I guess we probably don't have to tell you that radio in DFW is about as cool as getting a lap dance from Jerry Jones, so we won't bother. We also assume that many of you don't have to be told about how good Frequency Down on KNTU is, but we're going to go ahead and say it anyway for those of you who, like us, haven't bothered to listen to local radio in quite a while. The show, which airs sundays at 10pm on 88.1 (or online if you click the link above), is surely the best thing going in Dallas radio, as a brief glance at their playlist will confirm. Yep, thats Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill, Wolf Parade, New Order and the Tah Dahs on there, as well as a lot of other stuff that you won't hear anywhere else in the metroplex. Give it a listen if you can remember how to work your radio dial.

JR

There is no It List for tonight. Thats ok. Its Sunday, the Lord's day of rest... so maybe thats what we should do. Rest. But we're not going to. Instead, we're going to make a couple posts of interest later on tonight, including a band profile and our Mp3 blog roundup. Stay tuned.

For Denton on a Saturday night: Violent Squid and You Are the Universe, two interesting Denton experimental bands are playing a free improv show at J+Js on the Square. I believe it starts at 10pm. Violent Squid sounds like Jandek one minute and Magnetic Fields the next, while You are the Universe sounds like, um, I don't know. Listen for yourself.

1. Fishboy | Voot Cha Index (Rubber Gloves Denton)
Both of these bands played for free today at Good Records, but if you're reading this and you didn't see them already, then you're outta luck. Voot Cha Index plays a cool sort of space pop thats worth giving a listen, while Fishboy is like a non retarded Daniel Johnston, which is a good thing since being retarded would suck.

2. Red Monroe (Club Clearview)
Ok ok, I guess every fly-over city in the United States needs their own local Strokes these days, and the Valentines are ours. They aren't particularly bad or anything and they write catchy songs, its just that we've heard them all before... being played by other bands that is. Needless to say, this means that the Valentines have a better chance of being big than most of the bands in Dallas right now. Red Monroe, a band we like quite a bit, is opening for them along with What Made Milwaukee Famous (pretty average) and the infamous Belafonte (you know what we think of them).

3. Lollipop Shop (Avenue Arts 825 Exposition Dallas)
Cute girls and art kids and hipsters dancing to soul, garage, psyche and other 60's stuff. Five bucks, BYOB, starts at 10 and goes until after 2. Probably the best place to meet a new friend tonight if you dress cool.

Seeing as how we didn't have anything for you tonight and the Good Records thing starts early tomorrow (we usually don't leave the house on Saturdays until several hours after this thing starts), we decided to go ahead and give you the lineup right now. There will be free food and beer if you're 21.... and they check ids, kids- not to mention to superegos (paging Dr. Freud). This is the Good Records Birthday/store moving party, by the way.

11am: Voot Cha Index (UPDATE: Actually some pretty decent noise pop stuff. Probably worth checking out if you can get up in time)
noon: Fishboy (pretty good)
1pm: The Theater Fire (yes!)
2pm: Deathray Davies (whateva)
2:30pm: Salim Nourallah (actually pretty good, despite what we expected)
3pm: Astronautilus (who?)
4pm: Record Hop (fun)
5pm: Daryl (don't know, don't care)
6pm: Jetscreamer (never heard)
7pm: Baboon (have heard good things about their new stuff)

Then the store will close at 10. Forever. Until they open again on Greenville next week. Really this is the best record store in Dallas, so we have to give props. Looking forward to exploring their new, much bigger location.

This really is a first for us. Friday night and nothin doin'. There are shows all over the place tonight, just like every Friday night, but nothing that really stands out to us. This means that you should go to house parties, or stay home, or do whatever it is you do. We're going to do whatever it is WE do. Feel free to post your events in the comments section, or to tell us how crappy we are for not including such and such a show on our list. Power to the people!

So call us Mr. Butterfingers or whatever because we just recently learned about the massive Wall of Sound event taking place in Fort Worth on Saturday April 8th and Sunday April 9th. Some of the highlights include Low, Starlight Mints, Okkervil River and the Black Angels, as well as pretty much every good local band you can think of. The festival certainly will be one of the biggest musical events in DFWD this year, so you should probably be seen there. Tickets go on sale today in like an hour.

Wall of Sound Festival website

So we wanted to tip you off on a good Denton band we started listening to recently. As we've said before, one of the things that separates bands that might get national attention (even if its only in the indie community) from those that are destined to play Mondays at Club Clearview forever is the quality of their vocals. Local bands just looking to have some fun can get away with having an average (or below average) lead singer and still be able to get girlfriends or whatever, but bands that have bigger aspirations have to get their shit together on vocals. Shiny Around the Edges has accomplished this goal, and they have the songwriting chops and unique artistic vision to properly back their two excellent singers, who also happen to be the only two people in the band.

SATE has been together for about four years, and both members share songwriting, singing and arrangement duties. They've released two limited edition Eps, a DVR, and have contributed songs to a number of different compilations. Most of the band's music is quite minimal and has an ambient and atmospheric quality that will remind you of Brian Eno, Castanets, Swans, Six Organs of Admittance, and maybe some of the early experiments of Sonic Youth. The sounds that you'll hear on some of their tracks are "noise" by definition, but its very controlled and quiet, allowing their vocals and songwriting skills to take center stage. Male vocalist Michael sounds a little like Leonard Cohen and Michael Gira, and female vocalist Jennifer seems to channel Massive Attack and a pinch of Stereolab. The band throws all of these influences in a blender along with some front porch folk, striking a proper balance with the drone minimalism that sets the emotional tone for their music. The result is a sound that is challenging yet perfectly accessible, poppy in a sense yet strange enough to strike a chord. Its like art school without the art students.

