LOCAL TOP 5

1. Voot Cha Index - The Talking House/Cradle 7"
2. The Polyphonic Spree - Wait
3. St. Vincent - Paris is Burning
4. Hogpig - Hold Back the Curse
5. Tame.. Tame & Quiet - Tin Can Communicate

TOP 20

1. Hell Yeah - Hell Yeah
2. Voot Cha Index - The Talking House/Cradle 7"
3. Blonde Redhead - 23
4. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
5. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Ever Sank
6. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
7. Danielson: A Family Movie DVD
8. Stars of the Lid - and their refinement of the decline
9. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
10. Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
11. The Polyphonic Spree - Wait
12. Grinderman - Grinderman
13. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
14. EL-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
15. Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis
16. Peter Bjorn & John - Writer's Block
17. Jana Hunter - There's No Home
18. Centro-Matic - Operation Motorcide EP
19. Menomena - Friend & Foe
20. David Vandervelde - The Moonstation House Band

(Contributions from Defensive Listening as well)


FRIDAY

Goth Valentine's Day with The Pointy Shoe Factory | The Night Game Cult | The Undoing Of David Wright | Minx Burlesque (SHQ Denton): Secret Headquarters may face capacity issues with this one. Here you have two(!) recently reunited bands playing on the most suitable day for both acts just short of a Halloween show. The Pointy Shoe Factory's legend has only grown since they disbanded with some of the area's prominent younger musicians citing them as an influence. In fact, since they'll be sharing the floor of SHQ with The Undoing, you will actually get to witness their influence live. Almost too much personality for one band, you have the wonderfully over-the-top lyrical drama of vocalist Daron Beck, Night Game Cult leader Kyle Cheatham on bass, and the best possible showcase for Tyler Walker's explosively good drumming. It's either a privilege to see these three together again or for the first time if you missed them a few years ago. Night Game Cult will also be performing and I've seen one solid show after another from him in the past six months. You could almost say "them" seeing as how much the audience tends to play a role in each performance. As excited as I was to see The Undoing Of David Wright at Rubber Gloves last week, I'm almost more excited to see them unleash their fury in front of a captive audience in the more intimate confines of SHQ. Sound problems also seem to be more manageable in that room. Minx Burlesque is a spirited take on that timeless Vaudevillian art-form with more talent and soul than you get with emaciated Suicide Girls knockoffs around the country.

David Karsten Daniels | Arbouretum | The Naptime Shake (The Cavern)
Well there's not gonna be any dancin' at this show (or swimmin' for that matter), but we can take a night off from all that stuff if the music is as good as what you'll find at The Cavern tonight. The weary, hazy sounds of Thrill Jockey's excellent Arbouretum might actually be a perfectly chill way to start a weekend: founder Dave Heumann has played with the likes of Bonnie Prince Billy in the past, but the compelling atmospherics found on his band's debut album have a lot more to do with soft psyche folk and Built to Spill than Will Oldham's material. Wildcat suggested that they sound like a typical Drag City band, and I agree. And thats a compliment. DKD's latest release might remind some of you of bands like Pink Mountaintops, Wooden Wand and Six Organs of Admittance, and although much of the (ironic?) religious imagery of those bands is present throughout his material, Daniels' music leans a lot more trad folk than most of those guys. Very solid.

SATURDAY

Fry Street Fair (Denton North Fairgrounds)
So a lot of the bands at Fry Street Fair are probably going to be a major beating... Space Cadet, Mad Mexicans, the list goes on and on. And then there are a lot of bands that I've never even heard of before, many of whom will probably suck too. But whatever. Most people go to Fry Street Fair just to drink and goof off anyway, and there will be SOME good bands scattered throughout the day, including: Tame... Tame and Quiet, Current Leaves, Record Hop, Jetscreamer, Red Monroe and Knee Pad. And since its like 5 or 10 bucks to get in, it probably wouldn't hurt to check it out, as long as you can save your energy for the evening's festivities.

