Groucho Marx once said that aging gracefully is the grandest oxymoron of all — the big lie. After all, to age is to wrinkle, to wither, to shrink, to vanish. To do so gracefully means only to admit defeat. Grace has nothing to do with it; what’s so graceful about…
Take a message to Murry As they continue to recuperate from a hectic recent touring schedule, Rhett Miller and Murry Hammond of The Old 97’s — also known as The Ranchero Brothers — will perform at Sons of Hermann Hall on August 18. The all-ages show was announced by Hammond…
Scene, heard Post From Vermont has called it quits, breaking up soon after returning home from a short tour through the Midwest. The band said in a brief statement posted to its Web site that the split “came down to the fact that our music didn’t live up to what…
Prince The Vault…Old Friends 4 Sale (Warner Bros. Records) Among the unreleased Prince albums sitting in Warner Bros. Records vaults: a note-for-note redo of James Brown’s 1962 Live at the Apollo album, complete with canned applause; a soul-jazz-prog-fusion-polka two-man ballet titled DMSR, 4 Feet; a collaboration with Sly Stone, Bernie…
During a conversation with the Dallas Observer last year about the Bad Livers’ soundtrack for Richard Linklater’s The Newton Boys, which he produced and performed on, Mark Rubin said he and longtime musical partner Danny Barnes were not really a band, but more like banjo-wielding Dust Brothers. Of course, he’s…
There is a strong possibility that all the quotes below are the fabrications of an impostor. The man who answered the phone claimed his name was Moby, but after speaking with him, it’s difficult to believe he was telling the truth. For one thing, he didn’t seem to know much…
Julian Lennon always understood why critics hated him and why, ultimately, his audience abandoned him. But, for God’s sake, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out: It’s one thing to do a John Lennon impression from a distance, and something else entirely different — and seedier –…
The Muffs’ singer-guitarist Kim Shattuck is careful not to sound too arrogant when discussing how big a part she’s played in the recording of her band’s four albums, including the recent Alert Today Alive Tomorrow, released in June on Fat Wreck Chords offshot Honest Don’s Recordings. While Alert Today is…
When Matt Barnhart moved back to Denton earlier this year, he found himself facing a big decision, the kind of choice that can change your life no matter what the answer is. It had already been a year filled with tough choices for Barnhart, from deciding to leave St. Louis…
Mötley Crüe Dig out your ripped jeans, tease your hair like Adam Curry, and apply that peroxide: Mötley Crüe is celebrating the fact that, for the 18th straight year, they’ve had no band-member deaths with a show at Starplex Amphitheatre on August 20. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bear…
Country Teasers, Compulsive Gamblers Scotland’s Country Teasers are Shania Twain’s inverse, a hideous aesthetic mirror image, coarse and misanthropic where the former is glossy and chummy. Where Ms. Twain’s slick, Fairlight radio pop retains only the barest frame of Nashville form, the Teasers produce a primitive indie guitar sput unrefined…
Duran Duran Duran Duran used to be the boys that the little girls understood. Only now, those little girls are all grown up, and it’s all they can do not to change the station when flashback radio blares “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Sure, Duran Duran and all its lip-gloss-coated adventure…
Scene, heard The reformed New Bohemians recently performed at a benefit concert in Long Island, appearing on a bill with Lyle Lovett and Paul Simon. (Hmmm, I wonder how they got that gig?) A source close to the band — OK, it was Carol Brandon, prodigal drummer Brandon Aly’s mother…
Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease Juxtapose (Island Records) Listen once to a Tricky record, and it feels as though there’s nothing there. At first glance, it’s all insinuations and whispers, music built upon the faint boom-boom-boom of a stoned heart barely beating. Turn away, do anything else, and it…
Wilco There are times when you can listen to Wilco’s latest, Summer Teeth, and hear only Jeff Tweedy’s peculiar songwriting genius, the way he can turn a thousand familiar melodies into one perfectly imperfect song that manages to sound like everything and nothing that came before it. It’s a mess…
Once, during the early 1980s, Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel tried to escape from the enormous shadow that blanketed the Western swing band since its 1973 debut album, which featured the immortal Bob Wills cut “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” The Austin-based band had run into a brick…
An explosion of graffiti covers the walls and ceiling of the room, Lone Star beer flows from the bar like sweat on a thick August night, and the sharp voice of a fiddle cuts down the long, narrow concrete floor. Neon beer signs lend a mellow, buzzing backdrop to a…
Cornell Hurd and his longtime guitar-playing cohort Paul Skelton are lunching on Cajun food at Hoody’s in Oak Hill, on the southwest edge of Austin. They aren’t sure how they ended up there, but they’re trying to figure it out, tracing the long and sordid line that brought them to…
DJ Merritt doesn’t sound much like the life of the party at the moment, sleepily answering questions in a voice that sounds as if it’s still hitting the snooze bar. As the afternoon creeps toward the evening, he is just now recovering from the previous night’s activities, a trek to…
If you attend one of Tripping Daisy’s shows at the Curtain Club this weekend, you can be the first on your block to own the band’s new album. As it did with 1996’s odds-and-ends EP Time Capsule, the band will be pre-selling copies of its forthcoming follow-up to last year’s…
Centro-matic The Static vs. The Strings (Quality Park Records) In the hands of any other band, an album like The Static vs. The Strings would merely be something to fill the gap between real records, a way to buy a little more time until the group could come up with…
Ween Ween is just about the most frustrating band in the world. Dean (Mickey Melchiondo) and Gene (Aaron Freeman) are extraordinary songwriters and musicians — versatile, charming, and clever — who can pull off any kind of vibe they like: old-time country, hair metal, disco funk, expansive prog. They’re also…
