Oh, and that second reason: The show has recently been changed to BYOB, so before you drive into Oak Cliff, pick up a few wine bottles or a box of Bud (sorry, no hard liquor) and art it up, y'all.
Fed-eracy of dunces: Fans of 102.1 The Edge's "hard" playlists, get pumped, because Dallas' The Feds have some guitar-blasty fodder to peddle to you on Saturday night at Club Clearview. There, the band will blast away as part of a CD release show for their self-titled sophomore album, recorded after winning last year's Rolling Rock Town Fair Five national "battle of the bands" and playing for two years straight on the Vans Warped Tour. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get our paws on a copy by press time to conclusively state that the band, in spite of (or perhaps because of) its stabs at the mainstream, is still boring as hell. We apologize. Based on the snippets we heard on the band's MySpace page, our assumption hasn't been shaken very hard, but the band is already promising another full-length to be released this spring "on a label to be announced," so it's not like our pessimism is slowing the Feds' momentum. Good luck, guys.
Blogs and 'nog: Though we enjoy Texasgigs.com plenty--we gave it the "Best Not-Quite-Podcast" award in this year's Best Of Dallas issue--we don't send site owner Cindy Chaffin a dime for her ceaseless coverage of the local rock scene. Hey, we have kids to feed...or, well, we will. Someday. We think.
At any rate, to make ends meet, Chaffin has to throw concerts like Saturday's Texasgigs.com and Spune Productions Fa-La-La-La-La Musical Extravaganza at the Cavern. This makes us glad that we're cheap bastards--if we'd donated money through her site, she might not have organized a show with awesome country-appreciative bands like Spitfire Tumbleweeds and Thrift Store Cowboys. Thanks to concerts like this, we're not donating a damn thing next year, Chaffin. Hope you manage to feed your kids anyway.
Something smells funky: Pairings can't get odder in Deep Ellum, as '70s funk-filth master Blowfly descends upon the Texas Tea House on Thursday. That's right--the Atlanta native behind "Queer for the New Year" and "Who Did I Eat Last Night" is playing a country bar. Included on the bill is Arlington's Man Factory, who, in spite of playing a completely different genre of music, should fit the night's oddity very well. Thursday night isn't looking very crowded, so get on up to the Tea House.
Indie rock Santa: Two weeks ago, we reported that Best of Dallas winner Good Records is moving to Lower Greenville in January. To prepare for the move, the folks at Good are selling their entire selection at 30 percent off. CDs, records, DVDs, box sets, T-shirts and even magazines--as long as it's not a special order, you can claim the discount. Normally, we don't report on sales, but this one is special because 1) the discount is ridiculous, and 2) it resulted in an amusing story. When we went last week to the first day of the sale, Good clerk C.J. Davis showed me a stash of merchandise he was about to buy--seven records in all. I asked what the big deal was for him, seeing that he already worked at the store, and he said, "Dude, even I don't get this good of a discount." Now that's a sale!
