow managed to not puke, and was drunk enough the next morning to not even have a hangover. The only disappointment of the night would be the lack of a particular, somewhat unsanitary, rite of passage. Unfortunate-

ly this isn’t one you can make at home. Next time your friend has a birthday and you guys go out, make sure to order this for them. Take a shot glass and empty contents of beer mat (some beer, some liquor, some juice, and God knows what else) into the glass. Drink up! If anyone is interested in listening to audio of Steven’s drunk ride home, it is available online at www.austincut.com.

austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

5 3

iS a data-driven police force there when you need them?
by Brandon Roberts

Attacking Austin
54% 52% 50% 48%

Traffic Enforcement (% APD Budget)
8% 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% 0% Traffic (%)

Neighborhood Patrol (% all Officers)

46% 44% 42%

N. Patrol (%)

Instead of splatting the cockroach against looking human composite drawing ever done, the crack of the wall and mopping him up was just “a person of interest.” later, I stared, frozen. Another cockroach The crowd pressed further: they wanted straight from hell. Ridiculously giant, too. to know why, when a woman was followed With its antennae feeling around all on their and attacked in the middle of the night, the own, it watched me for the next move. police didn’t pay more attention or even really I could feel my pulse hard. If you were look for the attacker. They wondered why next to me, you would’ve felt it. I tried the a police helicopter wasn’t brought in. They dumbest idea: try to put a cup over the bug. wondered why there aren’t more cops patrolTrap him and flush him. Instead, I fumbled, ling the neighborhood right now. And why the cup touched the roach, it bolted, and I there were so many police handing out tickets dropped the cup. I jumped back. The roach and enforcing traffic laws instead. Shouldn’t darted along the cracks and corners of the they be like ... “catching criminals?” room and disappeared into a small crack The spokeswoman officer wasn’t speaking under the bathroom cabinet. Slurrrppp. All loud enough and people were interrupting gone. her every couple of minutes yelling, “we can’t Great. Now we’re living with this damn bug. hear you!” After deferring to other officers, Art Sleeping with it. And I was supposed to tune Acevedo, Austin’s Police Chief, took over. into the psychotic Austin wavelength today He didn’t take many questions. What questo write. We’ve got this horrific murder, these tions he did take, he answered like a politiattacks, the Police Chief running around turn- cian. He made sure everyone in the room ing everything into a “MORE COPS! BIGGER knew how little money the Austin Police BUDGET” sermon, and seriously believable Department works with, how they’re a “lean claims of police abuse. The cops look about as department,” and how they maximize every spooked and incompetent as I do holding this penny. He talked about how the APD is a can of Raid. “data-driven, intelligence-led” police force. People are mad and people are afraid. The About how he puts the cops where the data city is in defense mode, now. They’re dug in says they should be, and how traffic enforcefor battle like that damn cockroach. ment brings down all crime (and to “look it Everyone’s got a question for the police. up”). Everyone clapped as he said goodbye, “What are you doing to catch the murderer?” even though he didn’t really answer anyone’s “How can I feel safe at night?” “Are you putquestions. But that doesn’t seem to make a ting more cops up here where the murder dent in people’s love for Art Acevedo. The happened?” Basically every newspaper or TV guy’s so good at deflecting tough questions news organization has interviewed the Police and charming crowds that he doesn’t need to Chief, asking the same old shit. say shit. At the Heritage Neighborhood Meeting, the I was one of the first people out of the neighborhood where the murder and attacks church. It was disgusting in there. The woman happened, the police made a big display with in charge of the meeting said she had to lock their question-and-answer session. The room up the church, even though nothing really at the First English Lutheran Church was packed full with friends of Barrera and people had been resolved. On the way out, a super made-up TV news reporter yelled at me from who’ve been living in the neighborhood since her news van. forever. TV Reporter: “Hey! Were you in the meetThe police stepped up, but struck out on ing?” some of the first questions. The cops didn’t know anything new about the murder. No one Me: “Yeah.” TV Reporter: “We didn’t get to go in. Can you was arrested. The alien-like, most generic6 4 The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

tell me about what happened?” Me: “Uhh, well, the cops don’t know anything and the chief told us not to go outside by ourselves late at night. It seemed like he pissed some people off.” TV Reporter: “Anything else?” Me: “Not really besides that.” TV Reporter: “Oh …” Me: “Well, good luck with your … thing.” It was big news when Art Acevedo was selected to be Austin’s next Police Chief. He talked well on camera, looked like a George Clooney whose looks were gnarled by seeing grisly crimes, claimed he had “the heart of a servant,” challenged us to “question government,” and he even looked square into our eyes and told us that “getting to shake kids’ hands and to hand out candy and just letting people know that you are part of that community is, to me, it is the most gratifying part of the job.” Local media ate it up. In 2007, The Austin Chronicle, quoting the director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, wrote, “Today, the sun has shined on the city of Austin, with the hopeful promise of a new era for relations between the police and the city’s minority communities.” They agreed: “Let the sun shine in. Let the sun shine in, indeed.” Even the alternative press was suckered. All of this sunny, love-blind enthusiasm covered up Acevedo’s fairly recent Californian past: a crude sexual harassment case involving a female officer. The case interfered with Acevedo’s near-promotion within the California Highway Patrol. According to a July 9th, 2004 LA Times article, “Acevedo kept sexually explicit Polaroid photographs of the woman in the glove box of his state-issued car and showed them to other supervisors after the affair ended … Two CHP captains allegedly have said Acevedo showed them the pictures, including one in which the woman is performing a sexual act on him.” The result of the internal California Highway Patrol investigation isn’t surprising: no official punishment for Acevedo, the case was

dismissed (supposedly in preparation for a lawsuit that never came), and the woman got state disability, according to the Times, “on the grounds that she suffered a stress injury because she was victimized in ‘a high-profile sexual harassment investigation.’”

Traffic Enforcement’s Cash Injection
Looking at the budgets from 2005 to 2009, the years directly before and after the APD became Acevedo’s, there’s one obvious change: traffic enforcement spending rockets. In 2005, 8.8 million dollars were spent on traffic enforcement. In Acevedo’s first year, 2006-2007, about 14 million dollars were spent. In terms of the whole budget, spending on traffic enforcement went from taking up 4.8% of the budget, to 7% of it. Austin has kept the APD’s strength at 2 officers per 1,000 of us. But the amount of police assigned to Neighborhood Patrol (these are the most important form of cop: the ones that are supposed to respond to emergency 9-1-1 calls) is only a part of the force. For the first half of the 2000s, Neighborhood Patrol used half of the entire force. But in 2006, that percentage started to go down. As of budget 2011-12, only 45% of the total force is Neighborhood Patrol, but you wouldn’t know it by glancing at it. You’d actually think that it rose to over 50% of the force since last year, because they lumped Traffic Enforcement in with Neighborhood Patrol. Why would they combine two seemingly unrelated categories of cops? At the Heritage Neighborhood meeting, Acevedo made it clear that he thinks he’s working with a bare-bones, minimalistic police force. And since he doesn’t have enough raw cop power to put one everywhere you might need one, he’s using these popular modern policing strategies to spread the APD as efficiently and thinly as possible: “CompStat” and “Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety.”

Austin Crime Rates 2000-2011
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Burglary (per 1000)

force that happened during the same time could easily be the real cause for the decrease in crime. He also points out that crime fell all across the country, regardless of whether or not these other police departments used CompStat. But those statistics aren’t sexy or easily headline-able.

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Traffic Fatalities (per 100k) Property Crime (per 100) Violent Crime (per 100k) Murders (per 100k)

Say ‘Hello’ to CompStat, Data-Driven Policing, and Texas-Sized Police Badges
In 2007, Chief Acevedo came into Austin with “guns blazing.” He fired a trigger-happy cop who contributed to the APD being under review by the Justice Department for what basically boiled down to accusations of racefueled police brutality. By 2008, Acevedo had restructured some seemingly strange areas of the police department. He made traffic safety and enforcement a high priority. According to the 2008 budget, “traffic safety continues to be a major focus of the Austin Police Department and substantial resources are committed to traffic safety improvements and enforcement.” Secondly, the police uniforms were redesigned and their badges got bigger. From the budget, again, “part of the department’s reorganization was the revamp of law enforcement uniforms and vehicles. This included the beginning of the conversion of squad cars to a black and white scheme, larger identification badges that feature the Star of Texas above the Capitol building, and the removal of red from officer uniforms.” But most importantly, the APD started using CompStat. Forget for a second that there has been almost no research showing that these programs are effective. CompStat isn’t a prepackaged software bundle, either. It’s a model for identifying problem areas and deploying cops, using statistics and detailed, timely police reporting. Every department’s implementation will be different, with different levels of success and resemblance to the original NYPD CompStat system. But by 2008, CompStat was pretty much old news. Of course the police were using computers to find the crime “hot spots.” Obviously that, alone, wasn’t the key to ending crime. A similar, but new, statistics-based policing model was being promoted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), one that mimics all of the APD 2008 budget, and Art Acevedo’s talking points: Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS). What DDACTS does, is basically take CompStat-like, statistic-driven crime density reports and use them to suggest deployment for traffic enforcement. The theory being that since there is somewhat of a relationship between areas with a lot of collisions and a lot of crime, throwing a traffic cop at those areas to pull over anyone who forgets to put on a blinker, or has a busted tail light (most of Texas), will reduce crime rates. This was echoed by Acevedo at the Heritage

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Shortly after Acevedo became Austin’s Chief of Police, the department went under a thorough restructuring. Several extra million were devoted to Traffic enforcement, and the APD changed its policing strategy. As you can see, besides traffic fatalities going down, the new changes have done very little in the way of lowering crime rates.

