Articles about Music
Toast 10 Most Beautiful Winner Aubree-Anna Thursday Night at the Warwick Melrose
photography by Bode Helm
Whether you’re a fan of music or our 10 Most Beautiful Women in Dallas competition, Thursday night is a good night to celebrate at the Warwick Melrose Hotel which is raising a toast to 10 Most Beautiful Winner (and former D cover model) Aubree-Anna Stinson, who graces Library Bar attendees with her smooth vocals every week. Tickets are being sold for $25 a piece which will include “heavy appetizers and a champagne toast,” and, of course, a live performance by Aubree-Anna. For tickets to the “Celebration Party,” call 972-841-5864. Apparently, tickets are going quickly. Thursday, December 15 at 7 pm.
Bash With Bushes Marks a Very Good Year for McKool Smith
George W. Bush and Mike McKool
Dallas’s Belo Mansion may have been a funeral home for 50 years, even hosting the funeral of Clyde Barrow back in the ’30s. But Friday night the old joint was anything but a dead zone, as roughly 1,000 people turned up for a raucous holiday shindig there marking the 20th anniversary of McKool Smith, an IP/commercial litigation law firm.
Think casino games. Exotically clad drink servers (one, pictured after the “jump,” wore a steel “skirt” holding dozens of champagne flutes). Plus multiple live bands — including a group (called Vocal Trash) at the valet entrance that sang and banged out tunes like Footloose using garbage-can lids and drums made out of empty water-cooler bottles.
The Dallas-based firm’s Mike McKool blew out all the stops for this year’s annual holiday party, no doubt. Example: Lawyers from the firm’s other six U.S. offices, including from its newest outpost in L.A., were flown in and put up at a local hotel (presumably not a Super 8). McKool also went above and beyond on the season’s giving side, presenting not one but two $100,000 checks to nonprofit groups during the evening.
Dallas’s Vogel Alcove snagged one of the checks. The other went to Barbara Pierce Bush’s Global Health Corps. The daughter of George W. and Laura Bush was there to accept the dough in person, while her parents sat watching at a table nearby.
The 2011 economy may be continuing to struggle in many ways. If the McKool Smith bash was any indication, though, it’s been a stupendous year for the lawyers. (Photos by Jeanne Prejean)
Rhett Miller on Fatherhood
An alert FrontBurnervian points us to this essay by Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller about what it’s like to be a rockstar and a father. Stop what you’re doing and take four minutes to read it. Good stuff. Sample:
Every freaking day they wake up demanding to be fed again. And then, more likely than not, refusing to eat the meal you’ve prepared. Every day. There is no cycle, much less a break from the cycle. There is only the grind. I feel like I’m tour managing an endless tour with a band comprised of subliterate narcissists.
Houston Drivers Get to Enjoy Country Legends
During a weekend road trip to Houston, I discovered one area in which Sweat City beats Dallas hands down: They have a classic country radio station, and we don’t. The appropriately named “Country Legends” revels in the catalogues of Willie and Waylon, Kenny and Dolly, Hank and Dwight, and other artists we all know on a first-name basis. Why can’t we get a station like that? The powers-that-be at Cumulus Radio should remember this the next time they’re ready to change the format of 93.3 FM (tick tock, tick tock).
Once we get a classic country station, we can set our sights on a classic hip-hop station. How great would it be to have a channel that played vintage Public Enemy, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul? It sure would beat the noise they play on K104 and 97.9 The Beat.
Ticket Giveaway: Cystic Fibrosis Concert Series at the Granada
FrontRow has two VIP tickets to Saturday’s benefit concert (featuring Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s, Sarah Jaffe, and The O’s) up for grabs. Enter to win here.
Quick, though, you only have 30 minutes or so before we must randomly select a winner.
“Sexycalifragilisticexpialidopeness” Video for Your Eyes
Andrew Meals and his wife Charlie (aka Multi-ID and Lady Multi) are in a group called The Weekend Hustler. You probably already know this. Me, I’m just now learning about them, thanks to Pegasus News. Below, you’ll find the video for their new song “Sexycalifragilisticexpialidopeness,” which, from what I can tell, is about two zombie skeletons that are installing a chain-link fence. Turn this up really loud at work.
Despite Economy, Dallas Opera Raises $20M For Endowment Fund
In the October edition of D Magazine, Willard Spiegelman wrote that times were tough at the Dallas Opera. Well, things just got a little brighter. The opera announced today that they have raised $20 million for their “Cultural Renaissance Endowment Fund.” The details are over on FrontRow.
Johnny Bush: Producers Stifling True Country Music
Traditional-country-music icon Johnny Bush, who penned the Willie Nelson anthem “Whiskey ![IMG_6181[1]](http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG_61811-300x200.jpg "IMG_6181[1]")
River,” says today’s Nashville producers have “tied the hands” of C&W songwriters. “You can’t say anything bad about the woman. You can’t talk about drinking anymore,” Bush said. And that’s a problem because true country music has traditionally been about such “real-life situations,” he added.
