One thing going down tonight that we know about: The Flashlight Party will be helping DJ Nature get the motherfuckin' party started over at Rubber Gloves. Should be a nice combo. Flashlight's mix CD, which we got our mits on this week, will be passed out for free tonight. It focuses more on newer dancerack, pop electronica, 80s dance and disco kinda stuff than Nature's mixes, but seems to compliment what he does perfectly. They'll be going back and forth all night, so this will surely be a nice addition to the vibe over there. Oh, and since Flashlight Party is gonna be there, our friends Cowboyriot will be there as well, taking pictures of all the cool kids doing crazy shit. We'll be sharing some of those pictures with you later this week.

Teenage Symphony has to be one of Dallas' strangest pop bands. They recently told us via email that our description of them as a Spacemen 3 marching band fronted by people with a Brian Wilson fetish was dead on as far as what they're into and where they're coming from, and considering that your typical Daryl Blacktie Davies Dallas pop band tries as hard as they can to sound like that Dandy Warhols album about monkeys (and even fail miserably at that), we hope Teenage Symphony keep doing things more than a little bit differently.

The band was started by keyboardist Mikal Beth in December 2005, and consists of five members: two are teachers (one is an elementary school choir teacher), two are former marching band kids, three are high school drop outs, one was a music major, and all five sing. Pretty damn well I might add. Mikal met guitarist J. Louis III while the two were teaching together at a middle school, and when Louis was fired for "conduct unbecoming," he eventually began working at a Plano alternative school where he met guitarist Geoffrey Spungeon and drummer Christopher Glass. After meeting bassist Lucas J. at a bookstore, Louis, Mikal and the rest united and began recording demos early this year on an 8 track at Louis' apartment.

The band's sound is certainly inspired by the psychedelic, but they approach it from a fairly unique prospective (and extraordinarily unique locally), mixing in heavy doses of choral spiritual music and 60's vocal groups like the Zombies and the Beach Boys, with tons of reverb and a dark, lo-fi, almost hollow sounding recording style that lends quite well to what they do, adding an element of empty creepiness to their songs. And if the above doesn't really sound like a description of a pop band, it is because Teenage Symphony isn't anything like most groups that earn the label. A listen to their tunes reveals that their songs are quite catchy and traditionally structured; but the way they sing, what they sing about, and their minimal yet generous arrangements all add an element of weirdness that you just wouldn't expect from people that seem to be so influenced by music that is usually quite happy and straight forward. The songs are fairly lengthy and trance-like at times, causing the listener to get lost in their world of echoes and ghostly vocals. The music itself isn't really psychedelic but the approach certainly is, allowing the band's distinct personality to add to the effect.

After just a few short months together, Teenage Symphony has already demonstrated their unique take on some of the more popular forms of American Pop music from the past five decades, and considering that they are one of the few bands in DFWd with multiple vocalists that can actually sing, it seems that they can push their style in all kinds of interesting directions, and that they intend to do just that. It is nice to hear a Dallas area band that realizes that pop rock doesn't have to be polished in order to be good, and that being catchy doesn't have anything to do with making music that could be played on the Edge. Teenage Symphony is certainly a band worth keeping your eye on.

MP3s:

"Lucky" MP3

"We Will Be Together" MP3

1. Wilderness | Year Future | Parts and Labor (Rubber Gloves-Denton)
Wilderness aren't for everyone. Even people that are into the bands that obviously influenced these guys, namely P.I.L. and Joy Division, might not like them for that simple reason. But we think they're pretty good, and worth checking fo sho. Their guitar parts are fantastic, as is their rhythm section, and if the vocals come off the right way in a live setting, this could be an excellent show. If you haven't heard them, imagine a more sprawling and slightly more atmospheric P.I.L. Year Future absolutely sucks, so go eat at Sweetwater or something while they play. Parts and Labor are a noisy mess of distortion, feedback and reverb with some pretty strong pop songs lying just beneath. Probably good live.

