Jessica Nelson didn’t need a new car. Her Deep Ellum loft was a short walk from her job as studio manager at Broadcast.com, so she didn’t need a car at all, really. Walking from her parking space would have taken longer than the trip from her front door. But she…
It’s not the band. They are little more than a bar band with a Texas accent. An extremely skilled one, mind you, but yeah, there it is. It’s not the melodies. There are only so many things you can do within rock ‘n’ roll’s guitar-drums-bass setup, and they’ve all been…
The power has been off for five minutes, maybe more. It feels like it’s been off forever, like it’s never coming back. At least not during this show. The amps sit useless at the back of the stage, little more than furniture. The crowd is getting restless. So is the…
It takes a real lifer to belly up to the bar at just past 9 on a foggy Wednesday morning, the kind of professional alcoholic who considers bourbon the breakfast of champions, a drinker who needs to head off his hangover at the pass. Brent Lewis certainly doesn’t fit the…
The people who live here call it their “pier-and-beam house.” They’ve lost a lot–all of their security, most of their sobriety, some of their sanity–but they still have a sense of humor. Or irony, at least. The “house” is the underbelly of a bridge on Northwest Highway, a slab of…
Even though the Polyphonic Spree’s album was released in 2003, it was also released in 2002. And 2001. So we’re disqualifying it. Here are the ones that do count. Centro-matic, Love You Just the Same (Misra) Will Johnson and company return after a lengthy (for them) two-year break with another…
A year ago, Eisley was still MossEisley, and the band was still on the verge of something instead of in the thick of it. But you could hear it coming, see it on the way. You wouldn’t have predicted the deal with Warner Bros. necessarily or the tours with Coldplay,…
During the Mavericks’ December 4 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Steve Nash became the latest victim to be taken down by one of Karl Malone’s infamous “inadvertent” elbows. Here’s the play: Early in the third quarter, Nash takes it to the hole, misses. Malone rebounds, and Nash swats at…
The whole point of rock and roll, as Placebo front man Brian Molko sees it, is never growing up. That’s what everyone who straps on a guitar or picks up a microphone is after. It’s certainly not a new theory. Pete Townshend even wrote a song about it. Actually, Pete…
For one thing, since I’m not actually leaving the Dallas Observer, just changing jobs, I didn’t really wanna do this. Writing a goodbye column, to me, feels like storming out of the room after a fight only to realize you left your keys inside and have to slink back in…
Many bands coveted Deftones’ support slot on this year’s Summer Sanitarium Tour, opening for Metallica, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. If singer Chino Moreno had his way, one of those other groups would have taken it. Deftones hesitantly took their spot on the bill, only after a 3-to-2 vote that…
The five young men in the band had to deal with more bullshit than a cattle drive, but they never seemed to mind. All they cared about was the music, so if everyone wanted to talk about their clothes or their lifestyle, screw ’em, whatever. Let them have their fun…
When a label signs one Dallas-area band, you can almost count on said label signing another one. It may take a few months, maybe a year, but it will happen. Oh, it will happen. For example: Wind-up: The House That Creed Built kicked off its love affair with Dallas by…
It was one of my best stories at parties and such, a great icebreaker, sure to get a laugh. It was May 5, 2000, and I’d just seen Elliott Smith perform at Trees. He was touring behind his fifth and latest album, that year’s Figure 8, and the show couldn’t…
Here’s something to think about: Mayor Laura Miller has become the city’s mother. Or she’d like to be, at any rate. Sure, so far, her attempts to impose a 2 a.m. curfew on all clubs has met with plenty of resistance from club owners and their customers, not to mention…
If I didn’t know any better–and I don’t, actually–I’d swear Jim James is higher than Rush Limbaugh on an OxyContin binge right now. More than likely the singer-guitarist for My Morning Jacket is not, but the conversation we’ve been having is enough probable cause for a search warrant. That is,…
This is what ESPN.com Page 2 columnist Bill Simmons wrote about Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles skirmish: “This is the game where all those pseudo-Cowboys fans–and you know who you are–come out of the woodwork and start supporting the team again. Most Cowboys fans are like those missing fathers of NBA…
Over the years, we’ve wondered why some of the bigger rock shows don’t come to Dallas but do, on occasion, schedule a stop in Houston. Or near Houston, we should say, since the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion is in The Woodlands, a suburb about half an hour or so outside…
Back in the day, and we’re talking about maybe five or six years ago, the Good/Bad Art Collective could be counted on for at least one genius music moment every few months. Centro-matic’s Will Johnson performing in a bunny suit on a swing. Chomsky playing in a box. E.F.F. doing…
It’s a simple philosophy, one that Kenna Zemedkun offers up with little prompting. “It doesn’t matter what size the stage is. I give everything I’ve got. At the end of the day, you’ll either get it or you won’t. And the people that don’t get it, they weren’t supposed to…
As much as we would like it to be, the North Texas New Music Festival will never be South by Southwest. But that’s OK, because its lower profile allows attendees to focus on what’s really important: the bands. Not free drinks or rumored special guests or industry shop talk or…
Never got to see Johnny Cash, and now I never will. I had a chance in 1996. I was living in Austin at the time, a couple of months shy of graduating from college, a couple of years from figuring out what to do after that. Never had any money…
