Lil Wayne, T-Pain, Keyshia ColeAmerican Airlines CenterDecember 19, 2008 Better Than: Listening to a whole bunch of records in which T-Pain and Lil Wayne are just the featured acts. Check out our photos from the show here.As if, at any point over the course of this past year, there was…
Ah, Friday. If this were 1993, I’d be gearing up for a badass night of TGIF on ABC. But, alas, it’s 2008. Luckily, there’s plenty of live music to take in all weekend long. Some pretty good. Some not as much. But, for the most part, pretty good.Anyway, onto the…
And, no, I’m not making this up. –Pete Freedman…
It’s time to rank the best of what went around and came around again. BILLY JOEL The Stranger (Columbia/Legacy) As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man’s deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell – and, occasionally, rock. “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” and…
…is a metal band made up of 14-year-old high school freshmen called Crooked X. They’ve toured as openers for Ted Nugent. Were featured on CBS’ The Early Show. Even had a song in Rock Band. All nice accomplishments.But, c’mon. Seriously? –Pete Freedman…
Hotel guests across the country will see Dallas’ own Erykah Badu named among the artists in USA Today’s critic’s picks for top albums of 2008. Edna Gunderson named New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War as the No. 5 album of the year, describing it as “Gutsy, inventive, deeply felt…
Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that’s true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The…
I stumbled across this the other day on Youtube, and, yep, that’s right; it’s the Portland Trailblazers’ rookies, earlier this year, being hazed somewhat by the veteran players on the team and being forced to dance to Them GSpot Boyz’s “Stanky Legg” at a preseason scrimmage. I kid you not.Perhaps…
What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. Right?That’s where I left a temporary commitment to sobriety on an airport tarmac in 1982. Time to finally spill the beans on my surreal history in Sin City–but don’t get your hopes up too high. This isn’t about late night gambling…
A couple of weeks ago, an expert on the Harry Potter series told an audience of high school kids how lucky they were to have this Big Shared Experience–these seven books and 41,000 words in common. What does Harry Potter have to do with hip-hop in 2008? In an age…
This week’s winner was designed by The Crash That Took Me singer (and newly appointed Exploding Plastic Records head honcho) Dylan Silvers. Along with Silvers’ post-DARYL band, the lineup for Friday’s Christmas Toy Drive at Sons of Hermann Hall lineup features local favorites Centro-matic, Radiant and Little Black Dress along…
In 2008, independent rock returned to the underground, where it belongs. Given the grand catastrophe that is today’s record industry, most major-label executives don’t have the time or energy to convince music fans they might like something a little out of the ordinary. They’re too busy recycling variations on what…
Steve Visneu Dallas’ own True Widow has, well, basically come out of nowhere in the past couple months to fill the surprisingly heavy void within the city’s shoegaze/slowcore/dirge-rock scene–and fill it quite capably, thanks. We reviewed the band’s just-released self-titled debut a few weeks back, and for what it’s worth,…
Jason Upshaw I guess maybe I should’ve posted this on Monday morning, as I knew the news then, but for whatever reason, it slipped my mind: Congrats are in order for Airline, who, on Saturday night at Club Dada, beat out Sunward and Hendrick in an audience vote to determine…
Jason Janik Denton electro-dance act (by way of Boston) Roy G. and The Biv–which, in terms of abundant coverage and love, has pretty much been Quick’s answer to our Mount Righteous–has offered up its choices of the top ten albums of 2008 to the Stark Magazine blog (the same blog…
Listen: We’ve done our fair share of Forever The Sickest Kids dogging here at DC9 over the past 12 months or so–sometimes for good reason, and sometimes because, well, we were just bored.But, fact of the matter is, these guys had themselves a hell of a year: They released their…
In the print edition of the Observer this week, I previewed Saturday’s top notch bill of local acts at Double Wide who are playing to benefit the Fort Worth adoption agency The Gladney Center. Well, Danny Balis, co-host of The Orphanage, the weekend radio show on 1310 KTCK-AM The Ticket,…
Over at The Secret Machines’ web site this morning, you can listen to Brandon Curtis’ pretty haunting (and borderline disturbing) take on “Silent Night”. It’s worth a listen, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s a different from most interpretations. And who knows? You might like it…
In next week’s paper, we’ll unveil our national package on the best music of the year (the following week, we’ll tackle the best in DFWd music). But, as a teaser, here’s our paper’s contribution to the national package: Noah W. Bailey’s picks for the best Americana/folk releases of ’08. Picking…
A relatively recent entry onto the local scene, Nicholas Altobelli is a solid, alt-country/folk songwriter with a penchant for mid-tempo melodies and (overly) poetic lyrics that would make fans of Leonard Cohen proud. And Waiting for the Flowers to Bloom, the young man’s debut full-length effort, moves well beyond the…
Here’s a fun riddle: What do you get when you combine Talking Heads, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Queen and the country of Jamaica? Answer: The Killers’ third LP, Day & Age. Echoes of past influences have always made it easy to evaluate the Las Vegas band’s music based on…
For an artist who stakes his style on all things kinetic and “flamboastin’,” E-40’s new album—his first since hyphy’s high tide two years ago—is woefully contrived. If he’d merely taken up the challenge of following his breakout hit, 2006’s My Ghetto Report Card, by refining its formula—the tweeter-pinching synths; the…
