An explosion of graffiti covers the walls and ceiling of the room, Lone Star beer flows from the bar like sweat on a thick August night, and the sharp voice of a fiddle cuts down the long, narrow concrete floor. Neon beer signs lend a mellow, buzzing backdrop to a…
Cornell Hurd and his longtime guitar-playing cohort Paul Skelton are lunching on Cajun food at Hoody’s in Oak Hill, on the southwest edge of Austin. They aren’t sure how they ended up there, but they’re trying to figure it out, tracing the long and sordid line that brought them to…
DJ Merritt doesn’t sound much like the life of the party at the moment, sleepily answering questions in a voice that sounds as if it’s still hitting the snooze bar. As the afternoon creeps toward the evening, he is just now recovering from the previous night’s activities, a trek to…
If you attend one of Tripping Daisy’s shows at the Curtain Club this weekend, you can be the first on your block to own the band’s new album. As it did with 1996’s odds-and-ends EP Time Capsule, the band will be pre-selling copies of its forthcoming follow-up to last year’s…
Centro-matic The Static vs. The Strings (Quality Park Records) In the hands of any other band, an album like The Static vs. The Strings would merely be something to fill the gap between real records, a way to buy a little more time until the group could come up with…
Ween Ween is just about the most frustrating band in the world. Dean (Mickey Melchiondo) and Gene (Aaron Freeman) are extraordinary songwriters and musicians — versatile, charming, and clever — who can pull off any kind of vibe they like: old-time country, hair metal, disco funk, expansive prog. They’re also…
John Dufilho is either the hardest-working white man in show business or he truly believes that idle hands are the devil’s playground. It seems that Dufilho is trying to make a run at the position Michael Jerome has long held at the top of the hill when it comes to…
Before his gig later that night at Deep Ellum Live as part of the Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue — which features half-hour sets by The Flaming Lips, Sebadoh, Sonic Boom’s E.A.R., and IQU — Robyn Hitchcock will perform at Bill’s Records on Sunday at 3 p.m. And considering the…
There’s something rather romantic about the tale of the small, vanished musician who leaves behind a hint of genius buried beneath the debris of madness. All hail Roky Erickson and Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson, the holy trinity of pop’s martyred madmen. Even better if you’re crazy and dead; it’s…
The Light Crust Doughboys are more legend than band now — the longest-running Western swing outfit around, old men playing old music. Together since the 1920s, The Light Crust Doughboys are practically just a name at this point, a ghost of Christmas dances past, even though some members of the…
Playing in front of a crowd that fire marshals only read about in training manuals, in a club with no air-conditioning, a faulty P.A., and one bathroom for about 500 people is kind of hard to forget, even if you’ve seen the inside of more clubs than bottles of Budweiser…
Dear Britney, I, like many of my peers, used to exercise a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the brand of perky, bubblegum-flavored pop that you, and countless other one-hit-wonder types like you, have been trading in and out of the Billboard Top 40 for basically the last quarter of this…
In last year’s Broadway revue I’m Still Here, Damn It!, since memorialized on CD, one of Sandra Bernhard’s best rants involves the Lilith Fair and how performers such as Jewel and Sarah McLachlan would wither like wallflowers in the Texas sun beside the female FM-radio rock icons of her late…
There I was, at the last Woodstock of the millennium. Three of three in the collectors’ series. This is it — this is life, man. I actually told myself that. My inner voice even adopted a stoner inflection to add that touch of authenticity that it knew would convince me…
Ben Yeager laughs a bit when asked about the differences between the setup he worked with for four years in the studio at the Last Beat Records complex on Commerce Street and the newly remodeled version, which he has been using for the past month or so. It’s the kind…
No Limit Tour If Master P’s No Limit empire ever crumbles — and one day it will — the shooting guard formerly known as Percy Miller has quite a future in the mail-order business. He’s been designing catalogs since 1990, when he turned No Limit Records from a store into…
Flaming Lips, Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock A friend of mine — the sort of Robyn Hitchcock fan who hits his Web sites every few days — has been keeping up with the fans’ online reviews of the current tour their cult hero is on with The Flaming Lips and Sebadoh. “They…
Brian Setzer Orchestra With the exception of just a few — Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and the Tonight Show Orchestra — big bands went out of fashion after World War II. Almost no one could afford the upkeep of a big band, and no one wanted anyone to try to…
The Rough Guide to Music USA, a new book by former Option editor Ritchie Unterberger, purports to be “a tour through the most important and interesting varieties of American popular music.” And it is, sort of. We just don’t understand how Unterberger’s musical trek from sea to shining sea could…
In a move that should surprise exactly two people, bassist Angelique Congleton recently quit The Darlingtons to concentrate on the other bands she plays with, which include The Meat Helmets and, occasionally, The Secret Machines of Captain Audio. (Whoever had July in the pool can come collect their $10.) Guitarist…
Detroit Rock City Detroit Rock City (Island/Def Jam) The only thing worse than Ted Nugent is Pantera covering Ted Nugent; Phil Anselmo can cure a boy of “Cat Scratch Fever” real quick (though it does beat his band’s titty-bar Dallas Stars anthem). The only thing worse than Thin Lizzy is…
Regent Sound Studios, at 24 W. 57th St. in Manhattan, was my alma mater. What began as a lucky summer job when I was fresh out of high school became a two-year hitch. I dropped out of NYU that fall to maintain the job. It was my entrée into the…
