The Echo Chamber

We're working on a gizmo to throw recent comments to the homepage. But in the meantime, user "sulaveho" really enjoyed the show last night:

Holy Cow, what a great show. Prayer for Animals rocked the place. I really loved that Wurlitzer. I thought it added a unique sound. They really just get better and better.

I had never heard the Cartrights, and I gotta say, I'll hear them again, I hope. Terrific raw sound, very powerful. The crowd was enthralled, Good keyboard, I thought. Carlin, you put together a great show.

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.

Originally posted by gigger "stevewilsononline"

This story makes me particularly sad due to the fact that Fry Street was where this all started for me. I actually LIVED on Fry Street. I remember living next door to Melissa from Gropius and Neff from the now-defunct Dollybraid. The first place I played in Denton was at Ricks Place. Now, it's gone too.

Let's face it friends, the bottom line is about revenue, not culture. You'd think in a place so rich with talent and culture, the elected leadership would recognize the fact that environment has direct-effect on society. The University of North Texas is, afterall, a LIBERAL ARTS school. I don't think I'm attacking windmills when I say that the environment on and around Fry Street has fostered an atmosphere of creativity for a long, long time. Now it would appear that the focus is going to be on getting the "top 40" crowd in to pay for 10 dollar cups of Hawaiian-monkey-poo coffee and maybe pick up that wonderful new John Tesh CD from the Kiosk at Starbucks. Unfortunately, this is an attitude common in the area these days. The "unofficial, but recognizable abandonment" of Deep Ellum just down the freeway, seems to be contagious. In that case however, the motive seems to be lost on me.

This is, however, clearly about making money from you and I friends. Fry Street and it's occupants offered an alternative to the mainstream. Soon, we'll see no alternative and that's what they count on. Is this progress at a price or simply greed?

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.

By John Clarke, of It's Smelling a Lot Like Tuesday

I just bought a 14-year-old CD for --- and is there really any other reason --- purely nostalgic reasons. It is a compilation of mostly Dallas bands that a local radio station had released. Yes, back before radio stations were all owned by one company, they would actually play and promote bands that their local listeners might enjoy. I doubt these days that many people except me would buy "Tales From the Edge - Volume 2 - Flying Squirrels Ripped My Flesh." That must have been the reason the CD was only 3 bucks.

One of the bands on the CD was the Dizzy Spinning Poets. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, lots of Dallas bands were trying to replicate the radio friendly pop success of (Edie Brickell &) The New Bohemians. The Dizzy Spinning Poets were no different. In fact, I think one of the guys in the band was an ex-New Bohemian.

So in 1989, I was back in Dallas on Christmas break from UT Austin. Dave, a college friend, invited me to go out with some dork he knew from SMU. The SMU guy's name was Quillton. I think his name was really Steve, but he changed it to Quillton --- reason enough to want to punch him in the face. Quillton had long hair --- not because he wanted to be cool or an iconoclast at preppie SMU, but because he was pretentious. He wore oversized wingtips and he'd read you the poetry he'd written, even if you didn't ask to hear it. Vomit.

Quillton wants to go to Poor David's Pub, then on Greenville Avenue, to see The Dizzy Spinning Poets. I don't know if he'd ever heard them before, or his just liked that they had the word "poets" in their name.

We go and I prepare myself for the band to suck. They get on stage and start to play some very acceptable pop music. Nothing earth shattering, but pleasant enough to go along with my beer buzz. The drummer was a guy who grew up on the same street as me in Richardson, so, even better.

Quillton sits in the back by himself, even though there were only about 15 people at the show. He leans forward and seriously studies the band, like there's something to get. It's a pop band dude, lighten up. Man, I wanted to punch him --- hard.

Because of a recent $3 purchase, the long defunct Dizzy Spinning Poets, and Quillton by default, live on.

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.

Magnus Stjernstrom gave us a shout about the latest Cirque du Soleil entry, "Delirium":

Or, as I'd like to call it: Cirque Du Yawn.

Short version: Do not spend your hard-earned dollars watching this show.

Long version: It started out with Nitza (http://www.nitza.com/) playing a few songs, and it took me a minute or two to classify them. Imagine a New Age band with a loud female singer. Now add some Folk music. New Age Folk Music. To their credit, they made it work and the audio/video combination was great.

That was the best part of the show.

After the band, and 20 minutes or so of waiting, the real show started. I was really trying to like it, I was, but after the first "scene", I found myself trying to understand it more than like it. After the third one, I started looking around the crowd, who were all sitting there with great confusion on their faces, doing the same. Where are the acrobatics? Why did I pay $250 for two tickets, plus $20 for parking to watch a (I kid you not) an 80's rockband playing while a guy in a balloon is flying across the stage and a girl in a peacock costome that everyone on stage was hiding underneath sings?

I think most people stayed simply because they *thought* everyone else was "getting" it and thought they'd look stupid if they left.

I found myself outthinking the crowd and left before the ending. (if there was such a thing, as there really wasn't a beginning or any storyline/red line throughout the show whatsoever).

Also, I have nothing against the gay community, I really don't. But men kissing on stage? Not my thing.

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.

John Clarke takes issue with my diss of CD-trading service LaLa:

Seems to me to be a good way to get around copyright infringment problems in the post-Napster age. Somebody could set up a free site overnight, but how are they going to pay for the bandwidth if it gets popular? For now, I’ll gladly pay a buck for a CD and avoid paying $10 to download it from Itunes or grabbing selected songs for free on various websites.

