When it comes to Las Vegas, the gambling and the naked showgirls and the 99-cent shrimp cocktails aren’t really what make it seem so different from the real world. It’s the bizarre architecture: Huge public buildings the size of Versailles or Blenheim Castle or the Kremlin abound there–while outside is…
It’s at times like these–after all the tabulation, assignments, editing, and production that go into the magnificent beast that is the Dallas Observer Music Awards–that I’m reminded of the last words of my late favorite uncle: “what truck?” No, the results this year weren’t as unforeseen as an 18-wheeler with…
Oh l’amour In the mid-’80s, no artsy high school music collection was complete without the pop avant-garde album Upstairs at Eric’s by Yaz–an early electronic project by the creative duo of Vince Clarke and vocalist Alison Moyet. After she left the band to embark on a modestly successful solo career,…
Rodney Crowell is one of those guys who was probably never meant to be a Nashville high-roller in the first place. Sure, he’s penned huge hits for dozens of top-echelon C&W stars, was ushered into patriarch Johnny Cash’s kingdom through his former marriage to the Man in Black’s daughter Rosanne,…
Music for buildings and food Orblivion The Orb Island Records Trace the history of ambient music, and you’ll touch on names like Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno, but when it comes to the history of danceable ambient music, Orb would be considered a founding father. Orb was the brainchild of…
Slaid Cleaves has a soft voice: not mumbled or insecure, just diminished. More than five years of living in Texas has diluted his childhood’s Maine inflections, but apparently has not lent him the trumpet-like blare that comes so easy to denizens of the Lone Star State. Cleaves–now an Austin-based singer-songwriter…
Function and form Swinging and Singing Johnny Reno Menthol Records Too often in pop, format counts for more than intention or even execution, and we’re left feeling vaguely suspicious of Andy Timmons playing the blues with the Pawn Kings (his hair is long and blond; he never picked cotton) or…
I wandered around the Dallas music scene lonely as a freelance cloud, the Dallas Observer Music Awards were about as interesting to me as a medium-sized rock in a coffee can. Who cares what anybody else thinks? Ah, the carefree ways of callow youth. Now that I’m the Observer music…
Don’t believe the hype Critics have taken two sharply different tacks when it comes to reviewing the new U2 album, Pop. While most of the larger, mainstream publications are hailing it as an innovative breakthrough, many of the smaller, more savvy mags are decrying it as the voice of a…
Heavy tin foil Come On Feel The Metal Various artists steve records The joke’s an easy one to remember, but a hard one to tell. Come On Feel The Metal, on which almost three dozen local bands go metal in all its incarnations (from Zep to ZZ Top to pop),…
Nobody’s looking past this one gig, but the late, lamented Cartwrights–a virtual family tree of local bands past comprising Barry Kooda (Nervebreakers, Yeah Yeah Yeah), Alan Wooley (Killbilly), Kim Herriage (Feet First), Donny Ray Ford, and Richie Vasquez–will reassemble to open for the Skeletons’ Hightone Record-label release party at the…
Misery as its own reward There is something about the allure of romantic despair. On her latest album, Excerpts from a Love Circus, Lisa Germano wallows in it, yet she seems reluctant to crawl to the shore. Listening to her songs makes you wonder how she can drag herself out…
Willful obscurity Straightaways Son Volt Warner Brothers Records “No one here says what they mean,” Jay Farrar sings on Straightaways, the latest offering from Son Volt. That line is accurate, the title ironic, since this album is a triumph of indirect transmission, implied feeling, and mumbled delivery unmatched since REM’s…
Ever since the guitar filibuster got elevated to sacrament, blues fans who love great singing and concise songs have been screwed. To their rescue come the Holmes Brothers–Wendell and Sherman Holmes on guitar and bass respectively, and Popsy Dixon on drums. The Promised Land, their newest album and fourth release…
“Other people had hits with her songs” was the sentence just beneath the headline in USA Today that announced musician Laura Nyro had died. She succumbed to ovarian cancer at the age of 49. This was the most depressingly predictable of epitaphs for Nyro, whose flirtation with media celebrity flared…
When the Dallas Observer ran a preview a few weeks ago announcing an upcoming Monte Warden show, said preview mentioned that Warden–like our own Colin Boyd–seemed to be haunted by the ghost of a certain bespectacled pop genius named Buddy. It was a nice bit of affirmation, then, when Boyd…
Service with a smile Satellitely Quickserv Johnny Rainmaker Records Quickserv Johnny, to paraphrase the Tom Hanks character in That Thing You Do, is the latest star in the Rainmaker Records galaxy–blasting through the same platinum-filled universe as Deep Blue Something. QJ has already been introduced to statewide radio audiences through…
For much of the ’90s, rock ‘n’ roll scenesters–from Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson to Alex Chilton and Peter Buck–have moved to New Orleans, drawn as much by the city’s Flowers of Evil darkness and spirit of perpetual carnival as by its musical heritage. It’s interesting, then, that Cowboy Mouth,…
Thinking man’s headbangers Aftertaste Helmet Interscope Records Helmet has long been promising to inject hard rock with new life: A combo led by a jazz guitarist who plays tight, economical, and subtly brutal metallic rock looks great on paper, and the underlying intelligence is another feather in leader Page Hamilton’s…
Even if the competition is not exactly fierce, to be nominated in the Dallas Observer’s “Best Rap/Hip-Hop” category two years in a row is no small feat. Denton’s Bassx walked away winners in 1995; in 1996, prior to the ballot counting, the band packed it up and moved to New…
Honky-tonk hero If you’re one of those folks who’s just a-brim with good intentions as far as live music goes, yet always ends up feeling bad when you don’t quite make it out to see show X or Y (especially when listening to everybody rave about it the next day),…
Running around Deep Ellum frantically on this cold and drizzly morning, Gordo “Buzz” Gibson (aka Michael Gibson) is a poster child for all that is unresolved. He’s been up all night, working on final mixes for his band’s soon-to-be-released debut album, but he’s just shy of finishing. He’s got record…
