Teddy ThompsonTeddy Thompson(Virgin Records)Rickie Lee JonesIt’s Like This(Artemis Records)He’s the son of Richard and Linda Thompson–hence, the no-shit CD review, since Teddy’s the heir to more than three decades’ worth of giddy accolades and piss-poor sales–and dear ol’ dad shows up on five of the debut’s 10 singalongs. But the…
Various artistsWhistle Bait: 25 Rockabilly Rave-Ups Ain’t I’m a Dog: 25 More Rockabilly Rave-Ups(Columbia/Legacy)Wild, raunchy, and brimming with chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, rockabilly–real rockabilly–was a musical sucker punch delivered to the button-down Eisenhower years. As unrefined as moonshine but packing twice the kick, here was homespun, hard-driving nose-thumbing aimed right at Mitch…
It’s a late night at Nomad Studios in Carrollton, where The Paper Chase’s John Congleton works as a sound engineer. At the moment, he’s sitting in a studio with one of his clients, gospel popster Kirk Franklin; Congleton, who worked with Franklin on 1997’s God’s Property, is acting as an…
It’s a Dallas stage, a few years ago. Picture a slightly younger Phillip Karnats onstage, clad in a black jumpsuit, “08” on the back. He’s just moved from Bloomington, Illinois, to add his guitar to the pre-Commercials, pre-Adventures Of Jet pop-rock stylings of Bobgoblin. On this particular night, a feisty…
The Joshua Tree home of musicians Victoria Williams and her husband, Mark Olson, is not easy to find. Situated on 10-odd acres, a mile or so off the main road on an unmarked, unpaved street–trail might be a better word–the home rests in the middle of a dusty patch of…
Rick’s Place–the anchor of Denton’s Fry Street for years and home to more drunken frat boys (‘scuse us, fraternity members) than a South Padre Motel 6–suffered an estimated $100,000 worth of damage following an early morning fire on August 16. Of course, it wasn’t quite as bad as some had…
The Who said good-bye in 1983, then again in 1989 with a stadium concert that barely escaped tarnishing the legend for good. There was Pete on the Cotton Bowl stage with his hand plastered and bandaged after having impaled himself on his guitar’s whammy bar; most of the time he…
There’s a strong temptation right now to rechristen this aging musician/megalomaniac as Stink, ’cause man oh man, does his new album suck. It’s called Brand New Day, and it does herald a new phase in the man’s career, one in which he is completely and utterly irrelevant. (Seen the video/Jaguar…
The BandMusic from Big Pink The Band Stage Fright Cahoots(Capitol Records) For far too long now, The Band has rested on the dusty shelves of musty intellectuals who treat the works of Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and Rick Danko as though they’re history lessons instead of…
FlickerstickWelcoming Home the Astronauts(226 Records)Change, stay the same, sell out: With these three easy steps, you too can become a modern-rock phenom like Matchbox 20…er, Twenty. And Flickerstick’s debut, Welcoming Home the Astronauts, seems to illustrate that the band is willing to give this formula a shot. With the exception…
What you see before you — two brothers sharing a stage in front of the adoring handful, two boys singing songs about football, their grandfather’s birthday, and doing the dishes — is the opening few minutes of any episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, the happy tale before it mudslides…
I don’t adhere to any stoner-rock rules or bylaws,” Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme sneers, leveling in one fell swoop the burgeoning mini-genre that has sprung up around his feet. “You call it stoner rock if you want, but that’s got nothing to do with me.” Yowza…
Throw a stick, and you’re apt to hit someone who thinks the current pop scene is the worst ever! And who, other than nine-year-old white girls, could argue with that logic? Britney Spears and Celine Dion, to name just two, seem more like actors portraying musicians than the real thing…
Expect to see more bands perform at Smirnoff Music Centre than ever before, now that the Pierre Smirnoff Company has taken over title sponsorship of the venue from Coca-Cola. Reportedly, Smirnoff agreed to pick up the sponsorship rights (the company assumed them in June) only if the owner of the…
Shellac1000 Hurts(Touch and Go)Über-producer, general pain in the ass, and guitarist-engineer Steve Albini has a keen ear for abrasive sounds. During the mid-’80s, before his work with Nirvana, Bush, and PJ Harvey (and countless others) turned him into a minor celebrity among alternative-rock fans smart enough to read their liner…
DarlingtonLive Dallas 1999(Mutant Pop Records)Todd DeatherageTodd Deatherage(Self-released)Todd Deatherage and Darlington’s Steve Visneau and Christy Darlington have been buddies for years, beginning when they were part of the group of friends that used the now-defunct Orbit Room as their personal clubhouse, hanging out regardless of the occasion. More than a few…
Hanson Hanson has nothing more to prove, really. If a band’s fate is to be a one-hit wonder, it’s to their everlasting, heavenly glory to have that hit be one as transcendently, joyously dumb as “MMMBop.” Now, three years later (two lifetimes in teen boy-band years), they make their somewhat…
Mary J. Blige It may seem like an overstatement, but Mary J. Blige could be the best female soul singer since Aretha Franklin. There’s a smoothness to her voice that puts all her contemporaries and imitators to shame. Of course, it helps that she chooses to wrap that big, bad,…
OzzFest 2000 Ozzy and Pantera. Main stage, back to back, in Dallas, Pantera’s stomping grounds. That’s all that matters about OzzFest, regardless of what you might’ve heard about all the up-and-comers on this year’s bill. There’s no way to beat that, not even with a 10-foot line of fire ants…
What we will not spend a lot of time doing today is retelling the story of the Dixie Chicks, their rise from local kitsch-bluegrass babes to international country-music stars and Dairy Council spokesgals. In fact, we will discuss that for all of one sentence, which could be placed anywhere in…
It starts — surprisingly, frustratingly — with a question of etiquette, after half a dozen calls to the appropriate cell-phone number at the appropriate time, and the only thing picking up is a voice-mail greeting. Is it proper to leave a message at the end of each call, or hang…
Most observers regard the onslaught of teenage pop sensations like Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync, and Christina Aguilera as proof positive of the cyclical nature of rock music. And like the big teen-idol boom of the early ’60s, all this smiling and dancing must mean that a renaissance…