Acevedo Becomes Chief (July 2007)

Lies, Damn Lies, and Computer Statistics
The New York subways in the late 70s were basically a complex maze of crime-ridden hell-holes. They called ‘em the caves. Jack Maple, a transit cop in the 80s, got sick of the routine of just chasing after the criminals, so he made huge maps of the New York subway system and started plotting crimes. When William Bratton was made Chief of Transit Police, he worked with Maple and his maps. Together, between 1990 and 1992, they cut crime by some extreme numbers. Two years later, in 1994, Rudolph Giuliani made Bratton the Chief of the NYPD. Maple became second in command. Bratton was influenced by criminologist George L. Kelling, the co-founder of “broken windows theory” In ‘82, Kelling and . a colleague of his, James Q. Wilson, wrote an article titled “Broken Windows” for The Atlantic Monthly. In it, they argue that general “disorder” and annoying behavior directly leads to serious crime. They take the example of broken down property, which eventually becomes “fair game.” They extend this logic to society: a small breakdown of authority eventually makes all rules and law fair game. If police officers let us get away with things like being an obnoxious drunk, begging for change a little too aggressively, or scribbling “FUCK YOU” on a wall somewhere, they are encouraging criminal behavior all around. Using statistics like when, where, and what crimes happened, by mapping them over the city, and by comparing the information over time, Maple and Bratton were able to see trends in crime. They were able to point out, mathematically and scientifically, where the most crimes were happening and when. This is the core of what became CompStat, or

Computer Statistics. Over the next few years, New York crime fell so quickly that people were beyond shocked. Many criminologists were expecting a chaotic violence-ridden near future where crime rates skyrocketed higher than we’d ever seen before. But those people were laughably wrong. Five years after CompStat and the NYPD’s reorganization, murder fell by over seventy percent. Crime fell so quickly that news articles between 1990 and 1992 quote resistance to the idea that the fall in crime rates would last. In 1992, The New York Times quoted then-NY Governor Mario Cuomo, “most people will rebel at the idea that the subways are getting safer.” The media gave the credit for the sudden drop in crime to the police and their new policing tactics. It seemed easy to understand that if the cops are Nazi bullies about the dumbest offenses, then people would stop breaking the law so damn much. The story was propagated like it was truth from God. Broken windows theory and CompStat were picked up by police departments all over America. But not everyone agreed that the NYPD was able to bring crime down that far, all by itself using CompStat and with its faith in fixing broken windows. Their results weren’t really backed by any serious studies. In 2004, Steven D. Levitt published a critique of the commonly believed reasons why crime fell. Levitt argued that “Better Policing Strategies, played little or no role in the crime decline.” Crime began to fall two years before Giuliani became Mayor and Bratton the Chief of Police. Levitt noted that except murder, there was no “obvious break” after Bratton took over, and that the massive 45% growth in the NYPD

“In 2007, Chief Acevedo came into Austin with ‘guns blazing’ ... the police uniforms were redesigned and their badges got bigger.”

Neighborhood meeting, and in interviews about the murder of Barrera. He insisted that traffic stops reduce crime. Contrary to what a lot of people think, traffic stops don’t necessarily generate money for the Police Department. If they do get any of the money made from traffic tickets, it’s in a very abstracted, bureaucratic way that isn’t made clear in the APD budget. So that’s not necessarily the motivation for DDACTS. A lot of arrests start with a simple traffic stop. It’s not hard to understand why. The police run your ID (if you even have one), check you for warrants, look through your car windows for illegal shit (guns, drugs, open booze containers, stolen stuff ), and grill you about where you’re going and what you’re doing to try and figure out which law you’re breaking. This is the backbone of data-driven policing. Put the cops where the crime (and crashes) happen, and people, hopefully criminals, will get arrested. The NIJ lists seven “demonstration sites” where DDACTS were tested. In all of the sample police departments, the result was across-the-board less collisions. One claimed fewer “fraud” cases, less vandalism, and whatever else they could see was down, but evidence didn’t really support that anything but luck was the cause. The agencies that claimed all violent crime went down were grouping murder, rape, assault, and robbery and then displaying it as a single line on a chart. These “studies” are a joke. They’re not scientific at all. All they are is promotional garbage aimed towards politicians and police executives. Some of the departments claimed that their increased enforcement lowered robbery, some didn’t. A 1988 study by Wilson and Boland of police “aggressiveness” (in the form of traffic stops and interrogations) and crime seemed to suggest that it reduced the amount of robberies by either accidentally finding fugitives or illegal stuff, or by deterring criminals in general. Another study done in Kansas City in 1995, where police increased patrols in “hot spots,” targeted towards “high risk” offenders (those suspected to be in the middle of doing a serious crime), allowed police to find more illegal weapons, which led to a decrease in gunrelated crimes. Yet, there have been an equal amount of scholarly studies (Jacob and Rich, 1981) that didn’t find a relationship between increased traffic enforcement and reduced crime. Also, it’s unclear whether or not you can increase traffic enforcement indefinitely and catch an indefinite amount of criminals. Not all criminals own cars, you know. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the effectiveness of increased aggressive traffic enforcement against various crimes. The scholarly evidence varies between “yes, ____ crime went down” and “no, we didn’t find any relationship.” The NIJ “case-studies” are basically anecdotal evidence at best.

austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

7 3

Fighting Crime with Traffic Stops?
Since every data-driven approach relies on every police department’s statistical methods (CompStat) and every city’s traffic, every data-driven strategy will look different. So let’s look at Austin. Every week, Chief Acevedo makes CompStat reports. Some of them get published on the City of Austin website. Basically, these are charts of crime for that week, broken down by violent and property crime. There’s also a running plus or minus percent of crime rates, compared to last year. These don’t mean much by themselves, even though a lot of media organizations report off of them. (You can find them here: http://www.austintexas.gov/department/ apd-reports) What the police department supposedly does with this information is look for trends and areas where crime might go up, suddenly, and then put traffic cops in the area and increase patrol. The APD publishes a Racial Profiling Report every year. In it, they show us maps of traffic stop density, search density, then crime density, and tell us what percent of drivers were white, black, and Hispanic. To try and figure out where the APD are actually making traffic stops a priority around the city, and if they’re really putting the traffic cops where the most crime happens, I made a map. I took the APD’s traffic stop density map and overlaid it with their crime density map. (Both were included in their 2010 racial profiling report.) With this map I could see whether or not they make the most traffic stops in the highest crime areas. While some of the highest crime areas matched up with the most traffic stops, this wasn’t always the case. There were a lot of areas with really high crime that had barely any traffic stops. And areas with lots of traffic stops and little crime. Regardless, increasing traffic stops isn’t even proven to reduce crime. Like I said above, it’s been shown that increasing traffic enforcement might be able to reduce traffic fatalities and possibly robberies, but not necessarily any other violent crimes like rape or murder. If we look at Austin’s crime rates since Acevedo restructured the APD, we can see that it hasn’t been very effective at reducing crime. Especially when you consider the amount of money thrown at the APD: 267.2 million in 2011, or 38% of the City of Austin budget. Burglary, a crime that is supposed to go down with increased traffic enforcement, kept on going up, even years after the APD pumped up traffic enforcement. Violent crime, overall, stayed pretty level, and eventually went down a tiny bit. Property crimes stayed pretty level, too, after a couple of small upward spikes. Murder is inconsistent, spiking wildly high and then low. Traffic fatalities are the only thing that went down drastically and solidly. There’s something, I think we can agree, that traffic enforcement was responsible for. Overall, the evidence doesn’t show that our doubling the traffic enforcement budget over the past six years has had any real effect on crime in Austin. There hasn’t been that much change in crime statistics since the APD employed data-driven techniques, except for 8 4

Traffic stops (left) versus crime (right). The darker the spot, the more traffic/crime. Maps are from the APD’s Racial Profiling Report 2010. You can see a huge disparity at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport in regards to traffic stops. With some exceptions, the highest crime areas don’t necessarily have the most traffic stops at all. Looking at Sixth Street, you can see an area with a lot of crime and little stops. a few blips here or there, and people in 2012 definitely don’t feel as safe as they used to. at 3:00pm. I wrote an email to the APD asking them to explain how filing a report twelve hours after the fact fit into their data-driven model. Obviously it didn’t. But currently, according to the region’s commander Troy Gay, “officers should initiate a report when requested by a citizen.” At the Heritage Meeting, there was a definite sense of frustration with the police. Could the murder have been prevented if they’d listened to the victim at all, and actually searched for the man? Maybe send more than one cop, and actually get out of the car and give it an honest try? The official excuse is that the attack and murder happened on “a very busy night” and that the police tried the best they could. Commander Gay explained that the Austin Police Department “believes our policy needs to be re-written and clarified so this does not occur again in the future. APD will be revising our policy to reflect that officers will initiate a report if they are provided information that a crime occurred.” But if the APD is actually dedicated to using data-driven, statistical approaches to policing, as is being championed by Art Acevedo, why did such obvious events and necessities get ignored? Under CompStat, an event like this should have been entered into the system immediately so others would be aware that a woman had been attacked in the middle of the night right there. These sorts of policies should have been written years ago, around the same time that we dumped millions into restructuring the department towards datadriven policing. Who knows, maybe just having the cop sitting there, writing a report could have deterred anything from happening. According to Jack Maple, inventor of CompStat, this is the foundation of the method: One of the big problems in policing is … you call up the police department and say there are two guys on the corner dealing drugs. The guys see the [police car] and what do they do? They step back into the doorway. The [police] car keeps going. In police work, nobody memorializes that complaint. It drops right off the CAD screen. What should happen is that those complaints should go to narcotics in the local district or precinct to be worked on to see if it’s a chronic condition. That is why you hear people say that they keep calling and calling and calling, and the cops never do anything. It is because that simple complaint is never memorialized and the cops, from one day to the next, don’t see that it is a chronic condition. All of this makes me wonder what the cops were doing that night. I looked and was disgusted with what I found.

New Year’s Eve Attacks, Murder, and APD’s Miserable Failures
This brings us to the attacks and murder on New Year’s Eve. The APD failed on so many fronts. This should not only not be forgotten, but it should go down in the books as one of the biggest Austin Police fuck-ups, ever. At 2:18am, on New Year’s Eve, a 21-year-old woman was attacked by a man. She was walking home from a birthday party when she noticed that someone was following her. She saw a group of people and stopped to talk to them. She watched him pass and started walking home again. On King Street, just off 31st, the man surprised her: he grabbed her from behind, took her to the ground, and started smashing her head into the pavement. She screamed, struggled, and finally the man ran. She called 9-1-1 and the police came. According to KXAN’s interview with the victim, “I reported it [to the officer] and he said he was going to check around the neighborhood but he probably wasn’t going to find him.” With that attitude, the officer left. No police report was written. A half hour later, Esme Barrera was found. Killed, a short distance from the attack. On New Year’s Day, KXAN brought the attack to the attention of police investigators. Then, over twelve hours after the attack, a police report showed up: exactly

“The evidence doesn’t show that our doubling the traffic enforcement budget has had any real effect on crime in Austin.”

