On Sunday, July 25, a 44-year-old father took his two teenage daughters to an Old 97's show at the Gypsy Tea Room. He left on a stretcher and may not walk again. What happened in between is uncertain. Around 12:20 a.m. Monday, as concertgoers exited the show, an altercation occurred...
Cast: Photographs by Jin-Ya Huang In her photographs, Jin-Ya Huang turns fuzziness and blur into a visual vocabulary of the indecipherable. The illegibility of her images is by no means frustrating. The combined result of the artist's secret prop choices and photo-digital process, these images will keep you guessing while...
It is 7 p.m. on November 2, and the polls have just closed in Texas, but there is already calamity. CNN and NBC and the rest are busy telling us what a mess the presidential election is going to be. The poll numbers that scroll across the television screen at...
A good friend likes to say that there's only one kind of great pop song--the song that someone had to create, as though the writer and performer had no choice. The song can be corny or cynical, upbeat or downhearted; it doesn't matter. All that counts is that the person...
The members of the Wrens read off like a PTA roll call. Guitarist Greg Whelan and his bassist brother Kevin work for Pfizer in New Jersey and use their vacation time to tour. Drummer Jerry MacDonnell, a father of three, also holds a corporate job, as did singer/guitarist Charles Bissell...
The Same, but Different No matter what team youre on, softball is softball At Kiest Park last week, Barbara Barnette, athletic coordinator for the Dallas Park and Recreation Department, was trying to determine whether the Gay Softball World Series was different from any other softball tournament that had been played...
Basic Instinct Texas primitive archers do it Indian-style Bill Decker eyed the fencepost carefully, sizing up its potential. Gray and decayed on the outside, it wouldn't have looked like much to an outsider, but Decker knew it was destined for greatness. Made of Osage orange wood, or bois d'arc, it...
Twenty years ago it was hot, this collection of retrofitted and spit-polished early-20th-century warehouses. The neighborhood's edge was the sharpest in the city. Parking lots brimmed with the rides of the A-list. Bodies, money, sex and alcohol sluiced through the West End and its Dallas Alley "entertainment complex" of nightclubs...
I live the High Fidelity life--donning Cons and working in an independent record store--and I can tell you that Nick Hornby's book (and the film it inspired) sums up the music-clerk world with painful accuracy. We are geeks. We collect, covet, champion and condemn music. Even worse, we do so...
Michael Smith Michael Smith's videos, installations and photographs break down many of the barriers of art while paradoxically remaining fully within its confines. Smith's installation "Famous Quotes From Art History" draws attention to "art" not only as a thing but also as an institution. Playing on art's role as a...
7/10 We just thought we'd seen bowling leagues. But after perusing the requirements and details for the USA Junior Gold Bowling Championships in town from July 10 through July 16, we realized that what we really saw were uniformed drinking teams with stats and non-rented balls and shoes. Over the...
Without risking much critical credibility, it can be said that Catwoman succeeds on its own feline terms. Much like a cat, the movie is a superfluous gob of fluff with an attitude ranging from idiotic to nasty. It's a sleek and self-absorbed animal, adoring itself so ardently that those of...
Funny how what is gritty urban charm for some is a fly in the foie gras for others. Just take Deep Ellum's critically acclaimed Standard 2706 restaurant on Elm Street, which chef/owner Tim Byres shut down on Father's Day. "We always tried to give our customers exactly what they wanted,"...
This one time, at band camp, we wore black bike shorts under ripped jean shorts and participated in a dance contest. So, it's definitely a good thing our parents stopped shipping us off to camp right before puberty kicked in. Who knows what further embarrassments awaited us. Not that we...
Employing Buddha to drive nightclub adrenaline is odd when you think about it. There are bars named after this enlightened fellow (here there was Buddha Bar before it went Bali Bar before it went bust), and Buddha busts and figures inexplicably fill nightclub alcoves, dugouts and pedestals. At Sambuca Uptown,...
Davíd Garza may not enjoy talking about his past, but talking isn't how musicians communicate best anyway. Maybe that's why the Mexican-American singer-songwriter, a 33-year-old Irving native who has already released a dozen albums, is augmenting that vast catalog with a four-CD, one-DVD box set. Appropriately titled A Strange Mess...
"I wouldn't consider us a throwback, but I also wouldn't say we're reinventing the wheel of rock and roll," says Ronnie Vannucci, drummer for the Killers. "We're taking the best parts of the music we were influenced by, putting them in our songs and making them our own." The Killers...
Most articles about Jay Farrar lead with his history as an alt-country legend. Considering how sleepy his solo work has sounded since leaving Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, though, the only remnants of his whiskey-fueled Americana are those press references. Until now, anyway, thanks to...Canyon? Yes, this out-of-nowhere alt-country five-piece...
He had two belts. He tied the first one around the handle of his bedroom door, then tied the second to the first and swung the slack over the door's frame. There was just enough slack to form a noose. Taylor Hooton slipped his face through it. It was around...
Alex de Leon The question begs: What to do with art that makes avid if not heavy-handed political statements in an era so eager to wrest itself from the rant, screed and morality inherently connected with political art? Is it the responsibility of art to engender social revolution, much less...
America's Heart & Soul, the debut feature from commercial director Louis Schwartzberg, is being depicted in some quarters as the antidote to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, mostly because it's a documentary, being released around the same time, about the USA. For more simplistic minds who equate anti-Bush sentiment with hatred...
Forget Los Lonely Boys. San Angelo's much-ballyhooed blues trio doesn't have half the blood and fire of Del Castillo, whose tireless live performances and incendiary rock en Español helped the Austin six-piece win "Band of the Year" honors at the 2002-2003 Austin Chronicle Music Awards, a rather shocking coup for...
