Some summers it seems that there are more blues players in Dallas than mosquitoes, all buzzing and shuffling along the same wide and worn Chicago groove. Mike Morgan’s been there, too, and he wonders if part of the problem isn’t that musicians tend to live so much by listening. “Heck,”…
The next best thing Live at the Vortex Rotten Rubber Band Heat Wave Few local bands do as good a job of transporting an audience into the sweaty, smoky heart of a weekend night as the Rotten Rubber Band. Passing out percussion instruments and encouraging the crowd to participate, they…
Margo Timmins stands on the edge of the Los Angeles Wiltern Theater stage, her arm draped over the microphone stand. She buries her head in her arm, looking like she can barely breathe, much less continue with the show. To her right, brother Michael, himself with eyes so sleepy he…
Inappropriately named Today’s Specials Specials Virgin/Kuff Seventeen years after their debut, this version of the Specials–which corrals a few of the originals (Neville Staples, Roddy Byers, Horace Panter) but suffers from the absence of Jerry Dammers–doesn’t even sound like it ever heard the first. If ska is indeed being reborn,…
Marvin “Smokey” Montgomery is a politely unassuming man, small in a way that suggests concentrated vitality rather than size. His 83 years show neither on his waist nor in his eyes. There’s little to suggest that this grandfather had once walked with musical legends, or that he was among those…
Lone Star special When Borders Books and Music hosts its free “Asphalt Rhythms” show June 1 at the store’s Plano location–out in the parking lot, no less–here’s an opportunity to hear Texas music’s champions (Ronnie Dawson, Jimmie Dale Gilmore), unsung heroes (Bobby Patterson, Doyle Bramhall), renegade pilgrims (Ray Wylie Hubbard),…
“I’m only going to play bowling alleys from now on.” With that sentiment, Bruce Springsteen christened the new Bronco Bowl–one more legendary memory heaped upon so many old ghosts that still haunt the place, which is still Dallas’ last, best mid-sized concert hall. But that January 26 show seems like…
Like members of some secret society, people in the music industry speak in code. This is especially true in Nashville, which in some ways is like a charismatic cult within the already alien world of the music business at large. The latest phrase on the lips of Nashville record companies…
Speaking to England’s New Musical Express earlier this year, Stereolab mastermind Tim Gane announced that the Beach Boys is his favorite band. It was an unequivocal claim–“It all sounds brilliant,” he insisted–even if it didn’t make much sense at first. After all, Stereolab–which is fronted by a Brit (Gane) and…
Waymore or less Right for the Time Waylon Jennings Justice Records Willie Nelson makes his “comeback” doing Paul Simon’s “An American Tune” and “Graceland” on Across the Borderline in 1993, then Waylon turns around three years later and digs up “The Boxer” to resuscitate a career on life support. Nelson…
Flame on Clouds Taste Metallic, the latest Flaming Lips album, sounds like it was recorded in a toy store: Cheap bells and whistles tinkle in the background as unidentifiable sounds whiz by like wind-up toys, mixing together until they become an integral part of the band’s psychedelia. Even after 10…
Survival of the fittest Just Rockin’ and Rollin’ Ronnie Dawson Upstart Records The once and future Blond Bomber makes his national debut for the second time in his career, 40 years after he hit it small with “Action Packed” and signed to Columbia–as a black singer, no less. But this…
Three years ago, Neal Caldwell sold VVV Records and thought he was done with the store forever. Caldwell, among the key members of Dallas’ new-wave scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s as a member of N.C.M., had opened VVV in 1979 to import impossible-to-find British and Jamaican albums,…
God bless Al Green When Al Green stepped off the concert stage in 1979 and took his place behind the pulpit, the greatest singer alive never once tried to reconcile the disparities: His soul belonged to God, his heart belonged to the ladies, and never the twain shall meet as…
Trendy bastards The Great Southern Trendkill Pantera East West Records Pantera used to moan they never got any media attention, but now, like true platinum punks who’ve discovered any rage is good rage at the cash register, they bitch about what coverage they have gotten: “Every fucking second, the pathetic…
When Greg Dulli first went off to college in 1983, he packed two posters to put on his wall there. One was of Aerosmith; the other, Earth, Wind and Fire. Thirteen years later, it’s evident from the music of his band the Afghan Whigs–a judicious blend of hard rock, soul,…
Singles going steady Down on the Upside Soundgarden A&M Records Superunknown wasn’t a consistently great album, but every time you heard a single on the radio, Soundgarden managed to make everything around it seem thin and inconsequential; Soundgarden is a rock-and-roll band that wins by comparison, meaning you’ve heard it…
This year marks British punk rock’s 20th birthday, but the Sex Pistols reunion tour hangs in the air like the stench of death–or at least the suspicious smell of a million moldy dollar bills. As John Lydon, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock prepare to kick off their tour…
Adding to subtract Crow Pot Pie Slobberbone Doolittle Records This isn’t to be confused with Slobberbone’s same-titled, Sam McCall-produced debut of last year, but that won’t be a problem because the “new” version bears only a slight resemblance to the “old” one. They’re both still called Crow Pot Pie, seven…
Melting the wax museum Austin’s never going to land an alternative-rock band anywhere except in the cut-out bins; Spoon (whose first four albums I owned when they were called the Pixies) and Sincola and Prescott Curlywolf are this year’s Glass Eye and Zeitgeist and Wild Seeds, which isn’t necessarily a…
Ten years ago it would’ve been a major event in my life–receiving a new Elvis Costello album in the mail–but when I got All This Useless Beauty last month, it just went in the big pile. After a few days I finally got around to listening to the Costello LP,…
Odds and sods All This Useless Beauty Elvis Costello Warner Bros. Records Deep Dead Blue Elvis Costello/Bill Frisell Warner Bros. Records/Nonesuch Warner Bros. has no intention of releasing the Costello/Frisell collaboration in the States, though it has landed over here as an overpriced import worth its price. Recorded in front…
