Eat or be eaten Picnic Robert Earl Keen Arista Austin Records It’s always an iffy proposition when a much-loved indie cult artist signs with a major label and makes the move to the big time. For sure, our hero deserves a global audience and riches for his/her good works. But…
The last two years of the sixties were a time of awesome transition in music, the nation, and popular culture, as well as the sound and personnel of the Byrds, the Los Angeles-based folk-rock band once touted as America’s answer to the Beatles (by Derek Taylor–the Fab Four’s own flack–no…
Twisted Willies Must’ve Been High The Supersuckers Sub Pop Records The similarities between punk and country have been remarked upon enough to skip here, so let’s just cut to the chase: In an arena filled with varying degrees of separation between the two camps, The Supersuckers’ Must’ve Been High is…
Things are beginning to happen for local blues stalwarts Tutu and Andrew “Junior Boy” Jones. Tutu has been in Memphis, where his latest album, Blue Texas Soul, on the Bullseye Blues label, was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award. Although he was edged out by Austinite W.C. Clark’s similarly titled…
Pop smart Unlike U2–currently flogging their tuneless pop as a vague multimedia concept, forced by megalomania to put it in quotation marks–the Cardigans stick to pop, pure and simple. The five young Swedes go for the sugar buzz of the three-minute song: melodies that cause toothaches, hooks that echo in…
Ich bin ein Berliner Burn, Berlin, Burn! Atari Teenage Riot Grand Royal Records You know you’re on the cutting edge of music when Art Forum magazine reviews your album and says you’re fresh; and it doesn’t hurt to have the Beastie Boys’ label Grand Royal and nearly every music mag…
In defense of space cowboys The first time you hear Jamiroquai, you might mistake it for an early Stevie Wonder single–something from back in the days when Little Stevie was too busy gettin’ down to do Disney soundtracks. In reality, what you’re hearing is a ’90s Brit-funk band that has…
Fort Worth’s Erotic D swims with some of the biggest fish in rap. A veteran of controversial industry figure Suge Knight’s Death Row Records, Erotic has worked with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, rapped with the group Life After Death, and gone on to a successful career producing other acts…
Reachin’ above your raisin’ Livin’ or Dyin’ Jack Ingram Universal Records Crossin the Line Barry Kooda Big Iron Records Each of these albums represents a longtime local musical mainstay continuin’ to develop past his point of origin. For Kooda, it’s that of one of Dallas’ founding punks; for Ingram, it’s…
When it comes to Las Vegas, the gambling and the naked showgirls and the 99-cent shrimp cocktails aren’t really what make it seem so different from the real world. It’s the bizarre architecture: Huge public buildings the size of Versailles or Blenheim Castle or the Kremlin abound there–while outside is…
It’s at times like these–after all the tabulation, assignments, editing, and production that go into the magnificent beast that is the Dallas Observer Music Awards–that I’m reminded of the last words of my late favorite uncle: “what truck?” No, the results this year weren’t as unforeseen as an 18-wheeler with…
Oh l’amour In the mid-’80s, no artsy high school music collection was complete without the pop avant-garde album Upstairs at Eric’s by Yaz–an early electronic project by the creative duo of Vince Clarke and vocalist Alison Moyet. After she left the band to embark on a modestly successful solo career,…
Rodney Crowell is one of those guys who was probably never meant to be a Nashville high-roller in the first place. Sure, he’s penned huge hits for dozens of top-echelon C&W stars, was ushered into patriarch Johnny Cash’s kingdom through his former marriage to the Man in Black’s daughter Rosanne,…
Music for buildings and food Orblivion The Orb Island Records Trace the history of ambient music, and you’ll touch on names like Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno, but when it comes to the history of danceable ambient music, Orb would be considered a founding father. Orb was the brainchild of…
Slaid Cleaves has a soft voice: not mumbled or insecure, just diminished. More than five years of living in Texas has diluted his childhood’s Maine inflections, but apparently has not lent him the trumpet-like blare that comes so easy to denizens of the Lone Star State. Cleaves–now an Austin-based singer-songwriter…
Function and form Swinging and Singing Johnny Reno Menthol Records Too often in pop, format counts for more than intention or even execution, and we’re left feeling vaguely suspicious of Andy Timmons playing the blues with the Pawn Kings (his hair is long and blond; he never picked cotton) or…
I wandered around the Dallas music scene lonely as a freelance cloud, the Dallas Observer Music Awards were about as interesting to me as a medium-sized rock in a coffee can. Who cares what anybody else thinks? Ah, the carefree ways of callow youth. Now that I’m the Observer music…
Don’t believe the hype Critics have taken two sharply different tacks when it comes to reviewing the new U2 album, Pop. While most of the larger, mainstream publications are hailing it as an innovative breakthrough, many of the smaller, more savvy mags are decrying it as the voice of a…
Heavy tin foil Come On Feel The Metal Various artists steve records The joke’s an easy one to remember, but a hard one to tell. Come On Feel The Metal, on which almost three dozen local bands go metal in all its incarnations (from Zep to ZZ Top to pop),…
Nobody’s looking past this one gig, but the late, lamented Cartwrights–a virtual family tree of local bands past comprising Barry Kooda (Nervebreakers, Yeah Yeah Yeah), Alan Wooley (Killbilly), Kim Herriage (Feet First), Donny Ray Ford, and Richie Vasquez–will reassemble to open for the Skeletons’ Hightone Record-label release party at the…
Misery as its own reward There is something about the allure of romantic despair. On her latest album, Excerpts from a Love Circus, Lisa Germano wallows in it, yet she seems reluctant to crawl to the shore. Listening to her songs makes you wonder how she can drag herself out…
Willful obscurity Straightaways Son Volt Warner Brothers Records “No one here says what they mean,” Jay Farrar sings on Straightaways, the latest offering from Son Volt. That line is accurate, the title ironic, since this album is a triumph of indirect transmission, implied feeling, and mumbled delivery unmatched since REM’s…