Happy 2012: Now Bend Over and Take It
The cops were out in full force on New Year’s Eve. It was one of their “no-refusal” weekends, where if you get pulled over for driving drunk, your choices are to (1) voluntarily take a breathalyzer test,  (2) voluntarily get your blood drawn, or (3) get your blood drawn by force. After midnight the cops were overloaded with drunken people driving home (“DWI”), drunken people walking around (“Public Intoxication”), and responding to random

The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

chaos (“Theft,” “Burglary of Vehicle,” “Possession Controlled Sub/Narcotic,” “Theft of License Plate”). You get the picture, courtesy of the APD’s online police reporting tool. Around 1am, Antonio Buehler pulled into the 7-Eleven at North Lamar and West 10th and was getting some gas. He noticed a car pulled over, an obvious DWI stop: the woman driver was getting a field sobriety test, still in her high heels, according to Buehler. Then he heard a girl screaming and saw the police pulling the passenger out of the car and throwing her to her knees. She was yelling, obviously in pain, as the police cuffed her hands behind her back and pulled her arms up, lifting her. Buehler started taking pictures and asked the police what she did. From this point on, the police’s story is totally different from Buehler’s. According to Buehler the police aggressively walked up to him, started shoving him, and asked him “who he thought [he] was … or something along those lines.” He was thrown around by the police, taken to the ground, and arrested. He was charged with a felony: “Harassment of a Public Servant” and is look, ing at two to ten years in prison. Police say that Buehler got in the cop’s face and spit on him. The APD are refusing to release dashboard camera footage saying it would interfere with the investigation. Buehler, knowing the police wouldn’t release their evidence which would likely support his version of what happened, made a post on Craigslist asking if anyone had footage of what happened. He got really lucky: someone did. The video supports what Buehler is saying. He didn’t approach them, from what we can see. What we do see is an officer getting in Buehler’s face and then throwing him around. Currently, it’s a cop’s word versus not a cop’s … only Buehler isn’t some random punk. He’s basically a model citizen: Iraq War veteran, ex-military officer, West Point graduate, has a master’s from Stanford, and is an all-around respectable guy. “Highly educated Iraq War veteran, abused by police.” Media picked it up fast. Jeff Ward heard the news and started talking about the story on his afternoon radio show on January 5th. Opinion by callers was very anti-Austin cops and then suddenly, Chief Acevedo called into the show and was on the air. His argument? The slippery slope. Jeff Ward: “It sounds like we could be arguing something that could be relative here, what is a citizen harassing a cop and what is a fair distance to stand there and start taking pictures?” Chief Acevedo: “… when you start engaging police officers and when you start distracting them from their business at hand … now you’re starting to somewhat interfere with their official duties and that’s when you’re going down a slippery slope when you might end up getting arrested.” Jeff Ward: “So can he not say anything?” Chief Acevedo: “When I’m dealing with you and you start screaming and yelling at me, you’re starting to go down a slippery slope and the bottom line is that’s not a good idea.” He goes on to repeat himself when asked different questions. Acevedo makes himself clear: don’t mess with my cops.

I don’t know what’s going on in this country, but things are escalating. The cops are getting mean. Look at the Occupy movement. The crackdowns all ended the same: one relatively small nuisance turns into a gigantic militaristic police response. Maybe that hasn’t happened here in Austin, yet, but I can feel the tension in the air. It’s electric. A few weeks ago, one of our writers was walking to my house at around 11:30 at night. He didn’t show up and called me about an hour later.  He sounded scared: “Hey I can’t come over.” I asked him what happened. He was walking to my house and noticed a car shining its brights at him. He heard some yelling, but kept walking. (It’s a somewhat sketchy neighborhood that the police helicopter seems to circle on a weekly basis.) When he turned around, he saw a cop with his gun out, screaming at him to get on the ground. He listened. The cops handcuffed him, searched his pockets, and took his ID. They kept asking him who he was, what he was doing, where he was going, if he’d heard any gunshots, and if he knew the people in a car that’d driven past him. He told them that he heard something, but thought it was fireworks, that he didn’t know anyone in that car, and that he was on his way to a friend’s house. They gave him his ID and told him to “turn around and go home, going the same way you came.” And that was that. Go home. I tried to look for police reports about the incident, but I wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t find anything. All I could see was a report of a stolen car about an hour earlier. Is this how the police are going to respond to Austin getting bigger and seemingly more dangerous? The result of the NYPD’s emphasis on numbers seems to be a twisted statistical corruption. Evidence is popping up about mandatory ticketing quotas in New York, and threats for cops who don’t write enough. There are other allegations of cops messing with the categorization of crimes. Some cops have come forward after feeling pressure to downgrade the seriousness of certain cases in order to drive crime rates down. In retrospect, this all seems easy to predict: if you put the cops where the data says to put them, then controlling the data means controlling power. Where there’s power, there’s corruption. With Acevedo going around talking about how the New Year’s Day murder is a sign that we need to give the APD more money and forces, we need to scrutinize any future structuring of the department. The police department still hasn’t implemented the police reporting changes that Gay told me were necessary, and they didn’t give a time frame. If Austin’s going to be a safe place to live in the future, even with massive population growth, we’ve gotta be able to trust that the cops will do their jobs. No, fuck that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about government it’s to never trust them. Make them prove they’re doing their jobs and doing them well. Because if they can’t be trusted to do simple things like look for attackers in the middle of the night, or follow their own model for policing, who knows what else they’re not doing under the hood of official police matters. Instead of harassing and ticketing us into oblivion, why not work on being there when we actually need you, APD?

austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

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New Blood: An Interview With Some of Austin’s Newest Rock N’ Roll Movers and Shakers
louiS interviewS auStin’S crooked bangS and unknown relativeS, and diScoverS the camel promo buS
by Louis Fontenot

AArON rOBErTSON

With the start of the new year, Austin’s music scene continues to grow and change. Blossoming new bands play their very first shows just about every day of the week, sometimes splitting bills with bands playing their last. In such a musically cataclysmic environment, it’s easy to see why bands make up, break up, stay together, and cut records. This happens incessantly and in whatever order. Here’s a look at some of the new up and comers to the Austin music scene. Crooked Bangs, who have been earning their stripes playing out frequently in all your favorite rock n’ roll haunts and Unknown Relatives, a band made up of some Sacramento/Memphis transplants. They are gaining a buzz and finding their place at home on the same stomping grounds. I got a chance to interview each of the bands about plans for the new year, music, and how they feel about what’s going on in Austin, after they played a show together, recently, at Beerland. I went there for an interview with Crooked Bangs, a three piece that I have loved watching grow as a band, since I first saw them sometime in the late summer /early fall of last year, and ended up being blown away by Unknown Relatives. They were unknown to me, so after the show I asked them if they would like to also do an interview for an article on newer bands in town, I was met with enthusiasm, charm and an allaround positive attitude about playing music. All I had heard about them was from a girl I knew, and all she had said was “oh yeah, Unknown Relatives. They’re really good. I just saw them.” Later I heard some highly dubious quasi-legend about them all coming from different places and meeting on a bus to Austin and deciding to start a band. The truth sounds less like a shitty Cameron Crowe movie idea that never happened, and more like the reality of what usually brings people together who just wanna make music. Louis: So where are you guys from? Jason: Well, me and our drummer and bassist are all from Sacramento. We kinda moved here together. We all moved at different times, but then we converged after a certain amount of time and then we just started a band. Louis: So did you guys know each other prior? 10 4

Kyle: No, I’m from Memphis. Louis: I was just up there for Gonerfest. Kyle: Oh really. Cool. Goner’s awesome. Louis: Yeah, it was the first time I had been. I had a great time. Jason: Check out anyone really good, did you see The Gories? Louis: Yeah I got to see The Gories, and I really liked Brides, this old Chicago punk band, they were killer. Jason: They’re fucking awesome, Brides? Man they’re so good. Louis: Yeah I guess they haven’t played in like fifteen years or something. They were all bitching at each other between songs, but the set was awesome. I got the set list, it was on a pizza box, but then I lost it. Jason: Yeah dude, I watch just like YouTube videos of them cause I can’t find any of their shit online, and I watched this video and it scared me, just watching it. I was like man this is getting out of hand. I thought it was great. Louis: So what do you guys have in mind for 2012? Kyle: SXSW for sure, we wanna get a couple gigs for that. That’s like our main priority, ‘cause we wanna get a tour going next year. Louis: Have you guys recorded anything? Jason: Were trying to do that, really hard. Talking to everyone, you know like man we’ll buy you a case of beer! Kyle: We could have got that four track, but Chris never got my message I sent. If he had got it we could use that. Then the guy from These Are Words... Jason: Yeah Ian, Ian might do it. I’m friends with These Are Words, I actually played bass with them for a little bit. Ian’s cool as fuck that dude has like … Have you heard that guy’s recordings before? Louis: No. Jason: They’re so good. He has some These Are Words recordings and they’re spot on, awesome. Louis: Are you guys thinking about doing some 7”s, or an LP? Jason: We talked about it… Kyle: But we think it’s best just to get them all out at once. Jason: Yeah just get them out there. Louis: So what are some bands in town that you like? Jason: Strange Boys, Harlem, Woven Bones, Crisis Hotlines, These Are Words. This band I saw last night, Rufio, they were

amazing. Love Collector, they’re the best, they’re so fun. I saw them one time and they blew me away. Oh and OBN III’s, they’re one of my favorite bands. Coma in Algiers… Louis: So how long have you guys been living here? Jason: Well I’ve been here a year. Nick’s been here since September. Kyle: Me and Nick have been here about three months. Jason: Jessie has been here about a year, we sort of moved here together. Louis: So what made you guys move here? Jason: Well I was already a big fan of a lot of music from this town. In California, I knew of a lot of bands I liked a lot. I knew when I moved here I’d be happy. Cause there’s good music, and wherever there’s good music there’s a great time. Louis: What about you? Kyle: I was living in Fort Worth, and one day I was just like I gotta get out of here. Nick: I felt like I was going to die if I stayed were I was. Louis: Where were you? Nick: In Sacramento. Kyle: It’s kinda weird how we met. I was living in Fort Worth, and one day I just drove down here randomly, I moved here by myself not knowing anybody. I was just like ... let’s see what happens. Jason, Jessie, and Nick all knew each other. Then I got here, I was just walking down the street the day I moved here. I was wearing a Spacemen 3 t-shirt, and within like three hours of being here I ran into Jason, and he saw my shirt and was like, “hey Spacemen 3. I fucking love Spacemen 3.” Then we started hanging out and now we have a band. Nick: Yeah I remember the first band practice me and Jason had here. Me and Jason had played together in a couple bands back home. I get there and this little squirrelly fuck was already there in the room, and I was like “who the fuck’s this guy?” Laughter Nick: Then Jason said, “This is Kyle he’s going to be playing with us now.” Kyle: I was like, what’s up man? Cool! How’s it going man?! Nick: Then the next morning we all wake up, all sleeping in Jason’s bed, Tri-portioned. I wake up and Kyle walks out ...

