Apparently I’m not the only one who’s secretly listening to the new free-format 100.3 Jack FM. On Sunday, a horribly unscientific poll of Lower Greenville stores unearthed three (three!) businesses with their radio dials tuned to 100.3. Though the playlist does veer toward cheese, it’s accommodating enough for most tastes,…

Wild on E! is a travel show on E! Entertainment Television known for its exhaustive portraits of pole-dancing women and neck-licking drunks. On Friday, August 27, the crew filmed a segment on Dallas, visiting the Denton rodeo that afternoon and at night, three clubs: Firewater, Suede and the newly opened…

These days, everyone’s a DJ, right? The iPod, not to mention the sheer availability of all kinds of music, has transformed everyone’s bulky CD and album collection into one tiny portable party mix. If, perhaps, you long for more discipline, schools offering classes in DJing are cropping up all over…

You may know Bob Schneider. And you may know Salim Nourallah. But you probably didn’t know that the two Texas singer-songwriters are childhood friends who played together while growing up in El Paso. Most people would never put the pair in the same sentence: Schneider is the swaggering, perennially-almost-famous frat-boy…

The Snoop Dogg Afterparty was heavy on party, light on Snoop. The Doggfather made only a brief appearance in the audience on Friday night, about halfway through Erykah Badu’s terrific mid-evening set. I lingered around till 3 a.m. with a few hundred other suckers, hoping he’d make a stage cameo,…

This just in: The Polyphonic Spree will perform at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, along with OutKast, Usher, Jessica Simpson, Jet and Hoobastank. Don’t worry if you miss the show; MTV will replay it somewhere between five and 3,000 times over the next month. On Thursday, there will…

At first glance, the renovated Granada Theater looks mostly unchanged–the same stage orientation and bar areas, the same murals of movie icons up on the wall. Yet, a few beers into the evening, and the differences start to creep in. There’s that huge sign hanging above the rafters, bright as…

The best song on The Chemistry Set’s full-length debut is a lacerating little number called “Lee Minor 7.” It’s a creepy, somewhat inscrutable story about dropping bombs and shooting guns, full of snare and syncopated piano and vocalist/guitarist Stephen Duncan’s telephone-muffled voice reaching through all that to announce: “This is…

This just in: Pleasant Grove drummer Jeff Ryan has left the band. Vocalist/guitarist Marcus Striplin cites “personal reasons” and says the band “is sad, but happy for him.” The band will be trying out new drummers and hopes to have someone in place in time for their September 3 show…

While Lakewood father David Cunniff struggled to recuperate from a devastating attack that may leave him paralyzed, skinhead Jesse Chaddock holed up in a Long Beach apartment complex and hid from police. Last Thursday’s Dallas Morning News featured a blink-and-miss-it item on Chaddock’s arrest in California, including the information that…

In last week’s Across the Bar, we reported on the July 25 incident at the Gypsy Tea Room that left a divorced father of three paralyzed from the waist down. Although the suspect has not yet been caught by police, several readers e-mailed to ask what they could do for…

Last Thursday, after a bout of touring, Polyphonic Spree percussionist Brian Teasley flew from Dallas to his home in Birmingham, Alabama, stopped at a Taco Bell for dinner and arrived at his house to find the FBI waiting for him. “Are you Brian Teasley?” the man asked. Why yes, he…

It was hot that afternoon. Combust-into-flames hot. And yet the kids came anyway–in their black concert T-shirts and wide-mouthed black jeans. Shame the color of rawk isn’t a cool lime or a crisp summer white. Shame to see all those fat dudes a shade shy of heatstroke. Some in the…

This week’s Deep Friday (eight clubs for eight clams!) features not-long-for-this-town popsters Mur at the Gypsy Tea Room, playing with the Mermaid Purse and Monsters and Dust. Mur front man Max Hartman reports that the band may be joined onstage by the excellent, genre-busting string quartet Neo Camerata. If you…

On Sunday, July 25, a 44-year-old father took his two teenage daughters to an Old 97’s show at the Gypsy Tea Room. He left on a stretcher and may not walk again. What happened in between is uncertain. Around 12:20 a.m. Monday, as concertgoers exited the show, an altercation occurred…

The following is an honest-to-God transcript of a teleconference that took place between regional journalists and superstar Usher Raymond on Wednesday, July 28. It has been edited for space, and questions have changed order, but it is otherwise untouched. Operator: Thank you for joining us today for the Teleprint conference…

Christmas morning, 1978: My brother rips open his final present to find exactly what he wanted–a newfangled chemistry set. Later, bathroom pipes will mysteriously explode. July 29, Gypsy Tea Room: Dallas band The Chemistry Set holds a CD release for its self-titled album, a lovely little CD of catchy, ethereal…

Lower Greenville isn’t exactly the classiest stretch of road in the city. All those skanky neon signs and dark alleyways, the clubs that reek of back-room drug deals. There are a few bright spots, like the Cavern, with its chatty bartenders and cozy upstairs lounge, but Taco Cabana probably calls…

Here’s an event to please the whole family: On Saturday, Coyote Ugly will host a fund-raiser for DISD schoolchildren called Christmas in July. Last time I went to Coyote Ugly–OK, the only time–a waitress served me a beer by holding it with her teeth and crawling across the bar on…

In his column in last month’s Spin, Dave Eggers waxed hyperbolic about San Francisco harpist Joanna Newsom. She was haunting, sad, lovely, precious, dark, bizarre, brilliant. I happen to be a fan of Eggers–his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a masterpiece of a self-indulgent, hemorrhaging prose–so I…

Drag It Up is the Old 97’s sixth album and their first since 2001’s Satellite Rides. Since that album, the band has been dropped from its major label, Elektra, and for a while, its future was rumored to be in jeopardy while front man Rhett Miller started a family in…

Dallas is a rock town. No place for a girl and her piano, really; I don’t care how many Norah Joneses grew up here. Fortunately, Lauren Fine hasn’t heard, or doesn’t care, and she makes the kind of modest, lovely singer-songwriter music that the city sorely lacks. The 11 songs…