Deadheads are a persnickety, obsessive bunch; the only group with a comparable fascination with minutiae, trivia, and detail are baseball announcers: “Sorry, Clint, I doubt it–the Dead have rarely gone from a second-set-opening ‘China-Rider’ directly into ‘Dark Star’ when ‘Deal’ closed the first set, and never on a summer tour!”…
Room to mood Melatonin Bullet EP Transona Five Sandwich Records From Our Living Room to Yours american analog set Emperor Jones/Trance Syndicate How much structure can you subvert, how much melody can you deconstruct, and how many found sounds can you bend to a song’s will before it stops being…
Endurance as protest Senor Blues Taj Mahal Private Music The Will to Live Ben Harper Virgin Records Neither Taj Mahal nor Ben Harper could really be considered bluesmen in the traditional sense, although the blues forms the core of each one’s vision. Mahal has traveled along the roots of American…
The great pretender My Charmed Life Little Jack Melody and his Young Turks Carpe Diem Records Denton’s Little Jack Melody–aka Steve Carter–has always been among the most ambitious of the abundant crop of eclecticists that our area has been blessed with. More directed than Paul Slavens, more textual than Brave…
Like most quests, the most recent mission of James “Big Bucks” Burnett–to make his very first album–has mystical beginnings. Known to most as the driving force behind a uniquely hands-on brand of fandom that has found fruition in “Edstock,” a salute to Wilbur’s talking TV horse (of course) and “Tinypalooza,”…
What’s that on your head? I believe it was Roy Blount Jr. who, while meditating upon the cowboy hat–that most essentially American thing to place atop your head (with the possible exception of a lampshade)–said that while having actually grown up working on ranches and riding horses enabled him to…
Business as usual Hogs on the Highway Bad Livers Sugar Hill Records I Hate These Songs Dale Watson Hightone Records At times our need for–or at least appreciation of–the brand-new and different leads us into a baby-bathwater scenario, particularly in the realm of music. If an artist or act does…
“Hopefully, this’ll be the one that does it,” says local singer-songwriter, guitarist, and occasional Observer music section contributor Josh Alan, referring to his new album and its chances of getting him the kind of market clout that enables artists to write their own ticket. If nothing else, however, the album’s…
Occasionally an album comes along that completely screws up an editor’s greatest comfort–the orderly scheduling of attention and consideration for the next several issues. You’ve got all the big artists covered, all the important demographics have been given their moment in the spotlight, all your ducks are in a row,…
Opportunity under heaven Symphony 1997 (Heaven Earth Mankind) Tan Dun and Yo-Yo Ma Sony Classical There’s a scene in Fellini’s great movie of childhood memory, Amarcord, in which the inhabitants of a small rural village, hearing about the passage of a great ocean liner close to them, go to the…
The divine Miss La B. Tina Turner may have the el grande stage show, the magazine covers, and the movies (both starring her and about her), but there’s something about the Big Time that leaches some of the personality out of soul music and takes it a bit too far…
In the past, shows by the avant-garde performance group ComaTheatre could approach a delightful stimulus overload as musicians played tape loops, sequencers, actual instruments, and prepared tracks while a series of images–clips from movies and newsreels, paintings on a slowly advancing roll of transparent film, and still photos–flashed about them…
Manifest destiny It Had to Happen James McMurtry Sugar Hill Records In 1995 two songs came out that were sharp expressions of the burden that the freewheeling ’60s left its children: the Charlie Sexton Sextet’s “Plain Bad Luck and Innocent Mistakes” and James McMurtry’s “Fuller Brush Man.” McMurtry continues to…
Shake it all about Group Dance Epidemic Brave Combo Rounder Records It’s always been easy to miss (or misapprehend) Brave Combo’s point, so unfamiliar are we with bands that actually have one. Many who prefer a more reflexive, less thoughtful approach to music–just rock me, dude!–are put off by the…
Leonard Maltin’s Movies on Video called it a “silly period piece”; Video Hound Golden Movie Retriever termed it “weak” and advised that “it probably isn’t worth your time.” It got attention on It Came From Hollywood, a video collection of cinematic wretchedness, and another video guide awarded it negative stars…
Davy Jones liked to party. Hell, everybody in Austin did back in the early ’80s, and if you weren’t careful, your days could disappear into a haze of pot, noxious stimulants, beer, and pills that invoked such a hellbroth of effect and counter-effect that you might think yourself sober–at least…
Paul Slavens, still known to most Dallas music fans for his now-suspended band Ten Hands, has been busy since he folded that particular tent. Dr. Paul’s Freak Show saw Slavens taking over the stage at Club Dada on Wednesday nights and playing with a rotating lineup of area musicians. Now…
Sarcophagus rock Flaming Pie Paul McCartney Capitol Records Blue Moon Swamp John Fogerty Warner Brothers Records Neither John Fogerty nor Paul McCartney need prove anything. Fogerty may well have invented roots-rock, and McCartney has proven himself a pop classicist; new releases from both reveal their makers as masters. Unfortunately, both…
Almost there Too Far to Care Old 97’s Elektra Records Wreck Your Life, the 1995 effort of the Old 97’s, was a snapshot from a band stretching their original premise to the breaking point, an album that sounded almost like a parody–a problem that dogs many of the acts signed…
For a couple of years now, Homer Henderson (Phil Bennison) has provided folks who like to mix tapes for their friends with an infallible indicator of just when those tapes get listened to. Put one of Henderson’s sardonic ditties–“Nightclub Cancer” or “Lee Harvey was a Friend of Mine”–on the tape,…
Shake, rattle, rumble, and roll Jump back, everybody–all you retro gods, surf guys, reverb artists, and fey Pulp Fiction-inspired pretenders–The Man is coming to town; make way, make way. The ’50s were full of inspired and essential guitar stylists–Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Luther Perkins–but nobody rode the black back of…
They’ve been around so long, you probably thought it would ever be thus, but Lithium Xmas–first founded in 1985 and one of the few acts that remain from that era–has decided to call it quits with a pair of shows over the next few weeks. “It’s all so sprawling that…
