Stop it, you’re killing me! Murder Ballads Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Mute/Reprise When listening to Murder Ballads, you can’t help but compare it to recent media events–the films of Quentin Tarantino, the televising of the O.J. Simpson trial–that offer murder as a cheap-thrill hayride. Such is the niche…

Great music should be described in terms of the mood in which it puts the listener. In the end, after the echoes have faded and the CDs are stored away in their jewel boxes, we remember the finest worksongs because, individually, they make us do things or feel strongly at…

It’s a chilly winter night at the half-abandoned Executive Inn near Love Field, and the frigid north wind is knocking the temperatures down even further on the skin. The place is dark and seemingly deserted, except for the noise emanating from several of the rooms. What used to be a…

Mike Daane, the bass player for Ugly Mus-tard, welcomes his guest in his elaborate home studio with a hearty smile. You might know Daane’s name or his face: For years, he has been known as the friendliest and busiest bassist in local music, a man who has loaned his talent…

The three members of Lower Caste Struggle sit hunched around a table, their eyes intense and their fingers fidgety. They scarf down pizza, suck down beer, exhale cigarette smoke, and pontificate about their young lives as punk rockers. Of the three band members, singer-guitarist Peter Yoass (not his real name,…

“I’d like society to have an open mind about music and not believe everything you hear on the radio and television. Investigate different ideas.” The man who says this sits in a nearly empty Deep Ellum restaurant between the breakfast and lunchtime rushes, preaching to an audience of one. Dressed…

Turner Van Blarcum is perhaps the most easily recognized figure seen stalking Deep Ellum’s streets. With his shaved and mohawked head, he is a lumbering rail of tattoos and energy–a punk-rocker, to be certain, but no punk. When he speaks, his voice rattles around in his throat as if being…

As Matt Hillyer and Steve Berg welcome their guest into the living room-cum-rehearsal space in which Lone Star Trio and the Collyers practice and hang out, they bring out three cans of Lone Star beer. The gesture could not be more welcome, or appropriate: As two-thirds of Lone Star Trio–Hillyer…

Simon Le Bon loves to bathe in the limelight. Over the phone from London, Duran Duran’s lead singer–one of the last famous international playboys, to use Morrissey’s lyric–is jovial and seems to relish talking to the press. He doesn’t even hesitate to reveal what kind of music he likes to…

Mention the name Moon Festival to those who know or care about such things, and probably they will half-remember the name, maybe even a song, but little more. If the band ever made an impression to begin with, it has been washed away by tides of new bands and new…

A few years ago, a perplexed music writer asked Joey Ramone the $64,000 question: how can the Ramones write all these songs when they only seem to use three chords? The reply was typical Joey: “Because we only know three chords; it just happens they’re the right ones.” Ramones songs…

On a gorgeous spring day, a man known by the name J. Bone Cro sits on the front porch of a house on Lower Greenville Avenue–the home and studio of a seminal experimental music collective called the Vas Deferens Organization. The 27-year-old musician’s spirits are high, fueled by the sunshine…

Joe Butcher, the lead singer and guitar player for UFOFU, leans on the microphone and asks the Club Clearview audience if they would prefer a Gordon Lightfoot or a Buzzcocks cover song. It is close to the end of the night’s set, and almost everyone is grinning with something that…