Last year, Lauryn Hill managed to do the impossible: make an album consisting of virtually everything that’s missing from most popular music as of late. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her first recording outside the Fugees camp, was as fierce as it was emotionally raw, deep as it was danceable,…
Though Direct Hit Records hasn’t quite been the same since Kelly and Sean Handran were forced to close their store in Exposition Park in July 1995, the mom-and-pop label’s catalog reads like a history of Dallas and Denton music over the past 10 years. After all, Direct Hit released Bedhead’s…
Scene, heard Quality Park Records, the Denton label owned and operated by Matt Barnhart, recently doubled its catalog, taking Western Vinyl Records — an even smaller independent based out of Bedford — under its wing. Quality Park will now distribute all of Western Vinyl’s releases, which include singles by Knife…
Five years after his perfect record, This Perfect World, Freedy Johnston proves why it never pays to get too close to a singer-songwriter. For a while there, Johnston made adult pop records that transcended the genre — meaning, they were too smart for the heart, but too tender for the…
There is nothing very unusual about Chomsky, not a single thing that should catch your eye or ear right away, just four guys playing pop songs on guitars, drums, and bass. Right. Got it. Line forms to the left. At first, it’s all too easy to assume that you could…
It was January 1978, and the Winterland was packed, and the Sex Pistols had just played their last show anywhere, and it had ended with lead singer Johnny Rotten cackling these choice parting words: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Cheated wasn’t the half of it. The Sex Pistols…
The publicist from Columbia Records calls right on time, Tuesday at 10 a.m., the very moment a member of the London Suede is scheduled to call for an interview to promote Head Music, the band’s latest album. Only, instead of the expected “I’ve got Richard Oakes from the London Suede…
Carl Finch never thought Brave Combo would last 20 years, never thought he’d still be playing polka music two decades after he formed the band with horn player Tim Walsh, drummer Dave “Tito” Cameron, and bassist Lyle Atkinson in 1979. He was working on his master’s degree in fine arts…
OZZFest ’99 A few weeks ago, I ventured to the June 4 installment of OZZFest ’99 at the Nissan Amphitheatre in Washington, D.C. To the best of my recollection, this is how it all went down. Most of it, anyway. 11:05 a.m. Denied entrance into the Nissan Amphitheatre’s parking facility…
Jewel What follows is an excerpt from Jewel’s forthcoming book of poetry, her second. It is titled See My Breasts, Aren’t They Perky?, and is the follow-up to her wildly successful literary debut, A Night Without Armor, by far the best book ever written by a pop star — at…
Macha Bang a gong, get it on. Six years ago, Joshua McKay went to Indonesia searching out the gong orchestras his mother used to play for him as a child; he brought with him a tape recorder and ears big enough to consume and absorb the entire world. The result…
It looks like The Old 97’s will not be performing at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios on July 22 as was previously scheduled. The latest batch of 97’s tour dates sent out by Chris Blake, the band’s manager, makes no mention of the show, which was to have included Slobberbone and…
God knows I’m not the only one who can’t get past The Voice. That deep and rangy alto — a near tenor at times — has a way of dragging the music forward to match it. We forgive artistic trespasses and let ourselves be dazzled by indirect nostalgia. Since the…
The Telefones exist, just barely, as an afterthought, a name to be conjured only when old-timers talk about wasting their youth pogoing the night away at the corner of Maple and Hondo. It’s almost impossible to place the band — featuring brothers Jerry, Steve, and Chris Dirkx, and their rotating…
Every few weeks, Wayne Coyne drives the three hours south to Dallas from his home just outside of Oklahoma City, a place he refers to as “Wayne Manor.” It’s a trip he’s been making since the mid-’80s, when his band, The Flaming Lips, took the stage at Theatre Gallery or…
The phone call couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. It’s a publicist at Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records — a vice-president at A&M for 14 years before Seagram’s eviscerated the label — ringing on behalf of one his clients, Sinead Lohan. But quickly the conversation turns to a mutual pet peeve:…
Normally, we stay away from writing about an album in the, ah, concept stage; it’s a little bit like critiquing a building from an artist’s rendering. But we couldn’t help butting our noses in where they don’t belong when we received a copy of a letter One Ton Records big…
It should have been a disaster, the kind of performance bands talk about later as the beginning of the end, the exact moment things started to go all wrong. Even now, as they sit around a table at The Cavern with the moment long behind them, four-fifths of The Gospel…
At a June 18 performance at Fort Worth’s Ridglea Theater, The Commercials announced that they have indeed officially changed their name to Jet, as was reported in Street Beat two weeks ago. The group will perform under the new name for the first time on July 30 at Bar of…
Nation of Ulysses wasn’t around long — only two albums, 1991’s 13-Point Program to Destroy America and 1992’s Plays Pretty for Baby — but the quintet remains one of the best bands Ian MacKaye’s Dischord Records ever produced. The Washington, D.C.-based group wasn’t as influential as MacKaye’s own outfits, especially…
Pavement pissed me off four years ago during an outdoor show on the University of Chicago campus. From start to finish, they played with their backs turned to the audience, and Miles Davis they ain’t. It was just prior to the band’s stint with Lollapalooza, and Pavement had already been…
By now, you’d assume that country musicians would know it’s easier to sell your soul in Nashville than it is to sell a song there. Yet every year, dozens of people like Houston Marchman head off to Nashville to make it as singers and songwriters, and the only thing they…
