The Distillers In 1998, a 19-year-old girl named Brody came to the United States from Melbourne, Australia, and settled in Detroit. Back home, she had played in a punk band called Sourpuss, so she wasted no time in getting together a new group and dubbing it The Distillers. Brody’s new…
Warped Tour 2000 I remember as a little boy, sitting around the fire in my ancestors’ ancestral home, hearing of the mysterious and mystical thing known as the “Warped Tour.” The elders would speak of it only in hushed tones, late at night, and with the house poorly lit. Once,…
Tattoo the Earth Tour When the Tattoo the Earth Tour invades Fair Park this week, 20 of the hardest bands in the land will be on hand, wearing a lot of black clothing (if anything), cursing blue streaks, screaming until they’re hoarse, and ensuring considerable panic and chaos. (In the…
Scene, heard The New Year will perform its first two Texas shows on August 25 at the Gypsy Tea Room and August 26 at Austin’s Mercury. The band–featuring Bedhead’s Matt and Bubba Kadane, Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine), Mike Donofrio (Saturnine), and Legendary Crystal Chandelier’s Peter Schmidt–recently finished recording in Chicago…
The Staggers The Sights, The Sounds, The Fear and The Pain (Haunted Town Records) Remember Riot Squad? Anyone who spent much time at the now-defunct Orbit Room probably does, since they played countless all-ages afternoon gigs there, along with tons of similar shows at the Galaxy Club. Riot Squad was…
The Causey Way For Causey, front man for this semi-eponymously named Florida quintet, getting guitar lessons from David Koresh was like the Flying Nun learning landing maneuvers from Christ himself. Causey once followed Koresh, believing in the same things (primarily that women should do the cooking and cleaning, men the…
Deftones First things first: White Pony, the just-released third album by Sacramento new-metal act the Deftones, does not belong on the shelf next to stuff by Radiohead or Fugazi, despite what Maverick Records or a few overzealous critics may have told you. It’s simply too unrealized and showy and self-consciously…
Duran Duran A few months ago, I–as I’ve done for the past few years–attended the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, spending almost a week as a visitor in a city I once called home. The place that I left doesn’t much resemble the place I returned to in…
Steely Dan no longer exists. Forget about the name, despite what you read in this paper’s music listings; since when did “in print” mean “the truth” anyway? Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are sick to death of the name–ah, if only they had gone with one of their original choices,…
For years, rumors swirled that Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon was intended to serve as a sort-of alternate soundtrack to The Wizard of the Oz. A number of songs fit certain scenes a little too perfectly for some viewers. Though the idea had made the…
When The BellRays’ Let It Blast blares over the speakers in a local hole-in-the-wall record store, the eyes of bored hipsters in the aisles suddenly come aglow. A few whisper urgently to the nearest clerk, “What is that?” The music is unnerving, unreal after years of digitally enhanced sounds–a time-warp…
Scene, heard While we’re straightening out things, in last week’s Street Beat (“Run, don’t walk,” July 20), while writing about Flickerstick’s inclusion on a new VH1 series, Bands on the Run, we forgot to mention one of the band’s members, Rex Ewing. If you remember, Ewing also did time in…
Heroes & Villains: Music Inspired by The Powerpuff Girls Various Artists (Rhino Records) Thanks to Craig McCracken, creator of The Powerpuff Girls, and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and Bob Casale, Heroes & Villains is less a soundtrack than another episode of The Cartoon Network’s hit series. The disc begins with the…
It’s rare when the opening band of a three-band bill draws the biggest crowd. Of course, usually the opener isn’t the new group from two (Tim DeLaughter and Mark Pirro) of the founding members of Tripping Daisy. Well, three, as it turned out, since Bryan Wakeland was back manning the…
A day that will live in infamy? Nah It wasn’t planned that way–not, at least, as far as we can tell–but on July 29, pretty much the entire spectrum of Dallas-Denton-Fort Worth bands will be on display in some form. Obviously, it’s not all of the groups in the D-D-FW…
I can see Clearview now Occasionally, when we pat someone on the back, we hit a little harder (and maybe closer to home) than we intend. For example, when we gave Uzigato drummer Joey Salerno credit for the improving slate of touring acts stopping by Club Clearview (the recent Murder…
Opening bands grumbled because the drummer’s kit had to be set up hours before his group’s set, and whoever was in charge of doing it complained too, because it had to be perfect. Every night, every tour; no exceptions, no excuses. And since perfection is difficult to achieve in the…
Contrary to popular belief, there are still a handful of jazz musicians with recording contracts who enjoy taking chances. But most of the acts that fit this description, including Other Dimensions in Music, Test, and the Matt Wilson Quartet, are indie-imprint signees forced to toil in relative obscurity–and those few…
“Beethoven is my hero,” Jeremy Enigk, Sunny Day Real Estate’s frontman, says. “I mean, writing a song on his deathbed–that’s beautiful to me.” He pauses, reflecting on what’s placed him on one end of the phone and me on the other. “And that’s kind of why I do it: For…
With shows such as the almost-hypnotic Behind the Music, VH1 has solidified its reputation as the music channel that’s actually about, you know, music. About is the key word in that sentence, because if you’ve seen more than a dozen videos a day on any music channel, you’re most likely…
Natalie Maines’ second marriage Natalie Maines and Adrian Pasdar (June 23, Las Vegas) I’ll admit being a little surprised when I heard the news that Dixie Chicks singer-“guitarist” Natalie Maines married actor Adrian Pasdar in Las Vegas on June 23, taking advantage of the situation when the group’s tour stopped…
Future Bible Heroes I’m Lonely (And I Love It) (Merge Records) Like The Magnetic Fields, the Gothic Archies, and The 6ths, Future Bible Heroes is just another alias for songwriter Stephin Merritt and whomever he happens to be collaborating with at the moment. In the case of Future Bible Heroes,…