The article you linked mentions this is just a copy of a DVD trading service and its likelyhood to fail because everyone wants to keep their best movies and trade the crap. I’d argue that trading music is totally different and this site will work for a couple of reasons. A.) One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. For example, I posted a CD I thought was total garbage --- an album from an obscure power pop band called Splitsville. A minute after I posted it, someone wanted it. In exchange, I got Josh Rouse’s first album. I win and so does the guy that wants my castoff. B). With the proliferation of Ipods and CD burners, does anyone really need to own CDs any longer? I found myself looking through my collection, thinking I could easily get rid of more than half of it. What I’m likely to keep would only be for sentimental reasons --- i.e. New Order’s Technique album, a CD that spent a ton of time in my car during college. Everything else is on my computer --- if I want the album again, I’ll just burn it.

Go lala.

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.

By John Clarke, of It's Smelling a Lot Like Tuesday

It's snuck up on me a bit, but tonight I'll get to see a legendary musician perform, one Van Morrison. Most people in the audience will have been looking forward to this show for months, for good reason. But I'm ambivalent. Here's why:

1. The setting. I am used to being disappointed at musical performances. I see lots of shows and lots of stuff tends to get in the way of my enjoyment of them that has nothing to do with the musician. If the place is too big, I feel detached from the performer. If my fellow audience members talk too much during the show, I'll get angry. If the sound is bad, I'll feel cheated.
2. The familiarity factor. If I'm not familiar enough with a musicians work and the music takes some getting used to, I won't enjoy the show. I've listened to Van's Astral Weeks about 57 times. And I know most of his hits. So this shouldn't be a problem with him.
3. The set list. If an artist takes a "radical departure" as my buddy Rob likes to say, the show could suck. Van's latest album is all covers of really old country songs. Van's great, but I want to hear him do his own stuff, not a stuff from a circa 1954 country jukebox.
4. The look. Van is no longer the long haired skinny guy I see staring up from the cover of 1968's Astral Weeks. That's OK because nobody stays young forever, even me. But sometimes if I can't translate my mental image of a performer with what they actually look like, it'll bother me.

And it's quite possible that all of the items I listed above are complete bullshit. If went to a huge concert hall that had bad sound in which the over-the-hill performer did nothing but Christmas music, and that musician happened to be Johnny Cash, I'd be ecstatic. I never got the chance to see J. Cash.

I will get to see V. Morrison. And It might be the best show I've ever seen.

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.

By Shakira Pierce, who is a co-owner of Palm Beach Reggae Club

To whom it may concern,

I was browseing through my google alerts and stumbled on your article on the town hall meeting with the mayor and the DE Association and other participants.

I am a the daughter of a club and restaurant owner in Deep Ellum and we've survived the pessimistic and misconception of DE's reputatation for close to nine years and we hope that our venue will get through nine more.

We are located in the heart of DE and I have bared witness to several venues come and go, their unfortunate demise would have been a great asset to DE but there was not enough support base to make their efforts successful.

On the other hand for a surviving reggae club that tries to add cultural diversity for people all over the world has had a hand in attracting a multi-ethnic clientele but has been stigmatized as another black club.The purpose of a Carribean club is to expose those who have an intrest in different experience that puts you in mind of the islands. We as any other club or venue in DE has had our share of uninvited experiences as well as great for the upliftment of perserving what DE has to offer.We are hoping to get a form transportation for customers to get back and forth to beat the constant elevation of parking prices that hurt all businesses in DE.We have also been an contributing factor to hiring a security force that patrols DE outside of our own security staff.We have been proactive in advising our customers as they leave to go straight to their vehicles and not hang out in parking lots or in front of the club,once it closes.We have not had very many complaints in our venue but clubs are getting a bad rap for the events that happen outside of these clubs which is unfair to blame a club and tarnish it's reputation because an idiot decides to break into someones vehicle within the vicinty or decide to shoot at the police when they we're in a previous altercations at another venue that has an after hours license prior to the the night that the incident took place.

Don't get me wrong I am for the presence of the DPD, free parking and the clubs efforts to control loitering and senseless violence,as well as uninvited crimes against the innocent.

The crime in DE is and can be a major deterant for a more mature crowd of people to frequent DE and its hot spots,but there has also been an over emphasis on targeting a younger crowd of people most of them minorities whether they are male or female and I have witnessed both sides to the spectrum while frequenting DE and working alongside with family members to meet club's goals. Several incidents have taking place before 12:00 a.m.in DE with the presence of DPD on one street harrassing club goers and a murder taking place on the next street over close to another club that has an after hours permit that allows 18 and over in their venue and wants nothing to do with the politics that is going on in DE. I am for perserving this place and seeing it revive in a healthy manner that doesn't create bad blood between the city and DE's venue owners.

I would like to invite the writers down to 2816 Main St. on a Friday or Saturday night to enjoy food and music carribean inspired cocktails as well as goodhearted suggestions for us and our clientele.This is a laid back environment that pumps Roots rock,reggae all genres as well as soca and calypso,chutney soca,Spanish reggae as well as reggaeton and the American favorite- some(very little hip-hop)possible, but we have to please everyone because this is a muti-ethic and diverse crowd of people.I hope to meet you soon or read your response.

Thanks for your time and interest in the politics surrounding DE's many never-ending issues, Shakira Pierce daughter to Augustine Ekukpe and Mounlette Miller-owner and co-owner,manager of Palm Beach Reggae Club.

The Echo Chamber is a place for our readers to speak their minds. You can respond to this post in the comments, or send us your opinion on another topic.