Monkeys Shine

On their own, Irving’s DJ Frantic and Houston-bred Big J are dangerous. Dangerously funky, that is. But when they join forces they’re twice as dangerous, four times as funkified and 86 million trazillion times doper. That’s just simple math, folks. Clutch City transplant Big J relocated to Dallas from the…

Oh, Melodic Mullet

The Barber of Seville works equally well as a classic comic opera or a classic Nick at Nite sitcom. Granted, it would be a sitcom sung in Italian, but zany shenanigans would ensue nonetheless. Seventeenth-century Spanish Count meets girl. Seventeenth-century Spanish Count falls for girl. Seventeenth-century Spanish Count enlists the…

It Was the Art!

While the bands (The Theater Fire, Pleasant Grove, I Love Math), the art up for auction (created by 150 local artists during a 24-hour period) and the charitable cause (Children’s Health Fund) were mighty impressive, what made last year’s inaugural Art Conspiracy event exponentially interesting was its historic choice of…

A Big Holiday Combo

The holiday season officially begins on Thanksgiving Day. Despite all the Target and Old Navy commercials, despite the fact that Starbucks employees have been donning their seasonal red shirts for weeks now, and despite that house off of Live Oak and Munger that has had festive Christmas lights up since…

Baker’s Dozen

13 (Tzameti) is one of those movies that can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be. Luckily, every movie it tries to be is a pretty good one. At first it comes off like a creepy mystery. It isn’t long before the story descends into the ol’ film…

Lady Sovereign

Lady Sovereign is either rap music’s salvation or another commercially crafted nail in hip-hop’s coffin. We suppose she could be both. Are the beats funky, fresh and/or fly? Yes, thanks to Basement Jaxx’s expert production, the S-O-V has been armed with an arsenal of bass-heavy UK garage grime and funky…

Cover Me

According to legend (and by “legend” we mean “Wikipedia”), the original model for the hootenanny was a result of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie’s inability to pay their bills. The folk-legends-to-be invited all their musically inclined friends and Greenwich Village neighbors to attend an open jam session that doubled as…

Waddle Waddle

This is the Gobble Hobble 5K and Family Fun Run’s inaugural year, and it’s being hyped as Richardson’s new Thanksgiving tradition, complete with a kick-ass “Kids Zone.” Personally, we think restricting adults from awesome stuff such as rock-climbing walls and inflatable obstacle courses by designating it a “Kids Zone” should…

White Ghost Shivers, DeWayn Brothers

White Ghost Shivers may sound like the house band at an old speakeasy, but they shred like a Brazilian speed-metal festival. Effortlessly leaping from western swing and bluegrass jazz stomps to calypso ballads and vaudevillian hamming, the Austin octet follows in the footsteps of fellow Capitol City residents the Asylum…

Radio Prairie

Growing up in New York City, my childhood Christmas memories are made up of Fifth Avenue’s meticulously decorated shop windows and storefronts, the fever dream that is a mid-December visit to FAO Schwartz and standing in line at Macy’s with 100 other rambunctious brats and our exhausted parents waiting to…

Flying Solo

Part MTV Unplugged and part VH1 Divas (which we suppose would add up to be an installment of VH1 Storytellers), Saturday night’s Flying Solo show at The Cavern features four local frontmen strippin’ it down and kickin’ it acoustic, though they’ll have to get by without a little help from…

Rahim Quazi, Teenage Symphony, the Antiques

The lovely ladies over at FineLineLive.com continue their maternal resuscitation of the local scene as they proudly present Club DaDa’s Featured Artist of the Month, Rahim Quazi. Mr. Quazi’s first record was an exercise in melodic indie melancholy occasionally garnished with flutes and strings and such. He’s now at the…

Trivium, The Sword, Protest the Hero, Seemless

Good metal is hard to come by these days. For a while, the fallout from the late-’90s rap-rock explosion threatened to undo forever all that is good and metal in the universe. Luckily, new blood continues to flow. Orlando’s Trivium unleashes faithful metal epics that channel late-’80s Anthrax and Cliff…

Hi-Tek

I’d probably exceed my allotted word count just roll calling all the A-list amigos that appear on Hi-Tek’s latest release. Established hip-hop statesmen like Q-Tip, Nas, Talib Kweli, Common, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon (among many others) drop solid contributions on top of a neck-snapping, toe-tapping canvas of orchestral loops, bleating…

Not-So-Secret Society

The following events have been irresponsibly fictionalized for dramatic effect. However, the names have not been changed. The Dallas Banjo Band claims to have formed back in 1989, and you’d be hard pressed to find any history on them prior to that. At first, it would appear as though this…

Tunes‘ Tunes

Part of what makes Looney Tunes characters live and breathe is their symphonic accompaniment. It’s the muted trumpet that accompanies Daffy Duck’s bewilderment after having his beak blown to the other side of his head or the staccato violins that accent Elmer Fudd’s footsteps as he tiptoes up to a…

A Mother of a Laugh

Moms have needs and desires, hopes and dreams. Some moms dream of running off with the pool boy. Some moms dream of their children growing up to become doctors, lawyers or pool boys. Still other mothers have that same unhealthy desire for attention and constant validation that draws so many…

Oxford Collapse

Oxford Collapse and Chin Up Chin Up perform Thursday,
October 26 at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, Denton.

The Blues for Radio

KNON-FM is community-supported radio that’s as diverse as the community that supports it. They dabble in so many different formats—from death metal to Baptist gospel—that each genre seems to require its own community fund-raiser. In June, the station’s Latin Energy Festival drew a sweltering crowd of about 9,000 people. And…

A Hawk and a Hacksaw

It’s been about seven years since Neutral Milk Hotel went on indefinite “hiatus.” Since then the band’s drummer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Barnes has kept busy with a great many projects, not the least of which is A Hawk and a Hacksaw, which kinda sounds like a traditional Hungarian folk band…