Latin ska bands suck. Actually, all modern ska bands suck, period, and they suck in Spanish, English and Croatian. Early Fabulosos Cadillacs and a few other post-Specials by-products notwithstanding, the “refreshing” ska movement is as imaginative as the best of the middle-class, white, one-hit-wonder rasta bands that tend to disappear…
On their debut, an embracing of rural Southern stereotypes called Watermelon, Chicken and Gritz, these self-professed down-to-earth “Country Boyz” rap about “Blowin’ Trees” and “Kentucky Mud.” The members of Nappy Roots are, as they aver more than once, “knee deep, head over heels in this country shit.” Except not really…
Joe Cripps sits on the porch of his house near Argyle, a sweaty glass of Maker’s Mark at his feet, a pile of dusty 45s by his side. It’s early evening in early May and the sun is setting on the home he shares with his girlfriend Ashley, their dogs…
The old man onstage at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios–the guy with the face like a weathered catcher’s mitt who is sitting in a wheelchair in his satin coach’s jacket and gimme cap, fretting his baby-blue Gretsch with a butter knife clutched in his polio-stricken right hand–is probably the only person…
In the past, the Get Up Kids’ best defense against the emo tag was its live show. Onstage, the band keeps naysayers at a safe distance–its guitar riffs blast with an intensity that has never translated to disc. Even if an ear-plugged bully came close enough to smack a “Kick…
Will Goo Goo Doll Johnny Rzeznik ever be satisfied? Not with his personal life–there’s a trail of Goo songs about dashed hopes long enough to suggest that Rzeznik’s stream of pent-up disappointment will never run dry–but with the lucidity of his sleek pop-rock, which since the Dolls’ 1995 breakthrough disc,…
Lots going on this week for fans of denatured guitar rock. First up, headlining the Ridglea Theater on Friday night, is Trans Am, three zany Washington, D.C., gearheads who’ve spent six albums figuring out how to best emasculate that form. They used to do it by laughing with it: The…
Long-haired rock weirdos won’t be the only ones hitting Dallas en masse this week; expect a number of short-haired hip-hop weirdos, too. Rubber Gloves is the place, and though the festivities will be spread over two nights, comprising stops on two separate package tours, the MCs and DJs (and lone…
Shannon Wright’s as much an actress as a singer, a director as much as a musician, with exquisitely crafted songs suffused with such drama and intensity that they’re best described as chamber theater. There’s an eerie expressionistic quality about her music, from the trembling tympani and haunting sustains of the…
Given the contrarian nature of the underground, it was inevitable that naïve indie rockers who described their music interests as “anything but country” end up drawn to their genre blind spot. Distancing themselves from Nashville, they’ve affixed an alt- prefix to these rootsy forays, but it’s a meaningless misnomer that…
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (better known to most as Arts Magnet High School) will host a 25th birthday party for itself May 26 at Gypsy Tea Room. It’s the curtain-closing event of a Memorial Day weekend that will reunite every Booker T. Washington…
If you don’t believe that underground hip-hop is enjoying a serious renaissance right now, just listen to El-P’s brilliant solo debut, Fantastic Damage. Maybe “enjoying” is the wrong word: The oh-so-appropriately-titled album doesn’t sound like it’s enjoying much of anything, save for the ruin of listener-friendly mainstream rap. But that…
We regard the Breeders as perhaps you regard your no-account, jail-prone Uncle Bob–if he shows up for Thanksgiving dinner at all, you’re happy and relieved. Even if he’s wearing his pants inside out and drooling all over the table. Yeah, savor that image. Title TK certainly embodies it. As the…
Steven Collins found what he was looking for at an abandoned Mexican porn theater an hour or so outside Los Angeles, 60 miles south on the seedy side of sleepy Oxnard. Or he thought he would, anyway. That was the plan. Where he ended up was just as strange a…
The logistics are enough to discourage any band from moving to New York City. Think about it: find an absurdly expensive and tiny rehearsal space in some borough outpost. (Never mind Manhattan. These days East Village bands are about as common as dodo birds). For load-ins, schlep your guitars and…
How does one embark on a career as a rock troubadour? Perhaps it’s by following the backwoods roads from one nowhere burg to another, crossing the fields like an itinerant ballplayer and tossing off heartfelt songs like Johnny Appleseed until they finally take root with the strangers along the way…
If there’s one thing the world most definitely does not need right now, it’s another watery mix CD from some overhyped trance DJ–you know, the ones with the tastefully modernist cover art (invariably featuring a handsome European staring meaningfully into space) and the interminable synth build-ups that eventually crest in…
Dallas got a big helping of plastic pop last week, when No Doubt and the Faint brought their retrofitted robot rock to the Bronco Bowl, but those new wavers looking for a safer night out–hey, the Faint’s first video just got banned by MTV, and Gwen Stefani’s tank tops keep…
Less than a year ago the smart money would’ve been on Alanis Morissette and Bryan Adams, two Canadians totally convinced of overblown, overproduced pop-rock’s persistent relevance. Surely no one would’ve expected The Ironic One to be joined by Ryan Adams, a young American singer with an airtight reputation for astoundingly…
Remy Shand’s debut album, The Way I Feel, couldn’t feel, sound, even smell more Motown if it had emerged from Marvin Gaye’s basement or the lips of Stevie Wonder. While Motown is, in fact, the label that released The Way I Feel back in March, the album did not originate…
Sort-of-local chanteuse Norah Jones has been getting flak lately for the smoothness of her Come Away With Me, the seamlessness with which she synthesizes the blues, pop, folk and jazz stuff she hears in her head. It’s an argument that’s as understandable as it is frustrating: Come Away With Me…
Ghetto Fame-Us has a new record in the can, And Then There Was Us!, a long-gestating sequel to 1999’s Add On! (We’re generally not fans of exclamation points in album titles, but Ghetto Fame-Us has had to work so hard just to get these things out, slack must be cut.)…
