When he was 13, Montreal’s Alain Macklovitch [no relation, I swear -Ed.] used his bar mitzvah money to buy a used Technics turntable and a mixer. While still in his teens, Macklovitch was holing up in his basement listening to Jazzy Jeff records and focusing his vision. A decade later,…

In Spanish, the word for soap opera is telenovela. And as anyone with even a limited knowledge of the Latin music scene knows, the eight years of Corpus Christi’s Kumbia Kings has been full of drama of the highest order. Supposedly, this is their last tour, as founding members A.B…

With his nondescript, boyish appearance, local multi-instrumentalist/ producer Todd Gautreau talks about his music with a casual enthusiasm, discussing his art with the same demeanor he might use in talking about his day job as a graphic designer. “I think what I do reflects a struggle,” he says. “I try…

Even with his hearing at risk, Pete Townshend would still go to shows by AC/DC, claiming the rush of sound and volume was an aphrodisiac, loudness as an assault and a reward. Japan’s Mono offers that same kind of visceral thrill with lengthy and thunderously loud instrumentals that touch on…

“The Death of Us,” the opening cut on The New Amsterdams’ notable new release Story Like a Scar, is music so open and lonely that it almost had to come out of the Midwest. Kansas native Matt Pryor’s frail tenor graces the rootsy accompaniment like a cool breeze across a…

If the guys in Spock’s Beard had gone to my high school, there is no doubt they would have received severe and painful admonishment for being the proverbial “band geeks.” Taking their name from the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk and crew inhabit a parallel universe and do battle…

Endure a few run-throughs of Pomp and Circumstance, make sure your tassel is on the correct side of your cap and ready your flask for the after-party at the rich kids lake house. Its a graduation, baby. Most years, the theme of the Dallas Observer Music Awards is an afterthought,…

“My music is for both the mind and the body,” says Osunlade, “but even more for the spirit.” And why shouldn’t it be? After all, the acclaimed House performer/producer is an ordained priest in the traditional African religion of Ifa. Speaking from Greece, and just a few days from the…

When he was 30, Mark E. Smith, iconoclastic front man for the Fall, wrote “Living Too Late,” an odd reflection on mortality where he sang of crows’ feet ingrained on his face. Now almost 50, one of rock’s most original and recognizable voices sees no reason to reflect or dwell…

Despite her fair skin and mostly bright disposition, dark is an apt word for Kristy Kruger. As the Dallas songwriter talks about her burgeoning career in local music, one that has been a long time coming, she has to pause to shield the sun coming in through a store window…

Conor Meads, vocalist for this San Diego pop-punk quartet, has a fondness for the overwrought theatrics of Elton John and the late Freddie Mercury. Trouble is that his innate ability is more in line with your local high-school punk. Meads and his three cohorts somehow manage to make this dichotomy…

For anyone whose limited exposure to the music of Jamaica and West Africa has fostered the impression that reggae is one-dimensional, such a person needs to get his or her ass in line early Monday afternoon at the Granada and be prepared for Burning Spear’s inspiring zeal. If you ask…

At 29, Maria Taylor has experienced a musical passage equivalent to folks twice her age. While barely in her teens, Taylor was part of Little Red Rocket, a Birmingham duo who released two efforts on Geffen and garnered positive comparisons to Belly. Taylor and her partner, Orenda Fink, then formed…

With the recent passing of his chief influence and mentor, Buck Owens, it should prove interesting to witness Dwight Yoakam’s mood during his forthcoming appearance in Rockwall. The pair had recently played together, and Owens had been known to dispense some fatherly advice along with an occasionally stern rebuke when…

One-time New Jersey cop Eddie Mahoney stopped walking his hometown beat in order to pursue his dream of rock stardom. In the late ’70s, he changed the clunky-sounding Mahoney to an ’80s-ready Money, and in one of the most unlikely ascensions imaginable, this poor man’s Springsteen hit the big time…

With his reedy voice, exceptional guitar chops and classic good looks, Tommy Keene should have been a star in the late ’70s when his career first began. The problem was that Keene’s amalgam of post-punk earnestness, ’60s pop and dense hard rock was always out of fashion. Even when Geffen…

“I can hear a collective rumbling in America.” This line on “Be Good to Them Always,” one of the best cuts on the Books’ third and most approachable album, is a sample hidden amongst so many other samples–percussion, cello, banjo, guitar–and struggles to have its say. It’s an old recording,…

“The U.S. is more of a continent than a country,” says Fredrik Nilsson, drummer of the Sounds, Sweden’s latest attractive source of ’80s new wave memories. Currently on tour in Los Angeles, Nilsson is somewhat awestruck on his second trip to America. “There’s more musical tradition here…In Sweden, people only…

Whether a Mekon, a Waco Brother or solo, Jon Langford’s three-decade commitment to the proletarian aesthetic of punk and roots has never wavered. His hoarse, Strummeresque hue and cry has proven equally adept at anthem shouting, dub-inflected pop and ageless Americana. Gold Brick, while decidedly rootsy, features elements from throughout…

In 1972, David Bowie gave Ian Hunter a song called “All the Young Dudes” and talked the reclusive, bitter Hunter into resurrecting the literate and tragically unsuccessful Mott the Hoople. For better and worse, Bowie turned the band into the forefathers of glam, complete with knee-high boots and a fashionable…

Last year’s return of Dinosaur Jr.’s classic lineup was one of the least expected reunions since John Lydon reanimated the Sex Pistols. After hitting bandmate Lou Barlow with a guitar as a prelude to dumping his ass in the late ’80s, temperamental frontman J. Mascis (sometimes with drummer Murph) carried…

Ed Anderson leads this Illinois alt-country outfit with the same kind of weary optimism that Brent Best once did with the late, great Slobberbone. Featuring a cleaner sound but an equally drunken aesthetic, Backyard Tire Fire’s Bar Room Semantics is the little brother to Slobberbone’s Everything You Thought Was Right…