Bliss Blood

I don’t know why, but I thought about Bliss Blood this morning, and decided to google her and found her website. She has several bands, each doing different styles, all based in jazz and blues from the 20s to the 50s. There are lots of amazing MP3s to download—I recommend those by her “Moonlighters” band. She reminds me both of the Ditty Bops and Fay Lovsky.

Bliss Blood was a fixture in Houston for a long time. In the late 80s, my friends and I would go to the sadly defunct Bellaire movie theater, where they had one of the best happy hours in town. It was a very cool place—the TV screens, instead of showing sports, showed Survival Research Labs videos (that was where I first heard of those guys). Bliss Blood was our regular waitress, and she was the coolest.

She had an industrial band called the Pain Teens, and in the 90s, the Pain Teens were the closest that Houston got to a popular alternative rock band. They never really broke through to the big time.

So how did she make this transition from noise merchant to swinging chanteuse? Hell if I know, but it’s cool that she has. Maybe it’s a sign of someone aging gracefully as an artist. But I like that she never changed her name to something more "appropriate" for her new musical path. It pleases me that the coolest waitress at the Bellaire is still cool.