Backed by industry vet Terry McGill’s Dallas-based Major Money Entertainment, Psy2ko and Mic L. Moodswing–the self-styled “2002 version of Pac and B.I.G.”–are the latest locals to attempt a quadruple bypass of major-label heartaches, hustling to make a name for themselves (and Dallas hip-hop) with their own ink. It’s a point…
When we were at South by Southwest a couple of weeks ago, we ran into a few people who told us they’d had trouble getting electronic acts booked into the Dallas-Fort Worth area. While that may be true for some, as far as we can tell, there doesn’t seem to…
It’s getting harder and harder to tell the good Neil Young records from the bad ones; they’re all blending into the same backfiring buzz, differentiated only by the guitar he chooses to pick up and/or plug in. At this late date, all of it sounds like Rust Never Sleeps or…
How do you tell a diva from a D-cup? Less succinctly, what separates our buxom, banal American pop stars from the rest of the world’s icy femme fatales? Here we get Britney Spears thinking Pat Benatar sang “I Love Rock and Roll” and barfing up a bloodless cover to prove…
Took awhile to get around to this, and now I remember why: I liked this better when it was called Flickerstick’s Welcoming Home the Astronauts. Actually, take that back–I didn’t. Starting now, a five-year moratorium on bands listening to Radiohead’s The Bends and/or OK Computer. It’s doing more harm than…
The glass flew everywhere as the bystanders’ jaws dropped to the floor. It was vandalism, nihilism, primal punk rage and, most important, absolute desecration. Imagine: to smash Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar out of its display case at the new Hard Rock Café in Austin to try a quick plug ‘n’…
As is true with many of the new breed of male singer-songwriters currently populating the same cultural blip, there’s plenty on paper to immediately dislike about Atlanta-based musician John Mayer: his goody-goody sincerity, his polished presentation, his loosely handsome good looks. Much like his labelmate Pete Yorn, he reminds you…
The Faux Pas of Nelly Furtado: 1. Venturing into many musical genres yet mastering none, therefore fetishizing them. (Because of this, her weak hip-hop moves, normally an excusable offense, mark her as not just a lightweight, but also as a jerk.) 2. Showing boundless self-love and passing it off as…
Fugazi became something else besides a band long ago, and its appearances have since become more than a show. The most memorable scene in Jem Cohen’s documentary about the group, Instrument, isn’t from concert footage, but composed of interviews from a Georgia concert crowd. These are awkward and oddly touching,…
Ah, the Beta Band. Perhaps no other band making records right now so closely resembles the Bad News Bears as this perennially goofy Scottish quartet: On tour last summer with Radiohead playing arenas and outdoor amphitheaters the group would amble onstage before it even got dark, dressed as shamans or…
A lot of rock writers got excited about the Chicago band Local H’s 1998 album Pack Up the Cats, a concept piece about a small-town rocker’s bid for big-time success, because it convincingly resuscitated the obviously flagging mode of music originally popularized by workhorse Midwestern outfits like Styx and REO…
Cranky singer-songwriter James McMurtry once dismissed Pleasant Grove, his opening act, from the Sons of Hermann Hall stage, calling the band’s music “Seattle alt-country bullshit.” He claimed if you wanted the real deal, you’d be best served checking out Deadman instead. Huh. While it’s a good idea–we’d even say it’s…
We may never get back the true Mystikal, the real Mystikal, the Mystikal who put his skills on the table first, then looked around for some well-deserved ass. That was the Mystikal of “Y’all Ain’t Ready Yet,” and indeed we weren’t. When the New Orleans rapper dropped that single in…
Dan Bryk, a frumpy Canuck who refuses to give his age but looks to be in his 20s, sits on an outdoor patio behind his Yamaha keybs and sings his ass off, which isn’t such an easy task–the dude’s heavy, literally. It’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday in Austin, and…
Music fans disappointed by a lusterless display of the unbridled genre-mashing they’d assumed implicit in the 21st century–those listeners possessed of an appetite not sated by Pink’s new one, that is–might do well to drop into the Ridglea Theater on Friday night for a glimpse at two outfits actually making…
We’d been in Austin maybe an hour, been at the convention center for less than half that time, when we were approached by two young girls, out of their teens by a few seconds, if that. They looked like just another pair of volunteers, two more of the dozens of…
Forget all that modern-day high-tech jive about the Internet, file-swapping, sampling and digital downloads for a minute. When all is said and done, there is nothing new under the sun, and what sells in rock and roll is the same old threesome: sex, swear words and shock value. Custom, an…
Much mediocre music is the product of dilettantes feigning artistry in order to get laid. This may be truer of bad folk music or indie rock than sorry specimens of other genres, as both subcultures eschew commercialism. So it’s almost a revelation to find a truly unassuming and creative soul…
No one’s really surprised anymore when a pensive singer-songwriter in a button-up shirt (or maybe a lovable old ringer tee) shows up on MTV or in the weekend pages of USA Today, wearing a terribly earnest look on his face and strumming his battered acoustic as though his 401(k) depended…
Ben Kweller stares at the row of posters taped along a wall inside Fort Worth’s Ridglea Theater, six or seven of the same make and model: an oversized reproduction of the cover of his new album, Sha Sha, a close-up of his face with a red toothbrush jammed in his…
The problem was, Josh Rouse was from Nashville. Well, he wasn’t from there, but that’s where he lived then, and where he lives now. And he sang and played guitar, sometimes an acoustic, wrote his own songs, wasn’t in a band. It all added up to a paint-by-numbers portrait that…
If nothing else, the English band Clinic deserves a seat on that upcoming commercial flight into space (you know, the one Lance Bass got denied) for sounding pretty much nothing like Radiohead. No offense to Coldplay and Elbow and South (and Starsailor and Lowgold), but the wide-screen hand-wringing the U.K.’s…
