Vibrolux, at last Kim Pendleton is pondering the question of why she and Paul Quigg moved back to Dallas last February, waving farewell to Los Angeles and the corpse of a record deal. “Why? Why?” she repeats, giggling in a high, hoarse voice. For a moment, she seems to be…
For several months, Paul Burch had planned to host a free punk festival at Arlington’s Veterans Park. Burch intended the festival, Acts of Defiance, as a way for people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area “to get to know one another so that they can see that skin color and clothing…
Ride with Ray There is perhaps no better friend to the memory of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys than Ray Benson. Benson and his band, Asleep at the Wheel, have been playing Wills’ music almost longer than he did over the course of their three-decade career. Benson’s love for…
Scene, heard Rockville Music officially called it quits on July 14, closing up shop after more than half a decade in business. The store, located at 2811 N. Henderson, will remain open for a few days a week for a while, but only so customers can pick up any instruments…
Even at his “funkiest” — and just try using that word with a straight face when talking about David Byrne — the former art-schooler has as much rhythm as an anthropologist lost in the bush with a tape recorder in one hand and a notepad in the other. He knows…
You can’t say that Denton’s Clutch Cargo doesn’t take care of business on its debut, Colon Bruising Sounds, blitzing through 11 tracks in less than 28 minutes. Produced by ex-Hagfish bassist Doni Blair, the disc is a constant sprint to the finish line, almost ending before it begins; the album…
Chris Hillman knew Gram Parsons perhaps better than anyone, or at least as well as anyone could know a wealthy young man dedicated to living fast, loving hard, dying young, and leaving a beautiful memory. It was Hillman who brought Parsons into the Byrds in 1968; and it was Hillman…
George Gimarc hasn’t had any real contact with the radio station he helped found, KDGE-FM (94.5), in about three years, since he released the 11th, and most likely last, installment of his Tales From the Edge series. As a group, the Tales From the Edge compilations are like portable histories…
Journey, Foreigner Easy targets, both of these bands — you can smell the bull’s-eyes on their foreheads from a thousand miles away. So get your e-mails ready, you old farts out there with your blood boiling, as we sharpen our butter knives and prepare for a little rock-and-roll tumor-removal. Yeah,…
errortype:11 World’s Fastest Car was doomed from the beginning. The band was founded by Quicksand frontman Walter Schreifels and singer-guitarist Arty Shepherd after Schreifels’ former outfit dissolved on an ill-fated 1995 tour. And just like any relationship formed on the rebound, it was never meant to last. After two years…
Harry Connick Jr. and His Big Band It’s been 10 years since Harry met Sally and birthed their little Frankie Jr., 10 years since the son of the New Orleans district attorney went multi-multi and made it safe for young couples in love to cozy up to “But Not for…
There are moments in Ray Wylie Hubbard’s past he would prefer to forget, as well as some he honestly does not remember. But he offers one tale that he can recall from his lost years with neither embarrassment nor the barely concealed glee of the unreformed. “I came out of…
It should have been the biggest gig of the year for Josh Alan, local bluesman and contributor to the Dallas Observer. And Alan will probably still remember it for a long time to come — just for different reasons than he originally thought. KKZN-FM (93.3) assistant program director Abby Goldstein…
While we hate pointing out the errors of others — OK, maybe hate is too strong a word — we couldn’t help but notice that last week’s issue of The Met referred to Ronnie Dawson’s recent More Bad Habits as his “first studio album since the ’60s.” Well, that isn’t…
The Toadies will be the last band ever to perform on the stage of Austin’s Liberty Lunch on July 31, when the long-running club shuts its doors for the final time. Well, at least for the final time at its current location. Liberty Lunch will remain in business, reopening in…
Too often, a Robyn Hitchcock album is like a series of one-night stands: a lot of screwing around that never leads to anything meaningful. Inexplicable choruses follow free-association verses, with a flurry of gibberish obscuring everything but the chord changes. And when he does hit upon a lucid thought, it…
Two discs in less than eight months — you’ve got to respect the drive and ambition. And bless the boys for continuing to find inspiration in an echo; it takes guts to keep cranking out the ol’ slap-and-tickle when rockabilly’s been dead and buried since Dwight D. was in the…
The Dallas Observer has obtained a copy of a script for a show being added to NBC-TV’s fall lineup, The Lilith Fairies. As best we can tell, it’s about a handful of female musicians — among them Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Shawn Colvin, and Luscious Jackson — out to rid…
For many bands, the lasting image of a carefully coiffed hairdo in a music video has given them far more fame than their talents would otherwise have warranted (See Duran Duran. Or don’t, actually). Yet there are others who have suffered a reverse fate: groups whose music is worthy of…
When Regina Chellew, Josh Garza, and Brandon Curtis came together as Captain Audio, it was as though three painters had stumbled upon a room full of blank canvases; there was no present or past, only future. They had all been in normal bands before — although calling Comet and UFOFU…
Rocket from the Cripps As was briefly mentioned in last week’s Street Beat (“Back to the future,” July 8), percussionist Joe Cripps has left Brave Combo after seven years with the Denton band. Both sides say the split was amicable and based solely on Cripps’ suddenly busy schedule, which seems…
You can fool yourself into believing this is just like seeing Van Halen in 1982; David Lee Roth has. He’s been trying to relive his bygone glories for the past few years, since he briefly reunited with Van Halen to record two new songs for the band’s 1997 best-of collection…
