thursday may 20 Only the Mafia can fix contests better than the organizers of the Lilith Fair. In fact, we already know the winner of the Lilith Fair talent search to be held at Trees on Thursday: She’s white, vaguely pretty in a hippie-chick way, and performs many of her…
The return of Jesus Christ would have trouble living up to the advance billing of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. (“I mean, it’s OK, but why isn’t he turning water into wine like he used to? And where’s Peter? He was, like, my favorite disciple.”) That’s not an…
The directions lead to a nondescript office building off Central Expressway, just south of Meadow Road–a five-story tan-brick box that saps the life out of you just looking at it. There is no sign on the outside, just an address in large white numbers on the facade, the sole identifying…
thursday may 13 When the USA Film Festival’s officials elected to cut off the Dallas Observer staff–or “naysayers,” as The Dallas Morning News likes to refer to some of us–from covering the fest’s recent rehash of the Dallas Video Festival (“Buzz,” April 8, and just about every issue since then),…
Nothing much has changed for Steven Visneau and Christy Darlington since they began playing together four years ago–first as Mess, then as Darlington, and now, perhaps finally, as The Darlingtons. Well, that’s not exactly correct, it just seems that nothing has changed. Actually, everything has changed, so much so that…
thursday may 6 Does anyone care about Naomi Judd anymore? No, and no one should, because she is still such a stage mother after all these years, popping up intermittently to swipe some of her more successful daughters’ spotlight. Look, Naomi, you used to be a star too, singing with…
While many people are still waiting in line for tickets to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, I’ll already be watching it, courtesy of the $300 ticket I bought about a week ago for a special advance screening on May 17, two days before the film officially hits theaters. All…
Head below water Nanci Darvish Hi-Fi Drowning Luminous Records Guilt by association doesn’t always apply to record producers, mainly because they remain anonymous to everyone but the fetishists who pore over the liner notes and memorize every last detail, from the name of the assistant engineer to all of the…
The song–or whatever it is–doesn’t really begin or end so much as it’s there and then it isn’t, a melody rescued from an aimless groove with little more than raised eyebrows and subtle nods, almost imperceptible cues. A skittish drum beat, marking time and abandoning it, is joined by a…
thursday april 29 A month or so ago, Night & Day placed a moratorium on coverage of local improvisational comedy troupes. It’s not that we don’t like some of them or that we’re not fans of the idea in general. No, it’s just that every theater, comedy club, bar, and…
OK, So We’ll Never do this again. It seemed like a swell idea at first: Do away with the so-called “local music-industry insiders” (i.e., guys who work for Sam Paulos) who have traditionally selected the Dallas Observer Music Awards nominees, and simply let the voters fill in the blanks. That’s…
thursday april 22 A recent viewing of Disney’s Rocket Man–starring the seemingly chinless Harland Williams–brought a few questions to mind. First, was it worth the 10 to 20 IQ points we lost in the process of watching the entire dreadful thing? And second, why hasn’t Hollywood shipped Williams back to…
Nestled between the bar and the wall at the Cock & Bull on Gaston Avenue, an overstuffed shoulder bag leaning against his barstool, Jeff Whittington looks no different from any of the young professionals hoisting pints at the end of their workdays in other bars in the neighborhood. He stands…
thursday april 15 We have a simple method when it comes to handicapping horse races: Pick the horse with the funniest name and put all of your money on it. It’s not a foolproof method–we’ve won only once with it since we started going to Lone Star Park at Grand…
When Aaron Stauffer moved to Mendocino County in Northern California two years ago, he wasn’t so much giving up on music as much as he was giving in to his love for the ocean. Hollywood Records had recently dropped his band, Seaweed, after just one album, 1995’s Spanaway, and Stauffer…
thursday april 8 There are times when we can’t find the television remote control for days, and we know where to look. When Roy Hazelwood was an FBI agent, he could find violent criminals in less time, and he had no idea where to look, or what he was even…
The last thing former Jawbox singer-guitarist J. Robbins wanted to do after the group broke up in April 1997 was form another band that sounded exactly like Jawbox. He wanted to do something completely different, write songs in a different way. It wasn’t that Robbins was ashamed of anything he…
Rhett Miller sits on a couch in the Driskill Hotel’s mostly deserted, overdecorated ranch-styled lobby. A bright red baseball cap tugs awkwardly over his eyes; his lanky frame is engulfed by an even brighter lime-green button-up. He thrusts his head forward attentively as he speaks into the tape recorder of…
Imagine Matt Sharp, the Rentals’ frontman and former Weezer bassist, at a rave in Barcelona at 9 a.m. Or just imagine him at a rave in Barcelona. Or just at a rave. It’s hard to picture the same man who appeared on the cover of the Rentals’ 1995 album Return…
thursday april 1 Night & Day hasn’t quite grasped the concept of Art Bar, one-fourth of the four-bars-in-one concept that also includes Club Clearview, Blind Lemon, and Red. Essentially an art gallery inside a bar, Art Bar is definitely more one than the other. We’ve been there a handful of…
Never knew quite what to make of Kinky Friedman, but that’s never been the point, has it? That would take a bit of the fun out of Kinky’s self-created, but not undeserved, legend. Besides, he likes it that way–loves it, really–being the eccentric joker laughing behind his ever-present shades, black…
thursday march 25 It’s a stretch to call stock-car racing–or any type of car racing, for that matter–a sport. If sitting on your butt for hours at a time is a sport, then we should have racked up millions of dollars in prize money in the past year or so…
