Critic's Notebook

…yep, the header pretty much sums up the whole post. Read the whole lineup here, if you don’t believe me. …

Speaking of MTV, the strictly music (and definitely not reality TV-based) cable network chimes in today with a recap of last night’s Silver Jews concert–purportedly Dallas native David Berman’s final show.Makes sense, as we’ve all seen how much love MTV has given artists like the Silver Jews prior to their…

…which is to say that Flight of the Conchords will be migrating to Grand Prairie that night. I mention this because foreplay is very important… in love…

Play-N-Skillz will be showing MTV around town this week as the network films for an upcoming special, My Block: Dallas, and you’ve got two chances to rub elbows with the Dallas rapper/producer stars.Tonight, the brothers are celebrating their Grammy nominations (for their production work on Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III)…

In what can only be classified at this point as “non-news”, country music legend George Strait may or may not be booked to perform at the new Cowboys stadium at some as-yet-undetermined point this summer, the Morning News reports today, following up a report made on The Ticket this morning.Thing…

Your daily dose of national music news for Tuesday, February 3, 2009… First Guitar Hero gave us the ability to shred with our musical heroes. Now the makers of Guitar Hero will let unknown DJs move from their bedroom to the living room via DJ Hero. Yep, now you too…

Looks like it was Broken Social Scene founder Kevin Drew who was so ill last Friday that the Canadian indie-baroque-pop act was forced to cancel its show at the House of Blues. In fact, it seems Drew was so sick with the flu that he was deemed “illegal”–or too sick…

Your daily dose of national music news for Monday, February 2, 2009…The line-up for the 2009 Coachella Music and Arts Festival was announced late last week, and Paul McCartney is headlining on Friday night. Wait, really?The Boss may have scored with a great Super Bowl halftime show.  But fans of…

Earlier this week, we caught up with Ollie, the drummer for Los Campesinos! (pictured, right), to talk for a few minutes about the band’s quick ascent to success, the fact that the band released its first two albums within six months of each other, and even how the differences in…

Been a good six months-plus since we checked in with Eric Landrum, program director of the still-kinda-new HD2 station at 105.3 FM, about how things are going over there at his indie rock radio station, The Indie-Verse. (Full disclosure: We haven’t really listened to it much before this morning, as…

Your daily dose of national music news for Friday, January 30, 2009… Run-DMC will be the topic of a new biopic from the writer of Notorious. Let’s just hope the acting and storytelling are a little better… Can’t get enough of Dee Snider’s cult classic Strangeland? Well, kids, you’re in luck: A sequel’s…

…per House of Blues’ Web site. We’ll call the HOB offices and Broken Social Scene’s publicists tomorrow to get the details. But, for now, it looks like it’s cooked. So that sucks.  Meanwhile, in far less interesting news to anyone except me, my crowded Friday night plans just got a whole…

The eighth annual Ponderosa Stomp show, which aims to showcase the “unsung heroes of American music” and showcases, well, pretty much any type of music you could tie to its locale of New Orleans recently announced its lineup, and it’s worth noting that two area artists found themselves asked to…

Answer: Get a London-based company to make your video as part of a test-run. Because that seems to be how Dallas-based Canadian rapper Freeky T got this video (screen grab above) made for his song “Tipspell (feat. S Davis)”. The London-based company Eye Revolution filmed Freeky T and S Davis…

The “official” “deadline” for bands to submit their application to play NX35 came and went last Thursday, and, according to the festival’s mastermind, Chris Flemmons, the first-year conferette managed to spread the word and nab enough submissions to fulfill their contractual obligations with Sonicbids.So, bands that didn’t send in their…

Your daily dose of national music news for Thursday, January 29, 2009… Lynyrd Skynyrd’s keyboardist, Billy Powell, died at his Florida home at the age of 56.  It looks like the Joaquin Phoenix “rap career” could possibly be a hoax after all. I really hope it is because, well, he sucks…

On Thursday, January 22, a little past 8:00 p.m., a car crashed through the front window of local music store CD Source. Seems an unlucky gent had pulled in front of the store and erroneously thought he had put his car in park. Once he opened the door and stepped…

Years ago, area legend Ben Kweller was dubbed a wunderkind by nearly every music publication in the country. Today, the child has grown into a husband and father–and says he’s eager to reconnect his family and career to the place he still calls home: Texas.His fourth major solo album, Changing…

Billboard reports today that Burleson’s own Kelly Clarkson is set to make chart history tomorrow. Here’s how: When the results for this week’s Hot 100 chart are officially revealed tomorrow, they will show that Clarkson’s newest single, “My Life Would Suck Without You”, will have made the largest jump to…

Your daily dose of national music news for Wednesday, January 28, 2009… Scarlett Johansson remains dead set on adding “singer” to her resume: She has now covered Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” for the soundtrack for He’s Just Not That Into You. You know the movie your girlfriend is going to drag you…

Per a Myspace blog post and a press release sent out to area media outlets by now-former frontman Cory Watson, local New Wave act Black Tie Dynasty–ever the line in the sand when it comes to area music fan tastes–has decided to call it quits. Says the band’s Myspace post:”Black…

Assuming you’ve picked up a copy of the Observer or read this blog in the past two weeks, the news that the Old 97’s are playing our St. Patrick’s Day Parade After Party Concert is old hat by now. Well, today, we’ve got some additions to the bill. Supporting the…