Here we go again, Dallas. For the 27th year running, the Dallas Observer Music Awards are on their way. Each year, the Observer throws a big-ass party to help celebrate all the hard-working musicians of the Dallas music scene. Two of them, in fact. And we even hand out a…
Cymatic has been a regular face among the The Guild DJ crew over the past year or so, utilizing his deep knowledge of the more experimental side of dance music and integrating it with something more digestible for the dance floor without losing the edge. Despite his youth he has…
When Jim Smith was a teenager he met the then iconic, now infamous rapper South Park Mexican at Trader’s Village. The underground superstar from Houston was selling his music and had a row of Sony Discmans lined up and loaded with his albums and mixtapes. Flipping through the CD booklet,…
From working with the D.O.C. to owning furniture stores and now considering a run for city council, Erotic D has had a varied life. After growing up a military brat and later seeing the Jackson family fight amongst themselves to the nth degree, he has now made being a husband…
Dallas hasn’t always done the best job of appreciating its musical culture, but the history runs deep in this city. Sure, concert venues and bands have come and gone; hell, even Deep Ellum has been all but lost on more than one occasion. So it’s important that appreciate all the…
Oaktopia Fest With Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Minus the Bear, Polyphonic Spree and more Downtown Denton Friday to Sunday, September 25 to 27, 2015 Oaktopia Fest has been quickly gaining traction since its debut in 2013. The three-day music/arts/beard festival centered around Denton’s town square has reached its…
Ratatat Bomb Factory, Dallas Friday, September 25, 2015 Two guitars, two keyboards, two toms, and an armada of lasers; these were Ratatat’s weapons of choice at The Bomb Factory Friday night as they played to a packed house. The Brooklyn-based duo of Mike Stroud and Evan Mast have been at…
Fall festival season is getting into full swing in Texas, but while Denton’s Oaktopia Fest has just come and gone the biggest, most obvious one this week (and the week after) is down in Austin. Of course, we can think of plenty of reasons to not feel the need to…
Hall & Oates Majestic Theatre, Dallas Friday, September 25, 2015 Before Daryl Hall, John Oates and six backing musicians took the Majestic Theatre stage on Friday night, it was occupied by spokesmen for CitySquare, a nonprofit devoted to fighting poverty that annually sponsors “A Night to Remember.” With a heartstrings-tugging…
If you made it out to the Van Halen show on Wednesday, chances are you had a pretty bizarre night. You may still be recovering. David Lee Roth has that kind of effect on people. But for all of the bizarre things that happened on stage at Gexa Energy Pavilion,…
Matt Battaglia started Denton’s newest, and possibly biggest, music festival when he were just 23 years old. Once the city’s upstart festival, Oaktopia is heading into its third year with its biggest lineup yet and an opportunity solidify its self as one of the very best in North Texas. But…
There are 85 million Taylor Swift cover videos on YouTube. We counted, so don’t bother. Some of them are good, some are bad, and some are just downright amazing. Maybe we are a little biased and our hometown pride is blinding us, but Todrick Hall from Arlington put together a…
Van Halen With Kenny Wayne Shepherd Wednesday, September 23, 2015 In the middle of a 10-minute-long “How to Dance Like David Lee Roth” monologue Wednesday night at Gexa Energy Pavilion, David Lee Roth got serious for a minute. Sort of. Having walked the crowd through his James Brown and stair…
Nick Jonas House of Blues, Dallas Wednesday, September 23, 2015 If Nick Jonas was ever the dopey boy behind the guitar standing on stage with his two brothers, he has now escaped that boy band hell and become a solo pop act. And successfully, we might add. On Wednesday night,…
The Dallas Observer’s 2015 Best Of Dallas issue hits newsstands today and it really couldn’t come at a better time. We’ve done a lot of talking lately about how things are looking up in Dallas nightlife, especially with the influx of bars (and people) in Deep Ellum. But as a…
In music, everything seems to go back to a break-up. Some of the best lyrics of all time were written by artists nursing a broken heart, but others decide to get a little more proactive after getting dumped. For Jessica Martinez, the end of a relationship began the building of…
Maxwell Carritt is part of a new wave of techno and tech house talent popping up in the shadows of Dallas club music. Most often associated with the burner DJ crew know as The Guild, he consistently sets a high bar for floor-thumping techno. Hypnotic patterns of persistent repetition, but…
Local music lovers over the age of 30 still remember Jibe frontman Joe Grah jumping off the side of the Curtain Club. Grah was exactly what we all morbidly want a rockstar to be: daring, out of control and ever on the verge of screwing up his chance at stardom…
When Trang Nguyen throws a Spice Girls party, she doesn’t mess around. None of that dancing in your living room with a few girlfriends business. Karaoke at a dive bar won’t do. No, Nguyen holds a screening of Spice World at the Granada Theater and invites all of Dallas to join her…
If you’re an introvert, going out to a bar can seriously be torture. Going alone means that any friendly drunk feels the need to chat you up and include you in conversation, which can get in the way of your ability to eavesdrop and, perhaps most importantly, people watch. There…
Back in February we told you about John Rody, a Texas Radio Hall of Famer who secured one of the FCC’s new community radio licenses enabling him to go on the air with a low-wattage FM radio station, known as The Pirate. The station, which has existed in Internet streaming…
When you’re out bar hopping in Deep Ellum, the bathrooms aren’t usually places you want to spend too much time. And no, we’re not just talking about the death trap bathrooms at Club Dada. You get in, you get out, and you probably spend way more time waiting to do…