8th Continent Not Fry Street Show: This is one of the two Denton events that we are really looking forward to. Our first post on this show has all the details and links, but let me spit the line up out at you one more time: Abigail & Hansel, Hotel Hotel, Zanzibar Snails, Delphi, Oveo, Angry Businessmen, Nouns Group, Christian! Teenage Runaways, Chief Death Rage, Unconscious Collective and The Great Tyrant. Shit thats good. And to top it all off, its free, BYOB, and located at one of the most pleasant DIY venues in the area. If you're up in Denton on Saturday, I would say that stopping by is necessary, especially to check out the incredibly intense noise theatrics of The Great Tyrant at midnight. The first band goes on at 2pm, and as far as we know, they are playing in the order you see them here, every hour on the hour. Located at 731 Texas St. in Denton.

Ladies' Night @ 715 Panhandle with: Koji Kondo | Teenage Cool Kids | Get Serious | Angry Businessmen | Jumping Phoenix | Black Wizardz | Trifle Tower (8pm)
Now that you know how great we think this place is, go for see for yourself but only if you want to have a fucking awesome time. This is a pretty straight-forward all out rock show with the punishing blast beats of San Antonio duo Get Serious, the skronky hardcore of Koji Kondo, 90's indie rock influenced Teenage Cool Kids, the screaming complexity of Trifle Tower, and brand new Alex Atchley project Black Wizardz. Angry Businessmen are working overtime by playing this show as well as making an appearance at the 8th and I don't really know anything about Jumping Phoenix, but I do know that this show will be a lot of fun. Come witness the increasingly rare phenomenon of an audience that gives a shit.

Lollipop Shop w/ Dj Tiger Bee and DJ Panda Flower (Avenue Arts)

Zoo (The Cavern)
Shit. We haven't been able to stop by for an episode of Zoo in a while, but the always entertaining video DJs are really busting out with some great stuff as of late. Check the partial set list for Saturday night:

NEW & Classic MUSIC VIDEO by:BSS, Groove Armada, the Flaming Lips, Justice, Gus Gus, M.I.A.,theKINKS, Radiohead, the Knife, R.E.M., Faithless,LIARS, 2-Pac, Simian Mobile Disco, LCD Sound System & MORE...+ LIVE & RARE stuff from:Beck '97, Reo Speedwagon '81, Pulp '99, Squarepusher '03, Tom Waits '74 - '94, the PIXIES '93, Lynyrd Skynyrd '74, White Stripes '04, & KISS '74 - '77

If you're in Dallas, you'd be dumb not to stop by for a drink at least. Most of the newer electronica stuff they're showing here is fantastic, and acts like The Knife, Justice and Liars seem to take their video production serious enough to make the visuals a must see.

Elsewhere, We Shot J.R. will pay you good money if you take acid and go see The Charlie Daniels Band and Little Texas for free at Sundance Square. First band at 6pm!

SUNDAY

Blood Brothers | Celebration | The Dead Science (Ridglea Theater)
Gotta be honest: I'm not the biggest Blood Brothers guy. I understand what they're trying to do I suppose, and I'm sure they're great live, but theres something about them that just ventures too closely to screamo for me sometimes. Someone will probably want to hang me for that, but what can I do? I'll take the Locust if I have to make a choice. However, my so-so take on BB will not prevent me from going to the show to catch the excellent Celebration, who are probably one of the more overlooked post-punk influenced bands to have emerged over the past couple of years, reminding me of a more gentle Slits at times. Besides, its been like six months since I've been able to use the phrase "angular guitars."

