Saturday, June 28, 2008

Sounds of San Antonio

The music of San Antonio, which was celebrated Thursday night at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, is sometimes called "Tex-Mex," but that tag barely begins to cover all the styles heard at the festival tent dubbed the Dancehall. There were Spanish-language ballads and Nashville-style country laments, but also blues-rock, Cajun fiddle music and a touch of jazz-funk.

And the beat that anchored the songs, more often than not, was the 2/4 hop of polka, brought to Texas by German immigrants.

The rollicking two-hour show began with a half-dozen numbers by Los Texmaniacs, who updated accordion-driven conjunto with a rock- and jazz-savvy rhythm section. Amid the frequent shuffling of personnel, the four Texmaniacs were onstage for most of the rest of the concert. First they backed Augie Meyers, a veteran of the Sir Douglas Quartet and the Texas Tornadoes, who was joined by flashy guitarist Joe Forlini. Then they accompanied Fiddlin' Frenchie Burke, who demonstrated what France, via maritime Canada and Louisiana, contributed to Texas music.

The evening emphasized danceable rhythms and old-fashioned showmanship, not innovation. The jokes Meyers and Burke told were well-worn, and so were most of the songs. The set list included "Orange Blossom Special," "(Is Anybody Going to) San Antone," Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Pride and Joy" and "Cielito Lindo," whose "aye aye aye" chorus is probably best known to Americans of a certain age as the Frito Bandito's refrain.

When all the musicians crowded onstage for the farewell medley, there wasn't really any doubt about which tune would kick it off: It had to be "La Bamba," didn't it?

-- Mark Jenkins

When Charles Gocher died of cancer last year at age 54, the mainstream music media took scant notice. But in the underground, the shockwaves were titanic. It not only meant the loss of a committed outsider artist, but the end of the Sun City Girls, for whom Gocher played drums. Over 27 years and a torrent of recordings (some sources list more than 70 full-length releases), the band shredded the concept of a rock band, making everything from free-jazz, punk and indie to Moroccan and Asian styles, to conspiracy theories and poetic rants -- all a seamless part of their ever-shifting mosaic.

The trio's surviving members, brothers Richard and Alan Bishop, conceived the Brothers Unconnected as both a traveling tribute to Gocher and the final performances of SCG material. The nearly three-hour show the duo unleashed at the Black Cat Backstage on Wednesday night lived up to the act's inspiration: Thrilling, bewildering and challenging, it was a heartfelt tribute to a restless, original soul.

Following a half-hour screening of Gocher's filmwork, the Bishops used acoustic guitars to pick apart the very heart of their former band, essaying both meditative drones and the kind of twisted, confrontational song-rants that were their departed drummer's forte. So for every mystical raga-drone like "Rookoobay" there were two like "Aristocrats of Impertinence" and "Dreamland," pieces that sounded like a delusional sailor dueting with Lenny Bruce on the Fugs' greatest hits. And when Alan Bishop got up at the conclusion of one song to scatter what looked like ashes over the audience, it was both touching and outrageous, a fitting capstone on the career of one of rock-and-roll's most amazing bands.

-- Patrick Foster