For the past 15 years, the voice of local music for Star-Telegram readers has been Malcolm Mayhew. He was here when The Toadies and The Old 97’s blew up in the early ’90s, and up until the past couple of years, when he began focusing on non-music columns and bigger features, he’s been vital to the health of the North Texas scene.
But Mayhew is leaving the Star-T, and with him will go an appropriately dispassionate and engaging writing style, a good guy, and, most significantly, unmatched institutional knowledge. The 34-year-old native Fort Worthian started writing for the paper while still in high school at Everman. He went full-time after graduation, taking a clerical position while writing about local and national music on the side. Once the paper’s existing local music critic left, Mayhew took over, and he’s been a steady, oddly avuncular presence ever since. As for his future, he will continue writing about music on a freelance basis, for both the Star-T and Texas Music, a six-year-old monthly magazine to which Mayhew has been contributing since its beginning. He’s also hoping to open an antique store with his older sister, Melinda Mayhew, either in Saginaw or here. Antiquing has been in Mayhew’s family for years. Now that his parents are deceased, Mayhew and his sister are simply carrying on the business they know and love. We wish him all the best. But on a less positive note, Mayhew’s departure could spell a little trouble – for us.
If what an insider tells me is true, that Mayhew and his column of a dozen years won’t be replaced, then North Texas musicians, unfortunately, will find generating interest in their art a lot more difficult than it already is now. I admit that sometimes I called for Mayhew’s head, but at least there was a head to call for. A music scene as rich and many-splendored as ours simply can’t afford to be ignored by the city’s paper of record. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
… Contrary to my assumption that all nerds are guys – who knew there were female nerds! – MC Router was incorrectly identified in last week’s column as a “he.” The intentionally lame rap-rocker and self-proclaimed “first lady of nerdcore,” MC Router is a woman. I regret the error. In addition, MC Router’s rep ain’t just local. Girl plays hacker conventions and once got a shout-out in Wired magazine. Holla at her at www.myspace.com/1gb. … Well, it’s that time o’ year, when cool-ass indie bands riff on Christmas classics for our listening pleasure. Locals Shiny Around The Edges have joined some other Metroplex outfits, including The Zanzibar Snails, Remora, and Goddakk, on Silber Records’ new two-c.d. set holiday compilation album, Silber Sounds of Christmas. The, uh, chestnut that SATE tackles is a goodie, Mel Tormé and Bob Wells’ “The Christmas Song,” best known as that “chestnuts roasting on the open fire” tune, as popularized, and canonized, by Nat “King” Cole, lo, these many Christmases ago. For more, check out www.silbermedia.com.
Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
