The local galleries are in the midst of the summer doldrums, when things get quiet, group shows get hung, and many collectors find another part of the world to wait out the Dallas’ cancer-inducing heat.

Barry Whistler Gallery is taking advantage of the lull to offer a tag sale on their inventory. The Red Hot Summer Inventory Sale kicked off last weekend, and you can see images from the the salty-hung show here. And while you are sweating it out on the Deep Ellum Streets, don’t forget to stop by The Public Trust to check out the Sleepy Dan line gallery owner Brian Gibb lined up for his summer slot.

Former Denton artist and musician Andrew Savage (formerly of Teenage Cool Kids and Wiccans) simply could have coasted when he relocated to Brooklyn, having already secured quite a bit of attention for his Fergus & Geronimo project before even departing. However, word came in Monday morning that Savage is prepping material to be released from a new band, with all members having some sort of local connection.

The group is called Parquet Courts, and is comprised of Andrew Savage on vocals and guitar, his brother, Max Savage on drums, as well as former area DJ Austin Brown aka Young Doc Gooden (also of New York act The Keepsies) on vocals and guitar, and finally, Sean Yeaton of long-running Cambridge, Mass. group, Daniel Striped Tiger on bass. Okay, the last one is a stretch, locally, but the group did do a split release with Savage’s Teenage Cool Kids.

The group has played sporadically in New York since their first show in January, but just announced their official web presence yesterday.

At this moment there are no premeditated recordings by the group itself, but Parquet Courts member Austin Brown tells me this morning that new tracks were just dropped off to be mixed. In lieu of any actual preview, the group has assembled a mix-tape of their influences. An actual mix-tape. Says Savage (IN CLASSIC CAPS LOCK PUNK):

NO RECORDINGS YET, BUT TO KICK THINGS OFF I MADE A MIXTAPE. “BY WHO POWER?” IS A TAPE PRODUCED BY (P)(C) THAT CELEBRATES THESE INFLUENCES IN THE BAND’S EARLY STAGES. IT IS FROM A REAL LIFE AUDIO CASSETTE, SO ENJOY THE HISS. AVAILABLE STREAMING OR DOWNLOAD IT TO YOUR MP3 PLAYER. ENJOY IT AND PLEASE SHARE WITH THE REST OF SOCIETY!’
ACTUAL RECORDINGS OF THE BAND TO COME IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS, SO JUST CHECK BACK. TRACKS ARE BEING MIXED NOW.

So there you have it. A quick listen to the tape’s intro reveals the wonderful source material from which the title was taken, as well as a healthy balance of clunky 90′s Indie classics,  a couple of rap tracks; one chopped and screwed and one straight-up, Krautrock, Dire Straits, Dylan, and at least one song by SST oddity Saccharine Trust. If Parquet Courts synthesizes these influences down as well as Fergus & Geronimo did with Motown and Zappa, then expect to hear a lot more about them soon.

November, David Mamet’s 2007 political comedy about an incumbent president days away from losing a second term, is full of pithy, audience-pleasing one liners that earn laughs without being particularly memorable. After I saw it for the first time in New York, I left with my sides splitting but for the life of me couldn’t recall many lines beyond “I hope your other wife gets eaten by walrus.”

The play opens with foul-mouthed Commander in Chief Charles Smith (Jerry Russell) and his faithful advisor/lawyer, Archer (Jim Covault, a bit of a Cheney lookalike) lamenting Smith’s abysmal numbers at the polls. Well, Smith is lamenting, and Archie is fairly matter-of-fact about the whole thing (Smith: “What is it about me that people don’t like?” Lawyer: “That you’re still here.”)

(more…)

Politics proves most enjoyable when the politicians are trapped on stage and under bright lights. Which is what makes David Mamet’s play, November, a production worth seeing. President Charles Smith’s chances of reelection are slim so on the eve of the election he chooses to manipulate a Turkey Representative, an Indian Chief, and his lesbian speechwriter to save his tenure. We’re giving away a pair of tickets to Stage West’s performance of November and all you have to do to get your hands on them is answer this question in the form below: What actor/actress received a Tony nomination in the original Brodway production? We’ll pick a winner after 3pm.

(more…)

Terminator 2/Waxeater/Nervous Curtains/Midnite Society (Rubber Gloves): A rather unfortunate note about this show: Louisville, Kentucky/Bloomington, Indiana’s Waxeater had to cancel since their bass player Elliott Turton was electrocuted last night during the group’s second song in a performance at Austin’s Beerland and is said to be in critical but stable condition. From the Electrical Audio Forum that Turton frequents:

For those who haven’t heard yet, our boy Elliott…was electrocuted on stage last night at Beerland in Austin during Waxeater’s second song. The information we have is that our friend Ashlee (a nurse and wife to an old friend of ours who was playing the show with Wax last night) and a fellow nurse helped revive him before EMS got there, and now he’s stable in the ICU.

Awful news, and here’s hoping that Turton and the group are back at it in no time. Waxeater has performed at different venues in the area quite a bit recently and as such have a lot of local supporters. This would have been their second area show in less than a week, since they had just performed at Pastime Tavern on Saturday. We previewed the show here, where I basically said they had hogged the last of the guitars in modern music, which was a compliment. Get well soon!

Cool Out Mondays (Beauty Bar): In another interesting twist, Cool Out winds up at one of its original alternate possibilities when it originally left The Cavern. Now its down to two resident DJs: Adam Pickrell and Tony Schwa.

