We never imagined those hours spent watching Saturday-morning and after-school cartoons would give us information we could use in the real world 20 years later. We mean besides the there’s-no-such-things-as-ghosts lesson. (Thanks, Scooby Doo!) But one simple slogan blaring from the TV speakers actually is worth the reels on which…
For Louise Connolly, everything about the Celtic dance and folklore revue Lord of the Dance falls within the range of “amazing” and “absolutely amazing.” She thinks the show is amazing. Everyone everywhere also think it’s amazing. Creator and former “Lord” Michael Flatley is amazing. But, perhaps most important, the fact…
Thursday, February 13 Five years ago, playwright Eve Ensler started hosting performances of her The Vagina Monologues to raise money and awareness about rape, domestic abuse and genital mutilation, renaming Valentine’s Day as V-Day and giving it a whole new focus. This year several colleges are continuing the tradition. Southern…
One could easily write off Bologna, Italy’s Forty Winks as just another group of punks with a number in their band’s name, tattoos on their arms and their hearts on their sleeves. But the comparisons to blink-182 and Sum 41’s juvy-punk (which are surely expectable and, on some songs, not…
Visitors to Forbidden Media are used to finding something unexpected, out of the ordinary and, sometimes, a little shocking among the store’s selection of videos, books and posters on Exposition Avenue near the gates to Fair Park. They would go there in search of items not available at chain stores,…
Is David Bazan–ringleader of Pedro the Lion, this show’s headliner–a masochist or just a blind supporter of new talent? We present the evidence. Exhibit A: Seldom. The three-piece from Seattle, home of Pedro and former home of Scientific, spent the spring opening up for and serving as the backup band…
On Hot Water Music’s latest album, Caution, the group shows a strange obsession with defeat, visiting again and again themes of falling and hitting the ground with a thud. Singer-guitarists Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard (who are backed by bass player Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo) sing, “That a…
The Epoxies’ name is no misnomer. Just like glue, the Portland band’s new wave-meets-punk tunes get stuck in one’s head with their shredding guitars, bopping keyboards and the voice of female leader Roxy Epoxy, which shifts from Exene Cervenka growl to straight-forward Missing Persons-style singing to the mid-’80s hiccup emphasis…
Emeril may have his own line of sauces and seasonings (and those pleasant memories of his bombed sitcom). Ming Tsai may be filling Target’s shelves with blue cookware. And Julia Child and Jacques Pepin may be able to dish out endless helpings of reheated cookbooks. But within the pantry of…
Somewhere Tony Wilson is laughing, and Ian Curtis is probably rolling in his grave. Or maybe every other band has always been compared to Joy Division and we just never noticed until sitting through 24 Hour Party People. Leading the pack is Interpol (the apple, for now, of the Big…
The three founding members of Hi-Fi Drowning–singer-guitarist Eric Martin, bassist Jon Eggert and his brother Jeremy, who fills both the other guitar and keyboard roles–live together in a house in far east Dallas. The band, which also includes drummer Taylor Young (who lives elsewhere), even has a nickname for it:…
“From my point of view, I was in this band that people considered so important, and people thought it really made a difference, and it touched so many people’s lives and changed the direction of popular culture. Now, that’s not necessarily how I look at it, but a lot of…
Some bands will do anything to get one new person to come out to their shows. The names of some are seen stickered on bathroom stalls, merch booths and light posts between Malcolm X and Good-Latimer more often than they’re seen on club calendars. Then there are bands who hand…
When Lewis was named Best New Act in the 1999 Dallas Observer Music Awards, the band was so new that the joke around the office was, “Lewis who?” The quartet had recently moved to Dallas from College Station where three members earned degrees from Texas A&M University. But then things…
Each week musicians drag out their friends, family and co-workers to see them play new-band showcases where the drink specials are the real draw (and often stronger than anything seen onstage). They hope one day they’ll play to more than a handful of familiar faces and some disinterested drinkers. Maybe…
The most difficult task for those wanting to attend Martice Enterprise’s production of Rick Najera’s Latinologues: A Comedy Without Borders may not be finding the pocket change to cover the $12 ticket. Nor will it be locating the Wilson Carriage House, the unconventional venue being used for the first half…
We competed in gymnastics as a child. We had medals, trophies, the works. But did we practice hour after hour, spraining our ankles and jamming our thumbs instead of playing Cabbage Patch and My Little Pony in order to learn about victory and defeat, experience the payoff of practice and…
Sitting at a railway crossing as the train cars cha-chunk, cha-chunk in front of our car, we tend to stare at the clock in the dash, watching the minutes slip past. But those who risk nausea and look instead at the cars might catch a glimpse of art, though they…
The lot at the corner of Fry and Oak streets in Denton, next door to Voertman’s bookstore and across from the Cork Screw, still sits empty. There are a few trees and bushes, freckles of weeds on the packed dirt and trash, beer bottles and cans, fliers for shows and…
Almost 7,000 people voted in this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards, and while I have absolutely no numbers to back it up, I’ll go ahead and say I’m fairly certain it’s the highest turnout for this election in quite some time. At least in the five years or so I’ve…
The phrase “didn’t go as it should” starts off “Long Fucks Up,” the first track on Failure Plus’ Care.Less.Now. And that says plenty about what’s happening here. Failure Plus is a Denton band that has played live few times; this is its first full-length release. But you’d never guess that…
For author and filmmaker Michael Moore, the old joke about having an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, each whispering commands, must be more like a daily battlefield. Except, for Moore, on one side there’s Corporate Crimefighting Chicken (his poultry-costumed crusader from his NBC series TV…
