War Party

Eleven Must-See Concerts in DFW This Week: May 23-29

Hello again, all! So, what you may not know is that each week I try to decide which picture of which band should go at the top of this weekly blog post. This week I settled on Guns N' Roses, since their fans span several generations; even though the tickets to their show this week are so totally out ... More >>

The Best Concert Posters: Bloody Texas and Ishi's Album Release

Talented artists are spreading their works of art all across the great city of Dallas through magnificent music flyers. Each week we'll spotlight our favorite poster picks for upcoming shows in the metroplex. Ishi's Digial Wounds Album Release show has finally arrived and their exotic and outlandis ... More >>

Record Store Day 2013: Your Guide to DFW Events

April 20 might be the biggest music day in North Texas this year. We have Untapped Fest in Fort Worth, Har Mar Superstar will turn Bryan Street Tavern into the area's best dance party and Dada will have some of the best local hip-hop in the area. 4/20 is also the date of of this years' annual Record ... More >>

The Top Ten Must-See Concerts in DFW This Week: April 18-24

Can we just take a second to acknowledge that the weather in Dallas-Fort Worth these past couple of weeks has been glorious? Optimal for outdoor shows, BYOB events and the like, the weather should remain this awesome--barring a tornado or two--for a short while longer (before the inevitable Texas su ... More >>

Happy Nerd Christmas!

The Five DFW Punk Albums We're Most Excited About for Spring/Summer/Whenever Punk Time Allows

Front-woman Ally Play-Nice of the Atomic Tanlines once told me, "Punk isn't about what you wear or how many patches you have on your vest. It's a fucking lifestyle." The genre's ethos alive and well in DFW. Most bands couldn't give me a definitive release date, album title or track listing for thei ... More >>

The Eleven Must-See Concerts in DFW This Week: April 11-17

We've got some good ones for ya this week--a nice, healthy blend of genres and artists, ranging from gigantic pop stars to local unknowns; Young DJs to old classic rock legends. This week in April, Dallas is yours for the taking. See also: -The 100 Best Texas Songs: The Complete List -The Ten Most ... More >>

Top Show Annoucements: Record Store Day, Limp Bizkit, Styx, Kid Rock, Matchbox Twenty and More

It's a little strange, but I don't know what's happening with all of the show announcements that have been pouring in this week: Limp Bizkit, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls and Kid Rock? It feels like 1999 all over again. Well, in 2013 news, Good Records just announced a kick-ass local lineup for Reco ... More >>

This Week's Best Concert Posters: Ewoks and Kung Fu!

Talented artists are spreading their works of art all across the great city of Dallas through magnificent music flyers. Each week we'll spotlight our favorite poster picks for upcoming shows in the Metroplex. Sunglasses&Sugar will be opening for Colleen Green this week, and have supplied us with a ... More >>

It's Pretty Simple: Show Up and Give a Crap. Just Ask Dallas Distortion Music

The amount of new band names they can spin at you is dizzying...and endearing. And most of all, uplifting. They're possibly the biggest fans of modern, often-as-yet-uncategorizable new music this side of the Rio Grande. It's fun to watch to Dallas Distortion Music, aka Matt Vickers and Evan Henry, g ... More >>

The Best from 35 Denton Night Two: Metal Wrestling and Fence Repair

By the calendar, we're halfway through 35 Denton 2013, though much of the good stuff is yet to come. Keep checking DC9 for daily updates from the fest. The highlights below are in a very (very) loose chronological order. In cases where the photos don't refer directly to the words on either side of t ... More >>

The 10 Must-See Bands at 35 Denton

The 35 Must-See Bands at 35 Denton

So, this is definitely a top-five weekend in North Texas music annually. We're flush with bands this time of year, what with the mid-size tour Mecca four hours south and four days away. But much of what's going on in the Metroplex in the coming weeks owes at least as much of its awesome to our own d ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts In Dallas This Weekend, February 21-24

Electric Six Saturday, February 23, at Dada, $15 Electric Six, the warhorses of heavy and frantic disco-rock, roll into Dada to spray high-energy chaos over Dallas' most extensive corner stage. After the release of their latest album in October, a live greatest-hits number, "The Six," as I have arbi ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts In Dallas This Weekend, February 14-17

Patti Labelle Thursday, February 14, at The American Airlines Center, $31-$86 KSOC-FM "Old School" 94.5 has earned the nickname "The Baby Making Station," as the station's nighttime programming of "Old School Lovin'" has become a go-to staple of gatherings in the area. So it comes as no surprise tha ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts In Dallas This Week, February 11-14

The xx Wednesday, February 13, and Thursday, February 14, at The Granada Theater Achingly hip Londoners the xx have a two-night stay at The Granada this week, meaning twice as many Dallasites will be swept away by songs from their now-ubiquitous debut album and the recently released Coexist. We're k ... More >>

