Eleven Hundred Springs took to the Double Wide Saturday night, playing to a drunken audience (don’t worry–it was the happy kind) and recording the efforts for potential use on a future live album. Photographer Matt Nager was there to take some shots, er, photographs, for us. Check them out in…

As noted earlier today on City of Ate, yesterday marked 74 years since Elvis Aaron Presley was born in Tupelo, Miss., and to mark the occasion, Chuy’s locations around Texas paid him the honor of hiring impersonators, handing out cake and inviting diners to dress like him.Elvis impersonator Michael Wroughton,…

The party was called “Strike A Pose,” but club-goers at the Green Elephant Saturday did well more than that. Serious stripes, over-enthusiastic smiles, and faceplants into laps accompanied DJ work by Select, Keith P and Vega over the weekend.We’ve got photos from the night in our slideshow up here.  –Patrick…

Saturday night in Deep Ellum was hopping for two reasons: The New Frontiers’ final show and, well, the reason for this here post, Fair to Midland’s crazy-packed one-off gig at the Curtain Club. We’ll have more on the specifics of that show, as well as plenty of news on FTM’s…

Toadies fans rang in the new year at the Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth, and from the looks of things, this was one show that got everyone psyched for 2009.See the confetti, champagne, and a stray bra fly in our slideshow up here. –Patrick Michels…

It was a battle for the ages at the Cavern on New Year’s Eve, along with DJ sets by Keith P, DJ Schwa and others. Whisky Bar hosted Celebrate the 80’s with DJ Joel Gajewski, Minc Lounge hosted DJ Red Eye and five others, and Tribal Elements hosted a South…

New Year’s Eve was a big night here for DC-9, as we took our best shot at covering the happenings around town. It’s all about the memories, after all (look forward to some particularly rough ones in our Night Moves club photos, coming soon).First off, though, check out scenes from…

The New Year’s Eve balloons loomed high above a sold-out crowd at the House of Blues Tuesday night, where the Old 97’s played their part of a big alt-country night around Dallas.It was a little early for a New Year’s Eve party, but front-man Rhett Miller said he understood why…

Photographer Caity Colvard braved the Plano Centre yesterday for some quality time at the second Unsilent Night Festival, headlined by Forever the Sickest Kids and Scary Kids Scaring Kids, and attended by a whole lot of actual kids, too.Shots of local acts Red Car Wire and Sky Eats Airplane (and…

Once the little ones were tucked into their dreams of St. Nicholas (or parked in front of their new Wiis and Xboxes), the rest of Dallas made it out on the town over the long weekend.We’ve got a pair of Night Moves slideshows here this morning, first from Green Elephant…

You don’t need a half-wit music critic to tell you it’s been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were demolished by a Midwestern…

And now it’s time for the “I love you like a fat kid loves cake” memorial Worst Lyrics of 2008, March Madness-style tournament, this year a terrifying mélange of appalling oral-sex requests, bargain-bin philosophies, grammatical atrocities, and cringe-inducing pillow talk. To elevate the drama, I provided a trusted colleague with…

For whatever reason, we were feeling like a real team last week–so much so that we gathered up most of the music writing crew here at the Observer and packed everyone into my spacious fake college dorm room office to talk about our favorite local releases of the year (and…

Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn’t caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously absurd record or two…

Photo by Michael Alan GoldbergTwo young blondes with toothy smiles and hard-core work ethics, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, helped country expand its fan base in these years of shrinking music sales. Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and George Strait kept filling…

Americans who still think of Latin music as mariachi bands and gyrating Ricky Martins and Shakiras might want to lend a closer ear to the genre. This country’s Hispanic population isn’t just growing, it’s growing more diverse. More and more unique musical styles are being gobbled up, and that should…

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry…

In a year worthy of your rage, metal delivered in spades. What with the economy circling the drain and Sarah Palin coming down from the tundra and then refusing to go back, 2008’s been the kind of year that really makes you want to smash your head into walls or…

This gem by Brian Harkin may still be fresh in your memory (it’s from the Spree’s evening show earlier this month), but we’ve got 35 more shots, reaching all the way back to early January, to recap a year of the Observer’s concert photography online.You can check out the slideshow…