In a perfect world, the club would have been full of fans. There would have been a line out the door, snaking into the street. The first notes of each song would have been greeted with enthusiastic, knowing applause, each chorus met with a sea of closed eyes and a…
The front man and songwriter for a popular West Coast pop-punk band is asked whether his group has considered releasing a single-disc collection of career highlights. (In 15 years, the band in question has released about 10 albums and EPs with several different lineups.) His face clouds, as if the…
Well, this is disappointing. There are better synth-pop songwriters than Richard James. (Stage name: Aphex Twin.) There are better electronic-music composers, better drum ‘n’ bass programmers, better ambient musicians, better found-sound collectors. But none has combined these elements as well as Aphex Twin did on 1997’s Richard D. James Album…
Recently, there have been scattered reports that the Old 97’s were splitting up, after an eight-year run of fight songs and satellite rides. Some say the truth is this: The Old 97’s have been dropped from the Elektra Records roster, even though it was reported as recently as a couple…
What makes the Wu-Tang Clan so distinctive is that it embraces confusion in a genre that normally ducks it like the reefer-mad Method Man ducks urine tests. After all, hip-hop has long taken pride in being direct. “I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’,” Public Enemy’s Chuck D spat…
When the Velvet Underground toured the West Coast with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable back in 1966, the response was underwhelming, to say the least. LSD was still legal in California, and peace, love and tripping were the watchwords of the day. During the shows, the hippie hordes greeted the…
Each of Dan the Automator’s high-profile concept albums has been a palimpsest, a new work with remnants of his earlier records shining through. Even a cursory listen to Dan’s get-together with Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Kid Koala in Deltron 3030 reveals concepts from his Kool Keith-abetted Dr. Octagon project…
“I’m in the mud, and the mud’s in me.” So sings North Mississippi Allstars front man Luther Dickinson near the end of the Allstars’ sophomore album, 51 Phantom. On the one hand, it’s a declaration of loyalty to the band’s Mississippi Hill Country roots, but it’s also an explanation of…
High is high, low is low/Everybody wants to get to heaven/but nobody wants to die/Nobody wants to die/Nobody wants to do the don’ts/Don’t the dids/Color outside the lines/Nobody wants to try. Ignore the probability that the above paean to transcendence was written under the influence of amphetamines, hallucinogens or some…
It was likely the best three-band bill downtown has hosted in ages, in an unlikely spot. Fury III, Sorta and the Sparrows at the Liquid Lounge felt like an accidental jackpot or a secret club, and the bulk of the Thursday-night audience was other Dallas musicians. Everyone knew everyone, so…
The sound comes popping and stuttering out of tinny-tiny speakers from all around and underfoot. Glitchy, itchy beats blare from little HitClips micro boom boxes key-chained to bicycle handlebars and school backpacks. Chunky guitar rhythms and airy, kittenish vocal harmonies ring out on bright translucent pocket CD players, scooter radios…
It’s the holiday season (Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, what have you), so things are starting to slow down a bit in the D-D-FW area. We’ve been slowing down lately, too, though to be honest, that has less to do with the holidays and more to do with the massive holes in…
Once more, for the back row: Miranda Lee Richards is not, legally speaking, the godchild of R. Crumb, the famed and once-underground artist responsible for Fritz the Cat, “Keep On Truckin’,” Mr. Natural, Flakey Foont and Eggs Ackley, among other seminal artifacts of the hung-up generation. She’s not the godchild…
The album isn’t quite finished. A few tracks are still being recorded; the whole thing needs to be mastered. Then there’s artwork, CD pressing, booklet printing and the video files that might be included. Nevertheless, The Adventures of Jet are ready to move on, anxious to hit the road, play…
Earlier this year, a group of electronic musicians in Denton staged a coup of Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios’ open-mike nights, arriving early and commandeering the sign-up sheet each time out, turning the open-mike nights into their own open forum. Soon enough, the group, collectively known as Stereo on Strike, was…
Quite the impressive lineup: Sting, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Joe Strummer, Mark Knopfler, Dr. John, Eric Clapton, Paul Weller, David Gilmour and nearly a dozen more A-listers, not to mention scores of studio hounds, join the former Squeeze keyboardist and current Brit-TV music-show host on 22 new and slightly used…
Like the Repeater/Steady Diet of Nothing days of Operation Desert Storm, Fugazi is still keenly aware of the injustices in the world and suspicious of the bigwigs with the big bucks, suspicious of where their loyalties lie. It’s even in the band’s name–Vietnam slang for “a fucked-up situation.” Appropriate timing,…
For all the progress they’ve made toward introducing “out” sounds to “in” audiences, what I like most about the bands typically clumped into the “post-rock” scene (the phrase doesn’t really bother me all that much, but I’ll go ahead and use the quotation marks so you don’t think I’m lame)…
A couple of weeks ago (Scene, Heard, November 22) we told you about the recent closing of Dan’s Bar in Denton and what the loss of the venue meant to the city’s music scene. Specifically, we said that with one fewer outlet for Denton bands and musicians, the city was…
In Greek mythology, the Muses were gods and goddesses who were so proficient in the arts and sciences that they would inspire followers to glory by their mere presence. In the modern lexicon, the word “muse” refers to a simple source of inspiration, connoting a creative force that lies beyond…
There’s a game common at arcades called Whack-A-Mole, where plastic rodents pop up briefly from holes in the playing surface. You know the game–you get points for smacking the moles before they drop again. That’s an apt metaphor for the record industry’s current attempts to “whack” a legion of companies…
Raul Malo’s a nice guy–a real charmer, actually, the kind who bounds into a room and gives you a hearty-ass handshake, asks how you’re doing and then waits to hear the answer–so I’m not really that surprised that he’s not taking the chance I’m giving him to trash Nashville. As…
