It’s hard enough to pull off something like the upcoming Deep Relief benefit with months of planning, yet somehow, Deep Ellum’s club owners and retailers have managed to do it in just a few weeks. We attended all of the planning meetings for Deep Relief, and it was impressive to…
Always living in someone else’s shadow, the Charlatans have spent 12 years struggling to find their own identity. Whether it was singer Tim Burgess aping King Monkey Ian Brown, or guitarist Martin Collins ripping off Keith Richards, they seemed to be somewhat less than original. That all began to change…
Despite long-standing relationships with jazz labels such as Blue Note and Verve that stretch back to the mid-1950s and early 1960s respectively, organist Jimmy Smith has never been, plainly speaking, a jazz player. Sure, his early trio output and solo work on the surface conformed to the form, but many…
Five people were scattered inside Club Clearview, maybe 10. A dozen tops. Whatever the number, it wasn’t enough people to qualify as an audience and certainly not a crowd. Walking inside, it seemed as though the group onstage had served every person inside Clearview with a restraining order, forcing them…
Faint electronic beeps sound off in the background, spaced about 15 seconds apart. Their timing is somewhat familiar, but the tone is a little strange. Nevertheless, you expect the party on the other end to tend to it. “My phone is beeping,” says Murder City Devils’ guitarist and bassist Nate…
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of Cristal, it was the age of imaginary players, it was the epoch of money, cash and hoes, it was the epoch of reasonable doubt, it was the season of cashmere thoughts, it was…
When Wilco performed at the Gypsy Tea Room on September 21, Jeff Tweedy stopped between songs to thank everyone for coming out and making music with him and his band. “Especially now,” Tweedy added, and everyone in the audience knew exactly what he meant. Two weeks earlier, his comment could…
Two tribs, joined at the McCartney: Sir Paul’s the subject of one (Listen to What the Man Said) and featured on the other, a loving, star-spangled redo of Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ 1977 erstwhile masterpiece of working-class lust and despair, New Boots & Panties!! The former’s of moderate interest…
It’s a bright, cheery afternoon, and Miles Kurosky is walking, sunglasses on, talking on his cell phone. The singer, songwriter and guitarist for Beulah has arrived a little late for our brunch interview, but he lingers on the phone anyway, trying to reassure the caller about something. Finally, he hangs…
Brett and Rennie Sparks–the husband and wife duo who record her lyrics and his music as The Handsome Family–often get accused of being depressing. Or dark, or morbid or macabre. Take your pick. They all lead to the same conclusion: Why can’t they just write one happy song? “That’s when…
Though I’ve just had a conversation with singer Todd Baechle in which we took turns saying things, there’s still a couple of questions about the Faint, the Omaha, Nebraska, band he fronts, burning semi-important holes in the back of my mind. For starters, there’s the one to which he moaned…
On the first song of his band’s new album, right as Quasi dude Sam Coomes’ cracked-ass organ rides drummer Scott Plouf’s Bonham-heavy backbeat, Idaho native/electric guitar hero/probably cool dad Doug Martsch unwittingly nails the experience of seeing Built to Spill live and in person: “This strange plan is random at…
You don’t have to believe it to laugh your face off, but you’ll get more out of the self-titled debut by L.A. comedy duo Tenacious D if you buy their claim that they’re the best band in the world. After you’ve gone through the record, you’ll at least be convinced…
In the wake of September 11’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., many may feel as though it’s the end of the world as they know it. But if you turn on your radio and want to hear R.E.M. say…
Aging, balding curmudgeons who (barely) remember Deep Ellum’s musical melting pot in the olden days–when you bought a beer from an upright fridge in the Theater Gallery and later relieved yourself of its filling fluid in the alley behind it–often barely recognize the sparkling nightspot it is today. The closest…
When Mick Jagger sang of the girl who “comes in colors everywhere” in “She’s a Rainbow,” a gorgeously loopy ode to a flower-wearing, free-loving beauty on the Stones’ confused 1967 psychedelic experiment Their Satanic Majesties Request, there’s a good chance he was describing a woman he actually knew. But he…
Michael Azerrad’s new book, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, will come as a shock to those who believe the terms of VH1’s Bands on the Run are harsh, that its aspiring rock stars are roughing it, that life on the road is…
I’ve had the best album of 2001 in my hands for about a month now, and every day since then, it’s been in whatever CD player I happen to be near, and spinning in my head if I can’t find one. Even after all of those listens, I still haven’t…
Jamal Mohamed was born in Lebanon, but he is an American. “I love the Beatles. I played rock and roll. I mean, I did everything Americans do; I just happened to be born to parents of Arabic extraction,” Mohamed says, “and I happen to be a Muslim.” At the moment,…
What a difference a decade makes. After Snoop Dogg first fired up his spliffed-out delivery on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic in 1992, he quickly became not only rap’s first bona fide super-duper star but the very essence of gangsta rap. Sure, N.W.A., the Geto Boys and BDP hit harder and…
Give Ben Folds credit for knowing when a joke was wearing thin: Three albums in, Folds’ indie cabaret act–the oddly billed trio, Ben Folds Five–had run its course. Sure, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen went platinum thanks to the omnipresent anti-ballad “Brick,” but 1999’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner…
Stop the madness, please. It’s getting out of hand. Simply because there was an ample well of young-adult disposable income in the latter half of the ’90s doesn’t mean that every aspect of pop culture has to cater to their all-too malleable desires. Every movie doesn’t have to kowtow to…
