Friday night the Texas Theatre hosts the official premiere of Bryan Poyser’s film Lovers of Hate, a tale of two brothers that seems packed with drama, resentment, tension and sibling rivalry. Adult brothers Rudy and Paul recreate the torturous feelings that arise within a family when siblings see differing levels…
Like many of you, I missed the one-day-only “soft” opening of The Eight Track Museum because I was knee-deep in family, fruitcake and festivities on Christmas Day. Thankfully, our own Robert Wilonsky was there to document the historic day that Dallas became home to the coolest concept for a museum…
With more than 20 college-age folks milling about the packed parking lot in front of Stir Coffee just before 5 p.m., it was easy to spot the location of Monday night’s barista jam. Especially for those who, like Roasted, had yet to pay a visit to Stir Coffee, Dallas’ new…
Wild Nothing, Abe Vigoda, Soft Environmental CollapseSons of Hermann HallFebruary 5, 2011Better than: enduring another day cooped up at home and off work because of the icy weather. There was very little between-song banter from any of the acts on Saturday night’s bill at Sons of Hermann Hall. No crazy…
Occult Detective Club may have started as the solo side-project of Secret Bangs’ Alexander Anguiano, but once Secret Bangs officially dissolved and Anguiano devoted more time and energy to crafting his catchy garage-punk songs, it quickly became apparent that this new project was going to eclipse his previous act.Especially when…
Abe Vigoda’s fourth full-length effort, Crush, finds the Los Angeles-based band moving away from its “tropical punk” past and slipping toward a more electronic-studded, synth-soaked sound that’s a little darker and a lot dancier than its past releases. It’s one of those albums that reveals a major quantum shift in…
Bob Gomel took a gig snapping photos for LIFE in 1959, and he continued with the photojournalism-heavy magazine until it ceased weekly publication in the early ’70s. But, when LIFE was still in its heyday, the magazine’s prominence and popularity offered Gomel a front row perspective not given to just…
Annie Proulx has been on a roll since the 1993 release of her first novel, Postcards, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her second novel, The Shipping News, earned Proulx the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and her work–mostly short stories and novels–has continued to earn the…
What’s not to love about this campy sci-fi plot synopsis? On the distant planet Mongo, New York Jets quarterback “Flash” Gordon fights to save the earth from certain destruction at the hands of the merciless Emperor Ming…all with aid of the brilliant Dr. Hans Zarkov and the beautiful, um, travel…
Datahowler, Gallery Cat, Damaged Good$, Hoyotoho Club Dada January 15, 2011 Better than: staying home to “avoid all the crazies on the road” while your friends have a ball celebrating the New Year (again). Honestly, if I wasn’t sick and running a fever right now, I’d try to come up…
Few people who have walked this earth are more deserving of annual celebrations, tributes, parades and concert extravaganzas than civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. After featuring American Idol veterans Fantasia Barrino and Ruben Studdard in recent years, the planners behind The Black Academy of Arts and Letter’s 28th…
No Age, Total Abuse and Rene HellJanuary 10, 2011Sons of Hermann HallBetter than: making the trek to The Smell for such an eclectic, entertaining bill. Whether the folks that showed up to last night’s show were new to No Age or “long-time” fans of the act’s 2007 Fat Cat debut,…
How the hell does a DIY, eff-it-all-if-it’s-not-art duo birthed out of Los Angeles’ famed DIY-venue The Smell come to grips with the pressure of following up a critically successful debut album on Sup Pop? Well, according to lead vocalist and drummer Dean Spunt, if the band’s No Age, then it…
Known for being fiercely independent with a serious rebellious streak, painter, poet and actor Salvator Rosa was a bit of a controversial character in the 17th-century Italian art scene–run-ins with the papacy tend to do that for an artist’s reputation, then and now. In the first major U.S. exhibition devoted…
In his latest batch of inventive mixed-media sculptures, Jerry Dodd explores the “functional and esthetic qualities” of tools, utilitarian objects and the like by incorporating things like pitchfork tines, hooks and rototiller blades into the context of his welded steel sculptures. Then, Dodd lavishly paints many of the components in…
Best known as one of the founding members of the ground-breaking, quasi-controversial Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, Iranian-born stand-up comic and actor Maz Jobrani must love all the new TSA regulations put in place just before the holiday travel season– after all, his routine on the tour’s 2007 Comedy Central…
Nitzer Ebb, //TENSE// Granada Theater November 23, 2010 Better Than: stomping the night away at the Lizard Lounge. With the strobe light pulsing around him and his bandmates furiously pounding the drums behind him, Nitzer Ebb’s lead vocalist Douglas McCarthy’s body convulsed like a man being electrocuted. The crowd danced,…
Had Brooklyn’s Small Black been recording and releasing material back in the ’80s, critics and journalists would’ve simply labeled the band’s layered, dreamy lo-fi sound as synth-pop or, perhaps, electro-pop. File under: Rock/Pop. In interviews, though, band members have described Small Black’s sound as “Casio dream noise pop” or “not…
Following September’s release of False Priest, of Montreal’s tenth full-length album, the band is back with what’s reported to be a more elaborate, glittery and flamboyant stage show after touring earlier this year with a setup considerably more reserved than it had for the tour supporting 2008’s (mostly) critically acclaimed…
It’s 2 a.m. on Lowest Greenville Avenue. As if on cue, the regular cast of clubgoers, bar hoppers and gang bangers spill out of the bars and onto the narrow sidewalks. The crowd gathers quickly, walking, stumbling, growing louder as the smell of hard liquor and stale beer scents the…
On a recent grocery shopping excursion to Central Market Dallas, Roasted was pleasantly surprised when we rounded a corner near the bulk foods section and spotted a display on an end cap stocked with one-pound bags of fresh-roasted beans from Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters. The display was next to the…
Just yesterday, over on Unfair Park, Robert reported that James “Big Bucks” Burnett is in the the final negotiation stages for a permanent Dallas home for his Eight-Track Museum, for which Bucks recently add one of Bob Dylan’s harmonicas. The news comes after a Deep Ellum home for the museum…
