I thought it would be a private relationship between me and my record player. Music collections, no matter what they are made of, can be so intimate they border on embarrassing. Not sure what to buy, I clicked on review after review, talking myself into and out of nearly every…
Every week Gavin will be presenting a guide to basic notions of common sense he feels are sometimes lacking from various aspects of the world of music. Also, he’s British, and they’re polite, right? Social media. It’s pretty great for bands. They can list their gigs, share updates, and connect…
Dear Mexican: What do we need to do to make the güeros understand we come in peace? As Mexicans, we are from this great American continent as well, but in the average close-minded English-speaking folks’ definition of “American,” it’s amusing to see they don’t understand what it really means, being…
Let’s be real, for a change, about the debate over building an eight-lane highway along the river at the western border of downtown. Sometimes we say it’s a question of traffic needs or flood control or parks. It’s not. This is about the one thing everything is about sooner or…
Around Deep Ellum, Alan Keys is best known as “Alan from Reno’s”…the guy who threw a hell of a party for many years at Reno’s Chop Shop, bringing a pretty raucous and heathy-sized rock crowd in. Keys networked hard to get a lot of national touring acts to stop by…
With Jay Farrar and Son Volt playing at the Sons of Hermann Hall this weekend, it seems a good time to evaluate the entire Alt-country semi-movement. For all practical matters, Alt-country began with Uncle Tupelo’s album No Depression in 1990. Shortly thereafter, the magazine of the same name was published…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Dearest Bic For Her … I heard…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef [Editor’s Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
So, Eater Dallas asked Hypnotic Donuts to invent a burger that they’d serve for Eater’s Burger Week. Awesome. The photo above is a picture of the burger that Hypnotic invented. Here’s a description of it, straight from Eater: Hypnotic Donuts: The ‘Minimum Wage’ burger is a half-pound patty infused with…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Your friends are throwing a baby shower…
According to a questionable food holiday website, tomorrow is National Peach Cobbler Day. In Texas, America, this is a special occasion as the scent of peach cobbler is capable of taking most of us back to birthday parties around the pool (even if your birthday is in December) and barbecues…
What does it mean that Republicans and independents joined Democrats yesterday to shut down Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s anti-gun reform filibuster? It means Cruz lost a lot more than his filibuster. At a certain point — Cruz’s point — the gun reform debate ceases to be about guns and becomes…
Update: Judy Garland’s “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” is forecast to be #1 on the British charts on Sunday, the day the official charts are released. I’m not even shitting you. This means that it will end up being played on Radio 1’s Sunday Chart Show. Radio 1 is…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef [Editor’s Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a…
Story in The New York Times this morning about efforts in the Texas Legislature to cut back testing and course requirements for graduation from high school. If you sort through, most the alligator-tears for poor kids supposedly being pushed to learn too much stuff come from tea party types like…
Winston Edmondson has had his hands in local politics (he ran for Mayor of Lewisville a couple years ago), AM talk radio (on a couple different outlets) and, fortunately for us, is a big fan of unharvested local music talent. He’s a big fan of Salim Nourallah, Chris Holt and…
Now, we all know concerts, quite aside from genre, come in varying degrees of loudness. There are the kind of gigs (has anyone here seen Unsane?) where, even if you shout as loudly as you can directly into your friend’s ear from an inch away, they will not be able…
Dear Mexican: We’re in state testing this week at the high school I teach at. After the students finish a section, they can only sit and read or just sit. I did an experiment: I chose the cholo-est, tatted, pierced non-reader and dropped your book on their desk. Students who…
What are we in for? Before we can understand the accountability wars heating up now in the Dallas school system, we have to see the battle from a statistical helicopter. First let’s fly over the North and East Dallas high schools that still have significant remnant white student populations. At…
What to make of the big boot at JC Penney? CEO Ronald B. Johnson came tumbling out that door grabbing for his hat like a riverboat gambler evicted from First Baptist. Sometimes it’s hard to look cool. But what’s the big picture in this picture? Is there ever a big…
Everybody knows the Shakespeare quote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s the stuff of T-shirts. But how many people know what it was about? In Henry VI, Dick the Butcher proposes killing all of England’s lawyers as the first step toward accomplishing the treasonous plot…
