Pinkston Pinkston (Last Beat Records) Last Beat kicked off 1999 with Captain Audio’s My ears are ringing but my heart’s ok; now, it inaugurates 2000 with another EP by a band made up of local vets. And like Captain Audio, Pinkston is more than a new beginning tacked onto a…
Chappaquiddick Skyline Chappaquiddick Skyline (Sub Pop Records) Not enough people heard the Pernice Brothers’ here’s-where-the-strings-come-in debut, 1998’s Overcome by Happiness, a record full of big melodies and tiny sentiments. And you can bet that in a year, the same will apply to Chappaquiddick Skyline, because both records never fly high…
Last March, the Dallas Observer published a list of rules (“The rules of rock,” March 17, 1999), a guide that specified more than 100 things local musicians should and shouldn’t do. Among them were tips such as “Getting a tattoo is like sewing platform shoes to your feet,” and “Don’t…
Making a list of the worst records of the 1990s takes just as much effort as compiling a concise countdown of the best records of this past decade, maybe more. Sometimes, a few slip through the cracks, such as on Jim DeRogatis’ run-down of the most influential discs of the…
As with most things concerning indie labels, especially local ones, it’s best not to believe something until you see it. There are always more trip wires to navigate when you don’t have a major label’s deep pockets to rely on. And that’s what’s happened to the latest releases from Dave…
You’ll no doubt notice that many of the best-of lists that appear on the following few pages repeat the same names over and over: The Flaming Lips, the Magnetic Fields, Wilco, Beck, Moby, and on and on. You’ll also probably catch on pretty quick that many of the aforementioned lists…
Rakim The Master (Universal Records) When Rakim hit the scene in 1987 with Paid in Full, he was Michael, Jermaine, Marlon, and Jackie; Eric B., the DJ he nominated for president in the late ’80s, was Tito. Back then, Rakim “held the microphone like a grudge,” but he never stood…
In these pages last year, Robert Wilonsky wrote, “I can’t remember a year when so many local bands released so many albums that I’ll play well into next year and beyond.” And, at the time, I agreed with him wholeheartedly. Looking at the 20 albums we had singled out, it…
Russell Hobbs laughs a little when he’s told about a mural he allegedly painted a decade ago on the side of what is now the Curtain Club on Commerce Street. Yes, he remembers the mural, the one that simply had two words painted on it: “style,” with an arrow pointing…
Pleasant Grove Pleasant Grove (Last Beat Records) Pleasant Grove’s long-time-coming debut is seven songs strong, but it could be pared down to just one — the haunting “Nothing This Beautiful” — and remain one of the most compelling records of this year. Rarely does a song so long (a shade…
Everything involving Pleasant Grove seems to take a long time. Take the band’s songs, sweet and sour tunes that shuffle quietly along their way, burning so slowly that they appear to be standing still. “Nothing This Beautiful,” one of the tracks on the group’s self-titled debut, discreetly unravels over the…
Earl Harvin Trio makes one of its infrequent appearances on December 22, with a performance at the Gypsy Tea Room along with Hairy Apes BMX. Expect the group’s shows to become even rarer next year, since Harvin will be on the road with The The. Harvin — who’s toured with…
We’re still a couple of weeks away from the final onslaught of best-of lists, but we’ll go on record right now as saying that Cary Pierce has to be the best sport around, whether you’re talking about this year or any other. Last Thursday at Trees, following a set by…
Jeff Swaney has been doing business in Deep Ellum for a long time, since the area was little more than abandoned warehouses and starving artists. Swaney and his then-partner Steve Clohessy began hosting parties in the old Clearview Blind building on Elm Street in the mid-1980s, eventually turning it into…
Metallica S & M (Elektra Records) If Load and Re-Load and an album full of Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Thin Lizzy covers (last year’s Garage Inc.) didn’t succeed in putting Metallica over as just another Rock Band, then this surely will. No matter how the group cares to spin…
The Mag Seven Eighth Round Knockout (333 Industries) 12Lb. Test Harm’s Way (Self-released) It’s hard to escape your past, even harder if you’re a musician. There are very few fresh starts, if only because there are old albums to refer to, hazy memories of live performances. New projects are defined…
Even when we don’t mean to, we can’t help causing trouble; guess it’s just in our nature. For example, last week’s Street Beat featured an item on Crash Vinyl and its new CD, Precious Platinum. It was a fairly innocuous story that mentioned the two girls who dance onstage during…
For a while, it looked as though the death of the Dark Room — the Green Room’s performance space — would mean the death of The Enablers. After all, the band had been more of a fixture there than the stage, playing every Wednesday for three years. They liked it…
Cary Pierce You Are Here (Aware Records) Cary Pierce is the eternal straight man, taking himself so seriously that his every word and gesture are too good to ignore. You Are Here is an early Christmas present, wrapped in lyrics so unabashedly earnest they make James Taylor sound like John…
Dr. Dre Chronic 2001 (Aftermath/Interscope Records) Dr. Dre is still the best hip-hop producer this side of The RZA or Prince Paul and Dan The Automator; he’s among the handful who could almost be called a composer because of his preference for live instrumentation over tried-and-tired Parliament-Funkadelic swipes. And Chronic…
Occasionally when Crash Vinyl performs, the band is joined onstage by a pair of young women in bright-colored wigs and tight leather hot pants. The girls writhe around at the front of the stage, much to the delight of the audience — well, most of it, anyway. They are the…
Pleasant Grove and Pinkston will hold a listening party for their respective debut discs on December 8 at The Dark Room. No official release date has been set for either record, but they should both be available (on Last Beat Records) sometime before the end of the month. In other…
