Coming of age as a punk-rock kid in the early ’90s was an emasculating experience. Feminism invaded the Pacific Northwest’s music scene at its apex a decade ago via record labels like Kill Rock Stars and K, while the region was setting trends that infected the entire country (read: Nirvana)…
A few weeks ago, as usual, we were speaking out of ignorance. “Why don’t local bands put out more compilation CDs?” we griped. “Why don’t they get together more often, do something cool and out of the ordinary?” We were thinking along the lines of hoot nights, actually, or a…
More Lou/VU live, of which there have been plenty and then some–more on-the-road discs than in-the-studio ones, if you’re willing to do the math and include the barely legal imports worth the price of emission. (The best remains 1969 Velvet Underground Live, with its unreleased songs and choruses; not bad…
Two weeks ago in these pages I tipped a hat to the “shortsighted,” “solipsistic,” “retro-fixated” princes of American (and Canadian) indie rock. Though I didn’t include them in the list that followed (because their 2003 album was a snooze)–who was I talking about if not Guided by Voices, the most…
It’s not easy being Hank Williams. Number one suffered a pained back and an ambitious hellcat of a wife in Miz Audrey, among other travails, before shuffling off this mortal coil. Two took a header off a mountain onto his face after years of being dressed up and paraded across…
The alt-country party line on former Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt front man Jay Farrar is that once he dissolved his partnership with celebrated mumbler Jeff Tweedy, Tweedy went on to blaze all kinds of creative trails out of rootsy strum-and-twang, while Farrar tended shop close to home, slowly honing…
A dedication: To the hecklers and the drunk girls and the shitkickers who think they own the place. To the bozo spilling his beer and the gentleman who ashed on my head. To the people on their cell phones. To the cute alterna-girl who thinks tits and a few bottles…
Every so often, I get asked to DJ parties in the neighborhood–not because I’m the guy with the best taste, but because I’ve got the biggest CD collection in a 20-block radius (on rare occasion, size does matter). At first I gladly accepted the invitations for two reasons: It meant…
Four stories of holiday hard luck. I. It was New Years Eve, and Deep Ellum was on edgecars nosing impatiently around the perimeter, people spilling onto the sidewalk and swaying a bit too much. It was like any weekend, really, but a smidge more electric. Just after 2 a.m., when…
San Diego is a lovely place. Palm trees, beautiful Spanish architecture, Balboa Park, the Pacific Ocean, friendly people, breakfast burritos bursting with machaca–all these serve to recommend San Diego to travelers or people looking for a new place to call home. Note, however, that many people would be hard-pressed to…
For Elvis Presley, imitation may be the sincerest form of battery. It’s well-nigh impossible to take the poor man seriously with so many goofballs running around in jewel-encrusted jumpsuits and aviator glasses, marrying people in Vegas and gigging office parties. Then again, the real Elvis did decorate Graceland with porcelain…
For an uprooted Austinite, the Sons of Hermann Hall is pure Southern comfort. No pretense, no posturing, just honky-tonk and heartache, darlin’, with some of the best Americana acts to come through Dallas. That’s due, at least in part, to Mike Snider, who began booking shows at the historical venue…
We listened to their music, but who did they listen to? We asked Dallas musicians to tell us their favorite album of 2003. Carter Albrecht, Sparrows Beyonce, Dangerously in Love (Sony) As the kind CD World employee was ringing my total, I felt a gentle nudge in my back. “Whatcha…
The pithy titles below spell it out better than I ever could: Chutes Too Narrow, Echoes, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?. In 2003 indie rock–that ignoble refuge of the shortsighted, the solipsistic, the retro-fixated, the immature, the self-righteous, the terminally disappointed and the simply boring–faced perhaps its greatest…
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. While rap music all but dominated the pop charts in 2003, it also led to one of the lamest record crops (barring Outkast, God bless them) in recent memory. Even the ever-lovable Snoop Dogg was cranking out hip-pop…
OutKast, “Hey Ya,” Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Where else could we begin? It’s the song of the year–perfect for a drive on a blue-sky day: music at full tilt, voice floating out the open window and straining for harmony, fingers slapping the steering wheel in time, feet stomping the floorboards. All…
Even though the Polyphonic Spree’s album was released in 2003, it was also released in 2002. And 2001. So we’re disqualifying it. Here are the ones that do count. Centro-matic, Love You Just the Same (Misra) Will Johnson and company return after a lengthy (for them) two-year break with another…
Classical music commandeered my childhood. Bach’s fugues wallpapered our living room. Beethoven symphonies rattled through the door of my bedroom, where I mounted an all-hours rock radio counterattack. But my Madonna, my Duran Duran, my INXS, my (full disclosure) Whitney Houston proved no match for Schubert’s sonatas and Mozart’s warbling…
How one feels about Diamanda Galas depends largely on how one feels about the term “serious art.” We Americans don’t have much use for the stuff usually, nor does anyone else, really, though college students who spend a semester in continental Europe tend to return with the idea that everyone…
Among the CDs currently splayed across my desk are a handful of Christmas titles that I, being a sucker for holiday spirit, popped in the player. Now, I’m no Christmas elf, but I have been known to clap my hands like a seal at the sight of good zippy lights,…
A year ago, Eisley was still MossEisley, and the band was still on the verge of something instead of in the thick of it. But you could hear it coming, see it on the way. You wouldn’t have predicted the deal with Warner Bros. necessarily or the tours with Coldplay,…
Just when the Texas blues-rock sound as exemplified by Stevie Ray Vaughan felt like a dull old saw, along come three young Mexican-Americans to sharpen its teeth. The brothers Garza–Henry (guitar), Jojo (bass) and Ringo (drums, natch)–have been playing since their youth, first backing their father and then stepping out…
