So, today CNN.com gave Deep Ellum and Club Dada a shout-out in its annoying story, “Dallas Takes Big-City Fun Downtown,” by Elsa K. Simcik. Annoying because it’s one of those surface-y, glazed-over stories about how downtown Dallas can be fun, because of new “revitalization.” Thing is, the all the supposedly…
It’s interesting to see how quickly raw grief turns into a more refined form of the emotion. The sudden death of Carter Albrecht hit his friends, family and fans hard. To me, if I had suffered that sort of deeply personal loss, I would remain in a catatonic state for…
I just got a random MP3 from a guy called “Paul” via e-mail. He’s in a Dallas band called Adventure. I dunno shit about them — if any of you do, please send us some info via comments. I’ll update later, but I wanted you guys to check the song…
We just found out Denton’s Inner City All Stars have been tapped to open for Rebirth Brass Band at the House of Blues Oct. 7. If you haven’t seen this crew before, there is no doubt in my mind they’ll blow the headliners off the stage. This is an old-school…
Bryce Avary singing for the crowd at House of Blues Saturday night. (Jonathan Finley) Big D’s own The Rocket Summer recently won a Yahoo! Music contest. We were proud. Then Saturday, the band played with The Academy Is… at the House of Blues. Now we’re awestruck. Bryce Avary and bandmates…
Shock of Pleasure delighted fans Saturday night at the release party its It’s About Time. We know there was a ton going on this weekend, though. (One of our stops this Saturday was our Best of Dallas party.) So, the members of Shock of Pleasure are allowing us to share…
Your best bets for this weekend’s musical shenanigans: Frontier Brothers, Luke Boor, Acadia and the Asteroid, Coming Down, Epitas Gypsy Tea Room. Friday, Sept. 8. $10-$12. The hasty closing of the Dallas Door site to make room for condos (there’s a joke in there somewhere about closing one door to…
We just got word that local promoter, manager, blogger and all-around music gal Amanda Newman is officially the new co-owner of Club Dada. Newman joins David Seeberger and Bob Cummins at the helm of the venerable club, which has been around for 21 years. Newman sponsored Thursday Night’s Listening To…..
Atmosphere teased the crowd with new songs Thursday night. (Matthew Blake) When I rolled up to the Loft just before 9 p.m., the line for Atmosphere wrapped around the building. And anyone foolish enough to think they were buying tickets at the door seriously mistook the following the Minnesota rap…
Interpol engages the Palladium crowd Thursday night. (Matt Mueller) Interpol is one of those bands I managed to only see at festivals up to this point. Let’s face it, festivals suck for technical bands. Luckily, I was able to catch the New York band Thursday night at the Palladium Ballroom…
A Wednesday night out on lower Greenville offered a couple of surprises. First, parking was a bitch. Is Wednesday the new Friday? The second surprise was President George Bush with pasties. Did I really drink that much? Zubar celebrated its 11th anniversary with a prison themed party, Lock Down, and…
We’re watching the clock, waiting until it’s time for tonight’s Atmosphere show over at The Loft. If you’re like us, and can’t wait to hear the group’s rhymes, we have a treat for you. the track “Sunshine” from the band’s latest Sad Clown Bad Summer Number 9 (Rhymesayers). Listen while…
Sarah Jaffe Two weeks ago, we mentioned the forthcoming documentary titled At War, about U.S. combat troops stations in Afghanistan. It was directed and shot entirely by a former soldier-turned-photojournalist from Portland named Scott Kesterson, who spent a year in Afghanistan and is currently in Dallas editing the movie with…
Dallas’ soul musician Montrose is a fan of fashion mags. Can you tell? (Clark Perkins) Rock-soul musician Montrose isn’t unlike many other Dallas hidden gem, waiting patiently in the wings of local notoriety for his moment to shine. He, his band and his partner in prose Rhonda Nicole zig zag…
So how about that Kanye West/50 Cent beef, eh? And by “beef” we mean “public rivalry manufactured to stimulate sales of two albums being released on the same day by the same parent corporation.” West’s Graduation and Fiddy’s Curtis ended up making a bunch of Caucasian record label executives very…
Ya know, there are worse things in the world than naming your band something annoying—things like killing people, or donning a diaper and chasing some astronaut cross-country, or, I dunno, literally getting away with murder, only to years later bust into some Las Vegas hotel room with a bunch of…
It’s hard to imagine how I could have botched my interview with Interpol guitarist Daniel Kessler even more badly than I did. Maybe it could have been worse if the only thing I’d asked was “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” On second thought, that line of questioning would have…
Toronto, Canada’s Rock Plaza Central quickly endeared themselves to the crowds at this year’s SXSW, flooring music writers and college kids alike with the triumphant post-Mangum folk anthems of their strangely moving sophomore record, Are We Not Horses. And while an orchestral folk concept album about robotic horses might sound…
Billy Joe Shaver and I have been talking for about 20 minutes when I bring up his son Eddy, who died of a heroin overdose in 2000—on New Year’s Eve. He passed away just more than a year after Shaver’s wife and mother both succumbed to cancer. Then in 2001,…
So, you might have noticed, we’ve launched a new Dallas Observer music blog, titled DC-9 at Night (named after the line in the Jimmie Dale Gilmore song “Dallas”). Or maybe you didn’t; we haven’t really made a big deal of it. When Pegasus News reported that we were starting said…
Given the advances in digital studio equipment, cutting an album in analog can be both more difficult and more expensive than using readily available modern gear. Ben Harper, though, wanted the old-school experience, so he and his band laid down Lifeline fast and dirty using a 16-track console. The results…
Anyone who saw Liars cover Nirvana’s “Territorial Pissings” during last year’s summer tour might have suspected that, despite the seemingly irredeemable freakiness of 2004’s They Were Wrong So We Drowned and 2006’s Drum’s Not Dead, the New Yorkers hadn’t lost track of their more conventional roots. Sure enough, for this…
