I’ve said it before, though it bears repeating, if only because I’ve said it before: Modern ’til Midnight, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s annual music/art blowout, is transportive. The artwork, the bands, the vibe, the painfully stylish attendees – it all stands to take you to a place, metaphorically speaking, of course – otherwise, it’d be a little pricey – that’s totally NYC, specifically some ‘hood as gentrified-but-cool as DUMBO or the Lower East Side.
“Oh, you’re just a fuckin’ Yankee who hates it here, blah, blah, blah.” You know what, asshole? Save it. A.) I love it here, and B.) one of the best things about Fort Worth’s becoming a major metropolis will be the increase in first-class cultural shit. The museum’s second annual ’til Midnight is on Friday at the building (3200 Darnell St. in the Cultural District) on the second-floor sculpture garden. Bands slated to perform include headliners Mucca Pazza, plus 817’ers Stumptone, Dove Hunter, and Telegraph Canyon, and Cleveland’s legendary singer-songwriter and transgendered former street-person Baby Dee. Mucca Pazza is a bozo-punk circus, Stumptone is big and epic and awesome, Dove Hunter is killer alt-country-y prone to flights of bombastic rock ‘n’ roll the way Son Volt knows it, Baby Dee is a lovable spectacle, and Telegraph Canyon is having its forthcoming album produced by the hipster above all hipsters, Centro-matic frontman Will Johnson – ’nuff said. Goddamn, homey. I don’t even think that the average Big Apple hipster-indie-throwdown compares to the Modern’s. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the $15 cover charge – the event is free for museum members – includes access to mixed-media artist Kara Walker’s My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love and a new exhibit, Hubbard/Birchler: No Room to Answer, the first major survey in an American museum of the photographic work of the collaborative team of Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler. Also as part of the event, the Lone Star International Film Festival will be screening the best films from its 2007 edition in the Modern auditorium. (Titles will be announced soon.) The cash bar will be open until 11:30 p.m., and the Modern Café will be serving its full menu from 6 to 9 p.m. Visit www.themodern.org. … Arguably the liveliest part of any given We Shot JR post is the comments section. The crude, sunless depths to which the mostly anonymous contributors take shit-talking is almost transcendental, mainly in a crunch-your-hand-in-a-vise sort of way. On Friday, the Weekly’s 2008 critic’s choice for best local blog is throwing a house party at a secret location to celebrate the recent publication of the second annual WSJR readers’-choice-only Music Awards. Winners from the 817 include two Great Tyrant members – Tommy Atkins (best bassist) and Daron Beck (best vocalist) – and Black Tie Dynasty. The Fort Worth mod-rock quartet uh, “won” for “Worst Dressed Band” and “Worst Band Name.” Featuring music by DJs Vega, Schwa, and Young Doc Gooden and a show by California’s Damaged Goods, the event is free and 18-and-up. For a limited time, there’ll also be free beer for the over-21’ers, which we’re sure will definitely help prevent the party from degenerating into a Battle Royale among Anonymouses. For party info, non-TABC agents are encouraged to e-mail weshotjr@yahoo.com.
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