The 53 Best Show Announcements of September 2013

Every week more and more shows are added to the Dallas Observer live music calendar –here’s how to make sure your show is included. And you can always peruse every upcoming concert on our calendar. Below are this month’s additions. The newest are in bold…

The Nine Best Outdoor Venues in North Texas

Now that the weather has turned to something other than scorching, we can turn our attention to catching a show outdoors. Although most promoters (and many in the crowds) don’t seem to mind a show taking place in the middle of August, I sure don’t mind having dehydration and hyperthermia…

Daniel Johnston at the Kessler Theatre: Review and Cartoon

A friend of mine, on hearing that I was to see Daniel Johnston perform live, said, “his stuff is rough, but he is plugged into a scary truth.” That is a brilliant summary of Johnston’s music. His style is raw and unsophisticated, but also hyper-direct and fiercely penetrating. His lyrics…

The Nine Best Unconventional Music Venues in DFW

Thousands of years ago, primitive man performed their music near the campfire. Flash forward some thousand more years, and the “live show” (for most of the time, just the only way you could hear music) was later housed in churches or the castles and courtyards of the Renaissance age. Flash…

The State Fair of Texas: This Year’s 11 Best Concerts

Another Texas State Fair is upon us and when you’re not trying to stuff as much fried, doughy goodness into you or riding any number of spinning rides hoping said dough won’t unexpectedly leave your body, you might want to take a breather and listen to some music. It’s just…

Revenge Porn Provocateur Hunter Moore is DJing a Show at Club Zouk

Hunter Moore hasn’t technically been in business with the notoriously sleazy site “Is Anyone Up?” for some time. But he’ll forever be associated with the revenge porn site he maintained for years. Since the site shut down in 2012, Moore’s had more time to dedicate to traveling around the country,…

Here Are the Dallas Fun Fun Fun Fest Scavenger Hunt Winners

Gavin Cleaver: All competitions should be run in a scavenger hunt format. True, it’s a lot more work for everyone involved, but nothing good ever came from laziness, right? The FFFFest Scavenger Hunt, given that the prizes have an insanely high monetary value, is a perfect example of how you…

Let’s Do This

Fall Out Boy Thursday, September 26, at Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie Pop-punk never fared particularly well among people who enjoy spending lots of time talking about things like “authenticity” and “soundscapes.” It is a kind of music expressly built to make an antisocial expression (punk) as widely palatable as…

The Seven Biggest One-Hit Wonders from North Texas

Today is One Hit Wonder day, allegedly marked by music journalist Steven R Rosen to honor the bands whose moment passed too soon. He was serious about this topic, even briefly publishing One Shot: The Magazine of One-Hit Wonders. DFW has had its share of flash-in-the-pan chart success, and we’ve…

Black Milk at Club Dada, 9/20/13: Review

Following an understated introduction, Black Milk’s band appeared on stage and began to play, starting with an actual drum roll. Those drumstick snaps seemed to stretch for an impossible duration, each thump another block stacked atop a mounting tension that felt like it could topple at any moment. And then…