Remember when I had Old Austin’s good ear from 1998-2000? I tried to make my three-dot column in the Statesman fun, but some of the bigwigs in town just wanted to see their names in bold type and didn’t care for the sarcasm. My editors got tired of the phone calls, but I think it’s […]
by Michael Corcoran AAS 1999 John Lennon described the blues as a chair. “It’s not a design for a chair or a better chair,” he said. “It’s the first chair. It’s a chair for sitting on, not for looking at. You sit on that music.” Too often, however, the music that calls itself the blues […]
by Paul Kopasz 1996 In 1975 Lester Bangs wrote “Lou Reed is my hero principally because he stands for all of the most fucked up things I can think of, which probably just goes to show the limits of my own imagination.” I feel that exact way about Townes Van Zandt. Aside from the obvious […]
Paul Sessums loved the sound of loud electric guitars. When he’d stand on the Sixth Street sidewalk and rail about this and that, using a parking meter as his pulpit, everything was all right in his universe as long as the guitars were ringing through the doors of his Black Cat Lounge. He’d hire any […]
“Onstage, they were brothers, liberated from humdrum, hopeless lives, beating the odds with a baseball bat.”
9/11/2002 It had been touted as the first great work of art based on the Sept. 11 tragedy, but the Bruce Springsteen fans who filled the Mercury nightclub in July to get an early listen to The Rising would’ve been there if their Boss had just made a concept album about the London subway system […]
When U2 began its “Elevation” tour in March, the Irish Supergroup joked that it was reapplying for the job as the best band in the world. “Beautiful Day,” from the band’s most recent album, “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,” had just swept the song and record of the year categories at the Gram- mys, […]
by Michael Corcoran AAS As much as I try to come off as a party animal, fueled by that saying about that which doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger, I’m really more a creature of habit. When I go out to see bands, I follow a certain circuit — Hole in the Wall, Continental, […]
October 2009 In April 1994, Kevin Connor was fired from KGSR-FM for unspecified reasons and was moping at home, taking occasional “keep your head up” calls from friends. “My identity was so wrapped up in my job that when that was taken away from me, I was completely distraught,” recalls Connor, who’s now head of […]
The World United Music Fest held, kinda, in Nov. 2008, was a little shy of its goal of 100,000 fans during the three days. Yeah, just 99,800 short. WUMF could’ve been sponsored by Sharpie because, with high ticket prices and a local-heavy lineup, it had disaster written all over it. On the bright side – […]
