John Dufilho is either the hardest-working white man in show business or he truly believes that idle hands are the devil’s playground. It seems that Dufilho is trying to make a run at the position Michael Jerome has long held at the top of the hill when it comes to…
Before his gig later that night at Deep Ellum Live as part of the Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue — which features half-hour sets by The Flaming Lips, Sebadoh, Sonic Boom’s E.A.R., and IQU — Robyn Hitchcock will perform at Bill’s Records on Sunday at 3 p.m. And considering the…
There’s something rather romantic about the tale of the small, vanished musician who leaves behind a hint of genius buried beneath the debris of madness. All hail Roky Erickson and Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson, the holy trinity of pop’s martyred madmen. Even better if you’re crazy and dead; it’s…
The Light Crust Doughboys are more legend than band now — the longest-running Western swing outfit around, old men playing old music. Together since the 1920s, The Light Crust Doughboys are practically just a name at this point, a ghost of Christmas dances past, even though some members of the…
Playing in front of a crowd that fire marshals only read about in training manuals, in a club with no air-conditioning, a faulty P.A., and one bathroom for about 500 people is kind of hard to forget, even if you’ve seen the inside of more clubs than bottles of Budweiser…
Dear Britney, I, like many of my peers, used to exercise a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the brand of perky, bubblegum-flavored pop that you, and countless other one-hit-wonder types like you, have been trading in and out of the Billboard Top 40 for basically the last quarter of this…
In last year’s Broadway revue I’m Still Here, Damn It!, since memorialized on CD, one of Sandra Bernhard’s best rants involves the Lilith Fair and how performers such as Jewel and Sarah McLachlan would wither like wallflowers in the Texas sun beside the female FM-radio rock icons of her late…
There I was, at the last Woodstock of the millennium. Three of three in the collectors’ series. This is it — this is life, man. I actually told myself that. My inner voice even adopted a stoner inflection to add that touch of authenticity that it knew would convince me…
Ben Yeager laughs a bit when asked about the differences between the setup he worked with for four years in the studio at the Last Beat Records complex on Commerce Street and the newly remodeled version, which he has been using for the past month or so. It’s the kind…
No Limit Tour If Master P’s No Limit empire ever crumbles — and one day it will — the shooting guard formerly known as Percy Miller has quite a future in the mail-order business. He’s been designing catalogs since 1990, when he turned No Limit Records from a store into…
Flaming Lips, Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock A friend of mine — the sort of Robyn Hitchcock fan who hits his Web sites every few days — has been keeping up with the fans’ online reviews of the current tour their cult hero is on with The Flaming Lips and Sebadoh. “They…
Brian Setzer Orchestra With the exception of just a few — Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and the Tonight Show Orchestra — big bands went out of fashion after World War II. Almost no one could afford the upkeep of a big band, and no one wanted anyone to try to…
The Rough Guide to Music USA, a new book by former Option editor Ritchie Unterberger, purports to be “a tour through the most important and interesting varieties of American popular music.” And it is, sort of. We just don’t understand how Unterberger’s musical trek from sea to shining sea could…
In a move that should surprise exactly two people, bassist Angelique Congleton recently quit The Darlingtons to concentrate on the other bands she plays with, which include The Meat Helmets and, occasionally, The Secret Machines of Captain Audio. (Whoever had July in the pool can come collect their $10.) Guitarist…
Detroit Rock City Detroit Rock City (Island/Def Jam) The only thing worse than Ted Nugent is Pantera covering Ted Nugent; Phil Anselmo can cure a boy of “Cat Scratch Fever” real quick (though it does beat his band’s titty-bar Dallas Stars anthem). The only thing worse than Thin Lizzy is…
Regent Sound Studios, at 24 W. 57th St. in Manhattan, was my alma mater. What began as a lucky summer job when I was fresh out of high school became a two-year hitch. I dropped out of NYU that fall to maintain the job. It was my entrée into the…
One might imagine that Doug Sahm came up with the idea of forming the Texas Tornados — his Tex-Mex supergroup with Chicano country crooner Freddy Fender, conjunto music legend Flaco Jimenez, and Sahm’s Sir Douglas Quintet compadre Augie Meyers — while sipping Corona con lima in a rustic cantina down…
Stephen Kennedy, president and founder of iSong.com, is a little sheepish when discussing his company’s origins. Nervous laughs replace the periods at the end of his sentences. At first, it’s difficult to discern what he’s so skittish about. Maybe he’s embarrassed by the fact that iSong.com, a Dallas-based Web site,…
Buck Jones Bliss (One Ton Records) You can’t love or hate Buck Jones — there’s nothing but middle ground with the band. There’s just not enough on the band’s latest, Bliss — or 1997’s Shimmer, for that matter — to inspire such strong feelings…or any feelings, really. Sure, the band…
There is perhaps no man in the music business as smart as Dwight Yoakam — not necessarily biz smart (not a wise move wearing out “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in a Gap ad before it surfaced on the recent best-of), not even book smart (never gave him a pop…
The standard for bands these days seems to be release an album and tour, then record and release another album as quickly as possible to cash in before the craze winds down and the band becomes one more in a holding pattern on the VH1 Where Are They Now? runway…
Listening to Soul Coughing songwriter-guitarist Michael Doughty sing is like cranking up the garbage disposal just for fun. No, wait — it actually sounds as if Doughty has already swallowed the garbage disposal whole. His choppy, nearly spoken-word mode of singing only serves to reinforce the analogy. But that’s not…
