Even Todd Deatherage isn’t sure how long it’s been. Two years, maybe three. You don’t keep track of these things when they’re happening to you. Promises and projects come and go like an old man’s memory, and years go by. These things happen, and if you’re smart, you don’t pay…
At first, it sounded like one of the worst station promos ever, random snippets of familiar songs spliced together, the kind of thing most radio stations use to give listeners an idea of the kind of music they’ll be hearing if they decide to stick around. Only it sounded as…
Guy Berryman has just returned from Thailand, where he’s been on holiday for the past few weeks. That is where you go when you’ve seen almost all there is to see, when you’re in a band that has taken you to Italy, France, Spain, Australia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Japan, North…
When is a local band not a local band? No, it’s not a trick question; we had too much to drink last night–by last night, we actually mean the last two to three months–so we’re making it easy on you and us. The answer: A local band is not a…
Rivers Cuomo took a chance a few years ago, and from the sound of it, he’ll never take another one, at least not any time soon. On 1996’s Pinkerton, he collected every one of his confused emotions and awkward missteps for public display, tying them to songs that abandoned Ric…
Maybe our memory is failing us a little bit, but we’d swear Lift to Experience started working on its debut, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, more than three years ago. However many years it took, it was long enough for the band to completely record and scrap one version of Crossroads and…
When you’re in a young band starting out, trying to get people to buy your debut album and tickets to your shows, this is how it goes: You’re doing an interview with a writer in one of the next tour stops, and the cell phone you’re using won’t cooperate. The…
Usually at this time, people are too drunk to pay attention or too exhausted to care. It’s well after 1 a.m. in Austin, and the annual South by Southwest music festival is staggering to the finish line, limping along with a full belly and glazed, red eyes. Four days of…
Here’s how good a job Robert Jenkins has done spreading the word about his new record label, Summer Break Records: Even though Summer Break had yet to release anything at the time, the label came within a few nominations of making the 2001 Dallas Observer Music Awards ballot in the…
A week or so ago, Chomsky was in Austin to play a gig at the Flamingo Cantina with its friends from Kissinger. Instead of making the drive back to Dallas in the middle of the night, guitarist Glen Reynolds found a place where the band could get some sleep. Reynolds…
When is the Smirnoff Music Centre not the Smirnoff Music Centre? No, not when you’re too ‘faced at Edgefest to remember where you are. The correct answer is July 1, when a tour featuring Aaron Carter, his sister Leslie Carter (both siblings of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter) and the A*Teens…
You have to like Chris Mills’ songs. You just have to. If for no other reason, you have to like them because he understands that love and hate aren’t separated by much, that people make bad choices that can’t be easily fixed, that life isn’t a series of happy moments…
A brief explanation: Scene, Heard is accused of overlooking new bands trying to do new things so often, it might as well be part of the job description. While that still isn’t the case, it is an unavoidable fact, as inescapable as the Slop 40 spilling over the edges of…
A few months ago, we hinted that The Adventures of Jet might be permanently grounded, calling it quits, breaking up, however you want to say it. Not true. Yes, the band has taken a break from live appearances, but AOJ is still very much in effect. The proof: A song…
Before we go any further, let’s get this out of the way: Actionslacks is a band. Four members are in the group now, there used to be three, and the number of members named Tim Scanlin remains at one. Remember that, and highlight or underline it if necessary. There are…
A meeting of the Dallas Observer minds found us arriving at a happy–and unusual–consensus: Yes, there’s some good stuff playing at the 31st Annual USA Film Festival, but the programming is eclipsed by the people being imported for after-screening Q&As. We’re not talking a Cannes-like cavalcade of A-list names. No…
It never works: Trying to pick a winner before the race is over, calling the election before every pencil mark and mouse click is accounted for, tabulated. (Insert your own Dan Rather/Peter Jennings/Tom Brokaw joke here, because we don’t feel like it.) There are always upsets, last-minute votes, surprises. For…
Much has been, and will be, made of the fact that “Fair Touching,” the first song on Isolation Drills (the 12th album by Guided by Voices), includes the lyric, “And perhaps at last/The song you sing will have meaning.” Meaning: Frontman/heart-and-soul Bob Pollard is singing words you can understand for…
So this band is doing pretty well–looks that way, at least–with everyone expressing high hopes, doing that extra little bit of work that might make all of the difference in the world, pushing, prodding, trying to make it happen. And then, suddenly, disaster strikes. Or does it? The band’s A&R…
Normally, we don’t like to admit such things, but we screwed up. There, we said it. Not the first time it’s happened, probably not the last, but one of the few times we’ll ‘fess up to it. What, exactly, did we screw up? You might be asking yourself. After all,…
Elvis Costello knows what critics and fans will call For the Stars, the album he recorded with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter: a collection of covers of songs written by Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Tom Waits, ABBA, Ron Sexsmith and, yes, Elvis Costello. He doesn’t particularly mind that these…
In case you missed it–and judging by the crowd jimmied into the newly reopened Trees, not many did–The Toadies celebrated the release of Hell Below/Stars Above on March 20 and 21. (The expiration date on jokes has officially passed.) Not sure what went down at the second shindig, but on…