Some MP3s if you please:

"In the Heart" Link

"Waiting for the Night" Link

Kind of a slow Thursday night here in big D. Hopefully the weekend will be better. This weekend, and every other weekend starting now, we're going to do what we like to call the "Weekly MP3 Blog Round Up." I guess by now you realize that there are about 8 million blogs out there telling you to "Check out this new so and so from wherever that sound like this and that," and sometimes they're right on. However, a lot of the time they can fuck right off, especially if they try to tell you that Arctic Monkeys are the new Oasis, or that The Subways are the new Arctic Monkeys. I can't believe I typed the name "Arctic Monkeys" twice (three times) in one paragraph. Moving on, we'll sort through the shit for you and post the mp3 links that are actually good along with a link to the sites we got them from. With 8 million blogs talking about three of four new bands a day per blog, thats a lot of overhyped crap that you won't have to sort through because we'll do it for you. And you know our taste is better than yours anyway. So here we go, it list time:

1. Dj G 80's Night @ Hailey's: We've talked about this enough. If you need details you can email us.

2. Mile End with Dj Laureen (Fallout Lounge)
Same applies here.

If you know of anything else going on tonight that might be worth the time and trouble of the upwardly mobile demographic that reads this blog, feel free to post about it in the comments.

JR- weshotjr@yahoo.com

Just to let everyone know, coming up in the next few days we'll have a couple profiles of local bands that you may or may not have heard of, some new local and national Mp3s, and 7 1/2 questions with the Undoing of David Wright.
And if you're lucky, some free love on the free love freeway.

1. The Party w/ DJ Nature (Rubber Gloves- Denton)
The party is growing on Wednesday nights, so you should go drink cheap beer and dance to such a wide variety of good music that we can't even describe it.

2. 80's Night w/ DJ G (The Cavern)
80's dance, house, synth, new wave, whatever you want to call it.

Of Montreal put on a pretty good show tonight, even if it did happen to start at fucking 10:15, which caused us to miss a few songs. The set was more or less tight, and the band played with a good deal of energy to a pretty packed Granada crowd full of kids jumping around and dancing to all the hits from the two most recent records, along with some older types sitting around talking about stocks or something.

However, despite the fact that the band really didn't do anything wrong, the show was less than great. I believe this is mainly due to the fact that the Granada is just not a great place to see a concert. For one you can't smoke, which annoys us beyond words (although we are aware that some of you jerks might actually enjoy smoke free environments). And more importantly, the sound quality in the main room just isn't that great . We don't know much about sound waves and acoustics and all that, but something about the Granada's main room just kills the sound of live music and makes everything come out all compressed and flat. There is usually a lot going on in Of Montreal songs, but we really couldn't enjoy much of it since most of the time we just couldn't differentiate between sounds. Granada is a pretty cool theater in a great location, and everything probably sounded fantastic up close. But those of us that got there late and had to stand in the back really couldn't hear anything very well. Maybe it was the band and we just don't know it, but we've noticed this a few times at the Granada and we have decided to blame the room. Perhaps you know more and can explain to us why we're wrong. Or maybe you heard a different show all together tonight, and think we have cotton stuck in our ears. Let us know in the comments if thats the case. But for now we're going to be grumpy about the Granada, at least until they let us smoke inside.

JR- Weshotjr@yahoo.com

1. Of Montreal (Granada)
One of the great second generation Elephant 6 bands. Enough said.

2. Lost Generation w/ DJ Mwanza (Cavern)
After the Of Montreal show, stop by the Cavern for a night cap. Mwanza is out of town, but I'm sure he got someone good to fill in for him.

See you at the Granada.

First, we want to say sorry to the person that emailed us about not being able to get in to the "Why We Fight" screening because some sort of special pass was required and the event appeared to be sold out. Not sure what the deal on the "pass" thing was, but the theater did appear full. Guess we need to do a little more homework next time.

And you really shouldn't worry about it anyway because those that didn't see the movie tonight will surely get to in the weeks and months to come. We know this for sure because there is no way that Why We Fight will not be immensely popular. It was one of the absolute BEST political documentaries we have seen in YEARS, and we've pretty much seen em all. But JR, you're a loud mouth liberal pussy communist, aren't you? Yes, I am. But this is no Michael Moore movie.

Basically, the film revolves around Eisenhower's farewell address in which he discussed the (then) new formation of a "military-industrial complex" in the United States and its dangerous potential in a representative democracy. The film spends most of the time explaining in a level headed and clear way how Eisenhower's vision has rapidly become reality, culminating in the Bush presidency and the neoconservative philosophy that guides it, and seen most clearly in the lead up to and execution of the war in Iraq. If you don't have any clue what I'm talking about, then you should go see this movie ASAP. If you do, then you are probably excited because you know that there hasn't yet been a good documentary film covering this subject in a reasonable and informative manner. Until now.

And for all you republicans, conservative thinkers are featured just about as much as liberals in the film, and NO democratic politicians are interviewed at all while both John McCain and Richard Perle are featured throughout. Its a pretty balanced look, even though you will leave the film knowing that the filmmaker doesn't think much of George W. Bush. But that doesn't mean that he is a partisan, it just means that he has half a brain.

Go see this. You won't be disappointed.

So all the hippies in Austin can get pretty annoying, but sometimes they come up with some good ideas like this one for a community owned pub. Um, why can't this happen in Dallas? I'm sure 100 people with 100 dollars could be found in our little music community. Sell good beer, rent out some shitty place in a shitty part of town, put on shows and Dj nights there.... and bam! You've got the next hot spot. Or maybe we just don't understand business.