People make the place. Consider the Austin music scene, where a hideous National Guard armory (Armadillo World Headquarters), abandoned furniture warehouse (the original Antone’s on Sixth), and a lumberyard (Liberty Lunch) transformed into live music palaces because of the bands that played, the people who ran the joints, and the crowds that couldn’t believe […]
by Michael Corcoran His newborn daughter had him up at 4am again and after he put her down, Charles Attal knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, so he got dressed and walked the mile down the hill to Zilker Park. This was late September 2008 and the park’s Great Lawn was in the process […]
Marijuana’s active ingredient THC is not harmful, the scientific tests that I choose to believe have concluded. But if you’re a member of the University of Texas Longhorns, pot is really bad for you. It’ll cause you to lose your dreams, as well as your scholly. Forget that a Longhorns running back totally into Bob […]
(originally published in Texas Super Lawyers Magazine 2014) by Michael Corcoran Tony Buzbee was a 22-year-old lieutenant just out of the ROTC at Texas A&M when he faced his Marine squad for the first time during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. If his men had any thoughts of testing the new “kid” commander in […]
Last week, I came out of the Trader Joe’s on Bee Cave Road and as I started to drive away, a man next to a car with the front door open was waving for me to stop. He had a story. His wife (in the front seat) had just gotten out of the hospital and […]
By Michael Corcoran 7/15/99 Austin American Statesman IT’S ONLY A BUILDING, and an ugly one at that, with bathrooms that would’ve been an issue at the Geneva Convention and a hippy dippy mural dominated by a pouring coconut. It’s just a building, yes, but for the last 20-plus years it’s been a structure where musicians […]
Clubs by Michael Corcoran, Musicians by Chris Riemenschneider, Additional writing by Don McLeese Published in Austin American-Statesman October 17, 1996 Sometimes it’s still like it was Friday night at Liberty Lunch. About 500 people have paid $7 to see two local bands and as the couples break off into little dance circles during 8 1/2 […]
originally published in 2004, with quotes added following the death of Tommy Ramone. The singer was an Olympic-sized geek with obsessive-compulsive disorder who found his escape in grandiose pop songs. The guitarist was a sullen, right-wing former street tough turned control freak. The bassist was a bottom-feeding junkie who used to rent his body on […]
He gave Kenny Rogers a gig in 1959 and replaced David Clayton-Thomas in Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1972, but piano player Bobby Doyle made the most impact locally by establishing Ego’s, a dark apartment complex lounge on South Congress Avenue, as a live music venue in the early ’90s. A musician’s musician, Doyle succumbed […]
The boogie woogie was born in East Texas, pioneered by George and Hersal Thomas (the older brothers of blues singer Sippie Wallace), who heard music in the choogle of steam locomotives. On such pre-1920 Thomas brother numbers as “The Fives” and “The Rocks,” the percussive left hand aped the rhythm of trains carrying lumber from […]