The Houston-born, longtime resident of San Antonio (pictured) was in Dallas Saturday to play a private fundraising party for Dallas’ Museum of Biblical Art. During the party the art museum unveiled a series of 14 planned, life-sized religious sculptures by artist Gib Singleton. Bush said the backyard bash for 275 guests–held at the spectacular, Desco Drive mansion of charity benefactor Faye Briggs–was “probably the biggest private party I ever worked, of this stature. … This is a pretty high-class soiree.” Read more in the Q&A with Bush that follows.
FrontRow Live’s Lineup Expands as Violinist, Buskers Join Nov 3 Mayhem
I hope you’ve already secured your FREE tickets to FrontRow Live, which will take place at the Dallas Contemporary on November 3, from 8 p.m. until midnight. If you haven’t, you can get them right here. If your response to that sentence was, “what the what?” then allow me:
FrontRow Live is something we’re calling the “one night high brow, low brow blowout,” and all that means is that we have created an event at the Dallas Contemporary that will bring together an eclectic mix of all sorts of cultural exploits.
Like what? Jump
In Defense of Zooey Deschanel’s Star-Spangled Banner at World Series Game 4
Grantland is saying that actress/singer Zooey Deschanel sang the “least-inspired National Anthem ever” before game 4 of the World Series last night. They saw no passion in her version. They wanted to hear the sounds of ”a woman who has known loss and triumph, not the pubescent squeaks of a flinching sitcom star with cute bangs and a stupid blog.”
Then their No. 1 suggestion for singers who should be on standby for National Anthem duties is Brian McKnight. Really? I can’t stand the kind of vocal acrobatics that he and singers of his ilk like to put to the Star-Spangled Banner. Have we learned nothing from Christina Aguilera’s catastrophe of a performance at the Super Bowl? (And I”m not talking about any lyrical mistakes she made, just the horrid affectations she added to note after note.)
I was at Rangers Ballpark for Game 4 last night, and loved the sense of melancholy with which Deschanel infused the familiar song. It felt almost like a funeral dirge, and I mean that as a high compliment. It was quite different from what we normally get at these games: when some mid-level country music or top 40 star is trotted out for a serviceable, but instantly forgettable, performance.
No, Deschanel didn’t deliver a triumphant version of the song, like this fantastic Whitney Houston performance. But what she gave us was unique and perfectly appropriate to lyrics that were, after all, written during an uncertain time of war.
DJ Prince William, DJ Sober, and Lars Larsen To Perform at FrontRow Live
We’ve added a handful of musical acts to our November 3 event at the Dallas Contemporary, and we have full details right here. You can get your FREE tickets to the event where you will drink FREE beer and eat offerings from five food trucks right here. And don’t forget to keep checking back with our FrontRow Live page as we add additional elements to our eclectic fun-for-all night. If you want a taste of what to expect from the new acts, download a set by DJ Prince William and watch Lars Larsen’s video for Neon Indian’s video “Mind, Drip” before checking out all the demo videos of his video synth on his website. See you there.
Ticket Giveaway: Fun Fun Fun Fest
Want to go to Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin next month? Maybe with a buddy? We’ve got a pair of festival passes burning a hole in our collective pocket. That’s three full days of music. Check out the line up here.
All you have to do is follow FrontRow on Twitter (@D_FrontRow) and retweet our #FunFunFunFest ticket giveaway tweet. So easy. We’ll pick a winner Monday. Good luck, and happy weekend.
DJs, Dancing, Live Theater, Art, Movies, Food, and More: FrontRow Live Kicks Off on November 3
Do you like great music? Great art? Short films? Live theater? Break dancing? Live screen printing? Tattoos? Great food? Wait. Free beer? Everyone likes free beer, right?
Well then, you won’t want to miss what is sure to be one of the most exciting, entertaining, and unique events to hit Dallas this year: FrontRow Live at the Dallas Contempoary on November 3 from 8 p.m. to midnight, brought to you by Chevy.
Headlined by Grammy Award-winning producers and DJ duo Play-N-Skillz, the event we’re calling the “one night high-brow, low-brow blowout” will feature three DJs, a live theater performance to kick off the evening, screen-printing by The Public Trust’s Brian Gibb, a pop-up screening room featuring short films, a pop-up coffee shop provided by The Pearl Cup, food trucks, free beer provided by Michelob Ultra, and more. And here’s the best part: it is all FREE!
You want details? You want free tickets right now? Then get over to our FrontRow Live page.
Thursday Afternoon Time Waste: MC Whack
George Spielvogel, aka MC Whack, is a Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts graduate who spent a couple of years playing the Gary Busey role in a stage adaptation of Point Break. I dare you to watch this video and then go the rest of the day without singing his version of “Pease Porridge Hot” at least once.
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