2. Lost Generation with Wanz Dover (Upstairs- Cavern)
This is the last one that Wanz will be doing for a few weeks, so get check it out. He'll be doing a tribute to Spacemen 3, and we think the prospect of hearing Spacemen 3 in a bar is enough reason to show up and have some drinks, don't you?

Good God. We just looked at the full ballot for the Observer awards for the first time today (continuing our streak of complete uselessness, considering that voting is already over), and in most of these categories there just isn't a whole lot to chose from. We decided that we'd share our picks with you for the categories that we know something about. For the categories that we don't know anything about, we just tried to find the funniest name and go with that. Our picks are in bold. And we couldn't come up with a funny joke about the music blog/website category, so we just left it out. Sorry, we're busy.

Best Act In Town:
The Boys Named Sue (a cover band? What does that say?)
The Happy Bullets
Radiant
Record Hop
Sorta

Musician of the Year:
John Dufilho
Collin Herring
Chris Holt
Eric "Fishboy" Michener
Salim Nourallah

Best Album:
Beautiful Noise, Salim Nourallah
King James Version, Spitfire Tumbleweeds
Little D, Fishboy
The Vice and Virtue Ministry, The Happy Bullets
Water Sphere, Pilotdrift

Best Song:
"Crime Scene," Black Tie Dynasty (they should have called this song Ice cream, b/c ice cream is sweet.)
"Falling Asleep in the Snow," Auto Escape
"Still Afraid," Bosque Brown
"The Dark of Garage," South San Gabriel
"The Vice and Virtue Ministry," The Happy Bullets
"The World is Full of People Who Want to Hurt You," Salim Nourallah

Best New Act:
Auto Escape
Bosque Brown
The Drams
Rose County Fair
The Valentines (I don't choo choo choose you.)

Best Blues:
Hash Brown and the Browntones
Pops Carter (I don't know, guess you gotta go with pops)
Smokin' Joe Kubek
Silvertones
Jim Suhler

Best Country/Roots:
The Boys Named Sue
Eleven Hundred Springs
Jayson Bales and the Revival
Max Stalling
Spitfire Tumbleweeds

Best Cover Band:
The Boys Named Sue
Hard Night's Day (sorry, I like the Beatles better than country versions of Eminem songs)
The Mumbles
Petty Theft
Queen For A Day

Best DJ:
DeeJay CeePee (we always have fun on Mondays at the Cavern)
Kid Icarus
DJ Merritt
DJ Redeye
Wild in the Streets

Experimental/Electronic: (lots of good groups on here. What the hell is professional juice?)
The Angelus
the pAper chAse
Professional Juice
Tree Wave
The Undoing of David Wright

Folk/Acoustic:
Bosque Brown
Doug Burr
Fishing For Comets (is this the chick from Lillix?)
Audrey Lapraik
Mission to the Sea

Funk/R&B:
Montrose
One Up
Rhythm (winner of most awesomely strange name ever.)
Rubba Rode
Woodbelly

Jazz:
Earl Harvin Trio
Freddie Jones Band
Monks of Saturnalia (I'm into buddha and shit)
Shanghai 5
Shibboleth

Latin/Tejano:
Zayra Alvarez
Mad Mexicans (I ain't mad at ya)
Norte De Havana (I have no clue)
Rob G. and the Latin Pimps

Best Rap/Hip-Hop:
Steve Austin
Headkrack
Money Waters (I heard some of this guy's stuff. Its really funny.)
Pikahsso
Tahiti

Best Metal:
3/4 Ton
A Dozen Furies (If it had been like 11, I'd say no way. But a dozen? You can't fuck with that.)
Fair to Midland
Jacknife
Mugzu

Best Hard-Rock:
Burden Brothers
The Feds
Golden Falcons
Hogpig
Record Hop (We are really big Hogpig fans and all, but we thought we'd go with the underdog. But Hogpig fuckin' rules!)

