If you want your reunion tours full of spiritual enlightenment, regained perspective and mended relationships, go watch an Eagles DVD. You won’t get those qualities from the Toadies’ first concert since dissolving in 2001. In fact, you probably won’t get a reunion tour at all. The band’s final lineup–Vaden Todd…
We know what jokes you non-gingers are going to make, so let’s be clear about the entertainment you won’t find at this weekend’s North Texas Irish Festival. Don’t show up to Fair Park’s Centennial and Automobile Buildings with a net expecting to catch leprechauns and swipe their gold—they’re not comin’…
Hipsters looking for disagreeable, hard-to-digest music will presumably turn toward the new Liars record, Drum’s Not Dead, for a hearty dose of parent-scaring noise. It’s a reasonable assumption, as their last album, in spite of its weirdness and witch-loving themes, won out amongst the noise-rock crowd by pulling off near-poppy…
When local bands hype new singles, I have trouble holding back laughter. Really, a single? Do unsigned artists expect their songs to get played on 102.1 The Edge, the only modern-rock radio station in Dallas? It’s hard enough to crack the indie-minded Adventure Club playlist, let alone regular rotation (unless,…
Want to commemorate Centro-matic’s 10-year anniversary? Pick a date, any date. There’s the hazy “late April or early May 1995” in which guitarist, singer and songwriter Will Johnson wrote and recorded his first solo song, “My Test.” There’s also March 22, 1997, when the band’s current four-piece incarnation, a lineup…
Parents, let the deceit begin! Your little goons are getting old enough, which means it’s time to roll out the Big Three Stupid Parental Lies—Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Watch out, though. Of all of the BTSPLs, the Tooth Fairy will impact your child’s psyche the…
Truth be told, the Dallas Observer attracts an interesting niche of readers—convicts. It’s not a statistic that our advertising department touts (“We have a lock on Dallas’ five-to-10 market!”), but it’s certainly there, judging by the letters we receive from locked-up readers out-of-state looking for information about Dallas. Unfortunately, we’ve…
“First of all, fuck Bush, that’s the all, that’s the end of it.” With the first line of his latest CD, Audition, Minnesota’s P.O.S. wastes no time putting on his verbal brass knuckles, and everything he brings to the hip-hop game on this impressive LP is what both mainstream and…
For this week’s American debut of the Arctic Monkeys, bullshit deflectors have been readied in droves. And for good reason: The debut’s hype, British record-breaking sales figures and critical raves are getting more attention than the actual songs in question, a fact that demands an immediate red flag (yet, strangely,…
Coolest primaries ever: The Dallas Observer Music Awards are coming in May, which means we need to get started with the nominations…uh…right now. Just like last year, you guys get to tell us who you think deserves to make the final DOMA ballot. Go to this link www.dallasobserver.com/musicawards/nom2006 right now…
On Saturday, Death came to Deep Ellum. Adorned in black attire, the skeleton-man stopped at 617 Good-Latimer Expressway, presumably to declare the death of something–perhaps the entire district, though more likely just the former home of Good Records, which would close down that evening–but he was quickly distracted. “Hey, Death!…
Ticket fans, don’t take our assumption as a shocker—you’re going to attend 1310 AM-The Ticket’s Ticketstock 2006 on both Friday and Saturday, so you probably know everything about your favorite sports radio station’s largest public event of the year. P1s (industry slang for dedicated listeners) know that local sports heroes…
The Combo pairs up: Even the weirdest and most remarkable bands are tough to write about repeatedly. Case in point: Denton’s Brave Combo grabs our attention with interesting news every few months, yet we always come up with the same canned story–Grammy-winning local polka band that loves “The Chicken Dance”…
We’re with the Japanese on this one: Game shows aren’t worth their salt unless the contestants are humiliated, abused and scared out of their minds. If a lady makes thousands of dollars spinning a wheel, there better be spikes, snakes or cans of tear gas involved. That’s why we’re fond…
Emerge from your dark living room, turn off your TiVo-ed marathon of Law & Order and loosen your grip on those tubs of Häagen-Dazs, folks. Valentine’s Day is now officially over, which means you can show your lonely face in public once more. Yeah, it’s a bum holiday, but it’s…
Local bands, take note: When a weekly newspaper talks shit about your music and gives you grief about changing your formula on a new album, don’t write pithy e-mails to complain. Go the Slowride route instead. The Dallas trio disappointed two years ago with sophomore album Building a Building by…
It’s not too late to set the mood for Valentine’s Day, lovers. You can still get a fancy restaurant reservation, a few bottles of fine wine and, most important, the right music for the right night. And who better to suggest hot tunes for hot times than local rockers and…
Last year, when I started hearing blatant, one-sided praise around Dallas for some Austin band called the Lemurs, I was confused. Last time I checked, this was a town where people barely fill up Deep Ellum, where people have the gall to fold their arms in disapproval at amazing Deathray…
Papa schmo: For some ridiculous reason, we at AAT HQ keep watching MTV, not with any expectation of good music, mind you, but because we keep hoping one of our ex-girlfriends pops up on a show such as Room Raiders or Date My Mom. So imagine our surprise when a…
You wouldn’t have known it, but I prepared an optimistic look at local music for a January column. Instead of running that, however, I bumped it week after week after week, thanks to a lot of breaking Deep Ellum news–venue closures, an arrest, a crappy music festival–that hinted at nothing…
We’re iffy about midnight movies. Sure, some classics are best experienced on a big screen, but as the cost of building your own home theater goes down, so does the desire to stay up late and drive out to see Some Like It Hot one more time. Must be why…
It’s tough to get pumped about a Super Bowl that we actually had a shot at attending. Honestly, the NFC was an utter crapshoot this year, and if Par-sell-out hadn’t blown a few early games this season with “let’s, uh, wait and hold out” coaching “strategies,” the perfectly capable Dallas…
