Dancing in the floodlights Signpost albums–you come across them at particularly significant periods in your life, and forever afterwards they invoke, they stand for, those times. For those who were (post-)adolescent in 1976 when Joan Armatrading released her self-titled debut, the album will always be the soundtrack to youthfully earnest…
Hey, man, there’s no such thing as bad press–at least that’s what critics say whenever they run into somebody they’ve recently trashed. In the case of the fourth-annual SolstiCelebration, a drum-driven romp through a welter of progressive/alternative/New Agey signifiers heralding the arrival of the longest day of the year, spokesperson…
Dying to rock The Numb EP Baboon Grass Records The term “post-rock” hasn’t caught on in rock-crit circles, but nothing so perfectly captures the intentions and actions of bands who create such an amorphous sound using the tools hanging in the garage. Guitar, bass, vocals, drums–they’re the heartbeat and backbone…
It’s a job not unlike that of the village idiot–the gifted, insightful singer-songwriters in pop music whose genius sometimes leads them along the road of excess. They get out there, spaz out, and we all feel better; perhaps we even learn something. Their efforts alternate between inspirational and insipid, troubling…
Have a pop and a smile Dan Loves Patti Yum-Yum TAG Recordings As rock-and-roll continues relinquishing its territories to the metal-punks in one camp and the hippie-folkies in the other, here’s one more refugee who’s come in from the pop battlefield. Chris Holmes, like fellow purists Stephin Merritt and Eric…
Robert Earl Keen was country when country didn’t want him. It still doesn’t, as a matter of fact, but that’s OK: Nashville wouldn’t know a country singer if one crawled out of Hank Williams’ coffin. But pockets of rabid Robert Earl fans, multiplying like beer-swilling viruses across the country, know…
I sing the body electric Blessed or Damned Dale Watson HighTone Records Semi Crazy Junior Brown Curb Records Somewhere out past the countrypolitan glow of big-city lights, past even the Fogelberg-fertilized fields of Young Country, there’s a place where the beer lights shine preternaturally bright and the pool balls send…
Shooting stars Comet Comet Atomic Sound This Mesquite foursome might well have begun sounding like a Bedhead after-school special interrupted by Flaming Lips commercials, but in the past two years has evolved into a remarkable beast of its own creation. “Happy Anniversary,” which kicks off this six-song vinyl EP–neatly divided…
Being the son of Mr. Peppermint has always figured into Gibby Haynes’ myth, as has a past that includes being an “A” student and basketball star at Lake Highlands High School and an accounting/economics major at Trinity University in San Antonio. Almost from the get-go, Gibby has been asked about…
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center was hailed as a “world-class hall” and “one of the most acoustically perfect concert halls in the world” by the media when it opened in September 1989 to the cheers of champagne-sipping socialites and other lovers of the fine arts. I.M. Pei’s masterpiece was…
The men with the Midas touch Utilizing its ska-influenced sound to stand out from the rest of the pop-punk pack, Goldfinger has come out of nowhere (Los Angeles, actually) to land its first single, “Here In Your Bedroom,” on MTV and radio stations across the country. If there’s indeed a…
Some summers it seems that there are more blues players in Dallas than mosquitoes, all buzzing and shuffling along the same wide and worn Chicago groove. Mike Morgan’s been there, too, and he wonders if part of the problem isn’t that musicians tend to live so much by listening. “Heck,”…
The next best thing Live at the Vortex Rotten Rubber Band Heat Wave Few local bands do as good a job of transporting an audience into the sweaty, smoky heart of a weekend night as the Rotten Rubber Band. Passing out percussion instruments and encouraging the crowd to participate, they…
Margo Timmins stands on the edge of the Los Angeles Wiltern Theater stage, her arm draped over the microphone stand. She buries her head in her arm, looking like she can barely breathe, much less continue with the show. To her right, brother Michael, himself with eyes so sleepy he…
Inappropriately named Today’s Specials Specials Virgin/Kuff Seventeen years after their debut, this version of the Specials–which corrals a few of the originals (Neville Staples, Roddy Byers, Horace Panter) but suffers from the absence of Jerry Dammers–doesn’t even sound like it ever heard the first. If ska is indeed being reborn,…
Marvin “Smokey” Montgomery is a politely unassuming man, small in a way that suggests concentrated vitality rather than size. His 83 years show neither on his waist nor in his eyes. There’s little to suggest that this grandfather had once walked with musical legends, or that he was among those…
Lone Star special When Borders Books and Music hosts its free “Asphalt Rhythms” show June 1 at the store’s Plano location–out in the parking lot, no less–here’s an opportunity to hear Texas music’s champions (Ronnie Dawson, Jimmie Dale Gilmore), unsung heroes (Bobby Patterson, Doyle Bramhall), renegade pilgrims (Ray Wylie Hubbard),…
“I’m only going to play bowling alleys from now on.” With that sentiment, Bruce Springsteen christened the new Bronco Bowl–one more legendary memory heaped upon so many old ghosts that still haunt the place, which is still Dallas’ last, best mid-sized concert hall. But that January 26 show seems like…
Like members of some secret society, people in the music industry speak in code. This is especially true in Nashville, which in some ways is like a charismatic cult within the already alien world of the music business at large. The latest phrase on the lips of Nashville record companies…
Speaking to England’s New Musical Express earlier this year, Stereolab mastermind Tim Gane announced that the Beach Boys is his favorite band. It was an unequivocal claim–“It all sounds brilliant,” he insisted–even if it didn’t make much sense at first. After all, Stereolab–which is fronted by a Brit (Gane) and…
Waymore or less Right for the Time Waylon Jennings Justice Records Willie Nelson makes his “comeback” doing Paul Simon’s “An American Tune” and “Graceland” on Across the Borderline in 1993, then Waylon turns around three years later and digs up “The Boxer” to resuscitate a career on life support. Nelson…
Flame on Clouds Taste Metallic, the latest Flaming Lips album, sounds like it was recorded in a toy store: Cheap bells and whistles tinkle in the background as unidentifiable sounds whiz by like wind-up toys, mixing together until they become an integral part of the band’s psychedelia. Even after 10…