The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

and ever since I was a little kid I’ve always been a hot sauce junkie. You know how your mom would give you like Tabasco when you’d do something fucked up. ‘Open your mouth, now stick out your tongue!, but I was like “Ooooh all right” ..... then eventually she realized that her plan had completely backfired. Kyle: So that first morning, we woke up and Jason was like “you guys can’t stay here anymore.” We were like “all right, we’ll figure it out” and the first thing I saw this man do was , make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ... and then cover it in hot sauce. Then he put it together and was like “alright! Let’s go!” I think that was the day we had like what, four dollars left? Nick: No that was another day. We still had some money then. Kyle: Oh yeah. That’s when we went and got 40s and got stoned. Then we went to Barton Springs and listened to David Bowie. Nick: Yeah we had a two man dance party by ourselves. We were dancing in the woods and I was thinking, “I don’t know this cat, but this is the initiation. If he doesn’t get up and dance in the woods with me to Bowie, then he’s fucking stupid.” So I was like, all right. All right this guy’s cool .... so as they say in Robocop. “I’d buy that for a dollar.” We all laugh. Kyle: So yeah ... that day began our semi-platonic love affair. Haha. At this point a homeless guy came up to the fence asking for money. Kyle: I got nothing for you, sorry! Homeless Guy: How ‘bout a quarter? Kyle: I don’t have any quarters, I’m homeless too. Nick hands him some change. Homeless Guy: God is good for him. God’s going to bless this man. Nick: God forgot about me a long time ago, but here you go. We all three laugh at this. Homeless Guy: God is good, God is always good. Nick: David Bowie is good. David Bowie is always good. Kyle: God is good, but Bowie’s better.

Unknown Relatives: I hope their faces don’t get stuck like that ... The homeless guy walked off after that. Kyle: I like that question Johnathan asked us at the ballroom about that picture that was up there, which is the eternal question. Is that a lady or is that David Bowie? You know that one where he’s sitting in the chair and that dog’s jumping. Louis: Yeah. Yeah. Nick: Which reminds me of another eternal question. Is she hot, or just sixteen? Kyle: The answer to that is yes. Louis: Laughing .. either way. We all laugh. Nick: You wanna go to this Camel party and drink free beer? Louis: Oh man I would, but my ride’s here. Jessie: It’s right around the corner from here.

AArON rOBErTSON

I mulled over the idea, let my buddy know that I was going down the street, and then left with them to go to a Camelsponsored party not far from 7th and Red River. I drank some free beer from a company I had never heard of, while gambling on a roulette table with tens of thousands of dollars in casino chips that held no real monetary value. Which sucked because I kept winning, and I didn’t want to wait ‘till they were redeemable at 1:30am for some kinds of prizes. People were eating sandwich wraps off of a bar and playing blackjack in the corner. I was having a good time and was locked in almost perpetual laughter since we began the interview, but I had to go back to Beerland. I had already hung out for longer than I planned, so I said goodbye to the guys, and gave Nick the rest of my chips to gamble with. When I got back to Beerland, Crooked Bangs had already finished their set to my

austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

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Crooked Bangs Leda (left) thrashes on the disgusting Beerland stage. Samantha (right) hops around, methodically strumming out her driving riffs. disappointment, but I was still able to sit down with Leda and Samantha to ask them some questions about their prospects for the next year. Jordan, their drummer, played his last show that night. They tried to get him to sit in for the interview also, but I think he was in the middle of a conversation and I don’t think he was feeling it since it was, after all, his last show with them. Louis: So Jordan’s not playing with you anymore? Samantha: No, it was a mutual decision. Louis: So what do you have going on for the new year? Leda: We’re trying to record. Really what we want to do right now is put out an album. Get something done recording-wise in the next couple months. We’ve got bigger and better things planned for this year, but were still trying to feel everything out. Louis: You guys are a relatively new band, right? Both: Yeah. Somewhat. Leda: We started playing a lot around town like three or four months ago, but we’ve been playing for like eight or so. Samantha: Yeah. Louis: The first time I saw you guys, I thought you were pretty good. Since then, I feel every time I see you, you get progressively better. Leda: That’s cool. Thanks! Samantha: We have our good moments. Leda: Right now, we’re working on our oldest song ... and trying to make it the best. We used to be in another band with like six people. Samantha: With four dudes ... Leda: ... and us two. We had this song Blood Castle, and that was our oldest song. That was the first song that I wrote lyrics for in Spooky Scary, our last band, our old band. Then when Spooky Scary disbanded, we changed Blood Castle and we played it for a long time. Then we cut it out of the set after a while cause it was just so rough, and we were just like “what in the hell is going on with this?”  So we’re trying to fix it now, and that’s going to be like our new uncut, bigger, better South Park song. Louis: Okay so do you have any influences you guys wanna cite? 12 4

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Leda: I don’t think I really have any influences in mind. I mean when we first started playing, for the first two months we didn’t have any vocals. I was too nervous, I didn’t put any vocals to the songs. Then I started singing stuff. Then by the time we started playing shows, everyone was like “Oh, you sound like Danzig...” I laughed at this point, because I had heard this a couple times, totally separate from the occasion. This was a topic I wanted to touch on, but I figured, rightly so, that it was something that annoyed them. Louis: I have heard that. Leda: Yeah, I haven’t been able to shake that. At this point, my friend Lisa, whom also writes for The Austin Cut, brought a round of whiskey shots for us all to take. Then someone else brought another...Enter the Haze. We all cheered as we took the shots. Leda: We’ve got one more. Louis: One more. Samantha: Oh Shit. We all cheered again. Leda: Thank you. If you’re real Austin, you pump your shots. Anyway, yeah I don’t have any influences. I mean, Samantha, is my influence because she’s the brains behind this band. Samantha: What band? We laugh. Leda: She wrote all the songs. She would be like, “hey I wrote this and then she would play it for me, to show me how to play it.” Louis: I feel like starting out, you guys had an idea of what you wanted to do with your music and you just followed through with that and it’s just developed since. Samantha: Yeah, I hadn’t played or been in a decent, solid band till I moved to Austin. That’s why I fucking came here. [She laughs] It helps to play often. Leda: ... and to have a good person to play off of, and give each other ideas. It helps with the progression of the band. Samantha: Yeah. Her and I, we have a good thing going. Leda: Yeah. We have a good dynamic. Every time we play we want to get better, and it’s a hackneyed thing to say ... Louis: … but fuck it. If that’s what you mean, that’s what you

mean. Leda: We just want to play our music. Samatha: Yeah we just want to put on a good show, and play something that we like. Louis: Anything else you wanna add. Leda: Yeah I love French onion soup and space heaters. They’re wonderful! Louis: Yes! Space heaters, I have one at home they are wonderful. When I wake up in the morning I sit next to mine and smoke cigarettes till I’m warm enough to get dressed. Leda: What other questions do you have? Louis: How do you feel about bands in this city that play in the same music scene? Leda: That’s hard to say. I feel that the music that we go for is made to combat any girl band stereotype. Samantha: I’ll concur. Louis: I’ll even fucking concur. Thank God. You put out music that’s aggressive, but you don’t compromise it by making a big deal about eighty percent of the band being girls. Leda: Come on. Jordan deserves more of a percentage than that. Louis: Whatever. Jordan is five percent if he’s lucky! ... I’m just kidding. I really like that guy. Leda: Although he does contribute some percentage of vagina. Laughing. Samantha: He’s got the biggest fucking vagina of us all. Leda: Put that in the paper. Samantha: Print it up! No we’re kidding don’t print that. Louis: [Laughing] Pressed and pressed. Samantha: But, yeah we just want to play what’s in our heart. I’m not playing music because people like it. I’m not writing songs to tell anyone who I am. I’m playing it because it’s what I wanna hear. I feel like music in Austin ... is really dark, but pop centered. We try to find a nice middle ground. Leda: I feel like there’s this weird tendency to go toward whatever genres are happening in Austin. There are like four or five really big genres going on right now. Like metal, punk, pop rock ... 70s inspired... We all laugh. Leda: … and then the fancy shit, but then at the same time, still incorporate ourselves. I think we are almost definitely doing what we’re trying to do. So that’s our spiel, that’s our life story. Samantha: That was a crappy interview. We all laugh.