Best Indie-Rock:
The Deathray Davies F
ishboy
The Happy Bullets
Midlake
The Valentines

Best Female Singer:
Camille Cortinas, Fishing For Comets
Ashlee Cromeens, Record Hop
Kristy Kruger
Mara Lee Miller, Bosque Brown
Liz Williams

Best Male Singer:
Aaron Closson, The Hourly Radio
John Dufilho, The Deathray Davies/I Love Math
Trey Johnson, Sorta
Salim Nourallah
Levi Smith, Radiant

Best Instrumentalist:
Scott Danbom (keyboard/violin), Centro-matic/South San Gabriel ( I guess)
Daniel Hopkins (drums), Radiant
Chris Holt (guitar)
Todd Pertll (pedal steel), Doug Burr/Kristy Kruger
Ward Richmond (bass), Slick 57/Boys Named Sue

Best Producer:
John Congleton
Salim Nourallah
Matt Pence
Stuart Sikes (what have you done for me lately?)
Dave Willingham

Best Radio Show That Plays Local Music:
90.1 At Night
The Adventure Club, 102.1 The Edge
Frequency Down, 88.1 KNTU T
he Good Show, 88.7 KTCU
The Local Show, 102.1 The Edge ( although we love live burden brothers shows at Dada, we just couldn't do it.)

Best Record Label:
Kirtland
Idol
Spune
Summer Break
Undeniable

Best Live Music Venue:
The Cavern
Granada Theatre
Gypsy Tea Room
Hailey's Sound isn't great most of the time, but they get the best bands
Sons of Hermann Hall

Best Dance Club:
Hailey's (1. Dj G plays here. 2. We've never been to these other places. No, I swear I've never been to the Lizard Lounge... I promise.)
Lizard Lounge
minc
Purgatory
Seven

Man, I thought Memphis would at least put up a fight. Guess not. The story of the game has to be Josh Howard's 24 points. When that guy is good, and Dirk has it together, it is really hard for any team in the league to beat the Mavs.... almost impossible I'd say. Another good performance from JT as well.

Lets hope its the Kings over the Spurs in 7.

Since there isn't anything to do today, you could get on the phone and call 214-631-arts and order tickets to tomorrow's showing of "You're Gonna Miss Me," a documentary of the life of Roky Erickson. Apparently its pretty great, and we don't know if it will be screened around here again any time soon. So check it out.

EDIT: Sorry, its playing Tuesday at AMC 15 North Park Center at 7pm. So go see the movie and check out some MILFs after.

Thats what is going on today. No it list.

Tonight however, you should watch the Mavs take down the Grizz once and for all at 7pm. Thats gonna be some "it" shit.

And finally, we will have a Theater Fire review for you some time this week, but we just don't know when. Probably Thursday. Keep rockin.

Here is some good info on the Dallas series. We should be watching the Spurs-Kings as well, since it looks like Sac tied shit up. Lets take that one to seven games, boys.

Apparently someone over at TexasGigs has been dreaming about me again. And it looks like they think I have a nice ass too. I was hoping it was Scott Chaffin, but some things just aren't meant to be.

1. Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops
2. Starlight Mints - Drowaton
3. Black Angels - Passover
4. Riverboat Gamblers - To the Confusion of Our Enemies
5. Islands - Return to the Sea
6. Ambulance LTD. - New English EP
7. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
8. Black Tie Dynasty - Movements
9. Voxtrot - Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and Wives
10. Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon
11. Feist - Let It Die
12. Mates of State - Bring it Back
13. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
14. Sondre Lerche - Duper Sessions
15. Elf Power - Back to the Web
16. Calexico - Garden Ruin
17. Death Cab for Cutie - Directions (DVD)
18. Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
19. Philip E Karnats - Pleasesuite
20. Eagles of Death Metal - Death By Sexy...

See, Black Tie Dynasty sells records whether we like them or not. They probably get lucky more than we do too. And will people stop buying fucking Death Cab stuff please?