“Mouseketeers’ roll call, sound off now! Karen! Cubby! Annette! Sharon! Lonnie! Bobby…!” Who of the TV generation was not indelibly imprinted by The Mickey Mouse Club, the ’50s TV show Life magazine referred to as “the first organization many boomers joined?” As is usually the case with an ensemble cast,…
The lunchtime clientele is about what you’d expect for a semirural rib shack not too many miles from Texas Stadium. There are a couple of telephone repairmen, a table of secretaries giggling over a pitcher of beer, and an isolated sales guy trying to keep barbecue sauce off his rack…
Moist and delicious Fashion Nugget Cake Capricorn Records First steps are inspiring, but more than one newborn band has learned that many things are possible with those steps, and that some of them–like smashing your forehead on the edge of a coffee table–are not very pleasant. It is with great…
Broken whiskey glass, parts one and two Gather ’round, oh ye insurgent honky-tonkers and new-country hellions, and pay fealty to some of the men who first chalked out the pattern for the clothes you now wear so stylishly: Jason Ringenberg and the Scorchers, a bunch of Nashville boys (transplanted and…
It’s obvious that tonight–with Deep Ellum roiling in the aftermath of the Texas-OU game–was not the best night to schedule an interview at Sol’s Taco Lounge. An orange-and-white Winnebago at the curb is but a faint warning of the mayhem within: a crush of spilled beer, red faces, and bellowing…
i’dswingitintheevening ifihadahifi Meredith Louise Miller Steve Records A friend once interviewed Meredith Louise Miller for a local radio station. “What’s so great about you,” my pal enthused, “is that you say all the goofy things about love that the rest of us are afraid to say out loud.” “Um,” Miller…
Dave Abbruzzese rallies bandmates Paul Slavens, Doug Neil, and Gary Muller for a firewood run–a trip out in the 4X4 to scavenge dead branches for the fireplace at Abbruzzese’s North Texas recording retreat. David Castell chooses to stay behind to continue mixing one of the group’s new songs rather than…
Everything Sucks Descendents Epitaph Records Call it charisma. Or attitude. Whatever it is, it is essential to the role of frontman. Milo Aukerman has it, but when he left the Descendents to pursue a career in biochemistry, he took it with him. For eight years, the band (renamed “All” in…
Mr. DJ, won’t you please play a real country song? Where’s your conscience? What’s the problem? Speak up and say what’s wrong –Dale Watson, “A Real Country Song” Blessed or Damned Dale Watson rules. In an age where more people at alleged “country” bars dance to AC/DC than Bob Wills,…
The front room and the darkroom behind–on the street side of photographer James Bland’s house in the heart of Oak Cliff–are unusually neat for one of the archivists of a scene as random and disordered as the early days of Deep Ellum, back in the mid-’80s when the now neon-lit…
David Newman’s Oak Cliff home contains a living-room wall of fame–the “Fathead National Museum”–adorned with his 28 album covers in chronological order. They date from 1959’s Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Newman to last year’s Mr. Gentle, Mr. Cool. The great tenor sax player’s feisty old Aunt Freda runs his…
Satellite of Love Although much has been made lately about Christian music and the mainstream success the genre has enjoyed, most of the songs found there still fit into two categories: “capitalization” numbers wherein you need a lyric sheet in order to tell “love” from “Love” or “him” from “Him”;…
Be here now Return of the Funky Worm Johnny Moeller and Paul Size Dallas Blue Society Records Walk in the Sun Sue Foley Discovery Records What is it about the blues that makes each generation have to peer into them, squinting? Maybe it’s the same thing that unites all popular…
Edie teeters on one foot, streaming consciousness. Kenny noodles a spacey jam while John pings a cymbal here, a cowbell there, tom-tomming a slippery polyrhythmic groove. Slinky, sweaty old-school Boheads–Adina (but no Christina?), Amanda, Mark and Sherry, Kim and Brenda–pack a Club Dada sardine can; even “Grateful” Dave Moynihan, even…
The life of Corn Mo–stage name of Jon Cunningham–may well have been saved by rock ‘n’ roll. He’s on stage now, his long blond hair a tangle obscuring his face as he pumps and dips his way through an accordion-driven version of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine”; his…
Scrapple seems acutely aware of his environment, but he couldn’t be safer: He’s the four-legged pilot fish to New York City art shark Joe Christ, a transplanted filmmaker-musician-artist from Dallas whose confrontationally weird, painfully intense, and shocking films both document and run off the energy generated by the extremes to…
New Country The Picketts Euphonium Rounder Records “Euphony” is a pleasant concordance of sound, but with this, their third album, the Picketts have done more than fall easy on the ears: They’ve made one of the most affecting arguments for country as white folks’ soul music to come down the…
Downfall Solitude Aeturnus Pavement Music Even as the members of Metallica cut their hair and Soundgarden peddles its sub-Sabbath riffs alternatively packaged, Arlington’s Solitude Aeturnus continues its quixotic fight for the preservation of the metal beast. In Downfall–its fourth album–the band is more concerned with the dark, Gothic ambience of…
Casual Gods of the Tom-Tom Club Question of the week: What’s the difference between A) a band shamelessly exploiting its past; B) a band that keeps on keeping on like some old milk-cart horse that still must walk its route every morning even after retirement; and C) most of a…
Look out baby–it’s the kerosene man Although he came through here last year opening for Concrete Blonde’s farewell tour with just himself and an acoustic guitar, it’s been five years since former Dream Syndicate frontman Steve Wynn has mounted a major (read: with a band) American tour. His last gig…
The pool guy’s out back, a borrowed Lucky Strike dangling from his lips as he vacuums leaves out of the crystal-clear water. He comes once every few days to clean this beautiful pool that sits beneath a brick-wall cliff and an arrogantly blue sky, but the owners of the pool…
Those who frequent Local Band Hell are a capricious lot: They want tradition and continuity, yet if an act lingers locally–or, heaven forbid, makes a renewed bid for attention–they start to doubt the act: “Uh, if y’all were any good, woonchy’all be gone, like, by now?” Soul Food Cafe made…