I was talking to some friends from Austin the other day when I actually had to pause and reassess something I had just said out loud. "Denton has six D.I.Y. venues." Six. Count them. Secret Headquarters, 8th Continent, Fra House, X-Treme Dudes Manor, House Of Tinnitus, and 715 Panhandle. It seems that Denton is in the middle of a renaissance for this particular type of venue, and people far and wide have taken notice. I've never been a blind supporter of Little D (don't call it that), but I often hear people from around the state gushing about how good Denton has it, even compared to the super-hip Austin, a place I have always blindly supported. When talking with out-of-town bands, I hear pangs of envy when referring to the wealth of great places to see shows in Denton, which is starting to be come known as a place where you're likely to see almost any kind of act you can think of at any one of these venues on a given weekend. And out of the six thriving epicenters of Do-It-Yourself culture around town, 715 Panhandle in particular seems to be almost completely free of any type of sonic or social agenda.

715 Panhandle is kind of the positive little brother of the Denton Do-It-Yourself circuit, with a stronger link to the history of that culture than you might expect. It's shows cover a wide variety of music, from acoustic singer-songwriters to free jazz, and poppy indie rock to spazzed-out hardcore. The house is inhabited by four young lads with an assortment of tastes that dictate the mixtape-like nature of the eclectic line ups and add to the overall spirit of the venue. And speaking of tapes, the house is also the headquarters for a cassette-only label, NPNR, which stands for "No Parents, No Rules." The name actually provides a fairly good summation of the fun-oriented fliers, shows and overall feeling of the cassette label and the ethos it embodies, as well as the venue itself. I really enjoyed doing the research for this piece, including actually attending a Panhandle show, since the extremely upbeat attitudes of all involved with both the house and the label are a nice change from the typically jaded seen-it-all pose of music scene people, which I myself am quite guilty of. The enthusiasm for each show held there as well as the care put into the label is quite an admirable and refreshing break from the norm. The show I attended was witnessed by a cross-section of Denton's community of musicians, students, and grown-folks alike, comprising a group that differed slightly from the familiar faces you see at other places. It was such a mixed crowd, in fact, that I constantly saw little groups of people pointing at each other and simultaneously blurting, "What are you doing here"?! With such large numbers of people from diverse crowds and walks of life, its actually pretty remarkable that 715 has never had a problem with police intervention, even though it seemed like the crowd I encountered was a body short of spilling into the street, which is apparently a regular occurrence at the place.

Inside the house, people were shoulder to shoulder, moving, dancing, pushing, swinging and swaying. This is all too rare at shows now days and the energy from the bands and the crowd was easy to get swept up in as everyone seemed to move without the usual constrictions of self consciousness. 715 Panhandle is definitely a place to see a lively show, free of the extreme intellectualism or hardcore dogma you might find at similar places, but I don't mean to suggest that there isn't a lot of thought put into the music at the shows. It's just that the"No Parents, No Rules" motto does truly convey the feeling of the place: one of being at a house party someone threw when their parents were out of town, which often provide some of the best memories of growing up. Bands from out of state and as far away as Scotland have played 715 in addition to the usual Austin/Houston travelers and many DFW acts, including such diverse local groups as Unconscious Collective, Daniel Folmer, Trifle Tower, and Koji Kondo.

Again, I don't mean to make it sound as if the men of 715 Panhandle and NPNR are just here for the party. The NPNR label is a project founded by Clint Butler of Denton's Angry Businessmen, who started the label as a viable but cheap answer to the glut of "burned CD-R's with the Sharpied on title." NPNR releases include artwork and lyrics and are assembled with more care than you typically get from the aforementioned CD-R or myspace.com/mp3 formats. The first release was by singer-songwriter Sparlin, Jessels, the second will be from the Teenage Cool Kids, available at their release show this Saturday, and Angry Businessmen themselves will see their release on the 21st. The bands record onto an 8-track hooked up to a computer, where the music then finds its way to a master tape on a deck and is finally duplicated with a high speed duplicator. The releases all come in editions of 100, with represses possible if warranted. The idea of the cassette label seems more radical than ever in today's online dominated world of music, and hearing NPNR's story reminded me of labels like ROIR from the 80's and the now legendary status of those cassette-only releases, which have all eventually found their way on to other formats. Clint hasn't completely ruled out the possibility of another format for the self-released imprint, indicating that a 7-inch is possible at some point.

