Pompadour circumstance Rockinitis Ronnie Dawson Crystal Clear Sound On hearing the news that Crystal Clear Sound was reissuing Ronnie Dawson’s 1989 LP, Rockinitis, kudos were in order for the Dallas-based label, which also did the Lord’s work in ’94 by distributing Dawson’s Monkey Beat! album in the U.S. After hearing…
Slip and slide Pavement was playing Lollapalooza in Austin on the day that Jerry Garcia didn’t wake up. A reporter, sent to do a reaction piece, asked guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannenberg to comment on the passing of the hippie icon. “One thing about Jerry Garcia was that he made…
His mother begged him not to sue. Rapper Tracy “The D.O.C.” Curry says this in a rasp that sounds a little like resurrection’s whisper and a lot like Miles Davis’ parched bark. “She’s afraid something bad is going to happen to me,” the 27-year-old Dallas native says from his new…
1. Jerry Garcia. It was fitting that the man who specialized in 15-minute guitar solos would die in his sleep. 2. Selena. The assassination of Tejano’s once and future queen transformed Selena into a momentary superstar and the eternal martyr. She was number one with a bullet, quite literally: In…
It comes in cycles, this “year-in-music” stuff, and 1995 had the misfortune of following one of the most dramatic years in a long time, when such rock monoliths as Pink Floyd, the Eagles, and the Rolling Stones broke box-office records, while a disillusioned youth market shouted out, “Who killed Kurt…
Rock and roll exists today only because so many have decided they’re going to be rock stars or they’re going to make a living as accessories to rock stars. They don’t realize the era of the rock star is over. We’ve seen all the clothes and poses and we’ve heard…
A languid harmonica, the trumpet of the downtrodden, is the first sound you hear on Bruce Springsteen’s new LP The Ghost of Tom Joad. Then comes the gentle tug of guitar strings and a voice too wise, too weary to worry about enunciating last syllables. “Men walkin’ ‘long the railroad…
Before his November 7 appearance at the Dallas Music Complex, Bob Dylan hadn’t performed in Dallas since his 1990 concert at the Fair Park Music Hall. It was a sit-down (and scratch-your-head) affair, with Dylan blurring the line between mattering and muttering, lathering and butchering, as he rendered his own…
As Courtney Love and Woody Allen would attest, the best way to punch your way out of the wet plastic bag of celebrity dishonor is to go with what you know and get back, deeply and completely, into the gift that can’t be touched. Michael Jackson’s salvation has always been…
