South of Interstate 30 is an area that most Dallasites associate with one thing, lofts: those curSrently hip, so-called urban, overpriced living spaces that commercial real estate developers are banking on as the yupscale future. But this still-developing area, a mix of older industrial buildings and houses where lower-income families…
Wanna start a fight? Walk into any alt-minded, college-radio-friendly, independent record store in America during its peak after-school hours and proudly proclaim, “Rivers Cuomo sucks,” and see what happens. You may not incite the throwing of punches or even the pulling of hair, but you’ll definitely be the recipient of…
Though it’s only about 93 miles as the crow flies from Toronto, Ontario, to Rochester, New York, it’s a straight line that runs primarily through Lake Ontario, requiring a drastic detour if you’re going to travel between the two by automobile. You have to head southwest and wrap around the…
Almost everyone can name some scene in some movie that left such a profound impression on the mind’s eye that it caused him or her instantly to become aware of the overwhelming power of moviemaking techniques, even if it wasn’t realized as such at the time. It’s especially the case…
If the thought of keeping up with the latest and greatest in underground rock, combing through second-hand record stores until you develop carpal tunnel syndrome, managing the day-to-day operations of a small label, parenting, producing/recording/writing/composing music, reading, writing, living and breathing makes you want to scream enough is enough is…
A meeting of the Dallas Observer minds found us arriving at a happy–and unusual–consensus: Yes, there’s some good stuff playing at the 31st Annual USA Film Festival, but the programming is eclipsed by the people being imported for after-screening Q&As. We’re not talking a Cannes-like cavalcade of A-list names. No…
If the thought of a “jam band” sends shivers down your spine because it immediately brings to mind the twirling masses that started following Phish after the Grateful Dead stopped touring, then congratulate yourself on being sane. But there’s a slightly new breed of instrumental joy starting to flow out…
It never works: Trying to pick a winner before the race is over, calling the election before every pencil mark and mouse click is accounted for, tabulated. (Insert your own Dan Rather/Peter Jennings/Tom Brokaw joke here, because we don’t feel like it.) There are always upsets, last-minute votes, surprises. For…
The confluence of pop, op, conceptualism, minimalism, et al in the 1960s and 1970s coughed up video art like a fur ball. The portable video camera provided artists with a tool that had till then been the providence of movie studios with bigger bankrolls and enabled its early experimenters to…
If Ken Burns’ recent epic documentary, Jazz, has had any lasting effect on the state of contemporary jazz, it’s ensuring that the face of jazz today is one of a neo-traditionalist vein epitomized by the meteoric 1980s rise and ensuing commercial and critical success of Wynton Marsalis. Thanks to Marsalis…
One of the most unnatural things you’ll ever encounter in modern and contemporary art is a representation of nature. It’s one of the few constants in visual art during the past century. From the tail end of post-Impressionism through futurism, Dada, surrealism, abstract expressionism, Op, Pop, and the endless waves…
Before a group of metal-schooled, post-punk-bred young American men came around in the early 1990s to smelt a solid sheet of polyrhythmic guitar and percussion abuse, “math rock” referred to an algebraic approach to adding up a band’s sound. Like any scientific speculation, it has its flaws, but there are…
In recent years, a French achievement has been celebrated on this side of the Atlantic with a bravado not seen since Hollywood’s admiration for the romance of the Resistance–or ’60s French New Wave filmmakers realized American men would gladly fork over U.S. coin and accompany their social-climbing sweethearts to talky,…
Nothing says “adult contemporary” or “smooth jazz” quite like the presence of a tantric sex advocate, and the vocal appearance by Sting on alto saxophonist David Sanborn’s most recent release, 1999’s Inside, squarely places the album on the Najee-Celine Dion axis. A quick peek at the disc’s other guest spots…
Nothing nudges common sense out of any fruitful discourse quite like nudity. Ever since Homo sapiens began covering their bodies with “clothing,” from animal hides to Anna Sui, the necessity has arisen at some point or another to toss it off. The reaction to the absence of clothing, however, has…
Looking back, May 27, 1995, was the beginning of the end. Shortly after Denton’s Factory Press performed in North Texas for the last time that evening, at the Engine Room in Fort Worth, the band packed up and moved to New York to take on the world. The Factory Press–vocalist…
What passes for “reality” under the great video eye of network television is pretty lame these days. Personally, we’re not going to take that prefab national phenom known as Survivor seriously until someone dies of exposure, snakebite, or hunger during the show. Similarly, we’ll consider Temptation Island “reality-based programming” only…
Prevailing rockcrit wisdom posits Jon Spencer as rock’s pre-eminent postmodernist. Sure, he’s not as neon as Beck nor as conniving as Madonna, but he also doesn’t constantly evolve as visibly as either the whore or the mother and, ergo, is not as susceptible to the cataclysmic shifts of pop cult’s…
Every band attracts some type. Some draw despondent Goth kids, some draw the fun-loving mod boys, while others attract a Christian audience. Some even draw fun-loving, Christian mod boys, conflicts of interest be damned. But the North Mississippi Allstars–the trio formed by brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson along with bassist…
After conquering America by selling more than 7 million copies of 1998’s Devil Without a Cause, the only question that remains about 30-year-old Detroit native Robert James Ritchie–that’s Kid Rock to you and me, and Bob to his pal Carson Daly–is not why you shouldn’t wretch at the sight of…
Forget Zen–you don’t have to engage in obtuse intellectual gymnastics or wrestle with metaphysical riddles to be perfectly at ease with being in the now. Just ask Daniel Black, lead singer and guitarist for San Diego-based quartet The And/Ors. On the morning of the band’s kickoff show of its first-ever…
