Hooked on a feeling So often, the best songs are the simplest songs. Anyone who doesn’t believe that should go out and buy any of the Ramones’ first three records and listen to that band turn three chords and a handful of words into pure perfection. Sometimes, all it takes…
After a quick scan of a list of the past lectures presented by the Eclectic Viewpoint, it’s hard to resist the temptation to denounce the organization as mere coattail riders, snake-oil salesmen preying on the neo-conspiracy theorists who spend their time prowling anti-government chat rooms and their money on X-Files…
Mary Lou Lord’s story almost sounds like the plot of a Dickens novel, or at least the bastardized Hollywood version of a Dickens novel: a scrappy, waif-like street musician plucked out of near-obscurity and–after dogged pursuit by countless labels–is signed to a major recording contract. At the very least, her…
In a city like Austin, the so-called “Live Music Capital of the World,” it’s easy for a band to get lost in the shuffle. There are scores of clubs, twice as many bands, and every week it seems as though a new band is the darling of the scene, touted…
An hour before Denton’s Grown-Ups are set to take the stage at Emo’s in Austin–the second show of their three-date reunion tour of Texas–an episode reminiscent of the “mods vs. rockers” scene from Quadrophenia breaks out. Two rival packs of kids square off, but instead of beating each other senseless,…
The flustered clerk stood there with slack-jawed confusion, as if someone had just asked him whether he could mow the linoleum in the store. “You mean, you’re supposed to play them all at the same time?” he asked, still not fully grasping the concept. Yes. That’s the idea behind the…
It was an odd, unexpected sight at the Christmas party thrown this year in Austin by Hamstein Publishing and Lone Wolf Management: the four members of Sixteen Deluxe–Austin’s great white (pop) hope–gushing about their brief encounter with ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill at the shindig. In an era dominated by unabated…
Too Far To Care, The Old 97’s (Elektra) UFOFU, UFOFU (Medicine) Redo The Stacks, Centro-matic (Steve) The Twelve-Point Masterplan, Bobgoblin (MCA) Barrel-Chested, Slobberbone (Doolittle) Hell Is Other People, Dynamite Boy (Off-Time) Golden Energy, the tomorrowpeople (Last Beat) Chromatose, Novachrome (self-released) Shimmer, Buck Jones (steve) The Impossibles, The Impossibles (Red 5)…
OK Computer, Radiohead (Capitol) Tone Soul Evolution, The Apples in Stereo (SpinART) Urban Hymns, The Verve (Hut/Virgin) The Wannadies, The Wannadies (RCA) Nimrod, Green Day (Reprise) Retreat From The Sun, That Dog (DGC) Revenge Is Sweet, And So Are You, Mr T Experience (Lookout!) Too Far To Care, The Old…
Don’t fence me in Lift to Experience Lift to Experience Random-Precision Records Smoothie Sandwich Lung Cookie Records One of the bastard children of music criticism is labels, the stifling shorthand used to sum up any hard-to-define band’s work in two or three words: sweater rock, alternative country, blues punk, etc…
It’s been looking a lot like Christmas here in the office since about July, when the first “seasonal” albums began arriving, presaging a time when the people of the world–or at least those who aren’t Muslims, Jews, Jains, Bahais, animists, cargo cultists, Druids, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or born-again pagans–celebrate the…
Just like heaven The Cure has always been a band that was synonymous with the term “cult following.” It didn’t so much have fans as it had disciples: legions of pale-skinned, spidery-haired Robert Smith clones pretending that every day was Halloween. They didn’t just listen to the albums, they believed…
Local band hell It’s been nearly four years since the Toadies released their major-label debut, Rubberneck, and in that time the band and its label have done little to capitalize on the huge success of “Possum Kingdom,” a song so unstoppable it still receives almost hourly radio play. Although we’ve…
No sparkle, just fade With release dates separated by only a few weeks–and similar musical growth–it’s fair to compare Nimrod and So Much for the Afterglow, the latest efforts from Green Day and Everclear, respectively. On Nimrod, Green Day was able to almost seamlessly integrate new instrumentation–horns, strings, acoustic guitars–as…
When John Lennon or Noel Gallagher proclaimed to the world–tongue-in-cheek, hopefully–that their respective bands were bigger than Jesus, it could be laughed off as harmless boasting from a pair of musicians drunk on their own success (and more than a few pints of lager, in the case of Oasis’ Gallagher…
thursday november 6 Wilco, Blue Mountain: We know you’re a regular at Sons of Hermann Hall, cried when Naomi’s closed, and read No Depression on a regular basis. So we don’t have to tell you how great Wilco is. You were alternative country when alternative country wasn’t cool. You know…
Where you going? Where You Been, the 1993 album from noise-rock pioneers Dinosaur Jr, held the promise of great things to come. “Start Choppin,” “On The Way,” and “Get Me” combined the band’s trademark fuzzed-out guitar skronk with tight arrangements and solid songwriting. Singer-guitarist J Mascis still wielded distortion as…
Billie Joe Armstrong could be forgiven a bit of ego. After all, his band, Green Day, sold more than 9 million copies of its major-label debut, 1994’s Dookie, and almost singlehandedly brought punk rock back above ground. In fact, Spin magazine crowned him “The King of Punk” a few years…
thursday september 25 Jane Siberry: If you missed last week’s music feature on Canadian singer-songwriter-producer-instrumentalist Jane Siberry, here’s one last plug to get you out to see this wondrous musician tonight. She’s only played in the North Texas area once before–10 years ago at Lizard Lounge, when it was called…
The last two years in the life of British pop combo Blur closely resemble the plot of an awful movie starring country singer George Strait. Pure Country was foisted upon an unsuspecting American public in 1992, and it was notable solely because it marked the “acting” debut of Strait. In…
Foo for thought If it’s true that the best songwriters have to experience some amount of emotional pain to become great, then the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl may rank as one of the greatest songwriters living today. Pain has played an all too important role in his life in the…
The President of the United States of Love When the Beatles said, “All you need is love,” they obviously hadn’t seen the dark side of that emotion–the side that can plant you on your couch in a bathrobe for weeks at a time, wondering what went wrong. The side that…