The next 715 Panhandle show will be at 8:00 pm on Saturday, which will be right about the time the headlining Fry St. Fair acts go on...three stages. I've got nothing against the Fry Street bands, and frankly it's quite mind boggling to think of the over-abundance of quality there must be in Denton right now when the biggest music related event in town can't fully represent what takes place there at so many different venues on a weekly basis. I'm as shocked as I am grateful that places like 715 Panhandle fly in the face of my typically jaded seen-it-all pose, even if my pose does happen to be pretty cool.

Lost Generation With Wanz Dover (Fallout Lounge)
Tonight Wanz will be playing segments of the Kraftwerk live DVD. He'll also have his new mixtape which is cleverly titled: I Love Kraftwerk + I Hate Techno=Dumbass. Here's the track listing:

1.Kraftwerk - Numbers(live)
2.Ellen Allien & Apparrat - Way Out
3.Kiki - So Easy to forget(Ada Remix)
4.Booka Shade - Darko(tube remix)
5.Mochipet - Disko Donkey ([a]Pendics Shuffle Mix)
6.Simian Mobile Disco - It's the beat
7.The Fall - Dr.Bucks letter(Wanz Dover Banger's and Trix Mix)
8.Jeff Mills and the Montpellier orchestra - Amazon
9.Black Devil Disco Club - Just Foot
10.Barbara Morgenstern - aus heiterem himmel(Ellen Allien remix)
11.Gui Boratto - I like you (Supermayer remix)
12.The Field - A Paw in my face
13.Afrika bambaata and The Soul Sonic Force Vs. The Rapture - Planet Rock(Wanz party mash mix)


Forbes, Young, and Gonzalez Trio | Lil' Tedley/Unconscious Collective (Secret Headquarters)
This is a better show than you would expect see on a Thursday. I guess the two SHQ shows are on Thursday and Friday this week, since they're understandably closed for Fry St. Fair. The Forbes, Young, and Gonzalez trio and The Unconscious Collective feature some of the most talent you'll ever witness live, and both groups boast lineups that are pretty much the perfect mix of ability and taste. The Forbes, Young and Gonzalez Trio are more improvisational and closer to free jazz than the Unconscious Collective, who tend to attack with the intensity and bombast of the best moments of prog-rock, however there still tends to be some improvisation. I'm not familiar with Lil' Tedley and couldn't find a link, but they are probably the standout since I've heard they're more straight-ahead punk rock. This show is proof that so-called "real musicians" don't have to spend a lifetime playing cheesy shit. Take notes.

80's Night With DJ G (Hailey's)

The Intonations | David Trust | The Grass Fight (J and J's Pizza)
The Intonations sound like they take a lot of pop songwriting influence from New Order and Superchunk, with Reid Brothers-styled distortion sprayed all over it. The Grass Fight take a step backwards from there with some unabashed Joy Division style-biting. David Trust surprised me with some pretty interesting, darkly dramatic songs and singing on his page, but who knows if he'll pull the usual solo set with no backing band that many singer-songwriters subject you to. He's got a pretty cool, extremely low voice that reminds me of Calvin Johnson and Nick Cave. Pretty impressive artists to be compared to, but I'll need to see this live to really decide.

Something tells me he wouldn't want us to get all bent out of shape about it.

Just links today, fellow music bros. And for the ladies, we've got some good posts coming this week.... I guess dudes can read them too, but we're mainly writing them for the ladies these days.

David Vandervelde will be playing Good Records for free at 6pm, and later he'll be at Dan's Silverleaf with Richard Swift and the Sons of National Freedom. Um, ok?

Current Leaves | Pink Nasty | The Black | Glen Farris (Hailey's)

Sarah Reddington | Real Live Tigers | A Childlike Fear | New Science Projects (Rubber Gloves)