The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

show list february 1-3
Feb 1
Where’s the Band Tour with Matt Pryor (The Get Up Kids), Anthony Raneri (Bayside), Ace Enders (The Early November) and more
An acoustic round robin of pop punk giants. It’s moments like these that give rise to legitimizing the 2012 myth. Antone’s 7:00pm

Mixd Msgs with Lotic, Moral $upport
Mixd Msgs is a dance party hosted by Lotic and Moral $upport that specializes in playing a wide variety of genres from Chicago Juke to Baile Funk. Plush 10:00pm

(Austin) will be releasing a CD too, so you don’t want to miss that shit. If their new CD is anything like what they’ve been putting out in the past, it’ll be chalk full of indie alt rock jams with a dash of nu-metal. Stubb’s Inside 9:00pm

From Tunis” rules all ass, unfortunately it isn’t a good example of the rest of their music. ND at 501 Studios 10:00pm

Feb 3
Split Lip Rayfield, Clyde and Clem’s Whiskey Business, Whiskey Shivers
It’s gonna be a po-dunk spunk bender of dinga-ling music, whiskey, weed, and horny hillbillies lookin’ to get their poke on. Acoustic Witchita trio Split Lip Rayfield horse around a variety of old Americana genres usually adding a catchy pop to them. Clyde and Clem’s Whiskey Business (Austin) are an alt blue grass Americana band with lyrics about Silence of the Lambs and chronic. Whiskey Shivers rumple the pop blue grass with chicanery lyrics and backwoods oooomph. Jovita’s 7:00pm

Feb 2
Anthony Green w/ very special guests The Dear Hunter
Anthony Green, frontman of Philadelphia’s Circa Survive, is coming to Austin to serenade you with his beautiful acoustic canticles. The Dear Hunter (Boston) primly glaze their ostentatious pop rock shanties with exuberant vocals you could here in a Broadway musical. Mohawk Outside 7:00pm

Look Mexico, Major Major Major, River Ghost
An indie pop rock ground zero. Look Mexico (Talahase, FL) virtuoso their hearts out to present you with a post rock indie pop musical tome of delight. Major Major Major (Austin) and River Ghost (Austin) play a more conventional style of indie pop rock with River Ghost being a lot more ambient than Major cubed. Beauty Bar 10:00pm

Har Mar Superstar w/ Marijuana Deathsquads
Big daddy Har Mar Superstar, the indie-dance rockstar superstar never disappoints. So flock with the crowd and bear testament as he gets his mac and cheese on. DJ and drum spectacle Marijuana Deathsquads are one of the trillest bands to play Austin this month (if they don’t go all out and decide to sound like shit for art’s sake (which they do on occasion). As ridiculous as that may sound; it’s totally true. For real. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

Khringe, Bi_Polar Bear, Garrett T. Capps
A mixed bill night. Khringe (Austin) will be touching on dark and extreme metals, while indie alt punster Bi_Polar Bear (Austin) ham it up and lighten the mood after acoustic singer songwriter Garrett T. Capps (Austin) spins sultry yarns of tired truths and country blumpkin wisdom. Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Hello Caller, Boy, Shakey Graves
Dosey do at a folk inspired indie hoe down. Lamberts 10:00pm

Indian Jewelry Holy Wave, Hundred Visions
Indian Jewelry (Houston) is legitimately a psychedelic band with it’s own style that hasn’t been recycled a million times over like most psychedelic bands. This show is seriously going to be cooler than most of the bands that have been said were going to be cool this month. Holy Wave (El Paso) have an indie rock sound with lots of 60s influence. Hundred Visions (Austin) handle a variety of different styles in their sound, but they don’t really all hold together. Their song “Last Cab

D.R.U.G.S. w/ Hit The Lights, Like Moths to a Flame, Sparks The Rescue
The band name D.R.U.G.S. is an acronym for Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows. They feature ex-Chiodos singer Craig Owens, who fronts this unbreakable pop screamo frenzy of broken dreams and buttholes. Hit The Lights (Limo, OH) melee a pop punk massacre with punk rock party animal instincts. Emo’s East 7:00pm

Animal Train, The Millipede
If you’ve ever seen a lady yelling at her rambunctious kids as they’re exploding a bag of tattertots all over an HEB frozen food isle, picture that lady fronting her own punk band and you’d have Animal Train (Austin). Millipede (Austin) boister their nerdy heritage on the shoulders of pop infused metal punk. Beerland 9:00pm

Phranchyze, Hour Band (CD release), The Smites
Variety is s-o-o-o-o the spice of life, and what better way to prove it than by putting Austin rapper Phranchyze and Smiths cover band The Smites (Austin) on the same bill. Hour Band

THR iiCE
Fresh Baked Pastries
Gluten Free & Vegan

Threes Away, Last Action Hero, Bass Line Bums

coffee

wine

music

Made In-House Daily Thai Breakfast Tacos Local Draft Beer & Wine
7am-9pm Mon-Fri 8am-9pm Sat & Sun austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

909 W Mary St

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show list february 3-4
Threes Away take heart felt rock n’ roll to melodic heights with a perfect storm of carpe diem and pop punk. Cheeky twats, Last Action Hero (Austin) have a super cute name, but the real meat and potatoes of this band is found in the divinity of their dualistic comedy comprised from intense and poppy licks of the second wave emo by the deed variety. Bass Line Bums (Austin) rock their asses off on stage as commander and chieftains to an all out party punk gaiety event. The Annex at 1808 8:00pm Smoke & Feathers (Austin) will abort that fucker no problem, or turn it into a psychedelic genius. Smoke & Feathers might even assist in fertilizing another one of your eggs too, and with their guaranteed success in the music industry you could be collecting some hella child support. Houston’s Venomous Maximus restore the trans-scrotal fistula to black magik and satanism with a late 70s heavy metal goulash of sleazy solos and bellowed lyrics about rad demons and witchcraft. Curse the Heavens (Austin) might appear tobe a group of psychedelic prog-metal gurus, but they’re not. Don’t be-lie-ve the hype! They’re a couple of delicate choir boys just begging for a priest to touch their little bootyholes. Like whoa. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm
Legendary White Swan 9:00pm

Adicts, World/Inferno Friendship Society, The Flash Boys Adicts
Legendary Brit punk wankers and self proclaimed “Clockwork Punks” The Adicts are coming to Red 7. The only way to do something like this right is to get fucking wasted on 3% beers and tear the shit out of the venue, all in the name of good sport. World/Inferno Friendship Society (Brooklyn) is a jazz-funk-everything-punk fusion band with a lot of qualities reminiscent of Mr. Bungle. The Flash Boys (Austin) are an up beat punk machine with heavy Stooges vibes. Red 7 9:00pm

Emo’s Presents - Wild Child / The Couch / The Baker Family
Indie folk rockstars Wild Child (Austin) will make you believe in love. If Mathy alt punk heathens The Couch (San Antonio) leave anything left in your atrophied heart other than malice and shame. Like they were born in a jaded cradle, poppy indie alt rock n’ rollers The Baker Family (Austin) take your innocence and leave you barren of all hope. Beauty Ballroom 9:00pm

Cause for Applause, Crooked Bangs, Foreign Mothers
Assume the position for a post punk pentagram slam with lecherous punk fucks Gospel Truth splittin’ your tuchus wide open leaving you scream-gasping like Arnold Schwarzenegger for more, Cause for Applause (Austin) bringing you sloppy post punk with heedless leads and the vocals of a flamboyant radio host from the 40s, Foreign Mothers (Austin) for some apathetic and trundled arty surf pop, while Crooked Bangs (Austin) creep it up as a tight knit punk trio with necromantic lyrics about lovers and everyday bullshit, and The Wolf (Austin)... hell yeah ... doggystyle. Beerland 9:00pm

King Khan & The Shrines + Jacuzzi Boys

Feb 4
KOOP Radio’s Surfin’ 17 a-Go-Go Birthday Party with Junior Brown and more
Junior Brown champions the double neck regular-guitar/slide-guitar duo twanging out 80s pop country diddies with tongue in cheek, passive aggressive lyrics, making light of social subversion. If this guy isn’t a heavy drug user, he used to be one. Bill Kirchen (Austin), the 60s guitar hero, pulverizes phat cherry with his blues country eminence. The Del-Vipers (Austin) are gonna kick this shin dig off as jangly surf trio with a one track mind. Antone’s 7:00pm

The Dan X.O. Birthday Bash with The French Inhales (7” release) w/ Kingdom of Suicide Lovers, Lola Cola, Manikin, The Fine Lines
Hugs and kisses Dan. We all hope you have a splendid birthday. The French Inhales (Austin) do ambient punk with lots of conventional effects coupled with unconventional songwriting, but nothing to over whelming. They’re putting out a 7” too, the sneak peek on their Facebook makes it sound like it could be cool. Kingdom of Suicide Lovers (Austin) have a lo-fi punk I-don’t-give-ashit sound that uncontroversially shares musical qualities with X. Lola Cola (Austin) are an upbeat eccentric glam punk band with two vocalists and a lead keyboard added to their line up. FREE SHOW

If you’re into wild, freakish stage shows and 60s proto psychedelic rock you should see King Khan & The Shrines, fronted by the former Spaceshift punk, Almighty Defenders, and a bunch of other super groups, King Khan. If you’re lucky, he’ll get naked and do to you what he did to Lindsey Lohan during his performance at Cannes (shove his naked ass in your face). Jacuzzi Boys (Miami) pour salt on old wounds with a wicked take on raw indie pop punk. Mohawk Outside 9:00pm

Smoke & Feathers, Venomous Maximus, Curse the Heavens
Pregnant? Scared? You need not worry. Show up front row and put your possibly fecundated uterus against a speaker and a couple riffs from

Adicts, World/Inferno Friendship Society, The Flash Boys
Legendary Brit punk wankers and self proclaimed “Clockwork Punks” The Adicts are coming to Red 7. The only way to do something like this right is to get fucking wasted on 3% beers and tear the shit out of the venue, all in the name of

G Love and Special Sauce
Fuck sauce. La Zona Rosa 8:00pm

“Bring beer.”

Vinyl CD’s and FUN
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1401 A Rosewood Ave 512-524-1445 trailerspacerecords.com trailerspacerecords.blogspot.com
The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

show list february 4-11
good sport. World/Inferno Friendship Society (Brooklyn) is a jazz-funk-everything-punk fusion band with a lot of qualities reminiscent of Mr. Bungle. The Flash Boys (Austin) are an up beat punk machine with heavy Stooges vibes. Red 7 9:00pm
Mohawk Inside 10:00pm

Feb 9
Speak, Marmalakes, Roky Moon & Bolt

9:00pm

Feb 6
Jeremy Jay, Survive
Jeremy Jay gets a lot of hype, but for legit reasons. His minimalistic simpleton jams kick ass. Austin psychonauts Survive will be there too, so you can trip balls in good company before Jay does his thang. Stubb’s Inside 9:00pm

Gobi, Parking, Stereo is a Lie, 11:11
This show was made for dancers so expect to be sweating your ass off for Gobi. As Austin’s electroclub smashin’ titans give it to you full force. Parking is a respected Austin rapper with a growing reputation for his own developing style and a clever use of styles which the hip hop of today is built on. ND at 501 Studios 9:00pm

Speak (Austin) knock around an electro dance anatomy with plenty of 80s pop tang. The Marmalakes (Austin) are a folk pop band with an accessible grove and dancey rhythms. Mohawk Outside 8:00pm

Octopus Project + Deep Time (formerly YellowFever) + Hidden Ritual
Like a pack of demonic ogres, Octopus Project (Austin) scramble the mood as they wrangle up an all out indie noise pop fracas. If you liked Austin indie punks YellowFever, then you’d totally like Deep Time because it’s the same band. They ran into some legal trouble with a super corny fuckhead from Brooklyn who can’t sleep at night knowing a band in Austin shares the same name as his clothing company. And voila, now they’re called Deep Time. If Deep Time’s predicament starts to keep you up at night, too, let Hidden Ritual (Austin) loll you to sleep with a blanket of super stripped down indie background gems. Mohawk Outside 9:00pm

