Housed in the century-old Wright Opera House building on Denton’s Town Square, Recycled Books stocks, hands down, the town’s most comprehensive collection of local band and artist compact discs, cassette tapes and vinyl records. A second-hand bookshop in the vein of an independent Half Price Books, Recycled is filled with…
Other than having free reign to eat copious amounts cornbread stuffing and pumpkin pie with family and friends, my favorite thing about Thanksgiving Day is popping open a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Yes, wine snobs, I know that it’s a young wine that hasn’t had time to fully mature and…
With a scuffed wood floor, black ceiling tiles and strands of Christmas lights hanging on the sparsely decorated walls, Chaos Control looks like a ramshackle dive bar that’s, well, missing its bar. And because it doesn’t serve alcohol or allow drinking or smoking inside its space, Denton’s newest rock venue…
Released in 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the earliest and most influential of all the German Expressionist horror films. The psychological shocker’s chilling visuals, sharp contrast of light and shadows, and ending twist have been hugely influential on generations of filmmakers from Orson Welles and Alfred…
Commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art, Mary Lucier’s 18-minute, five-channel video work The Plains of Sweet Regret depicts the rapid depopulation of the northern plains, where large-scale agribusiness has steadily forced independent farmers, ranchers and cowboys to move on. Through stark images of the barren landscape and abandoned…
north of the dial On Halloween night, one of Denton’s finest strolled into Hailey’s Club. Bypassing the line of costumed clubgoers blocking traffic on Mulberry Street, the police officer approached the main bar. It was nearly midnight. DJ Nature of The Party was spinning records, and the house was packed…
A painter drawing influence from nature or other artists is nothing new, but I have to wonder how many contemporary artists are likely to be found frequenting the deserts of the Southwest, wandering around gazing at art painted, glazed or carved on the walls of mountains, canyons or caves thousands…
Stall!” someone hollered from the back of Dallas’ Lakewood Bar & Grill. “Play a few more.” Here, In Arms had just finished riffing through what frontman Brent Engel had announced as the band’s last song of the night—but half of Denton-based folk-rock duo RTB2 was still on the way to…
I was 6 years old when I saw my first zombie. Though it was only a 30-second television commercial for George Romero’s 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead, I was mesmerized and terrified by the black-and-white images of zombies slowly staggering through a graveyard. Romero’s classic and its…
Of all the depressing stories found in the Bible, Job’s tale takes the cake. Literally suffering a fate worse than death, Job goes from prosperous to penniless in one day. The poor guy loses all his livestock, his children, his servants, his health and his wealth. “Curse God and die,”…
Located a few doors down from J&J’s Pizza on Denton’s town square, Time Bandits specializes in vintage apparel and accessories. But the store has quickly become known around the city as much for its incredible selection of vinyl records as for its classic clothing. And, if Time Bandits’ owners Lisa…
It was a quarter to midnight as The Heartstring Stranglers’ revamped lineup started rolling through its set at a recent Dallas house party—though, technically, the chamber-folk band wasn’t playing inside the house at all. Instead, the stage for the Denton band’s acoustic performance was a narrow, dingy alleyway next to…
Playing the title character in What About Bob?, Bill Murray explains to his psychiatrist, “There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t…My ex-wife loves him.” Though blaming his ex-wife’s love of Mr. Diamond for the failure of their marriage sounds…
Sadly, the first time I was introduced to Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light, wasn’t in the world religion classes I took in college. Instead, my introduction to this tremendous holiday was an episode of The Office, in which Michael Scott mistakenly believes that Diwali is the Indian equivalent of…
French novelist and essayist Marcel Proust wrote about love, loss and memory. While much of his inspiration came from anticipating life’s future possibilities, Proust’s greatest muse was the remembrance of things past. So, what does that have to do with the 22nd annual DÃa de los Muertos art exhibition presented…
Gazelles frontman Adam Bertholdi remembers The Beach Boys always being present on his family’s home stereo. He remembers running and dancing around the living room couch with his younger brother, and when his family would take to the road, The Beach Boys’ music would be on in the car too…
George Rodrigue painted a blue dog for a collection of Cajun ghost stories in 1984, and he’s been painting different portraits of that ghostly loup-garou ever since. If the dog’s blue fur coat and eerie yellow eyes weren’t so captivating and mysterious, the dog probably would have been labeled a…
Cupping his microphone in his hands, Aaron Mollet’s hushed moans wash over the audience as the experimental lap-pop duo Florene starts its set at Dan’s Silverleaf. The pair stands on either side of a folding table strewn with cables, sequencers, pedals and microphones. Suddenly, Mollet throws his body forward and…
Before enemies climbs the steps onto Hailey’s stage, Ryan Gillbert struts around the club clutching his guitar looking like a young, Don’t Look Back-era Bob Dylan, while frontman Joshua Sinai puffs on a Djarum clove cigarette and chats with his mohawk-sporting girlfriend. Sometimes, before a band plays a single note,…
Former MAD TV cast member Pablo Francisco’s knack for vocal impersonations and sound effects rival those of fellow voicestrumentalist Michael Winslow (from the Police Academy films). Francisco’s routines combine his vocal talents with observational humor, which result in hilarious bits like movie-preview-man and jokes about how all the DJs on…
Tonight, if you feel like you’ve gotta cut loose–footloose–then kick off your Sunday shoes, shove it into overdrive and head on over to House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St., because at 7:30 p.m. you can take the highway to the danger zone with Mr. Kenny Loggins. Sure, you can…
Monday nights are slow ones at the clubs in Denton. School started a couple weeks back, and it seems the kids at the city’s two universities haven’t yet abandoned hope that they may end the semester with a few A’s. Well, that and they’re still recovering from the weekend. At…
