Take two things. One, five years ago the Dallas City Council told City Manager Mary Suhm not to allow gas/oil drilling in city parks. A few days later she signed a secret deal with a gas/oil drilling company to allow drilling in parks. Two, last year the council gave Suhm…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef [Editor’s Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. When you hear the name of the…
Interesting story in The Dallas Morning News today by Selwyn Crawford about growing national popularity for Juneteenth, a holiday originally thought to be strictly a Texas thing. Juneteenth marks the official emancipation of slaves in Texas in 1865, two years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. My family just visited a…
We caught up with producer David Castell here a couple years ago, but he’s been up to an awful lot since then. Castell has produced, mixed, mastered and otherwise had his hands in local music dating all the way back to the early ’90s, and he shows no sign of…
Welcome to The Weekly, where we’ll tell you what’s happening at various weekly musical events going on in DFW this summer. Some of them will be well-known scenes, some will be considerably less so. If you’re into jazz, cheap drinks and getting down on hump day, the Addison restaurant Azure’s…
Oh, tinfoil hat, all that stuff about how I’m paranoid, go ahead, say it, get it out of your system. I’ve got to be ready for it by now, right? But let me tell you something: There’s a big difference between paranoia and clairvoyance. And in the matter of the…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
The easiest thing to say about Dallas City Council elections would be that no one gives a shit. Voter participation in the council run-off election last weekend, counting everybody who mailed in a ballot or voted early, was 4.21 percent of the people who were registered to vote. That would…
When you go to a concert, which is purportedly a collection of like-minded people on the grounds that you’re all there to see a particular thing you personally enjoy, you have two choices. You can either dress like you think everyone else will, or you can shout “FUCK IT” into…
Safe to say that I was doing bong hits on the couch one afternoon back in 1987 when Michael Alago, the A&R rep from Elektra Records who discovered and signed Metallica, called me up out of the blue and asked what was happening with the music scene here in Dallas…
Dear Mexican: In Philadelphia, there are three Spanish-language stations on regular broadcast television. None of them offer English subtitles. I bet plenty of people of all heritages would like to check out Spanish-language television or the news from Central America or whatever, if we could get subtitles. I called one…
Wrong. I said the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination in Dallas would be no big deal. It will be. And it looks as if Dallas, to the delight of many, will step right into the middle of that big deal looking guilty as sin of something or other. The…
For over a decade now, Casey Di lorio’s musician colleagues have asked him for help making a record. Nowadays, it’s the basket he puts all of his creative eggs into, at his own Valve Studios. Di Iorio played in One Ton Records-signed rock outfit Valve back in the day, who…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef [Editor’s Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Welcome to Ask Willie D, where the Geto Boys MC answers reader questions about matters, in his own words, “funny, serious or unpredictable.” Something on your mind? Ask Willie D! DITCHED Dear Willie D: I got a little problem. My girl and I was supposed to hang out this weekend…
Dallas is a big city, but it’s a small town. The ability to walk into a room and find a friendly face can be a comfort. Still, it can be hard to disappear into the background when you want to. Sometimes a lady craves a bit of peace and quiet…
From 1998 when the Trinity River Project was first presented to voters as a racially unifying parks project, there has been a tension, to put it very politely, between the promise and the real agenda. As a matter of fact, I don’t really use the word tension. I prefer lie…
Highland Park police say they shot and killed a man Tuesday after he escaped from handcuffs while locked inside a patrol car, shot out the back window of the car, attempted to escape and got into a gun battle with them on a crowded shopping center parking lot where other…
Dear Readers: U.K.’s spectacular Guardian newspaper has asked if I could field some questions for their readers as part of the paper’s summer travel package — turns out Brits want to know more about Mexican food! Let’s be benevolent toward those buggerers: Their idea of what our comida constitutes comes…
Heard an interview with some actress on the radio recently talking about how she chain-smoked and behaved badly in college, causing her to lose a lot of weight and wake up incredibly beautiful one day. She said it gave her the confidence she needed to become a movie star. I…
