Dear Mexican: I have always liked ranchera music. As of late, I have wanted to get deeper into it as far as the history, the culture and especially the songs and lyrics. I was wondering if you know a good book or two or website that I can check out…
Jill Abramson, executive editor of my favorite daily newspaper, The New York Times, will speak in town a week from tomorrow, 10 days later than originally planned. Her announced topic will be the same thing that delayed her: “The Boston Marathon Tragedy: ‘Quality Journalism’s Role in the Hyper Speed News…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Dearest Lady Mosquito: Apparently your mosquito pools…
Just so people won’t get caught unaware, I want to point out that the town of West has until a week from tomorrow to grieve. That will be two weeks from the time of the industrial accident that blew up their town, took the lives of loved ones and left…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
So who exactly wants innocent people sent to prison for life? C’mon. You know this one. We all know the answer. It’s the same people who think we should toss out the Constitution and put American citizens on trial in military courts. They’re the arm-in-arm allies of terrorists everywhere, the…
I thought it would be a private relationship between me and my record player. Music collections, no matter what they are made of, can be so intimate they border on embarrassing. Not sure what to buy, I clicked on review after review, talking myself into and out of nearly every…
Every week Gavin will be presenting a guide to basic notions of common sense he feels are sometimes lacking from various aspects of the world of music. Also, he’s British, and they’re polite, right? Social media. It’s pretty great for bands. They can list their gigs, share updates, and connect…
Dear Mexican: What do we need to do to make the güeros understand we come in peace? As Mexicans, we are from this great American continent as well, but in the average close-minded English-speaking folks’ definition of “American,” it’s amusing to see they don’t understand what it really means, being…
Let’s be real, for a change, about the debate over building an eight-lane highway along the river at the western border of downtown. Sometimes we say it’s a question of traffic needs or flood control or parks. It’s not. This is about the one thing everything is about sooner or…
Around Deep Ellum, Alan Keys is best known as “Alan from Reno’s”…the guy who threw a hell of a party for many years at Reno’s Chop Shop, bringing a pretty raucous and heathy-sized rock crowd in. Keys networked hard to get a lot of national touring acts to stop by…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Dearest Bic For Her … I heard…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef [Editor’s Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Your friends are throwing a baby shower…
What does it mean that Republicans and independents joined Democrats yesterday to shut down Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s anti-gun reform filibuster? It means Cruz lost a lot more than his filibuster. At a certain point — Cruz’s point — the gun reform debate ceases to be about guns and becomes…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef [Editor’s Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a…
Story in The New York Times this morning about efforts in the Texas Legislature to cut back testing and course requirements for graduation from high school. If you sort through, most the alligator-tears for poor kids supposedly being pushed to learn too much stuff come from tea party types like…
Winston Edmondson has had his hands in local politics (he ran for Mayor of Lewisville a couple years ago), AM talk radio (on a couple different outlets) and, fortunately for us, is a big fan of unharvested local music talent. He’s a big fan of Salim Nourallah, Chris Holt and…
Now, we all know concerts, quite aside from genre, come in varying degrees of loudness. There are the kind of gigs (has anyone here seen Unsane?) where, even if you shout as loudly as you can directly into your friend’s ear from an inch away, they will not be able…
Dear Mexican: We’re in state testing this week at the high school I teach at. After the students finish a section, they can only sit and read or just sit. I did an experiment: I chose the cholo-est, tatted, pierced non-reader and dropped your book on their desk. Students who…
What are we in for? Before we can understand the accountability wars heating up now in the Dallas school system, we have to see the battle from a statistical helicopter. First let’s fly over the North and East Dallas high schools that still have significant remnant white student populations. At…
