When it comes to rumors involving John Freeman, just assume it’s true until you hear otherwise. Usually, no matter how strange or inexplicable it appears to be, any story that includes his name doesn’t need to be checked out very thoroughly. By now, hearing that he has landed a gig…
Steve Dirkx’s Beatles in a Blender project is pretty much just what the name implied, or as close as the law and modern technology would allow. Last August, while learning how to use his recently purchased sampling equipment, the former Telefones bassist liberally cut and pasted his way through the…
Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios will host its second annual chili cook-off on October 30, an all-day bash featuring many pots of Denton’s finest chili (well…) and a ton (give or take a few pounds) of bands, including The Baptist Generals, Jetscreamer, Little Grizzly, Mandarin, Stumptone, Coals to Newcastle, Union Camp,…
The rumors began making the rounds late Wednesday; they were the kind of whispers that lead to screams. And unfortunately, they were all true: Tripping Daisy guitarist Wes Berggren died Wednesday evening at his Dallas home. No cause of death had been confirmed by Thursday afternoon. According to the police…
It is late August, less than a month before his band The Promise Ring is set to release its third album, Very Emergency, and guitarist Jason Gnewikow is doing his best to remain calm. Not surprising considering the disc’s impending arrival and all of the anticipation surrounding it, all of…
Best-of lists — which have filled the pages of newspapers and magazines ever since the calendar read January 2, 1999 — probably shouldn’t exist at all. They are, more than anything else, the stuff of fiction. Surely, there is one album out there, or 100, we’ve not heard — that…
By now, the members of Ghetto Fame-Us thought that they’d be putting the finishing touches on their second album, taking care of all the details that crop up between the recording sessions and the CD-release party. And that’s what they are doing now, except they haven’t graduated to their sophomore…
Foo Fighters There Is Nothing Left to Lose (Roswell/RCA) It’s not hard to imagine that Dave Grohl was happiest recording the Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut, if only because he was allowed to do almost everything himself. Two albums later, he’s still trying to do it all, or at least…
Kevin Deal Honky Tonks-N-Churches (Blind Nello Records) Kevin Deal has already supplied the only thing that really needs to be said about his follow-up to last year’s debut, Lovin’ Shootin’ Cryin’ and Dyin’; the title of the disc tidily sums up the songs contained on it, from the “blessed old…
Robbie Williams So sad they had to move this show from the Bronco Bowl to Deep Ellum Live — sad, but not surprising, since the hype landed with the thud of a corpse chucked from a 100-story window. And it’s sad only when you consider how much Capitol spent promoting…
Cibo Matto There are two kinds of bands: those made up of smart, serious musicians, and those who are strictly performers. The former usually don’t make for the most energetic live acts (read: lethargic shoegazers), while the latter often lack substance, substituting staged theatrics for musicianship (i.e., anyone who employs…
The Gloria Record, Antarctica Almost two years down the line, The Gloria Record is still having trouble convincing audiences it’s not merely a diluted version of Mineral, the Austin band singer-guitarist Chris Simpson and bassist Jeremy Gomez used to be in that had more fans visit its grave than attended…
We’ve long suspected that Christina Rees was “the enemy within,” but it wasn’t until Neva Chonin, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, took Rees to task for her essay on women musicians (“Girl trouble,” September 30) that we had proof. Only after reading Chonin’s shoddy diatribe about Rees’ piece…
The Darlingtons (or Darlington, if you’re nasty) will be recording a live album on October 23 at Laser Trax in Arlington. The band — singer-guitarist Christy Darlington, drummer Steve Visneau, and someone on bass — is also working on demos for its next studio record, set to be released on…
It was the most unlikely reunion — and, perhaps, a most empty one, since it would lead to absolutely nothing at all except more hard feelings, more regret, and more pain. There they were only last April at the San Francisco Film Festival, sitting together for the first time since…
Janet Weiss might have been better off if she had just left Quasi when she joined Sleater-Kinney in 1996. She could have said goodbye to her ex-husband and Quasi partner Sam Coomes, his Roxichord, and his honestly caustic lyrics, and run off to be the star drummer in the much…
Although New Orleans is the main attraction in Louisiana for music fans, as too many House of Blues T-shirts attest, the state’s real musical magic, and maybe also the best food, is actually found in the heart of Cajun country to the west of the Crescent City. In fact, the…
It all made sense at the time, and to hear Melodica Festival founder Wanz Dover tell it, it still does. The annual festival had been left homeless when The Argo finally closed down after threatening to for months, so Dover decided to relocate to Austin. He had already planned on…
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Looking Forward (Reprise Records Aside from the commercial conceit — this sure ought to get your parents back into record stores, even if they’ll no doubt spend most of the trip wondering where the vinyl went — it’s hard to figure why Neil Young would…
Marchel Ivery 3 (Leaning House Records) It’s hard to stumble across a revelation, if only because there’s nothing left to shock or amaze us. Today’s music is often just a hodgepodge of superior yesterdays, a pastiche of sounds resurrected and retooled for an audience that’s heard it all before and…
The Get Up Kids The lyrics to “Red Letter Day,” off The Get Up Kids’ just-released sophomore album Something to Write Home About, don’t stand out from the rest of the songs on the disc. The song seems to tell the story of yet another broken heart, one more high…
