It was, according to no less an authority than The New York Times, the year rap went regional. There was plenty of recent evidence to support this claim, beginning with the suddenly paltry record sales racked up by some of hip-hop’s heaviest weights. There was lots of historical evidence, as…
Clearly nobody needs a primer on indie rock. We all have our own idea of what it is, right? Nonetheless, why is it that so few of us can agree on who deserves such a designation? Fact is, attempting to define indie rock universally is as futile a task as…
The criterion for this list was simple: Only the hardest, heaviest metal albums were considered. Bands who play a hybrid style of metal that is not thrash, speed, death, black metal, hard-core, grindcore or some amalgamation thereof were not included. What follows is pure effin’ metal. Bang your head off…
I had been hearing about Sorta since before I even began this job. Before I moved, I did some research, polled some Dallas Observer staff and tore through the Internet seeking out the band names I should know, who I should go see. Sorta kept coming up. The first Sorta…
Good cause, good times: Only in Dallas can the normally polar opposites sports and indie rock not only reach peace, but engage in a fruitful marriage. In the Big D, we love our Cowboys, we love our Mavericks and we love our music, so it makes sense, especially if the…
Bent over a shelf of aging vinyl, Johnny Lloyd Rollins adds another record to his stack of take-home goodies. He’s got a $20 bill in his pocket, and he wants to get the maximum amount of Disney for his buck. Rollins has struck gold: a Robin Hood picture disc, vivid…
January 1979: Al Green can barely sit still behind his desk at his offices just across the road from the Memphis airport. The nondescript building is tucked behind another housing “Al Green Hairstylists” and just a short drive from both Green’s Full Tabernacle Gospel church as well as the late…
Do you remember a time way back in the early 1990s when ska was “invented” by bands such as Voodoo Glow Skulls, No Doubt and Rancid? Well, actually it was invented in the early 1980s by bands such as the Specials, Madness and Selecter. Oh, wait a minute, it was…
Most parents find it difficult dealing with the sounds emanating from their young child’s room. The yearly onslaught (especially during the holidays) of products geared toward the wee ones can be daunting to say the least. What follows is a guide through the minefield of pre-adolescent music, one that might…
Part of the first generation of hip-hop fans now approaching middle age are suburban guys who balance family time and Frank-the-Tank weekends, guys still blasting hip-hop but doing so from minivans and sensible sedans. Coffee Nods main man Ben “Benisanna” Rogers speaks for them. With a hint of reluctance, Ben…
Gwen Stefani’s shtick has come to embody an entire female generation’s attitude toward good times and spending money. Simply check out The Sweet Escape highlight reel: “Breakin’ Up” is a possible transcript of a customer-service call with Verizon. Both “Yummy” and the lead single “Wind It Up” speak to the…
Despite all the biblical allusions on the 2002 debut Lord Willin’, Virginia Beach’s Clipse (brothers Pusha T and Malice) probably didn’t intend to also evoke Exodus. But in the aftermath of the Sony-BMG merger that buried the act at Jive, the duo has wandered for years without a release date…
Julie Doiron has a long-running history with Eric’s Trip, a brilliant but mostly defunct Canadian four-piece. The band was great mostly thanks to main songwriter Rick White and his creative production techniques—”lo-fi,” if you have to call it something. As a result, I was shocked (shocked!) to find out that…
If not for his cantankerous personality and eccentric behavior, it would be easy to label Wayne “The Train” Hancock’s complete approximation of Hank Williams as simply the work of a gifted impersonator. Yet over the course of more than a decade, Hancock has released some of the most authentic and…
Despite the first blush hokeyness of their name and enough TV play on the Dodge truck commercial that featured their hyper-tonk song “Llano Estacado” to sear the number into the brain cells with almost painful familiarity, Cooder Graw turned out to be one of the genuine bright spots within the…
Dallas’ own Thomas King Cone IV distills the sounds of such disparate acts as Dwight Yoakam and Dire Straits into radio-friendly retro-country that should be his ticket to a larger audience. Cone’s male model good looks may actually serve as a distraction from his quality songwriting as his growing (mostly…
If your holidays are less like a Hallmark card and more like an outtake from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, load up on eggnog, pack up the mistletoe and celebrate the season with true, kindred spirits. Reverend Horton Heat, the man (James C. Heath), the myth and the band, which was…
This is not an album that will translate into catchy ringtones or make you bounce in your car seat, bang your head, shake your booty with friends or write angry/gushy diary entries about your recent ex. Listeners have to sit down and spend some time with it, because the music’s…
I’ve been working on a feature story about hip-hop, and I’ve noticed something: In the hip-hop world, there’s a lot of talk about representing. Representing, as in a constant refrain of reference to one’s hometown, one’s neighborhood, one’s street. Hip-hop is filled with constant shout-outs to artists’ roots, to the…
Ohhh…we get it: In a world of senseless battle of the bands (wait, what’s the plural of that? Battles of the bands? It’s kind of like trying to pluralize “pig in a blanket.”), stupid rock competitions and slapped-together music federations, perhaps one organization stands as the only bona fide group:…
Since coping with a near-fatal bout of hepatitis C, Alejandro Escovedo returned to the studio late last year to put out his first non-live album in four years, The Boxing Mirror, and to the road—just not with the same fast pace or recklessness as days past. Getting new music out,…
Slick Rick, whose mellow voice and story-telling style featured on old-school rap classics such as “La Di Da Di” and “Children’s Story,” still calls New York home despite four years of efforts by the INS to deport him to his native England on the basis of his 1991 attempted-murder conviction…
