Photo courtesy of FLICKR/Takahiro Kyono While rock ‘n’ roll is necessarily classified as a form of pop music, it is actually an idiom whose radical, destructive primitivism established a new type of socio-cultural disorder. It’s about rejection of the status quo and celebration of the dis-imprisonment it instills. Always exploited…
Reporters do not gasp, generally speaking, but there were muttered exclamations that might as well have been gasps when Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, age 64, was led into a large and formal federal courtroom this afternoon. His hands were manacled behind his back, his awkward gait in leg-irons…
Arrests by federal agents this morning of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price on bribery conspiracy charges, along with charges against three associates, have set off a new round in everybody’s favorite courthouse whisper game, “Who’s flipped?” Multiple sources this morning say federal agents have arrested Price, who was indicted…
Seeing Tim McGraw in concert today isn’t the spectacle it was in 1996, when he was riding high on being one of country music’s biggest superstars. McGraw may have settled down slightly in his later years, but fans at the Atlanta stop of McGraw’s Sundown Heaven Town tour earlier this…
Late yesterday, just before finally answering my days-old question about it, the city manager sent a memo to the City Council characterizing $800,000 repaid to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a kind of technical accounting error and no big deal. Most of it involves money stolen by…
UPDATED SEPTEMBER 8 2014: The Search for Mary Suhm Heats Up with Rumors of a Trinity Road Goon Squad ORIGINAL POST Is the former city manager still at City Hall? Maybe, maybe not, but her spirit still reigns. Last week I made a new hat-cam movie for our news blog…
I wanted you to know that I am still trying to find Mary Suhm at City Hall, and I need your help. Last week I made a movie based on my hunt for the former Dallas city manager, who is rumored still to be lurking somewhere in City Hall. It…
Reaching for a badly mixed metaphor, I guess I would say those of us personally involved for a long time on the opposition side of the Trinity roll road issue feel right now like we’re breathless flies on the wall with our fingers crossed and our dukes up (flies have…
WOW. Looks like bigbexardaddy knows whereof he speaks. Little over a week ago bigbexardaddy commented on an item I had posted here about the Bexar Street boondoggle, giving away a lot of detail that sure sounded like it came from inside City Hall, including a claim that Dallas, even in…
The Austin American-Statesmanand The Houston Chronicle this morning are reporting that Governor Rick Perry will hold a press conference this afternoon to announce he’s sending 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the Mexican border to defend Texas against an invasion of unarmed Central American children. This, of course, goes nowhere…
As a lifelong reporter, I can’t help looking at the babies-at-the-border story and worry about the way my own craft tends to tilt a narrative like this. And don’t think I think I’m Goody Two-Shoes. If anything I know the drill too well. A front-page story in The New York…
That most notoriously unsentimental of bands, Steely Dan, are coming back to North Texas. (Well, the North Texas area. Kind of.) Comprised essentially of two men, singer Donald Fagen and guitarist Walter Becker, the band has shuffled unapologetically through its band members over the years, drawing primarily on the likes…
Tuesday was a very strange day for me — an experience I am sharing with you today (or inflicting on you, never quite sure) both here on the blog and also in a short film I made called “A Note for Mary.” I made it with my hat-cam, a small…
Yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding race as a criterion for admissions to the University of Texas at Austin comes on the heels of another big UT-Austin story — the alleged role of under-the-table political influence in admissions at UT and…
We all know that country music, by and large, isn’t the most progressive of musical genres. With loudmouth GOP musicians like Charlie Daniels and Hank Williams Jr., it’s easy to forget that country music isn’t all about trucks, America and hating President Obama. Believe it or not, there are surprisingly…
That Texas redistricting trial that started up yesterday in federal court in San Antonio? Watch that one. It could be third side of the magic triangle that turns Texas blue. The trial is not about whether the tea-tinged Republican-dominated Texas Legislature gerrymandered the vote maps in 2011. Asked and answered…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Sloppy handling of deadly viruses at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, including shipping a deadly virus to a lab by mistake, has spurred calls for an independent investigation of the agency. The head of of it concedes in a New York Times piece this morning there may be a…
At the risk of repeating myself, every time I see, hear or read Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins speaking about the immigrant kid issue, I’m struck by something dramatically new, almost shocking, in the way he frames the question. He starts from the heart. The heart. We don’t get much…
Dallas doesn’t get to call itself home to tons of living legends, but nowhere else in the world has the privilege of calling itself the home of Erykah Badu. As one of the most influential figures in modern R&B and one of the most interesting people alive, Badu is almost…
Maybe I need to do a mid-course correction. Beginning last Sunday, Dallas Morning News City Hall reporter Steve Thompson had what anybody would consider a terrific series of stories in the paper about an ill-fated slum clearance and renovation project on Bexar Street in South Dallas in which the city…
Although Queen has remained hugely popular worldwide for over four decades, the band’s albums have always proved rather spotty. As a matter of fact, it can be especially challenging to make it through any of Queen’s 14 studio efforts. For every great song (“You’re My Best Friend,” “39,” “Sheer Heart…
