Tonight at the American Airlines Center, before Aussie rock legends AC/DC will be bringing back a lot of high school memories by banging out classic hard rock warhorses such as “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Hell’s Bells”, the crowds will be warmed up by Ireland’s The Answer, a…
One-time Dallas native David Berman, the mastermind behind longtime indie folk favorite (20 years!) the Silver Jews, has reportedly decided to end his project.The news is all over the web this morning–Pitchfork, Stereogum, NME and many other places, too, I’m sure–and for devoted fans of Berman’s work, this is no…
Your daily dose of national music news for Friday, January 23, 2009…Hey, did you like the Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake song “Dick In A Box” (see above)? It was pretty funny, right? Well, Samberg and his comedy writing partners are coming out with an album now…I guess Kanye West…
Yesterday, over on FrontBurner, we saw a post by former Observer music editor Zac Crain, purporting that The Happy Bullets (who have a history of making some great videos) were going to attempt to break the world record for most people making out in one place at one time during…
It was just about six months ago that we’d heard that Soulja Boy had signed a contract to promote the Arlington-based shoe company Yums, and since then, Soulja Boy’s kept up his end of the deal, for sure, promoting the apparel and kicks on BET (see above) and in interviews…
Iff’n you’re in a band, and you wanna play NX35, well, you better get to submittin’ yer application. Because the deadline is today… maybe… but most likely, yes, it’s today. So who else is playing so far? Check the list right here. The list is not complete just yet (obviously…..
Early in 2007, a group of young men out of Plano formed a band called Swim Swim and released I’m So Glad That I’m an Island, a wonderful, but grossly neglected collection of indie pop that should have made local heroes out of Jeremy Aulden, Mike Brady and Jason Bailey…
Another Denton-reppin’ experimental band got some love from overseas. This time it’s Florene, which caught the ear of No Pain In Pop, a London record label and music blog. The duo’s “Room 5” was yesterday’s featured download track. NPIP’s Tom King described the group’s music as “soothing and balming, melting…
Your daily dose of music news for Thursday, January 22, 2009… Even the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday couldn’t keep Beyonce from goin’ all diva on the Secret Service’s ass. It seems the building her hubby Jay-Z was rehearsing in for his inauguration concert was part of a five…
Josh Alan Friedman, who penned an amazing piece about the Texas Tenor for the paper version of Unfair Park long ago, brings sad news today: Corsicana-born, Dallas-raised sax great David “Fathead” Newman died yesterday. There’s only been one obituary, but a call to David’s wife and manager Karen offers further…
Robert’s got the deets on Unfair Park. Of course, he gets into much more detail on the matter in the cover story in this week’s Observer–the one with the sweet vinyl image on the cover. …
Jonathan Goetsch As I alluded to last week in Good Friday, Hey Hollywood has, in fact, officially changed its name. The new name, which comes with some new-ish players on bass and guitar (and, with them, a new sound) is Companion. And what of the new sound? Well, it’s still…
Earlier this month, we unveiled our Dallas Observer contributors’ top albums and, in some cases, top singles of the year, as submitted to the annual Pazz & Jop poll conducted by our sister paper in NYC (in some cases, to the best of our recollections).Well, now the full results of…
Your daily dose of national hip-hop news for Wednesday, January 21, 2009… Hip-hop beefs are nothing new–they’ve been around for years. But it seems that 50 Cent has now taken to creating controversies as his promotional tool. He still seems to think that Kanye West is his adversary for some reason,…
Just got word from Lance Yocom at Spune Productions that Denton’s own Doug Burr has been tapped to open up for Jay Farrar’s Uncle Tupelo offshoot, Son Volt, on a five-day, five-city swing in February that will take Burr and the alt-country legends to Houston, Austin, Denton, Oklahoma City and…
At, oh, about 11:15ish last night, Robert gave me a call. Earlier in the day, we’d half-kidded about going to a strip club to watch the inauguration–surely, it was the most inappropriate place we could think of for watching the festivities (without putting ourselves in harm’s way, at least). But…
Or so one can glean from the Associated Press piece, datelined in Carrollton, that ran in the Morning News and in countless other outlets this past weekend. (No big deal, but we’ve already covered this ground, AP! Only, well, not so gushingly…) This piece, which compares Barney to The Mickey…
Your daily dose of music news for Tuesday, January 20, 2009… Apparently the Notorious B.I.G. biopic wasn’t the hit it was built up to be. Beat in the box office by a movie about a bumbling mall cop? Really? U2 is streaming its first single, “Get on Your Boots,” from the forthcoming album…
The New York Times has an obituary today on Clint Ballard, Jr., who died on December 23. 2008.Ballard, a longtime Dallas and Denton resident, wrote a number of hit songs, including Linda Ronstadt’s No. 1 hit single, “You’re No Good.” His death comes two and a half years after he…
Morley didn’t pen the Dallas theme–that was this guy–but the transexual composer and conductor (born Wally Scott) did receive an Emmy nomination for scoring a few Dallas episodes, says this Variety obituary…
Your daily dose of national music news for Monday, January 19, 2008…We knew he might be retiring from acting to become a musician, but, in what could be the world’s most elaborate hoax, Joaquin Phoenix may now be looking to become a rapper. The whole thing is being filmed by…
A few quick items worth passing along…Over on Idolator comes word that certain videos that are using the music of Pantera are coming up mute (see the above, soundless example). Why? ‘Cause Warner Music Group never approved use of their songs in these clips, and the struggling major wants to…
