Being in a band is a full-time job. Anyone who has played in one will tell you this. Between jams to write music, rehearsals, recording and gigging, it is exhausting and taxing. The trouble with playing in a band is that musicians see very little from it, aside from a…
On Thursday night, the Deep Ellum on Air show Local Over Everything began its second season. The show’s hosts Rodney Blu, Mo the Bear and Simon Phoenix brought in Dallas rapper Blue, the Misfit to mark the occasion. The show has done well with its unconventional, but authentic program format…
Seal Bass is part of an extreme minority amongst Dallas DJs. He plays techno in its purest form. While he’s not so well known in the regional DJ circuit, Seal Bass has over 20 years’ experience behind the decks. He still plays vinyl and his breadth of knowledge of classic…
Since early Saturday morning, the people of Dallas are momentarily retiring their auxiliary cables and tuning into not one, but two new radio stations, both specializing in a virtually untested format. As we reported Monday, both Boom 94.5 FM and Hot 93.3 FM made an unprovoked about-face early Saturday morning:…
A unique thing happened in Deep Ellum last night: People crowded into a bar, filling it wall-to-wall, and looking on in attentive silence at person in the front of the room. But that person wasn’t playing music; they were giving a lecture. The person was Jeffrey Liles, the artistic director…
In March of 2011, the Flaming Lips released a limited edition collaborative 12″ EP with Neon Indian that lit up the internet. It was a fascinating alliance, but the pictures of the actual vinyl records were just as exciting. No one had ever seen vinyl like this before. Every copy…
When frequenters of K-Soul 94.5 FM tuned to its position on the dial this weekend, it was to only quickly discover that without warning, their destination for “the best old school and R&B” had been replaced by something a little bolder and less conventional by radio standards. The silent makeover…
Inspiration is a strange beast. For Philip Gage, the leading track on No Touching’s EP came to him in response to a 7-Eleven clerk who he had a less-than-pleasant experience with. The track, “Big Mama,” started as a joking poem-rant from Gage to bandmate Elana Nelson, but eventually developed into…
Now’s when the real fun begins. Voting has been open for the 2014 Dallas Observer Music Awards for just about six weeks, and we’re in the home stretch. (If you haven’t already voted, you’d better make your way over to musicawardspoll.dallasobserver.com and make sure your voice is heard!) The awards…
Donny Young has been an active part of the Dallas DJ community since the early ’90s heyday of rave — first as a fan, and then as a DJ since 1996. Young is mostly associated with the DJ crew Motif and their parties. He has been a constant face amongst…
In the dull roar of a post-homecoming crowd at Crooked Crust in Denton, Garrett Gravley has his dining choices mocked. The perpetrator, Albert Louis, scoffs: “Dessert bread sticks and beer?” To which Gravley explains, “He’s always making fun of how I eat.” This is the makeshift office space of Who…
This week, Dallas-based songwriter Ronnie Fauss released Built to Break, his second full-length effort for the New West Records imprint Normaltown. Of course, that total doesn’t include the handful of killer alt-country EPs Fauss delivered before his 2012 Normaltown debut, I Am the Man You Know I’m Not. Since 2009,…
Tonight was supposed to witness Connecticut band the World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die visiting Dallas for a show at the Prophet Bar. But as of last night, that is no longer the case. Show cancellations are commonplace — Ms. Lauryn Hill’s scheduled…
Every Music scene has that guy who has seen it all. He’s the guy you always run into at influential shows, record stores and DJ nights from as long as you have been going to shows. Evan Chronister, known to many as Captain Groovy, was one of those guys in…
Though he hasn’t officially released music in five years, for many of us in North Texas Jack Ingram hasn’t gone away. For starters, he performs around here a lot; he’s hit Plano, Dallas and Fort Worth in the past two months alone. And more importantly, he’s built up an impressive…
Prism Cloud, like innumerable bands, started in a garage. But instead of plunking around on guitars haphazardly and figuring it out themselves, they pulled from experience with a different genre: classical music. With this approach, Collin Pollitt and David Sanchez use their broadened perspective to manipulate a seemingly straightforward subset…
Imagine what your labor of love was in college. It could have been a band or a blog or anything really. Just something that was your creative outlet. Now imagine college ending and putting that project to bed because it was time to move on and grow up. That’s the…
Tyrel Choat’s fingertips surged with power when he first pulled a riff out of an electric guitar. His older brother taught him the monstrous riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf,” and when he figured it out himself, he acquired a scorching propensity for riff writing that never burnt out. When…
Jamie Seltzer, known to most around Dallas as JWHO, has been making the rounds around area DJ nights for the past few years as well as doing time with the Love Rich crew. Know for bass-heavy sets that pay homage to house and techno without fully subscribing to their dogma,…
We can’t speak for everyone, but we here at DC9 at Night are getting pretty excited about this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards. Voting has been open for just shy of a month now, we’ve been busy booking the bands that will perform at the DOMA showcase, and the festivities…
On December 13, The Old 97’s will perform at the Majestic Theatre in downtown Dallas. That combination alone is enough to make for a pretty cool night. One of Dallas’ most beloved bands in one of the greatest rooms our city has to offer will never be an ordinary scenario…
Change is in the air these days at Crown & Harp. It may get by the casual visitor of the Lower Greenville club, but the differences are easy enough to see nonetheless. Long-time Monday night DJ Tony Schwa, the man behind Cool Out, has shifted to the weekly dance night…