According to Schwa, Sober is too busy with other obligations to make the move as well, but perhaps most importantly, he already has Thursday nights locked down at Beauty Bar with his Big Bang Weekly. However, Schwa went on to say that Sober will guest DJ “every month or so.” He also says there will be more out-of-town guests. So Cool Out is still largely intact, you’ll just have to cross the street.

Music Movie Mondays: The Nomi Song – Klaus Nomi (Good Records): Well-received documentary on the extremely interesting and lovably bizarre multi-talent that still has a large influence on both fashion and music. Besides seeing this film tonight, I would also recommend Nomi’s never-completed Za Bakdaz, his “Space Western” operetta. Though it’s fairly different from the work for which he is best known, it also possesses moments of great beauty, specifically on tracks like “Valentine’s Day.”

The Credentials/Stymie/Completely F****d/The Others/Terrorist (Phoenix Project): Everything from Thrash to “Raw Pop” is represented in this lineup, but the show invite contains perhaps the most pertinent information:

8 BUX
8 PM
NO BOOZE INSIDE OR UNDER 21
NO FIGHTING
NO RACISM
NO SEXISM
NO HOMOPHOBIA

THIS IS A FRIENDLY SPACE
LETS KEEP IT THAT WAY!

For more events, go here and here.

Image: Still from “The Nomi Song.”

The subhead to this story says it all:

The event seems to have found a perfect fit in the desert city, where partygoers danced nonstop and mostly untroubled all weekend long.

Unlike Dallas, where there are now two deaths “linked” the Electric Daisy Carnival which took over Fair Park a week ago but was shut down prematurely.

The LA Times piece points out a double standard in the music concert world, where deaths at rock concerts do not elicit the same popular condemnation that similar tragedies at dance events do:

There were two fatalities at the rock-oriented Bonnaroomusic festival this month, but this news was greeted with relative indifference and little fear-mongering. News of two deaths at the Dallas installment of EDC in early June, however, was treated much more ominously, as though there were trouble lurking inside the music and the structure of its presentation rather than inside every curious teenager faced with the temptation of experimenting with illegal drugs, be it an organic fungus or a synthetic drop of Ecstasy.

Image: Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles.

The headline of this Dallas Morning News piece (yes, sub. req.) about the New Kids on the Block/BackstreetBoys tour says fans relived the glory days of the two seminal boy bands, but the accompanying photo shows a good deal of younger fans queing up for Sunday’s show at the American Airlines Center who do not look old enough to remember when Joey McIntyre covered The Delfonics’ classic “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time.” They’re generational crossover hits, reports Caitlin Johnston, who did find the 31 to 36 year olds who were prime pickings for the swooning, boy-faced boys from Boston who once took the world by storm.

A group of ladies decked out in ’80s gear — including neon hair extensions, leg warmers and leggings — fiddled with their wedding rings as they joked about two of the New Kids members being single.

“We want to pretend we’re young again,” Holly Mullins, 36, said, adding that it was fun to leave the house in an outfit that embarrassed her children. Many of the women wore accessories their kids let them borrow for the night.

Hmm. Well, let’s just take the opportunity to jump back a couple of more generations and rock that classic jam that started it all:

There’s a nice piece over on the Morning News (sub. req.) by Carlton Stowers who wrties about his visit to Robert E. Howard Days, an annual June event in the tiny town of Cross Plains in West Texas that honors the writer who create Conan the Barabarian. Howard died in 1936, but the legend he created (which is set for a reemergence on screen with Jason Momoa stepping into the role that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous (and made Arnold famous)

The 25th annual gathering drew fans, scholars and movie folks from as far away as Sweden, France, Germany and Russia to little Cross Plains (pop. 1,000) to honor the man who once lived there with his parents in a little white frame house that still sits on the edge of town. There, Howard biographer Mark Finn tells us, the strange and tragic young man wrote furiously on an old Underwood typewriter, creating a genre that would eventually be known as sword and sorcery fiction.

This revolution will not be televised: after a successful season opener, Shakespeare Dallas transforms back to usual pedestrian, mediocre ways with its hit-or-miss second production, As You Like It.

Executive and artistic director Raphael Parry indicated that they wanted a “more modern interpretation” of the Bard’s beloved theatrical comedy, so they chose 1930s civil war era Spain. The time period and revolutionary ethos translate into some striking visual elements. Donna Marquet’s straightforward set design of bare posts (which become trees in ..read more

FRIDAY

Frank Phosphate Presents “Everything Is Terrible Night” (Hailey’s): Showcasing material from the bottom of the cultural barrel scraping blog of the same name. The best part is that two DJ’s will be purposely play awful music. That certainly beats the alternative, where the DJ does so unintentionally.

The Black Dotz/Dim Locator/Soular Power (The Crown and Harp): First show in a long while by Wanz Dover’s punk and soul hybrid, The Black Dotz. Of Dover’s many projects over the years, the group is one of his most well-received.

Ishi/Burning Hotels/Air Review (Trees): I’m not sure if the remaining members of Ishi are actually following through with their plan to audition its new singer hopefuls live, but if so, it all sounds a bit awkward. Shouldn’t these sometimes glaringly obvious mismatches take place behind closed doors? Besides, what’s the criteria here, whether or not your Hoff-ian eyeball aerobics are up to snuff?

(more…)