Calm Blue Sea + Follow That Bird + The Sour Notes + Buxton + Technicolor Hearts
This whole show is all part of a mini indie rock fest of eight bands, three of which will be playing the outside stage starting the same time these bands play. Calm Blue Sea (Austin) build engrossing sounscapes that swell and crash like tsunamis. Follow That Bird Have (Austin) meld a yin of lo-fi sensibility with a yang of pop rock energy. The Sour Notes (Austin) level out a chill and easy going vibe with proof that songs you can slow dance to rock just as hard. Mohawk Inside 8:00pm

Jealous Sound, She, Sir, Pswingset
Jealous Sound (L.A.) build walls of pop rock with sad serious vocals that have lots of elongated attention stressed on the Ss. She, Sir (Austin) goes deep in the indie pop rock ambiance. Pswingset (Austin) will bust your alternative pop rock loving nut. Mohawk Inside 10:00pm

Timmo & Graham’s Birthday Bash: The Fleshlights, The Blood Royale, OBN llls, Boars, Dirty Charley Band
This show is going to be gnar. Flesh Lights (Austin) and OBN III’s (Austin), a couple of the most savage, yet tender hardcore bands Austin has to brought to fruition. Also, The Blood Royale (Austin) and Boars (Austin), are two thrashy metal bands with hard-ons for gore. Of course, lest we not forget Austin’s Dirty Charlie Band (not a racist Vietnam war reference), serving up a mad fatty a brisket of Texas sleaze. Beerland 9:00pm

The Golden Boys w/ Ghost Knife
With expert mirth, The Golden Boys (Austin) ‘que it on the BBQ for a rowdy expo of hootenanny punk. Ghost Knife (Austin) remit a rock n’ roll seance full of pop punk ectoplasm gushers. Beauty Bar 9:00pm

Feb 7
Greg Enlow (Strange Boys), Sexual Human, Church Shoes
Singer songwriter Greg Enlow from Strange Boys is playing solo. Austin garage rock thugs Church Shoes are gonna rock out with a little bit of that country twang to liven things up. Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Gaslamp Killer, Drankenstein (Bird Peterson). Applied Pressure
Brainfeeder recording artist Gaslamp Killer may be the closest incarnation of Mike Judge’s Beavis ever. His sets are gnarly as hell and a good example of how, with the use of technology, people can make a living off of their attention disorders. This whole show is going to be crazy. If you’re looking for a dance party this is it. Beauty Ballroom 9:00pm

Spray Paint (record release/debut), Nazi Gold, Same Sack, Cruddy, Marriage
This show is going to be comprised of the Austin punk scenes most forward thinking individuals. If nothing makes you more disgusted than a conformist, you should do whatever it takes to make it to this show. Beerland 9:00pm

Nakia w/ Casino
It’s Nakia, the singing dude (with the beard) from the TV show The Voice. If you get a chance to touch him. just know it’s like being one with something that was viewed and loved by millions of people, so it’s almost like you were viewed and loved by millions of people. Oh!! And Casino, good ol’ trusty Casino. Frank 9:00pm

MC Lunchboxx (Ft. Worth), Jonah Hexx (Ft. Worth), Marvelous Mike D., Travis T.
This show is going to be a tripped up rap assemblage. These beats and rappers sound more disorienting and tangled up than a rainforest on steroids. Red Eyed Fly Outside 8:00pm

The Jensen Eyes, Creationists, Tempo Tantrums, Backseat Action
Fast tempo pop rock goobers The Jensen Eyes (Austin) will leave you in awe. Licentious fiends Creationists (Austin) let loose with garage noise punk putrefaction. Scoot Inn 9:00pm

The Preservation, SuperLiteBike, The Greatcoats
The Preservation (Austin) rock it old school with a heavy 60s pop influence. SuperLiteBike (Austin) dish out a slew of strange odd ball indie jams. The Greatcoats (Austin) are a pop rock group with a slight buzzballad sound and country western vocals. Frank 9:30pm

The Boxing Lesson, The Hi-Tones, Megafauna, Churchwood
The Boxing Lesson (Austin) combine psychedelic pop rock with spacey eerie synthesizers and a divergent acceptance that everywhere is the dark side of the moon. Check out old school heavy rock n’ roll hellions The Hi-Tones (Austin) if you’re looking for a roucas pop rock getaway. Cheer Up Charlie’s 10:00pm

Feb 8
February Residency Series with HarMar Superstar, Marijuana Death Squads, Zorch
Har Mar Superstar and the Marjuana Death Squads are taking the stage again this month except this time they’ll be accompanied with Austin’s noise pop duo Zorch. True Zorch fans out there, let em’ know wassup. Band T-shirts are for spineless dabblers. The only way to differentiate the real Zorch fans from the perpetrators is to scope out who’s rocking the headset microphone; anything less is a damn insult. I’ll be the handsome gentleman rocking his microphone T.I. style. Know what I’m sayin!? Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

The Dead Space, Sweet Talk, Neighbor, Smithers
If a couple of the garbage pale kids got together and decided to make a punk band, The Dead Space (Austin) is what they would like. Sweet Talk (Austin) is comprised of what sounds like horny shit mongers pouring out punk rock jams with a dash of an alt pop substance. Legendary White Swan 9:30pm

Talkdemonic, My Education, Black Books
Instrumental viola and drum duo Talkdemonic (Portland) rock their every-kind-of-mellow-music-fusion niche with the class of a true musical thaumaturge. Chill as fuck studs, My Education (Austin), bust it quiescent like the ambient indie rock peeps they are. Black Books (Austin) conjure up dreamy durges with a lot of Radiohead similarities without sounding like they’re completely biting Radiohead’s sound. Lamberts 10:00pm

Feb 5
Kiddoo & The Dude, Airplanes Above Us, Madisons
Bring an appetite for a heaping serving of alt rock. Kiddoo & The Dude (Austin) drizzle just enough bizarre bullshit over their sound to keep it interesting without going overboard. Airplanes Above Us (Austin) like their alt rock neat. No junk. They like to keep pure and cleansed of anything questionable or not right. Red Eyed Fly Outside 7:00pm

Feb 10
Bright Light Social Hour
Austin’s piquant indie rock aces are gonna serve it up nasty at this carnal celebration to a culture of life. La Zona Rosa 8:00pm

Feb 11
Coma in Algiers (ish’s bday party), A Giant Dog (LP release), Bad Lovers, The French Inhales, The Abominable Mex
A Giant Dog’s record release show and a grande gathering of post punk garage punk. You’ll hear everything from the abrasive and the un-ordinary to the super catchy. If you want to be smart you’d, buy a couple A Giant Dog records and keep one for listening and put the others some where safe since the band’s record release artifice is operating under a deflation strategy and current business world buzz is hinting A Giant Dog records may become the next world currency. Should be a wild night.

Teenage News, Larry Llodra, Sexploits, Waikiki
Teenage News (Austin) wail a bluesy country punk riot like a bunch of irritable banshees. Beerland Inside 9:00pm

Emilie Autumn
Being both a former mental patient and student of classical music, Emilie Autumn’s performance is a twisted bacchanal of industrial cabaret. Elysium 8:00pm

Riot God, Dixie Witch, Modok
A heavy metal squabble of space metal and southern rock with some Frank Frazzeta thrown into the mix. New Jersey mother fuckers Riot God (boasting two former Monster Magnets) show you what the Jersey shore fist pump is really for with a heavy metal mind warp to hell. Dixie Witch (Austin) wrassle up a sweet batch of Candidiasis inspired rebel yell.

Knifight, Paperthreat, Bali Yaaah, Real Book Fake Book
Knifight (Austin) utilize an electro dance pop melody with a heavy 80s influence from almost all of the 80s pop genres, new wave to decadent butt rock. Beauty Bar 10:00pm

Magnifico!
Behold the wonder of Magnifico! the Queen as folk cover band (they’re not a folk band). This show is perfect for any rhinestone Texas cowboy. Red 7

austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

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show list february 11-16
FREE SHOW Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

The Soldier Thread w/ Language Room
The Soldier Thread (Austin) deliver a noisy indie pop rock sound with lots of emphasis on their fleshed out ethereal background. Language Room (Austin) are high energy pop rock band with a heaping assemblage of hooks. Stubb’s Inside 8:30pm

seeing them trotting around stage and spoiling you with their alt punk in prurient fashion is almost too much of a good thing. By the way, if you don’t like late 90s pop punk you won’t like this show. The Parish 10:00pm

White Ghost Shivers w/ Jordann Mitchell
White Ghost Shivers (Austin) amass a mad agglomeration of old timey genres and non electrical instruments with a unique fusion style. Jordann Mitchell (Austin) rocks out an acoustic indie folk set with poppy chill vibes. Skinny’s Ballroom 10:00pm

The Lemonheads, Meredith Sheldon, Gentlemen Rogues
Alternative rock festivities with Boston superstars The Lemonheads. Eager to blast the night into alt rock martyrdom, Meredith Sheldon (Northhampton, MA) from Family of the Year is rocking it solo with a soft and savory alt rock twist, and Gentlemen Rogues will set it off in their indie alt rock hooligan fashion. Mohawk Outside 9:00pm

Dean, I’m bi” (because James Dean was hella bi and so was Lincoln (happy presidents day)). Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! (Paris, France) is a prime example of first wave Biebersploitation pop rock. This show is going to be a Mecca for Austin sex offenders. If I was a cop looking for an easy collar this is the first place I’d stake out. The problem lately is there’s so much bearded flannel out there, it’s been hard to separate the posers from the legit chi-mos, but luckily at this show even a sign of heavy stubble could be an indication of an out of place pervert. So give it up to Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! for helping rid our streets of unwanted filth. Emo’s East 6:00pm

Superstar, Marijuana Death Squads, Geoff Millions
For a slobbish stoner lookin’ group, Har Mar Superstar really do have voices and pop catchiness rivaling Justin Timberlake. Go figure. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

Cinema 41 Fundraiser: Tijuana Bible, Bad Lovers, Manatee Tights, The Baker Family
A bunch of wild rock bands get together to generate some cash for Cinema 41. Bad Lovers ride the Austin wave of 70s-influenced punk rock. If only Tijuana Bibles were actually playing, as teased by the Beerland website. Beerland 10:00pm

