Pegasus News Music 2008: Covering the Dallas-Fort Worth music scene is a community effort

by Erin Rice

As any reader of the site knows, we count a great bit on our content partners, community submitters, and others, including interns, to help deliver that lovely local news we're known for. One subject area where the community seems to have a particular interest in submitting articles, commenting on stories/events, and yelling at us, is music. In fact, the bulk of 2008's concert and album reviews came from people not on the PegNews payroll. Let's take a moment to look back through some of the work all of you have done to cover our local music scene.

PegNews Music Partners - Content partners for whom music is #1

2K7 Photography - Rock photographer Kenneth Smith has partnered with Pegasus for nearly two years now. With a penchant for the metallic side of music, he caught some of the biggest stadium shakers to hit Dallas in 2008 including Marilyn Manson, Megadeth, the Taste of Chaos Tour, and Ozzfest. The photo gallery accompanying this story features a sample of his work in 2008.

Life Outside the Bubble - Cindy Chaffin is the superfan of Dallas music. In September, she and PegNews content partnered up to bring you her video series from Life Outside the Bubble, in which she hits the town with a camera and tapes local performances. This year she's videotaped such local acts as Baboon, Matthew and the Arrogant Sea, Rahim Quazi and many - trust me, MANY - more.

Slacker Country - Jitter from Slacker Country reported on a few shows this year, including the very expensive, sweaty and worth it Tom Waits show at the Palladium. In his review of The Old 97's latest release Jitter wrote, "with Blame It On Gravity, it sounds like the Old 97's have not only moved back into the house that used to be but also tastefully updated the furniture."

Gobblers Knob - A content partner since October, the Gobblers Knob professes to cover "Dallas/Fort Worth area country/twangy bands that you won’t hear on the radio." Their first article on Pegasus was a review of soon-to-be-defunct The New Frontiers' Mending. Of the album GK wrote that The New Frontiers "never unnecessarily dare the listener to keep up with the pretense of overwrought, abstract faux poetry that clutters many 'singer-songwriter' albums."

The Vincent Tucker Show - Vincent Tucker and company discuss any number of topics in a given show, but they focus on independent R&B and hip-hop, often giving local artists an outlet for their music. The show celebrated its one-year anniversary in December. As a content partner, you can stream the shows from our site as they become available.

V's Vibe Spot - Though a partner for less than a month, V's Vibe Spot has already provided five articles looking at the local music scene. Most recently she examined the rebranding of local rappers Pikahsso and Tahiti as the two-headed hip-hop monster AwkQuarius.

ZLew.net - Not seemingly content with just checking out the national tours, content partner Zach Lewis has an affinity for the smaller local shows. In fact, with each monthly "Music Picks" we have to update our database because Zach has found yet another band we don't have yet (ahem, thanks, by the way, for all that extra work). In addition to suggestions, he's reviewed a few shows since joining our ranks in September.

(Hats off to the other content partners who have submitted music-related items and concert and album reviews this past year, including Strat's Corner, Urban South Entertainment, Gay-List Daily, Latina Lista, The Dallas Voice, The North Texas Daily, Mandrake Society Radio, and West and Clear.)

In addition to our regular content partners, other members of the PegNews community have regularly contributed to the music tab. Two of those major contributors have been Brenna Rushing and Ron Dempesmeier.

An intern from SMU, Brenna started working with Pegasus earlier this year. In addition to CD and concert reviews, her assignment through the Spring was to look critically at a number of local artists by analyzing single songs, a weekly series titled "Swift Tracks."

Catching in great detail a number of national artists playing Dallas, Ron's most notable piece was a Rush concert review. When dealing with hardcore Rush fans, you have to get the details precise, and he did just that.

As the year comes to a close we want to give a big, fat thanks to all the people who lent their ears and opinions to covering music in Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton, and everywhere in between. *bear hug*

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