Ask for James Baldwin. That’s how you get Chris Rock on the phone this morning, by telling the hotel operator in Philadelphia you want to talk to the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, and Blues for Mr. Charlie. The operator chuckles slightly when…
There is no good way to interview Mike Ness. He dodges questions by answering different ones, then answers them again. It’s like having a conversation with a press release, as he reads through a series of quotes that don’t necessarily even match the questions asked; you get the feeling that…
Here’s the greatest thing about being in a band signed to a major label: There’s always someone around — a publicist, a manager, some underpaid lackey — willing to take care of anything you need. Are you hungry? Get the manager to fetch you some lunch, even if that just…
No one in the living room of Clutch Cargo guitarist Ted Wood’s Denton house is paying attention to much of anything except what’s happening on the television screen nestled in the corner. The rest of the group — singer Alex Karchevsky, drummer Jeremy Shelby, and bassist Chris Ott — is…
Graham Parker Hard to overrate a guy who’s always been underrated, especially by no less than Graham Parker himself. One need only read his introduction to the 1993 double-disc Passion is No Ordinary Word collection to discover an artist who turns self-deprecation into the art of self-hatred; it’s difficult to…
Warped Tour Lollapalooza, it seems, didn’t die after all. Instead, it became the Warped Tour, taking its disparate lineups and carnival atmosphere with it. And looking at the bands participating in this year’s installment of the skateboard-competition-with-a-soundtrack, you’d swear that’s what happened. After five years in business, it’s not an…
Will Oldham Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, Bonnie “Prince” Billy — any way you slice it, it all comes up with the ever-troubled Will Oldham, constant traveler of sepia-toned folkways and lonesome byways. By now, with his sixth album — I See a Darkness — under his belt, Oldham has…
Get spiritualized Surrender The Chemical Brothers Astralwerks Play Moby V2 Records Wondering what happened to the Rave New World? The Chemical Brothers answer the question three songs into Surrender, when Bernard Sumner shows up to sing “Out of Control,” a brilliant seven-minute summation of his entire career with New Order…
There’s an anecdote that Red Krayola singer-guitarist Mayo Thompson likes to tell about philosopher of science Sydney Morgenbesser. “He’s at some philosophical conference,” Thompson begins, “and some linguist is up there saying, ‘A double negative is always a positive, but there’s no language where a double positive is a negative,’…
He said, he said — it seems everyone wants, if not deserves, credit for the rise of Deep Ellum from the dust of old warehouses long ago abandoned. Time has a funny way of skewing our perceptions of history; even those who were there don’t know exactly what happened, perhaps…
Irony doesn’t seem to exist for Jon “Corn Mo” Cunningham when he’s onstage, in the moment, looking like he just got back from a photo shoot for Styx’s Grand Illusion as he dramatically delivers his silly songs about Gary Busey and bananas. Imagine Tommy Shaw with an accordion and “Weird…
Go long! Marijuana Beach The Tomorrowpeople Olivia Records Counting Breaths Mazinga Phaser Idol Records Last week, Fox-TV gave The Tomorrowpeople some national distribution when the band’s shiny redo of its 1997 song “Mercitron” could be heard during the final period of the first Dallas Stars-Buffalo Sabres game. Hey, who needs…
Nothing too unusual about what The Tight Bro’s From Way Back When do: metal masquerading as punk performed by five guys who can’t decide if they want to be AC/DC or the Ramones, but only because they can’t all be Chuck Berry. If you happened to be at Trees when…
About two years ago, I wrote three tunes with a sister by the name of Sandra St. Victor, who was formerly the lead singer of the group The Family Stand in the late ’80s and early ’90s. She’s originally from Dallas and an Arts Magnet alumnus; we met through my…
Over the course of his first few albums (Shuffletown and Fireman’s Wedding being the best), Joe Henry produced an exemplary take on the whole New South/New Sincerity thing — you know, unreliable narrators singing about faith and loss and departure, a short-fiction M.F.A.’s eye for telling detail, and a whole…
Chris Plavidal is raving about the view from the windows of his new apartment. Over the phone, he sounds positively joyous. “On one side, I can see the Empire State Building,” he nearly shouts, “and out this way is the Statue of Liberty!” So much for Denton’s glowing “Corn-kits” sign…
Nothing ever dies on the Internet. Last week, drummer Mark Holland of the North Carolina band Jennyanykind–which released its fourth album, Big John’s, late last year–was searching for any references to his band on the Web, when he stumbled across the following: “30 years later, there still exists no band…
His old friends, men whose own names are synonymous with myth, often wondered what became of the man named Red. For years, they couldn’t understand what in the world would persuade William M. Garland to abandon New York City for the boonies, his hometown of Dallas. The pianist’s departure seemed…
The last waltz Good Night, Little Girl of My Dreams Budapest One Self-released When all else fails–when description becomes banal, when praise becomes hyperbole–then perhaps it’s best to fall back on the old, familiar standby: friggin’ brilliant. Somewhere among these 12 tracks, on a record that lasts no longer than…
One of the prime tenets of Hinduism and its Buddhist offshoot is the notion that becoming unattached to temporal objects and issues provides the means to achieve nirvana. By giving up the small shit, we can get the big enchilada. Simple, right? Hardly. Life on this earth is so fraught…
Detention rock The Donnas Get Skintight Lookout! Records “Rock and Roll High School” is the Donnas’ alma mater, but “Fuck School” is their anthem: The only thing these four gals ever studied was the history of three-chord punk–and most likely they skipped that class too, so they could smoke in…
The area in front of the stage at Austin’s Waterloo Park is one stray cigarette away from bursting into flames, a loose bed of hay piled on top of the park’s green grass like an accident waiting to happen. A few days ago, when it was raining, the hay seemed…
