His upper teeth are nearly gone; they have been replaced by tiny slivers of off-white that peek through rotten gums. His lower teeth, thin and brown, appear ready to fall out if he so much as coughs too hard. His lips are pale and dry, coated with spit so thick…
Blood, sweat, and tears Five years ago Social Distortion joined the Ramones at the old Bronco Bowl for one of rock’s dream double bills–the kind that we don’t get in Dallas that often. The two bands made three simple chords sound like heaven and created one of those nights where…
Mention the term “singer-songwriter” and immediately the image appears: an excessively serious soul–acoustic guitar in hand–singing an excessively serious song. Wally Pleasant may actually be a singer-songwriter, but you won’t hear about Tom Dooley’s long black veil from him: Instead of whining about a world gone to hell, Pleasant uses…
Nothing’s shocking Antichrist Superstar Marilyn Manson Nothing/Interscope Welcome to the “shocking” world of Marilyn Manson–a pop circus where the clowns combine the names of media icons and serial killers (Twiggy Ramirez, Madonna Wayne Gacy) and spew out humorless Four-And-A-Half Inch Nails tunes. Their live shows are supposedly raucous affairs where…
Classic rock Being There Wilco Reprise Records The drum rumble that starts off this two-disc set and soon turns to feedback suggests Wilco certainly isn’t lagging in its quest to remove itself from Uncle Tupelo territory. Being There finds leader Jeff Tweedy combining his love of pop style–still a little…
Grover Wilkins hadn’t intended to make musical history. He was happy with his life: conducting avant-garde 20th-century music in Pittsburgh and in Paris, France, and getting Fulbright scholarships to do research on the group of 20th-century French composers known as Les Six. But a series of events resulted in Wilkins…
There is nothing new under the sun, as God once dictated to somebody; no one knows this better than the hapless members of the Publicist Tribe who must call up those who serve as amanuensis to their respective Local (and even more frighteningly, National) Band Hells and tell them things…
Professionalism never sounded so good Marshall Crenshaw opened last year’s performance in Deep Ellum with the offhand greeting “Hello, we’re professional rock musicians.” He then proved his yeomanlike salutation a massive understatement, revealing himself as a masterful songwriter who could’ve topped the charts three or four decades ago alongside the…
Lauren Agnelli–known to most for her association with neofolkie groundbreakers the Washington Squares–imparts a New Yorker’s sense of forward momentum; one of her favorite words is “apace,” and when she tells you that “when someone makes me feel good, I tell them about it” in her East Coast accent, you…
Shooting star Chandelier Musings Comet Dedicated Records Those who wander the demo-strewn caverns of Local Band Hell soon learn not to trust much of what crosses their desk; instead, they come to rely more on word of mouth. It’s with great interest, then, that around a year or so ago…
In its September 11, 1964, issue, the British pop magazine New Musical Express featured an article on the Kinks underneath the headline “This week’s chart-toppers.” Each member of the band, which had just stepped into the limelight on the strength of its third single, “You Really Got Me,” was asked,…
Searching for a truer sound Like it or not (and from all accounts they don’t), the two artists who gave the late and much-lamented Uncle Tupelo its scope and direction–Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Son Volt’s Jay Farrar–are bound together in peoples’ minds, doomed to be forever compared much like another…
Paula Moore has long been a Deep Ellum fixture (dare we say “Ellument?”), with a history that dates back to the late Video Bar and the founding of Last Beat Records. Now a regional A&R person for MCA (she just made the jump from RCA), she may be best known…
Reel Life Trout Fishing in America Trout Records It’s to the credit of Ezra Idlet and Keith Grimwood that Trout Fishing in America doesn’t come off as cutesy shtick, but rather the most natural thing in the world; Reel Life does nothing to upset this. A mix of live and…
The Waiting Game Claire Martin Honest Records Claire Martin never actually scats on her debut; rather, she delivers the rhythms of great scatting through sheer energy. The possibility that the music might break away from her unbridled singing gives a necessary dynamism to her classic bebop style. Improvising swing with…
American mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves is the hot Carmen right now, and for the next two weeks, she belongs to the Dallas Opera. It was one year ago, on October 7, 1995, that Graves made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role in Carmen, an event captured on 60 Minutes…
The guys who are known as Romanovsky and Phillips are funny and freewheeling during their Sunday afternoon interview from New Mexico, but one question quickly corks their flow of irreverence and candor: “Is Romanovsky and Phillips still a duo romantically as well as professionally?” A throat clears and feet shuffle…
Love’s labor lost October Rust Type O Negative Roadrunner Records Two themes run through the fourth Type O Negative album: love and death. Most of the time they are indistinguishable–“Love You to Death,” “Die With Me”–giving October Rust a hypnotic continuity. Still, the New York band manages to reinvent itself…
Oscillator to the moon Stylistic mutation has been the tonic for old, tired rock-‘n’-roll horses since the Beatles fiddled with sitars and Deep Purple jammed with a symphony orchestra. For the past six years the London-based collective Stereolab has embraced diverse influences and tinkered with musical paradoxes with the wide-eyed…
After seeing the Sex Pistols spit and sneer their way across America, it might be easy for jaded mosh pit denizens and music critics alike to dismiss the new Descendents album, Everything Sucks, as yet another moneymaking scheme aimed at the ears and wallets of the burgeoning suburban mall punk…
Be here now Return of the Funky Worm Johnny Moeller and Paul Size Dallas Blues Society Records Walk in the Sun Sue Foley Discovery Records What is it about the blues, that each generation has to peer into them, squinting? Maybe it’s the same thing that unites all popular art…
It was a little more than two years ago that Dawn Miller (formerly of Wayward Girl) was talking to pal Aden Holt, owner of local indie label One Ton Records, about an idea she’d had: a local band compilation that would rework the soundtrack to the mid-’70s hit Broadway musical…
