I'm quite pleased about this week's Dallas Observer music section. It's literally chock-full-of-creamy-goodness.

Let's start with Sam Machkovech's feature story on the oh-so-lovely and talented Sara Beck:

"It shouldn't come as a surprise that Sara Beck isn't an easy read. After all, the Wichita, Kansas-born singer, now living in Austin, mixes the dark and the sweet from the very first strum of her guitar. "BTK Blues," from her forthcoming record Mold the Gold, devolves rapidly from a boy-doesn't-like-me mope to a tense ballad, and guest Will Oldham (Bonnie "Prince" Billy) interrupts her syrupy-sweet vocals with an ominous chant of, "It's dark now, you should head home..." Read it all or I shall track you down

SaMach turned me on to Pink Nasty back before Wall of Sound from this blog post. For the most part, I trust Sam's taste in music enough to go to a show/performance sound unheard, so I was sure to dash upstairs and catch Pink Nasty live at WoSF and it was excellent.

Catch the band live this Saturday, April 29th for Le Femme Qui Rock at The Cavern.

BTK Blues.mp3

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Rob Patterson got to talk to Patterson Hood - lucky dog...

"I don't think of us as a Southern rock band," says Patterson Hood, the main axle of the Drive-By Truckers. Huh? Isn't this the band that made a two-CD album about Lynyrd Skynyrd called Southern Rock Opera? They boast three guitar players, just like Skynyrd. Hood even hails from "Sweet Home Alabama." And countless reviewers have touted the group as the resurrection of Southern rock..." Read it - it's good for the soul.

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It seems that rumors are indeed true about the total demise of Last Beat Records. Sam writes:

"If it really is better to burn out than fade away, then Last Beat Studios certainly took the low road. For months, rumors have spread about the slow, quiet death of the huge Deep Ellum recording studio and rehearsal space, and people thought its demise would come in the form of some new owner ripping its innards to shreds. Turns out, however, that former owner Caron Barrett did that herself."

"Former LB engineer Jeff Halbert confirms that Barrett began selling every piece of equipment inside the studio "about a month ago. Everything's been sold off. It's creepy." After putting the studio up for sale late last year, Barrett, who had hoped to sell the building with everything inside to keep the studio going strong under new owners, found herself receiving few-to-no bids that matched her asking price of $1.2 million. Plan B? To quietly destroy piece by piece the birthing place of great records by bands like Captain Audio, Baboon, Sparrows and Chao..." Don't just sit there - read it all!

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Can I getta big-ass WHEW! I always tend to hold my breath when I see a headline of a review of a band that I particularly adore. Jesse Hughey reviewed the latest release from The Chemistry Set, Blue Monsters and seems to have taken a likin' to it. Go on now and read it.

The Boy the Story Wrote.mp3 - a track off of Blue Monster

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Drexel Faris takes us into the world of Kid 606.

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When I had my first-born child at Medical City in Dallas years ago, I happened to be a flight attendant for American Airlines at the time. My daughter was born at approximately 3-something a.m., which put me into my hospital room around 5 a.m. At 7 a.m. I awoke to see a young gentleman sitting in a chair across from my bed. It seems that his wife was one of the nurses attending to me and she informed him of my American Airlines status, so he wanted to give me his resume to take back to headquarters to secure him a job....sigh...why am I boring you with silly details of my past? Because this blurb in Sam's Odds & Ends reminded me of it:

"We at AAT HQ have been suffering through a ridiculous cough for the past six weeks, so our doc prescribed a cruel, cruel regimen of staying home and being lame...and then handed us a piece of paper with a link to his daughter's demo tape on the Internet. Awk-ward..."

There's other way-cool stuff in this week's Odds & Ends, including some P.P.T. luvin' and lots more!

Cindy now blogs at The Fine Line.