Austin Fanzine Project

years in that casino. It was kind of cool that my ill-timed hit at a blackjack table made one drunk redneck lose a grand, though.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND 1997 Readers of GW understand our fondness for the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, so you can understand how a more ideal combination would be hard to come up with: The Thinking Fellers were to play the Shangri-La Shindig in Memphis this year —at Green's Lounge, no less! It was Steve Decon's turn to come to Memphis with me, and he'd just returned from his summer in Mexico, so I figured this trip would help ease the shock of his return to the U.S. The actual show was really interesting. While we were sitting around outside, some guy was babbling on and on about Princess Di, then he pulled out a printout from some internet news site that proclaimed her death. Then we rocked out. The advertised "Hippie in a Cage" turned out to be GW friend Dave Dunlap, who was penned up in the corner behind some chicken wire, taunting the audience. His shirtless, body-painted, joke-crackin' self whipped the audience into a frenzy. An angry frenzy. I truly love Dave's near total disregard for punchlines — I think he's avoided the pitfalls of "humor" that bog down many lesser comedians.

Then the Thinking Fellers played and were pretty good, although their sound isn't so hot in a little concrete box. They played that Butthole Surfers song they cover, the name of which I can't remember right now. That damn band is one of the few reasons I like music right now. They are capable of expressing themselves in a very subtle manner, something to be missed when every stupid band thinks they have to hit you over the head with a goddamned mission statement. Banjos and mandolins are terrifically underused in the rock idiom these days, and their presence in the Thinking Fellers' music isn't anything but vital. Really, when have you ever listened to a Thinking Fellers record and found an element of excess present? Doesn't happen.

NEW YEAR'S EVE 1997

I ran away from Austin to Memphis on New Year's Eve so that I could salvage my shitty holidays. That means I missed the last New Bomb Turks show here, which I'm sad about, but I got to hear the Oblivians and the Royal Pendletons and a new-wave band play at the Young Avenue Deli. When I arrived in town, Scott met me at the Lamplighter all dressed up, so I was compelled to wear a formal gown (all right, I wore a long, slinky thing from work) and gloves. You know what I like about Memphis? Everyone else was dressed up, too. People are such slobs in Austin.

On this particular trip, Mike McCarthy was kind enough to show me his latest project, Shine On Sweet Starlet, a series of sixties-style clips where ingenues strip for the camera in the comfort of their own homes or favorite bars. The soundtrack should be out this April on Sympathy for the Record Industry, but I'm not sure when the flick itself will be completed. It's a great piece of work — modern naked ladies shot on Super 8 to look like vintage naked ladies. Mike will be shooting his next project this summer — ladies, send GW your headshots [buttshots —ed.] and they'll be passed on.

Dan Ball took some pictures of me while I was there, which I might get to see this year. He's the guy that took all those swirly, arty pictures of the Grifters, the Oblivians and the Clears. I got to crawl around on his piano and couch in a bunch of lingerie, then sit really still for those long exposures. I hope for next year's Christmas card to be one of these photos.

So I figure 1998 will turn out all right since I started it in Memphis. I'll let you know if that helped or not.

Interview with a Newspaper Man

Following a GW #4 contributor's gory evisceration of local writer Michael Corcoran (which was a personally motivated attack and does not represent the opinion of GW's editorial staff), Corcoran gave GW #5 a rave review in the Austin-American Statesman's XL Ent. He got some of his facts wrong (I — LaSuprema — am no stripper. That is Susan's occupation) but here we print pure truth. Susan originally conducted this interview for the Daily Texan in November 1997 but it never ran. Here it is, folks, uncut.

MC: I was a military kid, so I moved all over, but my father retired in Honolulu, so I lived in Hawaii from 1970 to 1984. '84's when I moved to Austin. It was April 1, 1984. Then I moved away in '88 and moved to San Francisco for about six months. I worked for the East Bay Express up there. Then I moved to Chicago in late '88 and lived there until 1992, then I took a job with the Dallas Morning News. So I've pretty much lived all over. But I guess Hawaii would be the place I'd call home.

GW: When did you start writing?

I was going through some stuff to get ready for this — I was gonna show you a few things, but I actually found the very first thing I ever wrote, when I was 7 years old.

[Tape problems ensue]

It's real embarrassing when people come into the room when you're transcribing, because you hear your voice and your questions.

I use headphones.

I always sound like an idiot during interviews. When I worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, I had one assignment with Roger Ebert, there was that movie Boyz in the Hood, and he was interviewing John Singleton and I was interviewing Ice Cube, it was one of those junket things. He was off there interviewing Singleton, and he wasn't even taking notes. And

on the drums during a set. I believe it was Mr. Greg Oblivian's time when the machine fot switched on, leading to Mr. Eric Oblivian's departure from the stage. Mr. Jack Oblivian had been performing a song when Mr. Greg Oblivian began an impromptu hymn to the virtues of the drum machine. "Ladies and gennleman, I just wanna tell ya, this drum machine . . . my favorite thing about this drum machine . . . is that . . . as I'm sure you all agree . . . the best thing . . . is that . . . you don't gotta play 'em yourself. Ya just TURN 'EM ON!" Mr. Jack Oblivian said, "Hey, waittaminnit, Greg Oblivian, this is my song!" Mr. Greg Oblivian had, by then, completely derailed the rock'n'roll show and Mr. Jack Oblivian's guitar rapidly became another noisy element of this weird techno-garage stew. He soon fled for the comfort of the dressing room, guitar in hand, to make noise from its confines. Mr. Greg Oblivian continued to harangue the crowd from onstage. "Ladies and gennelmen, I don't blame my parents for the way I turned out, I blame s'ciety!" He eventually followed his bandmates into the dressing room, mike in hand, to finish his "song." It's worth mentioning that at this point some 80% of the crowd had left, leaving only an amazed and baffled minority. Finally, Jack quit hitting random chords on the guitar and somebody must have distracted Greg from the mike, for all that he could be head was the tinny thump of that five-dollar drum machine. Hands down, the Geek Weekly show of the year for 1997.

Grifters 10.30.97 Fitzgerald's (Houston) and 10.31.97 Electric Lounge

Over the years I've emphasized the crappiness of the Grifters' Austin shows compared to those they've played in Houston. Jennifer and I experienced a near perfect pair of shows in Houston a couple of years ago, one at Goat's Head Soup and another at the Urban Art Bar with the Strapping Fieldhands, and on both tours the Austin shows haven't come near to their Houston counterparts. I have no idea what in the hell causes this. The Grifters are much loved in Austin and they even have a groupie home base of sorts here. A ton of people go out to see them when they play. In Houston this past October, there were about fifty warm bodies in the whole damn bar. Margaret and I felt like we had our own personal Grifters show all to ourselves! Hey, maybe that's what I like about those Houstonshows — but really, this one was truly fine. Full Blown Possession is much more to my liking than Ain't My

NOVEMBER FOOD'N'FUN ISSUE!

GEEK WEEKLY

[image: illustration, a group of people happily eating slices of pizza]