The 1997 Dallas Observer Music Awards

--Matt Weitz

Old 97's
Nominated for: Best Act Overall; Country & Western; Single Release (Cryin' Drunk); Male Vocalist (Rhett Miller); Local Musician of the Year (Rhett Miller); Songwriter (Rhett Miller)

Although the Old 97's lost their tag as Dallas' best unsigned band when they went with Elektra in 1996, they remain our city's most visible adored band, an affection borne out of long association.

The group has four members--Rhett Miller, Ken Bethea, Murry Hammond, and Philip Peeples--but singer-songwriter Miller has always been its central figure. He's been a driving force in the country-tinged-with-folk sound that makes the Old 97's instantly recognizable. Miller has introduced "Victoria Lee" as "a song about prescription drug abuse. And a girl. Of course." It's that frankness that leads audiences to think that he is leaving his personal life open for examination; his songs feel therapeutic, like good country music should. They have a smart and distinctive lyrical sense--a storyteller's clarity--that's not diminished by the band's strong musicality; when they lay into a furious guitar riff as they do during the closing seconds of "Doreen," you feel like you're listening to a missing track from the heyday of Sun Records.

Their new album, Too Far to Care, emphasizes rock 'n' roll motifs, but the Old 97's continue to confirm Willie Nelson's dictum that country music isn't about the song, but about the singer. If it's a question of attitude, the Old 97's have it in spades.

--Arnold Wayne Jones

Ooga Booga
Nominated for: Reggae
It takes a wild stretch of the imagination to call Ooga Booga a reggae band. Either that or there's such a shortage of the real thing in Dallas that our respected voters got desperate. Their latest CD, Fragile World, has life-affirming lyrics that would give Stuart Smalley a hyperglycemic fit ("Lift your eyes/See the eyes of children"), sung by voices imitating Afro-Caribbean accents. The music sounds like it's being played by an underpaid cruise-ship band in its third shift.

The earnest, smiling faces of the five musicians on the back of the CD suggest that this is not a campy joke. Apparently Ooga Booga believes that a few clubfooted tropical rhythms can help the audience forget its troubles for an hour--maybe even enlighten and soothe them--so they made the most politically correct album of the year.

--Philip Chrissopoulos

Bobby Patterson
Nominated for: Funk/R&B
Bobby Patterson is a true-life soulster who started his career fronting the Mustangs, a band that featured present-day blues notable Andrew "Junior Boy" Jones on guitar. Patterson also cut 45s for Jestar, the R&B wing of local label Abnak, but Junior Boy reports they were too "wild" for Abnak (believable, given that the label's main act was the Five Americans), so they left the fold. Patterson then either wrote or produced recording sessions for Albert King, Ted Taylor, Little Johnny Jones, Bobby Rush, and more. He cut records of his own, including "How Do You Spell Love? M-O-N-E-Y," which was later covered by the Fab T-Birds. After an interval as a promo man for Mississippi label Malaco, he heard Golden Smog's version of his old "She Don't Have to See Me" and was inspired to get back into performing. R&B fans are glad he did, because he's very much the real thing. Backed by the skintight Lazzar sextet, he soars through sets of his own material and cookin' covers of "Bo Diddley," "Ain't No Sunshine," and other chestnuts. Press for him is near-rapturous, and when you watch him work you'll know why.

--Tim Schuller

Pimpadelic
Nominated for: Rock, Rap/Hip-Hop
If the name alone isn't enough, the fact that the band is nominated in both the Rock and Rap/Hip Hop categories should clue you in to just how Pimpadelic fits into the scene. Take just a casual sampling from their album Barely Legal, with its testosterone talk about dongs that last longer than grandfather clocks, bongs that burn all night, and some woman referred to as "ho," and you've got the gist of Pimpadelic's "message." It's easy to say the Pimpsters are nothing more than a redneck take on the white-boy wannabe rap-rock first made popular by the Beastie Boys, but that misses the point: Pimpadelic is hard, fast, and fun, full of baggy-pants hopping, stupid-mother stomping, and misogynistic good times.

--Scott Kelton Jones

pop poppins
Nominated for: Alternative Rock/Pop
That pop poppins resurfaced in '96 with the hook-filled Non-Pop Specific was akin to Richard Nixon rising from the dead and winning the California gubernatorial race. Unless, that is, you asked the band members, who said all along they'd be back.

It's been a few years since pop poppins went on an extended hiatus at the height of their popularity. Word was the poppers would return when the music was pure again--and, by God, they've kept their word. It remains to be seen whether they can regain their following and status, but Non-Pop Specific is a glorious dreamscape of tunes, combining the trance-inducing hypnotica of Hawkwind with the shimmering craft of The Cure.

--Rick Koster

Professor D and the Playschool
Nominated for: Rap/Hip-Hop
With their Wild Tchoupitoulas stage show, multi-ethnic and pan-sexual line-up, and grooves blending '70s radio funk, '90s hip-hop, and high-energy techno, Professor D and the Playschool are truly a musical Frankenstein's monster.