Norton Records Benefit

Sunday, December 9, at Magnolia Motor Lounge

The Five Best Concerts In DFW This Weekend, Dec. 6-9

Mark Kozelek Thursday, December 6, at Granada Theater, $29-$39 I've been hard on Kozelek's past band, Red House Painters, mainly because in college they radiated an air of preciousness I couldn't accept. As I've gotten older and softer, though, Kozelek's music, namely Sun Kil Moon, has grown on me. ... More >>

Sunday's Norton Records Benefit in Fort Worth Helps the Revered Label Dry Off Their Vinyl

For fans of Norton Records, the Brooklyn-based peddlers of some of the rawest punk, R&B and garage rock you've never heard, the news that their Red Hook warehouse was flooded during Hurricane Sandy was a gut-punch. While much of their back catalog was destroyed, some 13,000 records were miraculously ... More >>

The Dallas Observer Music Awards Showcase: A User's Guide

We're taking over Deep Ellum on Saturday. Come along, will you?

A Guide to the 2012 Dallas Observer Music Awards Showcase

It occurred to me recently that, within the DFW music scene, people really love to draw county lines. So what we were trying to illustrate with our 2012 Dallas Observer Music Awards nominees is that Dallas, Fort Worth and Denton aren't three separate entities, but rather one big music community that ... More >>

Here's The Lineup For The 2012 Dallas Observer Music Awards Showcase

In the past few weeks, we've been getting you familiar with some of our Dallas Observer Music Awards nominees, and nudging you to vote daily, all leading up to our November 10 showcase, which is currently packing 60 acts across eight stages in Deep Ellum. We've got the lineups, venues and times b ... More >>

Public Image Ltd's John Lydon Is A Free Man

Public Image Ltd's John Lydon On The Election: "It's Two Blokes Fighting Over A Polished Leather Chair"

Since fronting the Sex Pistols in the mid-'70s and branding the nascent punk rock genre with its promise of "No Future," John Lydon, once known as Johnny Rotten, has appeared on Judge Judy, hosted a show on VH1 and used his name and face in commercials for Country Life butter. Yes, those butter comm ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts In Dallas This Week

Mind Spiders, Lenguas Largas, Occult Detective Club Monday, October 8, at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios When Mind Spiders' front man Mark Ryan transitioned from the studio to a live band in 2010, it was a breath of fresh air for the DFW punk scene. Since then, he's steered clear of the one-man sho ... More >>

Ten of This Weekend's Top Shows: Brutal Juice, Stockyards Music Festival, America's Most Slept On Tour and More

Every Thursday, we bring you the ten best shows you absolutely, positively can't miss this weekend. As always, you can find even more to fill your long weekend via our concert calendar. Mind Spiders, Nervous Curtains, Diamond AgeThursday, August 30, at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal StudiosThis solid tripl ... More >>

Fort Worth's Lo-Life Recordings Confess: "We're No Good At Sitting Still"

See also: Four Fort Worth bands to watch Fort Worth's Lo-Life Recordings have punctuated the seasons of 2012 with splits by Doom Ghost and War Party, two bands that mirror each other's three-chord mindset. Then they put out two really great videos: One in which Doom Ghost is profiled takedown-ad-s ... More >>

12 of This Weekend's Top Shows: Tenacious D, Arkansas Bo and More

Tenacious D Friday, July 20, at Palladium Ballroom Lots of frat boys expected to turn out for the D tomorrow night. Lots of mind bullets, too.

Four Fort Worth Bands To Watch

I'm not going to get involved in the stupid "Dallas vs. Fort Worth" pissing contest, although I've lived in the Fort for most of the last 35 years, so that should give you a clue as to my loyalties. Now that development dollars - many of them from Big D - have created our very own bar ghetto here (t ... More >>

Preview: Record Store Day

Saturday, April 21

The Octopus Project, Lower Dens and More Help Out a Local Family Sunday at Lola's

Cool show/good cause alert. The Octopus Project, Lower Dens, Peopleodian, Carey Wolff, War Party and Doom Ghost are all on board for a very special Sunday show at Lola's. "Fight For Maddie" is an ongoing benefit to help out Patrick and Melanie Higgins, whose five-year-old daughter Maddie was diagnos ... More >>

Good Friday: Vans Warped Tour Launches During A Busy Weekend of Shows

It's already started!​It's that time of the year again, when the heat has all of our teenage angst at an all-time high. The folks behind the Vans Warped Tour planned accordingly with this year's installment of the fest, which will be at Gexa Energy Pavilion today. So, if you're extremely pissed at ... More >>

TV On The Radio, Broken Social Scene, Ben Folds and More Show Announcements

They've got faces for TV On The Radio.​This week's show announcements come to us in the form of a one-two punch. TV On The Radio are fresh off the release of their brilliant new album Nine Types Of Light, and Broken Social Scene pretty much haven't released a bad album to date. Now, the two h ... More >>