Morphine The Night (Rykodisc/DreamWorks Records) Believe this: The fact that Morphine singer-bassist Mark Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage last summer in Italy is as important to any review of The Night as the 11 songs on the album. You can’t libel the dead, but just try finding…
After more than a year, as well as numerous pleas by the Dallas Observer and meetings between label and band, the speculation can finally end: Radish’s Sha Sha will not be released. And in the end, it’s not so surprising, but a plot twist everyone saw coming as soon as…
Since Luscious Jackson’s third album, Electric Honey, was released last June, singer-bassist Jill Cuniff has spent much of her time traveling around this country and others promoting it — playing shows and doing interviews all in the name of selling more records. Along with her bandmates, drummer Kate Schellenbach and…
His appearance, his name, his voice — everything about Ira Kaplan seems to belong to a high-school history teacher, or maybe a librarian. Intimidation doesn’t even begin to enter into it; at best, the Yo La Tengo singer-guitarist looks to be capable of sending an unruly student to detention. Maybe…
Maybe the biggest — or only — surprise about the latest disc from Chris Darlington (a.k.a. Christy Brigitte), Steve Visneau, and a bassist to be named later is that the group was still around to record it. Since changing its name from Mess, Darlington has seemed to be perpetually on…
Scene, heard While we can’t say many of the posters on the One Ton Records message board were big fans of our work, we’ll admit we’re more than a little sorry to see it go away. At the end of last week, the usual threads on the board (formerly located…
For a moment, it almost seems as though you’ve walked into the CD World location on Greenville Avenue and Mockingbird Lane by mistake. There’s the burly, bearded Chris Penn behind the counter ringing up a customer, and Carlos Jackson, a quiet Elephant 6 collective afficionado, checking the racks. Both were…
Travis Morrison should be at work right now, drinking bad coffee and building Web sites for the Consumer Electronics Association. But he’s not — he wasn’t there at 2 p.m., and almost an hour later, there still isn’t any sign of him. A few phone calls and a few more…
Despite recent claims that no one respects us because we print hearsay and gossip, as far as we know the Smashing Pumpkins will indeed be appearing at Tower Records on Saturday to sign a few autographs. It doesn’t look as if Billy Corgan and crew will perform though, and if…
The Limes Smile (Deluxe Records) There isn’t much about The Limes’ debut that stands out on the first listen — not one song you have to hear again right away before you can go any further, a roadblock with a chorus that sticks in your head like a round from…
In Dallas, listening to electronic music usually means sitting at home with the headphones, shaking your ass in the privacy of your own bedroom. (Translation: not much fun and sort of pathetic.) The dance clubs where most DJs perform are places where the music comes in a distant third behind…
As we’ve mentioned before, most things involving the music business are subject to change up to the point when they actually happen, and even then, you can’t always be sure. There is perhaps no better example of this than the annual South by Southwest Music Festival, which happens this year…
Good/Bad Art Collective hosts its first benefit concert of 2000 on February 4 at Dan’s Bar in Denton; from what we understand, it will involve a beauty pageant consisting of members of the four participating bands: Budapest One, Baptist Generals, Little Grizzly, and Asphalt the Recorder. The show begins at…
Ty Herndon Steam (Epic Records) Ten or so spins in (OK, maybe one), and it’s still hard to find something to say about Ty Herndon’s latest that someone else hasn’t used before to condemn Nashville for its absolute lack of originality. Every clever metaphor and analogy is already spoken for,…
Sean Donovan knows better than most people about the kind of support musicians need. He spends his days sending money to songwriters, making sure they all get what they deserve. The money belongs to the publishing house he works for in New York (the highly regarded Harry Fox Agency), and…
The last time we wrote about a benefit concert, we were publicly denounced from the stage at the Curtain Club by co-owner Doug Simmons. We didn’t mean any harm by what we wrote, we just felt it necessary to point out the irony of loud rock bands playing Black Sabbath…
Stumptone Stumptone (Two Ohm Hop Records) On first listen, Stumptone’s self-titled debut is as all over the place as you’d expect from a batch of songs recorded all over the place (singer-guitarist Chris Plavidal’s living room, Dave Willingham’s studio, the stage at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios) at various times during…
Nothing like arriving at work on a Monday morning to find an e-mail inbox full of questionable advice from even more questionable sources, such as one scrappy reader who wanted me to rip out my own tongue and hang myself with it. Thanks for the kind words, buddy, but I…
Space Cadet Space Cadet (Ffroe Records) Every band has to learn to play through its influences at some point, whether that means figuring out how to play the same old song better than anyone else, or actually coming up with something new — you know, the more difficult and far…
The Deathray Davies will tour with the Old 97’s during the first couple of weeks of February, hitting various clubs along the East Coast, including a stop at Irving Plaza in New York on February 11. We’re guessing at least a few clubs will make the same spelling gaffe with…
We’re pretty sure that Shannon Sutlief, Dallas Observer calendar editor and frequent contributor to the music section, didn’t mean any harm when she wrote about Denton’s annual Fry Street Fair in her year-end round-up of the shows and bands that made 1999 great, or at least some reasonable facsimile (“Hometown…
There are seven songs on Voices, the second disc from Fort Worth’s Ohm, but you won’t ever hear the band play one of them. They probably couldn’t even if they wanted to, mainly because they never thought of them as songs in the first place. And, for that matter, the…
