thursday november 26 There’s something mildly disconcerting about eating in a strip club. Actually, eating in a strip club would only be less comfortable if you were dining on a sandwich made of glass and sandpaper. A few months ago, a colleague invited us to lunch at The Lodge, one…
Brother Russell Miles is 32 years old, and the only thing he does, day after day, is make prank phone calls. He has done this for years, since he was a child growing up in the suburbs of Dallas, making amateur comedy tapes with his older brother. The pair would…
Hat’s off Never Look Back Brian Houser HEIRESS-aesthetic Music-scene regulars were whispering about Never Look Back, Brian Houser’s debut, long before the album was even finished. Houser, a regular at Adair’s when he’s not fixing Six Flags roller coasters, was the future of country music, they said, even though he…
thursday november 19 During his 25-year career with the FBI, John Douglas exhibited an uncanny ability to get inside a criminal’s mind. Based on a minimum amount of evidence, he could tell you almost everything you needed to know about the perpetrator: his age, height, weight, where he lived, his…
The members of Chomsky believe the band didn’t really exist until six months ago; of course, many people didn’t know it existed at all. To most, Chomsky has always been just another name in the crowded club listings, another band stuck with an early slot at Trees on a Friday…
DJ EZ Eddie D is late. It’s three minutes after 5 p.m., three minutes after his weekly radio show on KNON-FM (89.3) should have started, and he isn’t here. If Eddie D were the host of any other radio show, his tardiness wouldn’t be such a big deal. But Eddie…
thursday november 12 Sometimes, the most basic images are the most striking. For example, about three years ago video director Spike Jonze–known for his work with the Beastie Boys and Weezer–created one of the most interesting music videos in recent years with a clip that consisted of little more than…
Breaking up, it seems, was the most successful thing Sunny Day Real Estate ever did. Four years ago, it could not have played a place like Seattle’s Moore Theatre; the band never even would have attempted it. The venue, with its 1,700-plus capacity, was much too big for the group,…
thursday november 5 Every five years, Dallas endures another landmark anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, once again dredging up our city’s sullied past as “The City of Hate.” All copies of Oliver Stone’s controversial 1991 film JFK disappear from local video stores. Magazines rehash the facts. Conspiracy theorists crawl out…
You really got me…depressed Poor Me Fury III Self-released Stephen Nutt’s sense of humor is black enough to get lost in the dark. To him, life is a joke; death, the punch line. The Fury III singer-guitarist is almost laughably obsessed with failure and disappointment of all kinds, resulting in…
thursday october 29 There hasn’t been much progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Public awareness and understanding of the disease have improved in the last decade or so, and scientists have discovered drug combinations that temporarily stave off HIV and AIDS, but no one has yet found a…
thursday october 22 The metroplex has always been a step behind Austin when it comes to attracting the entertainment community. Austin may have a bit of an unfair advantage, housing the offices of the Texas Film Commission and hosting South By Southwest, the annual music and film festival that only…
Two years ago, Blake Schwarzenbach wasn’t being interviewed by writers. He was one, paying the bills by contributing reviews to PC gaming magazines such as GameSpot and writing for a couple of travel guides. After six years as the frontman for Jawbreaker–six years of constant touring and incessant bickering–he had…
Hair today, gone yesterday Buried Alive Chet Arthur Presidential Records It’s not hard to imagine the members of Chet Arthur watching This is Spinal Tap and not getting a single joke, so blissfully unaware are they of rock-and-roll cliches. I mean, any band that writes “You can be my rock…
thursday october 15 Actor Stanley Tucci, star and co-writer of last year’s sparkling Big Night, appeared on a recent episode of The Charlie Rose Show to discuss the state of the independent film industry. When he could get a word in edgewise–obviously, Rose is an expert on everything–Tucci said that…
For many bands, signing a major-label deal is like trying to date two girls at once: It hardly ever works, people hate you for doing it, and although the pitfalls are well-documented, it’s tempting enough to try anyway. When a Dallas band signs to a major label, it’s even more…
thursday october 1 No matter whether they’d admit it, many people have a secret jones for bad art, that is, paintings of dogs playing poker or portraits of Elvis Presley rendered on velvet or anything else you could find at a flea market or in the confines of a double-wide…
Get in the Van Blarcum The Shopping Sessions Pump’n Ethyl Thrift Towne Records On Thank God I’m Livin’ in the U.S.A.!, Pump’n Ethyl’s 1996 debut, singer Turner Van Blarcum lined up the whole world against the wall and mowed ’em down one by one with three-minute blasts of chainsaw guitar…
Yesterday, Mitch Greer and Michael Cullen–guitarists in Go Metric USA–sat in Cullen’s Denton apartment and talked about wanting to save Dallas from bad rock-and-roll bands. Yesterday, they were laid-back, quiet, like members of any other young band not used to talking about their music. But today–today, that’s a whole different…
thursday september 24 You may remember author Patricia Anthony peeking out from behind one of her books on our cover a few months ago (“Science Friction,” June 11). A former member of the classified sales staff at The Dallas Morning News, the 51-year-old Anthony is in the midst of a…
thursday september 17 You may not know who artist Cabe Booth is, but if you’ve been to Deep Ellum more than a few times, you’ve probably seen his work. A few of his murals adorn the walls of the Good-Latimer Tunnel, and his black and white portraits of local bands…
Ten years ago, an interview with one of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Reid brothers, Jim and William, would have been a train wreck–especially if the interview took place at 10 a.m. At that hour, the boys would be either shaking off a hangover or starting on a new one;…
