he following are excerpts from the comments section on the local music blog www.WeShotJR.com. The comments refer to a blog entry about a Denton band, Matthew and the Arrogant Sea. They’re “The Biggest Local Band You’ve Never Heard Of,” according to the entry, written by WSJR’s blogmeister, who goes by…
Billiard Bar Mad Mexicans 6 p.m. Nominated for Best Latin/Tejano Mad, as in mad funky. Mad, as in mad rockin’. Mad, as in…well, sometimes just pissed off. Mixing equal parts hard rock riffs, Latin rhythms and hip-hop-speckled vocals, the Mad Mexicans provide as much flavor as a bowl of mole…
It would be journalistically lazy, gratuitous, even, to reduce all of blues legend Johnny Winter’s accomplishments down to the fact that he was born a cross-eyed albino, but…the man is a cross-eyed albino! The mere percentages against this turn of nature are staggering, but when you factor in the fact…
Maybe it’s the mystique: The Frenz, one of local electro-Renaissance-man Wanz Dover’s many ambitious projects, is one of those computer/electronic progenies of Kraftwerk that takes you to another plane. An astral plane? Possibly. More likely, though, upon listening to the Frenz’s intricate blend of beats, blips and bodacious guitar riffs…
“BARK BARK BARK IS BLOWING THE FUCK UP!” screams the big banner on the band’s MySpace page. That may be overstating it, but the band—actually just Arizona’s Jacob Safari plus a rotating crew of assorted friends—should be going places. Bark3’s synth-y oeuvre is like a more friendly Nine Inch Nails—still…
Let’s just clear some things up here concerning the Dallas Observer Music Awards. There’s been a lot of, er, intense feedback concerning this year’s ballot. The main concerns appear to be: 1) Some categories contain up to 10 nominees, while others only have a few; 2) Some nominees don’t match…
Too often the whole garage band shtick proves as thin as a pasty lead singer’s skin. Oh sure, worshipping Iggy and Nuggets and the Troggs (side note: what’s with the two g’s?) is all fine and dandy, but the music ultimately has to be, er, about music. Too many bands…
Remember the days of neighborhood pickup football games? You know, lacing up your sneaks after watching the Cowboys whip the Steelers (or maybe the Bills, depending on how old you are), and your team (named after your street, of course) scoring a game-winning touchdown via the strategy of six lateral…
Obsessed with a found trashed white piano, decidedly quirky and channeling everything from ’80s pop to Modest Mouse, Bishop Allen is a band chasing after the heart of every scenester from here to Williamsburg. The group, consisting of permanent members Christian Rudder and Justin Rice and a rotating cast of…
It’s about midnight on a Saturday night at the Monkey Bar, and I find myself rather confused. It’s a few beers into the evening, so colors are blurring and edges are bending at odd angles, but, though my wits are softened, they are still about me. It is not the…
These days, modern rock—and by that, we mean straight-ahead bass-drums-guitar—has taken a strange and often irritating turn. A genre that once frightened parents has grown tepid, plagued by hookless guitar work and excruciatingly boring, anthemic, off-key vocals that sound more like Christian rock than the devil’s music. And let’s not…
On the mouth: That charming fellow we all know as Cottonmouth Texas is hard at work these days, including recording a mash-up with Los Angeles-based band the Spores. (If you’ve never heard/seen the Spores, think go-go-booted bassist/singer spewing off-kilter vocals with hard—but not exactly metal—guitar behind her. Oh, and puppets.)…
10 Things About 10 Hands: 1) They’ve been around since the mid-’80s in various lineup incarnations, though the brilliant Paul Slavens has been a constant throughout the band’s tenure. 2) The band began in Denton when members of Slavens’ band the Gonemen fused with members from a band called Zane…
Somebody call Pitchfork, cuz it’s time to believe the hype. Denton’s Ghosthustler is the real electronic deal, rolling up scuzzy, evil, synthetic riffs in a big spliff coated in angel dust and blowing them out at the audience. The consequences of attending a Ghosthustler show are therefore varied and dangerous:…
Boi Howdy: Rapper Countri Boi, who was born in Dallas, then moved at the age of 2 weeks to California, then back to Dallas after his folks got worried about his gang lifestyle during his teenage years, has signed to independent label TVT Records. OK, let’s try to figure out…
Moral dilemma: What do you do when one of the bands performing at your newspaper’s very own showcase proves disappointing, and you feel compelled to write about it? Compelled, not because you want to be an asshole or because you maintain some inner drive to take on Dallas’ sacred cows,…
Oh, Broadway—what other entertainment entity can combine the all-American drama of baseball, the cheesy thrill of overproduced song and dance numbers, and the creepy Satanic fantasy of Faust? You’ll find all of this in Damn Yankees, perhaps the quintessential Broadway musical, which kicks off a local run as the second…
It’s tough to say which part of Art Conspiracy’s upcoming event Seed is the most worthy of local support. The event is meant as a fundraiser for AC, a Dallas art collective that promotes visual art and music, as 10 local photographers will be auctioning off original works with the…
You don’t notice them at first, but at a certain point, you become aware of the hands. They are simultaneously delicate and strong, nimble and dexterous, their power coming in quick flashes like lightning, but also dense with strength, the kind that builds deliberately, like a river’s current. The hands…
There’s a YouTube video on Unknown Hinson’s Web site in which the enigmatic pyscho-country guitar badass is being interviewed. Speaking of being onstage, he says, “Just don’t bring none of those drum circle sumbitches–‘scuse me, hippies—up there with me, ’cause I ain’t a-doing none of that jam mess.” It’s reason…
OK, we’re officially jealous of Austin. Oh, the “Music Capital of the World” can suck it as far as South by Southwest is concerned. And all those venues they’ve got—well, shoot, who wants to be surrounded by that many hipsters anyway? But one thing Austin’s got that we ain’t is…
National Props: The Monday, July 2, edition of The New York Times arts section includes a review of St. Vincent’s debut, Marry Me (in case you didn’t see it, Robert Wilonsky has written a fine article on our local heroine on page 58 of this issue of the Dallas Observer)…