Feb 12
Sadie Hawkins Valentine’s Party with Bobby Jealousy, Kay Leotard, Megafauna, Agent Ribbons, Planets, Foreign Mothers
If St. Valentine was alive today would he be an anti-Semite? Regardless, an honored celebration of his life and death could never be more outdone than this event with musical acts: Bobby Jealousy (Austin) “the monsters of pop” mainlining you with a rush of their indie stank and catchy hooks, Kay Leotard (Austin) and their jangly indie pop that could easily be camouflaged on a C86 playlist, and Megafauna (Austin) the dirty rotten scoundrels of the indie math punk Sertraline scene. Hotel Vegas 9:00pm

Aurora Plastics Co., Sex Bruises, Lichen
Aurora Plastics Co. (Austin) are an insanely obnoxious band that sounds the way a human body feels while it’s going through glue withdraws after years of addiction. Not that fucking tap water we got over here. The African shit they use in the factories. The good stuff. This band’s cool, though, if you’re into sadist rubbish, so check em’ out. Sex Bruises (Austin) sounds like Darth Vader trying to be passionate while he’s giving somebody (you) sex bruises, but Darth Vader can’t yell very well, so he just has his helmet turned way up and blaring in your ear. Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Bang Bang Theodores, The Mayflower
Bang Bang Theodores mix proto punk influences, loud guitar-driven catchy hooks, with 70s stylings. Maybe it’s not the most revolutionary thing going on in Austin, but what’s not to love? The Mayflower (also Austin) are super mellow, rolling up classic rock, blues, and 60s folk influences, smoking them, and exhaling their own power pop rendition of it all. Beauty Bar 10:00pm

Thurston Moore
Sonic Youth badass Thuron Moore is coming to Austin and supporting his new solo album Demolished Thoughts. St. David’s Episcopal Church 9:00pm

Yob With Eagle Claw / Skycrawler
It’s a head banger’s orgy with Yob (Eugene, OR) headlining their doom-metal sound, while supporting acts psychedelic prog-metal bands Eagle Claw (Austin) and Skycrawler (Austin) set the mood and play tiddlywinks with your damned soul. Beauty Ballroom 9:00pm

Feb 16
Estelle with Luke James, Stacy Barthe
Do you remember Destiny’s Child? Do you still like R&B? Then you belong here. Antone’s 7:00pm

Valentine’s Benefit for Dan and Letha Melchior: The Zoltars, Simple Circuit, Boone Graham, Air Traffic Controllers, David Israel
It’s a V-day celebration so grab someone you love and head on down to an indie rock Lollapalooza of Valentines miracles. The Zoltars (Austin) are a minimalistic indie punk band with a demented sense of everything. Simple Circuit (Austin) garage rock it with leather eating punk rock baditude. Boone Graham (Austin) is a wild and untameable singer songwriting spirit with silly lyrics. Beerland Inside 9:00pm

Tacks, The Boy Disaster + Laura Gibson + Breathe Owl Breathe
Tacks, The Boy Disaster (Austin) pull off a legit pop rock sound with super infectious danceability and I think they’re able to do it with out the aid of advanced technology. Acoustic singer songwriter Laura Gibson (Portland) is a fiery young tart with vocals both alluring and beckoning as the mermaid legends of yore. Breathe Owl Breathe (East Jordan, MI) resuscitate the indie folk scene with the sensitivity of a closeted football coach from the 50s. Mohawk Inside 10:00pm

ST 37, Kaiser Soze, Lacuna Incorporated
ST 37 have been freaking Austin out since ‘87 with their spacey, acid punk. Some of their riffs sound like something that Euronymous from Mayhem might have stolen. Yeah, they might be getting old, but in a small room like Trailer Space, this has the potential to sound pretty fucking cool ... or maybe it’ll just hurt y’r ears and make you leave, you baby. FREE SHOW Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

RETURN OF THE @$$HOLES TOUR: Z-Ro w/ Trae tha Truth
This may be one of the best shows for all of February. Z-Ro and Trae the Truth are two Houston rappers with lyrics about what Houston rap is typically about. Z-Ro’s style is little more syrupy and d-i-r-t-y-dirty-south. Emo’s East 9:00pm

The Alice Rose, The Pons, Bravo Max, Greg Talmage
The Alice Rose (Austin) are a chain gang of indie pop stallions with a penchant for desecration. The Pons (Austin) bundle up their indie pop rock melodies with ambient beauty and a seething lust. Feather Face (Houston) represent only an extremist minority of the wide spectrum of indie beliefs and in action their psychedelic indie rock is truly a marvel to behold, almost horrifying in nature. Greg Talmage (Austin) is a witty and charming acoustic singer songwriter with a real talent for transforming your body and mind into his own personal temple of defilement. Or maybe not. See for yourself, but afterwards if you find yourself sleep-praying to satanic deities and J-ing off to war footage, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Frank 9:30pm

Feb 15
Omar & the Howlers
Omar Dykes and the Howler’s were Armadillo World Headquarters legends from the 70s. Omar was known for wild, feedback laden performances and for when “he dropped to the floor to spin on his back in a spontaneous, Big & Tall Store take on break-dancing. As he says, those performances were ‘sometimes fueled by, a-hmm, alcohol.’” I don’t think you can expect that from him these days, but maybe some solid blues instead. Waterloo Records 6:00pm

The Green Door Record Party with DJs Moe Zilla (Berlin), Apopalipstick (Nessa Munoz), host Scotty Upton
It’s a dance party. Super cool. Plus it’s free, so you can invest your money in making the party better your own way with stuff like ecstasy and better clothes. Or you can come dressed like shit; it’s your call either way. FREE SHOW Rio Rita Lounge 10:00pm

E.V.P., Anus Morissette, Breakdancing Ronald Reagan, Gym Mat Nap, Crashbarron, Princess Army Wedding Combat
Anus Morissette is raw performance art disguised as music. Please show up to this and experience a blast of fucked, nauseating light and sound being projected in your general direction using a variety of tools/methods: a blender and some sound effects, tenderizing a piece of raw meat with a face, etc. Bernadette’s 7:00pm

Feb 14
Soda Jerk Presents Attack! Attack!, The Ghost Inside, Sleeping With Sirens, Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!, Dream On, Dreamer
A metalcore, popcore cacophony. Attack! Attack! (Westerville, OH) rub out a sweet honey suckled metalcore ham hock, just like grandma used to make. Sleeping With Sirens (Orlando, FL) play from the heart, strings cutting deep, with a bare all metalcore opus that leaves nothing to the imagination. Check out their single “If I’m James

The Polyphonic Spree with New Fumes
I’ve always thought the Polyphonic Spree was totally ridiculous. They look like a choir on hard drugs with enough people dressed in robes onstage to look like a cult ritual. They incorporate a shit load of voices, flutes, harps, rock drumming, and all sorts of chimes that come together in a somewhat normal sounding pop group. I’m pretty sure everyone’s heard of them by now, so I’ll cut this short. La Zona Rosa 8:00pm

Shakey Graves, PJ Bond
Get out your straw hat and banjos, here comes Shakey Graves. Mellow, extremely melodic, altcountry bluesy folk jams. PJ Bond is coming to Texas, on tour from his hometown of New Jersey, with his high-energy roots rock and roll. Mohawk Inside 8:00pm

Schatzi, Dynamite Hack, Bo Bud Green
Power punk ogres Schatzi (Austin) are at it again, see if they still got it. It’s sad to say, but there are many people who heard Easy-E’s “Boyz in the Hood” from alt punk superstars Dynamite Hack first (I was one of those people). Witness, live, the magic that touched so many. Bo Bud Green (Austin) quench all corporal desires. Just

22 Thoughts, Befriend The Bears, Audioroad, Skirt The Issue, The Abstract
This show is all over the place. Austin’s own 22 Thoughts, a noisy, techno’d out, electronic / synth jam-band is playing with Befriend the Bears, a

February Residency Series with HarMar

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The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

show list february 16-19
somewhat generic alt-rock band carried by a female vocalist. Red 7 8:00pm
8:00pm

Los Campesinos! with Parenthetical Girls
Strangely, Los Campesinos! are a bunch of white guys from the UK. Sometimes they play shoegazey dancey music with a ton of layers and epic build-ups ... the kind of stuff that a lot of people used to jam in the mid-2000s ... and other times they’ll go all Shaft on us and try some funk riffs. I never really did understand Europeans. The Parish 8:00pm

Last Dance with How I Quit Crack
No, not “Last Dance with Mary Jane,” by that trite cornball Tom Petty, we’re talking about some serious electronic music going down tonight. I feel like there should be some sort of a hidden message in the trance-like near-psychotic episode that is How I Quit Crack’s electronic music. If there is, I haven’t found it yet. The 29th St. Ballroom 10:00pm

People used to make fun of industrial music, but somehow people are starting to warm up to the idea again. Mix chanting, epic 300 war-call vocals with boring electronic droning backgrounds and you have Sorne. Frank 9:30pm

your earplugs for this one if you’re feeling a little wimpy. Bernadette’s 9:00pm

Whitey on the Moon, Megafauna, Black Owl Society
Whitey on the Moon is playing their first show tonight. It could be a bold new step in Austin music or it could be another sloppy attempt at something that’s been done a billion times. You’ll be able to count on Megafauna’s groovin’ hard rock and Black Owl Society doing it even harder. For fans of Audioslave. Frank 9:30pm

Feb 18
Kingdom of Suicide Lovers, Chainbow, The Well
Kingdom of Suicide Lovers really sounds like they don’t give a fuck. Their singer sounds like he could have been chosen over two other potentials in a gory last-man-sings, Russian roulette game. Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Score More Presents Yelawolf
After being rejected by Yelawolf for a Facebook friend request (I just wanted to see his new music video with Kid Rock in it), I clicked something on his page that hacked into my Facebook account and started sending all of my friends Yelawolf suggestions. This dude sounds a LOT like Eminem, but he looks like Davey Havok and raps ... yes raps ... about killing people and extreme gangster shit. Where is this world headed? Beauty Ballroom 9:00pm

