Southern Star Amphitheater opens for business
by Marty Racine
Houston Chronicle; Houston, Tex.; May 9, 1985

WELL, it's not the official grand opening - that's next week with John Denver - but the new Southern Star Amphitheater adjacent to AstroWorld hosts its first concert Sunday: Bryan Adams and Survivor.

Showtime is 8 p.m., following a ribbon-cutting ceremony by MTV VJ Martha Quinn, who's in town this week for various functions, including promotional gigs with KKBQ radio and Cardi's nightclub. MTV, in fact, will be filming Sunday's concert for a special report on Southern Star to be shown at a later date.

Southern Star is a joint venture between AstroWorld and Houston's Pace Productions. It will provide the city with a seasonal (May-October) major outdoor venue for a variety of entertainment, including concerts ranging from rock to classical. Capacity is 20,000, with 3,000 permanent seats.

Advance tickets for Sunday's show are on sale at all the

usual Ticketmaster and Ticketron outlets and also will be good for admission into the park. (AstroWorld tickets alone will not cover the concert.) The day of theshow, tickets will be available at the AstroWorld main gate.

Survivor, on the strength of their ``Vital Signs'' LP, has appeared in town as opening act on a number of occasions. Headliner Bryan Adams, one of Canada's hottest exports, owns the million-selling album, ``Reckless'', near the top of the pop charts for half a year. He's also played in the Astrodome at the annual Texxas Jam.

THE CRITIC'S CHOICES: Old characters like me who dabbled in the folk movement of the 1960s - before rock 'n' roll once again got interesting with the Beatles and Stones - will probably remember Eric Anderson, one of the storied Vanguard label's mainstays. Anderson is a sensitive, Woody Guthrie-type poetic figure who, along with Tom Paxton and others, signified the period's restless search for the meaning of life - or something like that. Anyway, he's back - actually, he's never been away, except when in Europe, where he's even more popular than he is in the States - and he plays Rockefeller's tonight in a thoughtful bill including our favorite riverboat troubadour, John Hartford, and country-blues/ragtime picker Roy Bookbinder. Hartford, who wrote ``Gentle On My Mind'', the old Glen Campbell hit, is as much an ``entertainer'' as folksinger. He dances. He plays banjo, fiddle and guitar. He plays drums on his cheeks. Bookbinder, not as well-known, is nevertheless one of the few white boys who can tackle authentic country-blues, and he's an old staple of Rockefeller's, having appeared with the Banded Geckos and Leon Redbone. One show only tonight, beginning at 9. . . Another piece of friendly advice concerns Joan Armatrading, at the Tower Theater Monday night. All musicians are loathe to be categorized, but Armatrading is one of those rare artists who simply cannot be labeled as anything other than a woman for all seasons. Her earlier albums are generally in a spare and acoustic-folk style, while lately she's rocked out, concentrating more on arrangements.

On her latest, the complex ``Secret Secrets'', augmented by Joe Jackson on the Latinesque ``Talking To the Wall'', Armatrading also arranges horns and strings. Part of Armatrading's eclecticism is due to her background. Born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, she was raised in the factory town of Birmingham, England, where she began her musical career with the song, ``When I Was Young''. At the time she was - 14. This will be her second Tower performance within a year. . . Also tonight, punk-metal Lords of the New Church, anchored by lead vocalist Stiv Bator, return to Numbers on their third album, ``The Method To Our Madness''. While so much heavy metal and punk these days is nothing but empty flash and noise, the 4-year-old Lords are truly possessed - a heavy, hard-rocking, elegantly wasted group of misfits. A rogues gallery. Sounds like good, clean fun to me. Boys will be boys, you know.

POP NOTES: Cardi's nightclub on Westheimer is celebrating its fifth year in business this month, and - whether by coincidence or not - the club is presenting a very attractive lineup. Just to let you know in advance, the club hosts The Blasters May 19 and our long-gone buddy Rory Gallagher May 26. The Blasters, one of the rock-critic's personal favorites, actually have a loyalty to Fitzgerald's, which helped develop their reputation in this area, but they were after a bigger venue this time. Rory Gallagher, though, you may not know about. This Irishman is a boogie-and-blues guitarist on a par with Clapton, Page, Vaughan and anyone else you care to name in blues-rock. He was big in the mid-'70s but had disappeared from these shores for so long I figured he'd pulled a Peter Green and bonked out on us. . . Plans are under way for a second ARMS-America tour of five cities, the first of which in 1983 brought a Who's Who of British rock stars together in a benefit cause to fight multiple sclerosis, which has afflicted Ronnie Lane, founder of the old Small Faces. Unlike the first tour, though, this one should play Houston. After all, we're headquarters of ARMS - Action For Research Into Multiple Sclerosis. . . A new documentary film on the Carter Family, ``Sunny Side of Life'', will premiere at the Rice Media Center Tuesday. (Call Southwest Alternative Media Project for details at 522-8592.) The film was six years in the making. . . David Byrne, main man of Talking Heads, has his fourth solo album finished, ``Music For the Knee Plays'', which is self-explanatory so I needn't explain it. . .In Queen news, Brian May has built and designed his own guitar. It's called the BHM-1 and is manufactured by Guild. The BHM-1 is not cheap, retailing for a cool $1,200. It's a solid-body mahogany with three custom-designed DiMarzio pickups and a power booster. Queen drummer Roger Taylor, meanwhile, has been producing singles for three London acts, while lead singer Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon are immersed in solo projects. . . USA for Africa has announced the formation of an advisory board and medical task force to oversee the distribution of supplies generated by ``We Are The World''. The board is a permanent body and will meet twice a year. . .Here's another Frizzell, as in Allen, youngest brother of Lefty and David, who's signed with Epic Records. Allen has served as band leader and show opener for Frizzell & West and has recorded several singles for small, independent labels. . . Whither the vinyl disc? The Recording Industry Association of America announces revised figures showing that album sales in 1984 were down 6 percent from '83 and down nearly 50 percent from the peak year of 1978. Compact discs, though, were up a whopping 204 percent.