HOLOGRAM OF ROY ORBISON AT SMART FINANCIAL CENTER: ONE NIGHT ONLY
Tickets go on sale this Friday for the digital likeness of Roy Orbison that’s making a tour stop at the Smart Financial Center in Sugar Land on October 26, reports the Chronicle‘s Joey Guerra. It’s part of a 28-concert run the hologram will be performing throughout the US, to be followed by a 2019 tour in Australia. Houston’s own BASE Hologram — headquartered at 3009 Post Oak across from the waterwall — developed the laser technology that imitates Orbison. Aside from him, the rest of the band is real (it’s London’s Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra in the video above from a UK performance in April) and they’ve even got a rapport going with the ghost singer. “Between songs,” reads the tour website, “you will clap your hands numb as he interacts with the other musicians and reacts to you in the audience.” [Houston Chronicle; more info] Video: Jai Freeman
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Tag: Music
The main star of Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane’s newly-released music video for the song Nonchalant is arguably the townhome-sized closet in Lamar and Theresa Roemer’s Woodlands mansion, still up for grabs since its 2014 listing. It’s the swankiest rap stripper video filmed in The Woodlands all year!
The Roemers bought the home in 2013 and spent a couple million renovating it, including the addition of the 3-story closet-slash-wet-bar-slash-charity-party-venue. The closet was visited by a writer for Neiman Marcus’s blog in 2014, shortly after which a burglar stopped in — then attempted to blackmail Roemer into buying her own stuff back. Theresa Roemer listed the house herself at the end of 2014, after which it went on the market a few times (most recently for $7.95 million, down from an original asking price of $12.9 million). The place was supposed to be auctioned off last summer, but wasn’t; Platinum Luxury Auctions’s listing for the house does, however, imply that a new auction date might be set for this spring.
Much of the new video is set within the closet, as well as in the connecting full bath with garden tub (which gets some PG-13- to R-rated action):
Nonchalant in Carlton Woods
This week’s video release from hometown country singer Robert Ellis takes viewers on a forlorn wandering tour of Houston’s downtown and surrounding thoroughfares, sans all of those pesky people and cars. Iconic cameos include the AIA’s future headquarters on the corner of Franklin and Commerce streets, the WALD warehouse sign at Live Oak and Rusk streets, and Bad News Bar on Main St.; the video also includes a hike down a dead-empty I-45 and associated entrance ramps, several frantic light-rail stops, and a dramatic reunion on the pedestrian bridge over Memorial Dr. at Sabine St.Â
- Robert Ellis shares video for touching new single “How I Love You†[Consequence of Sound]
Video: Robert Ellis
Musical Background
A Montrose hang for lovers of live punk, metal and experimental sounds, Mango’s nightclub has sprouted a “for lease” sign.
The building at 403 Westheimer Rd. next door to Avant Garden has a history as colorful as its newly-painted exterior walls and patio:
The Ever-Changing Face Of Montrose
THE MENIL COLLECTION GETS ITS RAP TRIBUTE 
In advance of their exhibition and performances next month at the Art League of Houston, where they’ll recreate 5 performances by the Art Guys, “while adding a twist that could only come from Black Guys,” artists and musicians Robert Hodge and Philip Pyle II released what appears to be the first-ever song about Houston’s Menil Collection — or at least the first one available on the iTunes Music Store (where it costs 99 cents, but you can preview a short segment for free). And over on Glasstire, Bill Davenport has helped out the auditorially challenged by transcribing (most of) the entertaining and insider-y rap-style lyrics, including the catchy chorus (“Riding by Menil slow, you don’t need no cash flow, we the only negroes, Hodge and Phil”). Sadly, no accompanying video has been released, but a note on the website of Everything Records indicates an album entitled presenting . . . The Black Guys is forthcoming. A solo show of Hodge’s paintings opened last Friday at the CAMH. [Glasstire; Everything Records] Cover art: The Black Guys
LOOKING FOR HOUSTON ON THE MUSIC MAP “The amazing thing about Houston is that geographically it’s located at the southernmost end of the blues belt, the westernmost part of the Cajun music culture and northernmost part of Norteño musical culture.” — Former Blaster and X guitarist Dave Alvin [Houston Press]
LEADBELLY, WAITING FOR THE SUGAR LAND TRAIN Houston music historian Roger Wood traces the lyrical references of Bob Dylan’s new song, “If You Ever Go To Houston”: “Not nearly as many people realize that ‘Midnight Special’ is a song about getting arrested in Houston and sent to prison in Sugar Land (where the train tracks ran right past the prison near Hwy. 90, and where the folklore about the midnight train beacon signifying early release for the lucky cell-dweller upon which it might shine predated Leadbelly’s song, written while he was incarcerated there). The first verse of that one: ‘If you ever go to Houston, you’d better walk right’ (also recorded by Leadbelly with the alternate line, ‘If you’re ever down in Houston, you’d better walk right,’ which I myself allude to in the title of my first book, ‘Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues’).” [Hair Balls]