Welcome to DC-9 at Night, the Dallas Observer’s new music blog.
A little background about our raison d’etre: We began this endeavor by asking ourselves the following question: Why does Dallas need yet another contribution to the already overloaded music bloggery that exists concerning our fair burg? Our answer? Well, because the guys at corporate told us to.
Just kidding. Actually, our aim is to cover the nooks and crannies of Big D’s music world in a way that’s fun, inclusive, and, you know, not tedious.
This type of beginning, by the way, is known as a “soft launch,” which to us sounds like something that could be fixed with a little blue pill, but really it refers to a lack of fanfare. We’re not making a big-shit deal about it, even though we wish we could throw a big party and charge it to our bosses. Trust us, in the next few weeks you'll be wowed. In fact, it already looks great -- this week we’ve got lots of stuff planned, including slideshows of local and national shows, like the St. Vincent show and Wall of Sound fest in Fort Worth; mp3s from upcoming local CD releases (Shock of Pleasure, anyone?); blog entries and pics from the Austin City Limits festival; next-day reviews of local shows, and lots more.
In the next couple weeks, we’ll be introducing our weekly features, which include the advice column Ask an East Dallas Hipster; Good Friday, which will provide suggestions for the best weekend shows; Steal O’ the Week, which will give the less privileged of our fair denizens (you know, like music writers) some ideas for the best musical bang for your buck; and lots more.
One more thing -- in case you didn’t know, DC-9 at Night refers to the Jimmie Dale Gilmore lyric from the song Dallas, which goes, "Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night?/Dallas is a jewel, Dallas is a beautiful sight." We think that’s true, literally, but we also find Dallas’ music scene to be a metaphorical jewel, and this new blog is meant to provide an expansive, bird’s-eye view of it. -- Jonanna Widner
PS: Big ups to our new Web editor Chelsea Ide, who will be my cohort, comrade-in-arms and all-around badass in this endeavor. She’s already done a bunch of the behind-the-scenes work that has made all this happen, and you’ll see a good deal of her byline in the days to come.
