The 1997 Dallas Observer Music Awards

Of course, the sodden ritual and cigar-sucking remain, but at least there's a chance that somebody, stimulated, might actually learn something, a happenstance unlikely with, say, KC and the Sunshine Band. In exchange, Reno, often a sideman, has grown into his role as a bandleader and emcee. From the Red Jacket on Thursdays has sprung a relationship that's beneficial for both the artist and the audience, a symbiosis all too rare these days.

--Matt Weitz

REO Speedealer
Nominated for: Metal, Album Release
With the release of their self-titled album last year, the bad boys of hard-core boogie in REOSpeedealer made it clear that their roots lay in white-trash territory. That holy land of hot-dog barbecues and $1.99-a-six-pack beer, where KISS is blasting out of the double-wide so loudly that the aluminum frame rattles on its cinderblocks. A place where girls are named Tifny and Desiree and work in places with names like "The Beaver Shack." This is REO Speedealer's Oz, a land they cruise through in a beat-up Impala with Motsrhead in the deck and a cooler in the back seat.

REO Speedealer is the soundtrack to this trashy rock 'n' roll utopia cast with lovable characters ("Sticky Alan," "Cocaine Joey," "Showgirls") who "Binge," do a lot of "Swingin'," and sing praises to female anatomy ("Viva La Vulva"). Supercharged with interchangeable buzzsaw riffs, it kicks up a quick storm before its 25-minute (as short as their live shows) length is run--as if their level of adrenaline cannot be maintained for too long before veins start popping. Their public service is to stimulate every gland in your body and get you flailing around like a spastic dervish.

--Philip Chrissopoulos

LeAnn Rimes
Nominated for: Country & Western
LeAnn Rimes has long labored under the label "the new Patsy Cline." Skepticism can be forgiven: Cline was a lush, peerless songbird whose velvety voice soared plaintively into the night like the echo of a whispered prayer. How could Rimes, barely even a teenager, hope to compare? I'd seen enough bad thrillers claiming to be "Hitchcockian" to maintain a healthy skepticism about the link between marketing and reality.

Then I heard "Blue," Rimes' rabidly successful first single, written by Bill Mack for Cline and unrecorded until Rimes tackled it with a mix of vocal gusto and assertive sensitivity; you could almost believe that Cline was channeling herself through Rimes. Rimes is too talented to become a one-song wonder. She's already had another, lesser hit with "Hurt Me," a retro number like "Blue." The challenge will come when she moves out of that safe harbor: The other songs on Blue are uniformly weak, and her affection for the scenery-chewing "Unchained Melody" shows that her choice of material is far from sophisticated. In an established artist this would be cause for concern, but Rimes is so far away from an adult identity that it's hard to get that worked up about it; the feeling persists that she'll do just fine.

--Arnold Wayne Jones

rubberbullet
Nominated for: Album Release
If Bad Brains had a sexy white-trash female singer, they might sound a bit like rubberbullet. This is where drummer and band-founder Earl Harvin comes to blow off steam after his bread-and-butter jazz gigs at Sambuca. It's a powerhouse excursion into hard-core brought to you by people who know funk. During their existence, rubberbullet have overcome some of the tendencies that before left them less than listenable, and now seem to be more successful at creating material that's enjoyable beyond the noise factor. Not that they've toned it down. It's more that they've shaped it up. Releases like Open, which rated a slot on an Alternative Press indie sampler, pave the way for what promises to be an interesting future funk.

--Richard Baimbridge

Shabazz 3
Nominated for: Rap/Hip-Hop
Sampling standard jazz riffs and melodies and laying them over phat hip-hop beats is a great idea. When it works, either commercially or artistically, bringing those buried treasures out again is definitely worthwhile.

Ty Macklin, Bobby Dee, and Fatz, collectively known as Shabazz 3, do just that, and it works, if only for the way the cool blends with the hot. There is a slippery smoothness that surrounds the rhythms in fine satin, and the beats themselves are smooth, never the clunking, boxy rhythms of pedestrian rap. The fire that powers Shabazz 3 burns with an evenness that is almost sublime.

Credit is due to Macklin's acute sense of melody and sharp mixing techniques. As a producer, he has a lot of expertise, and members of the local hip-hop community often come to his home studio. An ex-member of the now legendary Decadent Dub Team, he was fiddling with black boxes and turntables and messing with the funk long before Snoop raised his hind leg.

--Philip Chrissopoulos

Slow Roosevelt
Nominated for: Best Act Overall; Rock; Metal
"I guess I've got to be careful so I don't sound bitter, but my attitude is still pretty much that it's always been a joke," says Peter Thomas--lead singer and head smart-ass of Slow Roosevelt--about getting passed over for this year's South by Southwest.

A Deep Ellum brat in the '80s who sang for Black Rites--a funk-rock group once posited as the next next big thing--Thomas has personally seen where local media hype often goes (nowhere) and considers that the rejection may have been a good sign. So maybe it's a little unsettling that his new band--having existed less than a year--is one of this year's heavy hitters, nomination-wise, but the members of this metal-with-a-punk-attitude group repeatedly say they don't take themselves seriously.