Green means stop?

Green means stop? On February 25, shortly after Amelia Abreu’s story about the Green Means Go! collective (“Good to Go!,” February 10), the group’s performance space in Denton was closed indefinitely by the city fire marshal for numerous code violations, including inadequate parking facilities and doors that opened the wrong…

Bug in your ear

At a time when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is lobbying Congress to pass a law that would make all recording artists nothing more than “workers for hire” (essentially making them even less than a label employee), it’s refreshing to see there are still people like Dan and…

The freed band

In the current climate of uncertainty and unrest within the recording industry, where big record labels eat other big record labels in perpetuity and indies retract themselves into self-contained genre-of-the-month stalwarts, it’s nearly unthinkable for a 12-year-old band to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. But…

Carl’s corner

From the outside, it appears as if Carl Finch and Brave Combo couldn’t have planned it any better. Only a few weeks after the group’s last album, 1999’s Polkasonic, was named Best Polka Album at the Grammy Awards, Brave Combo will have a new disc in stores, The Process, on…

Across the Bar

Scene, heard On March 25 at Fort Worth’s Ridglea Theatre, there will be a Comet reunion…sort of. For the first time since the group broke up a few years back, all four members of the band — Josh Garza, Daniel Huffman, and Jim and Neil Stone — will be playing…

Out There

PanteraReinventing the SteelElektra RecordsThese boys are celebrating the release of Album Number Five with a party at The Clubhouse, the, local, ah, gentleman’s club owned by Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell; nothing says metal like a nudie-bar throwdown. Just don’t expect the ladies to actually dance to anything off Reinventing…

Out Here

The Reverend Horton Heat Spend a Night in the Box Time Bomb Recordings The Reverend Horton Heat has been going downhill for so long, it’s difficult to remember exactly what made the band worthwhile in the first place. And, obviously, they don’t remember either, or else they might have hit…

Critics’ Picks

Deanna Varagona of Lambchop Billed as the new sound of Nashville, Lambchop must have a very different vision of what musical heritage means: Having as much — or as little — in common with No Depression as with young country, the band has a lineage that runs farther, wider, and…

Critics’ Picks

Fu ManchuEverywhere you turn these days, from Jersey to Sweden to Los Angeles, so-called stoner rock bands are sprouting up like weeds, and most aren’t much more appealing than weeds. What they don’t seem to realize is that it takes more than being really high to make great music to…

Critics’ Picks

Love as Laughter Love as Laughter’s latest, Destination 2000, is exactly the sort of thing that makes a person get her Camaro off blocks and start smoking Marlboro Reds again, even though her closet is filled with purple boas and silver fun fur. Is it surprising that it comes from…

Scene, heard

Scene, heard Dallas expatriates Transona Five will be back in the area for a few days later this month to finish mixing their forthcoming album with Matts Pence and Barnhart at The Echo Lab (the studio formerly known as 70Hurtz and Transcontinental Recording Company). The band, which moved to Boston…

Out There

AC/DC Stiff Upper Lip (EastWest/Elektra) Steely Dan Two Against Nature (Giant Records) Angus, Brian, Donald, and Walter could have gone out and screwed up the formula, which, at their age, would have thrown out their backs. As it stands, expect to hear Stiff Upper Lip’s title track in one of…

A heartbreaking work of death and embarrassment

A man in his 30s sits down to write his autobiography. He knows that doing so is a rather silly proposition. After all, what does a man in his 30s know? What has he lived through worth retelling? What experiences can he recount, what knowledge can he impart, that others…

The Big Man blows

New Jersey has long been the butt of jokes — the Polack of states, a place where all the bridge-and-tunnel cretins have Manhattan daydreams and bad ’70s ‘dos. Then along came a man they call The Boss and his colorful band of associates to make the Garden State cool. Yep,…

Do you wanna dance?

Last spring in Denton, Gregg Foreman — long-legged and wolf-voiced frontman of The Delta 72 — won my heart, along with that of everyone else in the audience at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. He sang in smooth, guttural growls, played a mean slide guitar, and owned the stage as if…

Kings of the ring

It’s one of the oldest saws in show business: Ya gotta have a good gimmick. For Los Straitjackets, the gimmick came about by accident, but it turned out to be a nifty one: Mexican wrestling masks. Not that there is any relationship, per se, between Mexican wrestling and the instrumental…

Welcome back to Hell’s Lobby

George Neal moved to Denton in 1991, leaving behind Midwestern State University and Wichita Falls to attend the University of North Texas and immerse himself in the area’s rapidly expanding music community. Since then, he’s been Denton music’s biggest cheerleader, a familiar face at almost every show in town, whether…

Out Here

Captain Audio LUXURY or whether it is better to be loved than feared (Last Beat Records) You get the feeling, after listening to LUXURY or whether it is better to be loved than feared a few times, that Captain Audio is trying to figure out where to go next. That’s…

Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson When I was 10, I dragged my father out of his hospital bed to take me to the Dallas County Convention Center for a Richard Thompson concert. I had never been to a concert, had no idea what actually went on at concerts, and was, in truth, partly…

The Mr. T Experience

The Mr. T Experience The following is an excerpt from the October 1999 issue of The T-Team, a monthly newsletter written, published, and distributed by Lawrence Tero, better known to friends and fans as Mr. T. Tero began the newsletter in 1983 when he was starring as B.A. Baracus in…

Beulah

Beulah Beulah, Colorado, is a lovely hamlet nestled between the Wet Mountains, just 25 miles southwest of Pueblo. On the Fourth of July, Beulah, Wyoming, is home to the “Largest Parade in the Smallest Town” in the country. Beulah, North Dakota, boasts a nine-hole putting green made of real grass…

They got it like that

It happened around the time the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul had their verses removed from the final version of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario,” the last song on the group’s 1991 breakthrough The Low End Theory. A three-way partnership was erased with the push of a button: Until…