Feb 17
Memphis Pencils
Memphis Pencils are psychedelics in denial. With everyone throwing that word around, a word that used to mean “cut y’r fuckin’ hair ya damn yippie,” it now means absolutely nothing. Memphis Pencils go from sounding tropical, to stuck in a freaky loop, but they always try to keep it melodic, poppy, and friendly. Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Talking Heads Hoot Night with Moving Matter, The Trim, Jabarvy
Since the actual Talking Heads have spent the past couple decades bickering with David Byrne over money, we’ll have to settle for cover bands, and fork over our own cash for an imitation. Antone’s 9:30pm

Digital Leather, Dead Space, Brain Attack
If there were ever a nightmarish future world where you were stuck inside of an enormous cube, and there were metal things smashing against each other randomly with extreme force, almost crushing you, ultra hot steam blowing in the gaps between the smashing metal, and you were running around trying not to get killed until you died, this might be what it would sound like. I’m calling it: show of the night. Beerland 9:00pm

Wiretree, Whitman, On After Dark
Wiretree is about as south Austin as it gets. Indie pop/rock, with a debut album called Bouldin. Considering it was put out in 2007, Wiretree was here first ... before the rest of Austin’s transplants got here. And it doesn’t get more south Austin than that, does it? Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

Feb 19
Andy Grammer with Ryan Star
Everyone wants to be a good-hearted Bruno Mars in radio pop, these days. Too bad there aren’t more blood diamond mine justifying Akon wannabes to keep things interesting. Stubb’s Inside 7:00pm

Super Diamond with The Cover Girls
Super Diamond is a tribute band to Neil Diamond ... they’re extremely popular for some reason, and they even played David Letterman’s Late Show. They’re gonna be playing with Austin’s The Cover Girls, an all girl ... well woman, they’re proudly all 30-something ... rock band. La Zona Rosa

Pussyviolence, Lucio Menegon, Macho Blush, Daze of Heaven
Smoked-out and heavy, heavy, heavy. Austin’s Pussyviolence doesn’t skimp on the reverberated, tortured screams, either. You might wanna bring

Sorne, Boyfrndz, Knifight

Scott Kelly (Neurosis)

2209 E. Cesar Chavez, Austin austincut.com | The Austin Cut, February 2012

East Side Food Park

17 3

show list february 20-29
Get down to the Mohawk for an underground extreme metal superstar lineup. Scott Kelley, the ridiculously prolific frontman of Neurosis, will be playing songs from his acoustic project. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm of the 22nd. Antone’s 7:30pm can say, “what? you never saw Planets?” Beerland 9:00pm

Black Coffee, White Knuckles Tour With Voodo Glow Skulls / Authority Zero
So here’s the deal. Voodoo Glow Skulls play the Beauty Bar with Authority Zero, THEN they wiz off to Emo’s East for yet another show (listed on here as well). One hell of a Sunday night for music in the live music capital of the world. Unfortunately most fuckers in this town can’t plan a show a month in advance so we were left with this crap today. Beauty Bar 10:00pm

Pussyviolence, Mugwump, Crawl, The Tits, Sex Bruises
Beerland 9:00pm

Feb 25
Angergy, Jesus Christ Superfly
Dudes from Round Rock who just love to play METAL. Fuckin’ hook ‘em! Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Patrick’s Beard, Chuck Harris, Aaron Tinjum
Austin-based Americana roots all-round. Red Eyed Fly Inside 9:00pm

Feb 23
Hector Ward & The Big Time with Roxy Roca, The LaRues
Local Latin / blues rock Kingpin Hector Ward keeps you hard all night long. For a seriously sexy time get down here. Antone’s 8:00pm

Feb 21
Children Of Bodom, Eluveitie, Revocation, Threat Signal
The only thing that disappoints me about COB (worst acronym ever) is that they are still putting out albums. Just over a decade ago, they were the representative modern black metal band who reminded losers like me that metal was very much alive. A few Slipknot-sounding albums later, they’ve been much forgotten. What should you to expect at the show? Expect singer/songwriter Alexi Laiho to fuck you in the ass and face while simultaneously downing a steady diet of guitar strings. Emo’s East 7:00pm

LOTUS
LOTUS uses jam rock as a framework for their music, but the electronic influence is what gives them their name, and potential. La Zona Rosa 8:00pm

Feb 27
Gomez with Hey Rosetta!
Gomez is some Southport indie rock band that sounds a lot like what I imagine a Christian indie rock group to sound like. Antone’s 7:00pm

Coma in Algiers
Garage band getup, Coma in Algiers, range in sound from soft synth with singing to a noisy mess of guitars and yelling. I’m closing my eyes now and trying to pick which Greek God I would imagine the singer to look like. Hmm... Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

The Band of Heathens
These dudes play are some good ol’ straight American rock music. Wear your leather jacket and a pair of aviators or Rayban Wayfarers. The Parish 8:00pm

Paul Banks & The Carousels, Daniel Ellsworth, The Great Lakes
Listening to songs from all of Paul Banks’ discography, I’m glad he doesn’t sing in agonizing falsetto all the time anymore. I mean, he has potential and it sounds OK, but there’s something that misses the target with every song. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

The Supersuckers with The Spittin’ Cobras, Dixie Witch
Seattle bands tour show. Jesus Christ, the Supersuckers are awesome. Imagine Johnny B. Goode but done way harder by Andrew W.K! Not before The Spittin’ Cobras shows why modern hair metal bands exist (to remind us why they’re all gone). I would love to hear these bands open for INSPECTOR CLUZO! Antone’s 8:00pm

Tribal Seeds with Fortunate Youth
IT’S STONER’S NIIIGHT! San Diego’s Tribal Seeds entered earth in 2005 through a giant plume of pot smoke and garnered a mini-cult like following. Amazing night of reggae. What more needs to be said? Stubb’s Inside 9:00pm

Matthew Good with Emily Greene
Matthew Good from the Matthew Good Band (of all things) brings his Canadian alternative acoustic ass to Austin. His height in popularity was in the few years preceding and following the year 2000. Emily Greene has vocals similar to Cat Power or that chick who sings for cotton commercials, but with prettier music. Antone’s 8:00pm

Katie Herzig
Tennessee indie pop artist Katie Herzig serenades Stubb’s. Stubb’s Inside 9:00pm

The Vintage 15
Big Band music (some jazz, too...) from a seriously big band. Get this: they play vintage genres and the group binds 15 souls. Skinny’s Ballroom 10:00pm

Reptar with Quiet Hooves
That little green dinosaur ain’t got shit on these modern electronic tyrants, Reptar. Stubb’s Inside 9:00pm

Feb 28
Symphony X, Iced Earth, Warbringer
They’ve been around since the oldschool 90’s black metal days, but Symphony X (great name, by the way) is finally finding their niche. I’ve conjured one word to describe these metal ballads: glorious. Metal heads! Bang ‘em! Emo’s East 7:00pm

Your 33 Black Angels, Slowtrain
Your 33 Black Angels has an early 90’s vibe to their melodies that mesh pleasantly with steady drumming and lax story-telling vocals. (If you show up expecting The Black Angels but get these dudes instead, you might blow your fucking brains out and ask for a refund.) And Slowtrain plain sucks. JUST KIDDING... they’re OK... Imagine Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” but with harmonicas and rock drumming. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

Feb 24
Bad Tattoo Script Reading
“Bring Beer.” Pre-game it, too. Trailer Space Records 7:00pm

Cloud Nothings, A Classic Education, Midgetmen
Cloud Nothings are an Indie Rock group from Cleveland, Ohio. I heard corporations open stores in Ohio as a test market because it’s the most mundane middle class place imaginable. Red 7 9:00pm

Ruthie Foster with Hadden Sayers
Blues powerhouse Ruthie Foster drops some knowledge and Hadden Sayers warms ya’ up with his blues pearls. Antone’s 7:00pm

A Giant Dog, Lola Cola, Kay Leotard
I’ll say it right off: this is the show to see tonight. Up and comers A Giant Dog rip you a new one and you won’t forget Lola Cola or Kay Leotard after they raw dog your anxious gloryhole. Mohawk Inside 8:00pm

Zeale (full Band Debut), The Shears, Sphynx, Prom Date
Zeale is fucking awesome. Austin rapper Zeale rapz over his own party song mash-ups. More indie and electro music from The Shears and company. Pretty hott night. Beauty Bar 10:00pm

Ramsay Midwood, Mike Nicolai and the Sensations
Mr. Midwood plays classic Texas rock. Mike Nicolai performs alt rock and is kind of catchy at parts. Skinny’s Ballroom 10:00pm

Har Mar Superstar , Polica, Marijuana Deathsquads
Prepare yourself for a night of sweaty dance sex and crazy party antics from the world’s greatest Ron Jeremy look-alike. Mohawk Outside 8:00pm

Feb 29
“Bear to Live!” Bike Night
Park your bike inside the Mohawk cult compound and get that free shot of the strong stuff to get you ready to ride. Mohawk Inside 5:00pm - 8:00pm

Feb 26
Authority Zero Voodoo Glow Skulls, Skyfox
Find a comfortable chair. Sit down, and relax your eyelids. Now, imagine being at Warped Tour. The smell of corn dogs and cheap booze. The sounds. YES! The sounds. Focus more on those. That’s what you should expect (if you’re not already familiar with the Voodoo Glow Skulls). Emo’s East 7:30pm

Feb 22
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Stephen Malkmus of 90’s alt rock group Pavement seems like he would have a cult following. He’s been playing with The Jicks for over 10 years now and they’re here to pop rock yer’ 90’s head off. Mohawk Outside 6:30pm

Quiet Company with The Orbans, Reynolds Number, Little Brave
Quiet Company has all the makings of a group that is on the cusp of really “making it.” Check out their latest hit “How Do You Do It?” That should decide things for you. Stubb’s Inside 9:00pm

Dropkick Murphys, Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls
It wouldn’t surprise me if this sold out. Austin’s cult following of Dropkick Murpys will have one hell of a Thursday morning hangover. Everyone know about these fucks, right? Emo’s East 8:00pm

Devon Allman’s Honeytribe with The Swingin’ Johnsons, Michael Holt
Son of an Allman Brother (phrase of the day), Devon Allman, plays solid blues rock. If that’s your thing, you know where to find it come night

Planets (Farewell Show)
Planets. A good band, backed by a rad label, whose first show listing we botched worse than an amature doctor’s first stab at a sex-change. Check them out while you still can ... if not just so you

The Nouns, Pre-War
Not your regula’ ass Blues rock group with some raw and 50’s elements. Mohawk Inside 9:00pm

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The Austin Cut, February 2012 | austincut.com

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