For Dallas Symphony music director Andrew Litton, a really good night at the Meyerson is a capacity crowd of 2,064. Imagine putting on your tux, going to work, and lifting your baton knowing that three-and-a-half billion pairs of eyes throughout the world are watching you–the biggest, most-watched TV event in…
Heart of the Congos The Congos Blood and Fire Given that most of what passes for rhythm and blues today has neither, the reissue of this 20-year-old reggae masterpiece by the sublime vocal duo the Congos is a reminder and a godsend. One of the most crucial reggae albums ever…
Head of the class Certain albums–and, if they’re lucky, certain bands–so skillfully present both influence and intent that they come to stand for an entire genre. The Wrens sum up (deep breath) American post-punk rock the same way in which XTC can serve as the Cliff Notes for turn-of-the-’80s Brit…
“Yo, we ain’t selling out. Fuck crossin’ over to them, let them cross over to us!” –N.W.A. Live intro, 1988 Rap music has gotten itself into a tough musical paradox: Soundtrack to inequity, the medium has always equated economic success with legitimacy. If you’ve got the stuff–the Versace, the gold,…
Many folks were disappointed when harpist and singer Lee McBee left Mike Morgan’s band, the Crawl, citing the distance between Dallas and his home in Kansas City. Bands that do the R&B-blues boogie often live or die based on their lead vocalist; the affable McBee could don the requisite personas–lover…
Junked and defunct Pawn Shop From Heaven Junky Southern Parallax A certain dulling of the critical faculties begins to occur in those who wander Local Band Hell overmuch: You stop holding out for quality and begin to settle for everybody starting and stopping at the same time, then for just…
It’s 9 o’clock in the morning, a perfect time to call record labels and publicity firms and leave messages, secure in the knowledge that the folks who work there haven’t even hit their first snooze button yet, and you’ll be able to fulfill a return-call obligation without talking to any…
Electric harvest Broken Arrow Neil Young and Crazy Horse Reprise There have been many different Neils in Young’s career: the icy jazzbo pretender of This Note’s For You and the earnest techno explorer of Trans; rockabilly reinvention vs. hard-rock revisionism and folkie perseverance; doper sociology played against cowboy myth and…
Shuffling toward the Pleistocene Slowly, ponderously, it lumbers onto the horizon, its massive head turning first this way, then that. Somehow, it realizes, something’s changed. Is it that the sun is no longer as warm–this winter just a bit longer than the one before? Or is it something else? A…
Mazinga Phaser is nothing if not ambitious. Exhausted from a day of intense mixing, producer Matt Castille and four of the six band members are slouching in the bedroom of Castille’s home studio. Although fatigued, they’re talking enthusiastically, riding that final rush that follows a job well done. Phrases like…
Jeff Aycock makes a pretty good case for predestination. Recalling his childhood in the far-South Dallas Bon Ton neighborhood, he remembers that “everyday, on my way home from school, I’d pass this pawn shop and see all these instruments in the window, and I’d imagine playing them.” Thirty years later,…
Women in jazz: Those words conjure up images of Ella Fitzgerald, Diane Schuur, and Sarah Vaughan–talented, but usually just standing at a microphone or sitting at a piano, not someone with legs astride, belting out licks on a bass trombone or beating the bejeezus out of a set of drums…
Not the same old blues Just Like You Keb’ Mo’ Okeh/Epic Can you have sunny blues? There’s no denying that on his second album, Keb’ Mo’ (Kevin Moore) assumes a decidedly upbeat tone, reminding the listener of Giant Step-era Taj Mahal, marrying the basic optimism of the folkie to traditional…
The divine Miss B A myriad of identities? Sure, that’s something we allow our big-time artists–talents like Peter Gabriel or David Bowie–but a blues player? Har, you say, it is to laugh, especially when considering a blues bass player, and a gal at that. Nonetheless, Sarah Brown has had musical…
It’s boom times and heady days for Dallas’ favorite insurgent honky-tonk combo, the Old 97’s; the band has just returned from a quick fortnight in Europe, where it met with continental acclaim, and now is hashing things out with a veritable Greek chorus of major record labels, including Elektra, MCA,…
Same as it ever was Stand By Tellus Tellurian Records With a surreal cover whose artistry would be right at home with any of Hipgnosis Studio’s bizarre illustrations for ’70s acts like Yes, Tellus announces that it shares the ambitions (and yes, the pretensions) of prog-rock standard-bearers. Of course, the…
One of the loudest pop bands to come out of Dallas is back; Hagfish, Dallas’ beloved band of dorks-in-suits, is returning to Deep Ellum after a year that has seen the band do everything from working with its musical idols on its first major-label album to rubbing elbows on the…
Such a Deal The heartland of America grows its rockers big and brawny, so it’s no surprise that the Deal sisters–Kelley and Kim–hail from Ohio. They’ve both made names for themselves–Kim as a founding Pixie, the pair as the Breeders–but it was Kelley who stood out as the woman who…
Shaken, not stirred It’s Martini Time Reverend Horton Heat Interscope Records From the cover alone–a woman passed out on a barstool in the dark–you know that It’s Martini Time is no “have fun responsibly” bulletin, but another collection of chrome-plated tales from a ducktailed world of indulgence and excess: the…
The past is revered–well, referenced–to an unprecedented degree by pop culture today; roots and history are important in a way that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago. Chalk it up to pop’s voracious need for product–ideas for which have to come from somewhere–and it’s particularly true in music. That’s often…
“Hey, remember me? We met 10 years ago at CBGB’s,” Syd Straw sings on War and Peace, her new album. In the seven long years between her first and second album, Straw has somehow managed not to be forgotten by the music world. That hardly surprises me; I can never…
The heart’s inner currents Gone Again Patti Smith Arista Peace at Last The Blue Nile Warner Brothers With Gone Again, Patti Smith comes out of more than 15 years of semiretirement; the poet who for years was associated with the start of something–New York art-punk, basically–now contemplates the end of…
