If you believe the urban legend, then Amon Carter started it: a bitter rivalry between Dallas and Fort Worth that goes back for generations. Carter is the Fort Worth tycoon who supposedly packed a lunch before traveling to Dallas, just to make sure he wouldn’t have to spend a nickel…
Used to be Kim Lenz and her Jaguars, though I suppose when your music is as static as this all-novelty-all-the-time act, you gotta shake things up somewhere, so why not the name? The surging audience for this local act has more to do with citywide retro-love than true musicality, although…
The West End. That master-planned pit of money-generating quicksand was originally Dallas city planners’ answer to a mid-’80s, shadowy Deep Ellum. Build a nightlife-shopping resort, pave it with snappy red brick, erect a mall as its central attraction, and stock the area with mounted police. Not the most culturally enlightened…
Back in college, I took a hardcore sociology course with a focus on gender. One day the teacher (with barely veiled feminazi leanings) asked the class: “Cats or dogs? Who here is a cat person, who a dog person?” and she tallied the vote. For the most part, the chicks…
“Erotic male flesh. Drinking with criminals and aristocrats. Not cleaning your brushes on anything but the curtains of the Savoy. Screaming Popes in Adolph Eichmann war crimes trial cages.” These are some of the Francis Bacon clichés drolly laid out by British artist and writer Matthew Collings, and while Collings…
You know the sad and familiar tale: Brilliant local musician trudges on with great work, other local musicians nod knowingly and with respect at the mention of his name, yet said talent hasn’t yet attracted the frothing fan base he deserves. No doubt Reed Easterwood knows the words to that…
After a spring season of veteran exhibitions, the new artists swarm into the light during these boiling summer months like cockroaches driven out from beneath the fridge. The galleries fill this otherwise dead time and space with emerging artist shows, and right now, Craighead-Green has one of the best samplers…
Duran Duran Duran Duran used to be the boys that the little girls understood. Only now, those little girls are all grown up, and it’s all they can do not to change the station when flashback radio blares “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Sure, Duran Duran and all its lip-gloss-coated adventure…
The gift for making great art is an elusive thing — some have it, most don’t, and any Saturday afternoon stroll through a handful of art venues can attest to that. But the talent for looking at art isn’t so elusive. Even if you don’t like a piece, your instincts…
An explosion of graffiti covers the walls and ceiling of the room, Lone Star beer flows from the bar like sweat on a thick August night, and the sharp voice of a fiddle cuts down the long, narrow concrete floor. Neon beer signs lend a mellow, buzzing backdrop to a…
Flaming Lips, Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock A friend of mine — the sort of Robyn Hitchcock fan who hits his Web sites every few days — has been keeping up with the fans’ online reviews of the current tour their cult hero is on with The Flaming Lips and Sebadoh. “They…
Most of us like to think of ourselves as flexible, to think of the stodgy “establishment” that rejects new ideas as a thing of the past, a thing that can’t keep up with rapid change, or at least a thing that we won’t subsidize with our own fleeting prejudices. But…
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is not exactly a slice of New York known for its cinematic beauty, what with its crowded tenement buildings, grime-baked streets, and indigenous odors of vomit and urine. Yet for a handful of years, it has been the last bastion of downtown bohemia for…
It’s all cyclical. The art scene, the rock scene, the theater scene — as cyclical as the economy, as the real estate market. Every city sees the ebb and flow of its cultural face, the exit of its veteran stars (or the dulling of their edge), the entry of a…
The publicist from Columbia Records calls right on time, Tuesday at 10 a.m., the very moment a member of the London Suede is scheduled to call for an interview to promote Head Music, the band’s latest album. Only, instead of the expected “I’ve got Richard Oakes from the London Suede…
Most people don’t want their art-going experience mixed up with God. To them — to us — the separation of art and church is a modern-day luxury we’ve grown to take for granted, necessary for keeping our high culture clear of any brainwashing effects of organized, God-fearing religion. Artistically inclined…
God knows I’m not the only one who can’t get past The Voice. That deep and rangy alto — a near tenor at times — has a way of dragging the music forward to match it. We forgive artistic trespasses and let ourselves be dazzled by indirect nostalgia. Since the…
Art-wise, these early summer weeks are some of the juiciest Dallas will see all year. Short of the big fall and holiday seasons, this is the most well-attended time for the local galleries. People are more excited about the longer days than sick of them — they’ll step out often…
Will Oldham Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, Bonnie “Prince” Billy — any way you slice it, it all comes up with the ever-troubled Will Oldham, constant traveler of sepia-toned folkways and lonesome byways. By now, with his sixth album — I See a Darkness — under his belt, Oldham has…
“The best example of…” A couple of weeks ago, local rich guy Howard Rachofsky spoke to a crowd at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary about how he’s built his art collection, a vast yet fine-tuned cross-section of modern to contemporary works housed in his Richard Meier-built home. It’s an ongoing process,…
Chris Plavidal is raving about the view from the windows of his new apartment. Over the phone, he sounds positively joyous. “On one side, I can see the Empire State Building,” he nearly shouts, “and out this way is the Statue of Liberty!” So much for Denton’s glowing “Corn-kits” sign…
Too often, we drain our best ideas by analyzing them to a pulp; the real juice is gone before we ever make the first move. After such hair-pulling, the concept that seemed brilliant at its inception finishes hollow and insincere–or so damn academic you wanna send it to detention hall…
