It’s all been tried and retried and tried all over again. The guitar-bass-drums format has been explored so often, Mapsco sells directions. If it doesn’t have Sonic Youth’s fingerprints on it, it probably has someone else’s. So the worst mistake that Girls Against Boys could make was letting people believe…
thursday july 16 One of the most interesting things about the interior of Club Clearview is the collection of fingerpaintings the club has compiled. It’s interesting to see what grown musicians will do with a blank canvas, a set of paints, and their fingers. Clearview recently unveiled 50 new paintings,…
Clowns scare the hell out of us. We’re not sure when it started, because we can remember watching The Bozo Show growing up and not even flinching. It might have been after we read It, the Stephen King novel that introduced the psychotic clown Pennywise into our subconscious. Maybe it…
Peter Schmidt shouldn’t even be here now. Here is Matt Pence’s home studio in Denton, and now is December 1997, not so long after it appeared that Schmidt had finally given up on music for good. By now, Schmidt figured, the record he has been making for months–months that seemed…
Back when the National Wrestling Alliance first formed in 1948, wrestling was much more real than it is today. It wasn’t, you know, real, but it wasn’t as ridiculous as it is now. Modern-day wrestling is more like a soap opera for guys, complete with scripted fights, family feuds, ridiculous…
thursday july 9 Charlie Gilder has been around Deep Ellum long enough to remember when there was nothing there to remember. When he and his partner Steve Asbeck opened the Twilite Room on Commerce Street in 1983, the only residents of Deep Ellum were a few artists who hadn’t yet…
Today’s Specials Life Won’t Wait Rancid Epitaph Records With its fourth album, Rancid has hitched up its bondage pants and recorded a career-making album without changing all that much. It isn’t the double-album answer to London Calling that was promised, but it’s no Cut The Crap either–if anything, it feels…
thursday july 2 In the past few months, the Dallas area has hosted several fine photography exhibits spotlighting Mexico and its citizens. The Bath House Cultural Center’s latest pair of exhibits, El Trabajo De La Mujer and En La Casa, may be two of the best yet. Both exhibits look…
Is there room in a modern society for a comic hypnotist? As far as entertainment value goes, hypnotists are almost on the same scale as ventriloquists and plate spinners, or anyone else who regularly appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. The whole idea is so old, it smells like liniment…
One of the busiest recording studios in the area is in the middle of nowhere. Well, Argyle actually, which isn’t technically in the middle of nowhere, but you can probably see it from there. Argyle is little more than a city-limits sign between Lewisville and Denton, a glorified bend in…
Cowboys from hell REO Speedealer REO Speedealer Royalty Records There’s never been a question as to whether or not REO Speedealer rocks. Hell, man, that’s all they do. They’re the bastard sons of Lemmy and Jim Heath, abandoned at birth at Carl’s Corner with a stack of nudie mags and…
thursday june 25 The Liquid Lounge is poised to take over where the Dark Room left off, hosting rock shows in an intimate venue, shows that are a little quieter but much more special. Already the club has hosted two shows by Peter Schmidt’s Legendary Crystal Chandelier project. (If you…
One of my best memories about summer is the time my mother tried to make cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream. Since she had never branched out from chocolate or vanilla before, this was pretty exciting. (Give me a break, I was 10.) Anyway, she had no idea how to go…
If you haven’t heard of Beautamous Loaf International, a Dallas record label that specializes in dishwater-dirty trip-hop and ambient sound collages, you’re not alone. Beautamous Loaf seems less like an indie record label and more like an exercise in proving just how underground something can be without ceasing to exist…
thursday june 18 Tuna, Texas, may be a fictional city, but the characters who inhabit it are awful real. You can find them crowded around the back of a beat-up pickup truck in one of the countless one-stoplight towns that dot the back roads of Texas, or distributing “Free Richard…
Although four years have passed since I last played in the Hoop-It-Up tournament, my experience there has scarred me forever–literally. That doesn’t mean that the annual three-on-three street basketball tournament is dangerous, just that it’s rougher than the typical driveway game. At the tournament in 1994, my two teammates and…
One degree of separation everybody’s a pinata El Gato self-released There are a million ways to say a record is boring without really coming out and saying it; Spin has been doing just that for more than a decade. You can say it’s a good record to listen to while…
Prop and costume sales are usually just overpriced garage sales, a way for a theater company to clear out the basement and make some quick money. Most of the items would be practically worthless by themselves; anybody who has ever seen the green-foam-and-staples monstrosity that Eddie Murphy wore as Gumby…
Every city has a few musicians like Stephen Nutt–talented performers who, for whatever reason, never found an audience. They probably never will, yet they’ve stuck around forever anyway, working as temps and busboys so they can keep their rock-and-roll dreams alive. They never made a fall-back plan, because they didn’t…
thursday june 11 Stephen King once said, “I have seen the future of the horror genre, and his name is Clive Barker.” Barker hasn’t really lived up to King’s hyperbole, but the British author and director has built a rabid cult following based on his perverse, six-volume set of stories,…
thursday june 4 “Colorin Colorado” is an idiomatic expression in Spanish that is used at the end of children’s stories, but in the case of Colorin Colorado: The Art of Indian Children, it marks the beginning. The Art of Indian Children is an exhibition of colorful wall-sized murals created by…
Festivals such as the Texas Scottish Festival and Highland Games have always seemed like a Cliff’s Notes version of history. For the most part, heritage festivals are just an excuse to get dressed up in a silly costume and drink heavily. Many years of culture are crammed into a few…
