Robert Dean
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Articles by Robert Dean
Music News: Rest in Peace to the Irish Troubadour Glen Hansard
55 Views Dublin, Glen Hansard, Music, music news, obituary, Once film, opinion, rock n roll, singer songwriter, The Commitments, The Frames, The Swell Season The world lost a real, dyed-in-the-wool character of the streets with the unfortunate loss of Glen Hansard. Hansard died in a motorcycle crash outside Dublin on July 29, 2026, at just 56 years old. Hansard made music for the lost, the broken-hearted, but also the hopeful.
Lou Koller of leading hardcore act Sick of It All has died at 59
71 Views Agnostic Front, deceased, hardcore, hardcore music, Lou Koller, obituary, opinion, punk rock, RIP, rock n roll, Sick of It All My fiancé likes the Bowen Yang podcast. One time she asked me a question she got from it: “What was the culture that made you say culture was for you?” And for a while I thought about it. Really, there are a few moments.
Live music review: Hardcore music festival The Rumble featured Hatebreed, Turmoil and more
48 Views Chicago, concert, D Block, Gridiron, hardcore, Hatebreed, Hold My Own, Hoods, live music, metal, music festival, No Idols, Outta Pocket, punk, punk rock, Review, Ringworm, Turmoil, underground Sometime around 1999 or 2000, I caught Turmoil at the Odum, a short-lived punk/hardcore venue in Chicago. I was obsessed with their seminal record, The Process Of, and made sure to make the show.
Live music review: Lisbon shared Fado, Patrick Sweany and incredible food
72 Views BLues, concert, culture, Fado, food, Lisbon, live music, Patrick Sweany, Portugal, Review, singer, song, travel Lisbon, Portugal, is a complex, strange place. It’s somewhere else — a city of hills that murder your legs and drug dealers on every tourist block asking if you want to buy a bag of blow, and then, around the corner, the most amazing views and pastel de nata bubbling out of half the storefronts.
Restaurant review: Frank and Margie’s hit target with new Round Rock spot by Michelin starred chef
68 Views Austin, chefs, fine dining, food, food scene, Frank and Margie's, Margarita Kallas-Lee, opinion, Philip Frankland Lee, restaurant, Review You’ve gotta give it up to the chef duo of Phillip Frankland Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee. When it comes to empire building, they can’t be beat. Their flagship Sushi By Scratch has a Michelin star and the man has been on Top Chef among other cooking shows. He and his wife are rockstars of the restaurant industry without a doubt.
Live music review: Eyehategod at Little Darlin 10th Anniversary
41 Views 10th Anniversary, concert, Eyehategod, glam metal, hard rock, hardcore, hardcore metal, Little Darlin, live music, Mean Mistreater, metal, Review, rock n roll Thanks to the power of social media, bands like Crowbar and Eyehategod are drawing bigger crowds than they have in years—and honestly, good for them. Get that bag, dudes. You earned it.
Live music review: Lamb of God played Moody Amp for Into Oblivion Tour despite storm
95 Views concert, Fit For An Autopsy, hardcore metal, heavy metal, Kublai Khan, Lamb of God, live music, Moody Amp, Review, rock n roll, Sanguisugabogg One thing I love about metalheads is their undying love for the music and its culture.
Live event preview: Fairy Fest 420 or No Tech Bros at the Altar of Frankie G
12 Views Austin, Austin event, Coven Nightlife, culture, Fairy Fest, femme, Frankie G, LBGTQA+, live event, Pease Park, preview “I believe parties are spiritual. More spiritual than church. We’ve been taught not to talk about that. But think about it — you’re spending your most valuable resources, time and money, to chase joy. To chase connection. To hope something magical happens. That’s ritual. That’s energy exchange. You’re stepping out into the night asking luck to meet you halfway.
Live music review: Punk rockers Touché Amoré celebrated ten years of Stage Four at Mohawk
8 Views concert, Jerome's Dream, live music, mohawk, Porcelain, punk rock, Review, rock n roll, Touché Amoré One of the greatest joys of live music is when you can tell the band is having a blast. There’s an explosive connection when the joy of music and joyous fans collide. And for Touché Amoré, they came out swinging at the Mohawk, celebrating their masterpiece Stage Four turning ten.
Interview: Hard living writer Robert Dean has gotten sober and his work is better than ever
87 Views culture, feature, Interview, journalism, metal, philosophy, punk rock, Red Eye book, Robert Dean, writing Robert Dean is sober, home by eleven most nights, and still writes about the years he wasn’t. The author, reporter, and jack-of-all-trades commentator arrived in Austin after a lengthy stint in the gnarliest place in the United States – New Orleans. A place like Austin, despite its lingering issues, doesn’t even come close.
SXSW review: Robots, driverless cars and rad bands (Lime Scooter not included)
47 Views Digjits, live music, Osees, Pink Fuzz, Play to the Plants, Review, Rocket From the Crypt, Sean Barna, SIMS Foundation, South by Southwest, Sun Atlas, SXSW, Tear Dungeon, Tropa Magica This SXSW was the year of the Lime scooter for me. I also took a driverless Waymo and saw a robot bartender at Faregrounds on Congress Avenue. Kicking off SXSW this year, I was not optimistic about what the festival had become in its ever-quaking need to feed the techno-masses.
In memoriam: We lost Adam Morehead of The Cavalier so we’re having a block party
8 Views Adam Morehead, BENefit, Chadwick Legar, Eulogy, Fleet Coffee, in memoriam, live music, music venue, Rachelle Fox, SIMS Foundation, SXSW, SXSW 2026, The Cavalier, Webberville Block Party The lights in The Cavalier are a little dimmer. The whiskey might burn a little extra for some folks and that’s okay. I think when a person passes, how those in their wake tell their stories is an important, but telling is way to show how much that person impacted their lives.
Opinion: Why Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine cannot stop talking about Metallica
36 Views Dave Mustaine, essay, feud, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, Megadeth, metal music, Metallica, music industry, opinion, Ron McGoveney Every time Dave Mustaine has something to say about Metallica, it’s like Al Bundy talking about his big game for Polk High. Not because he brings it up once in a while, but because he never stops. How is someone who hasn’t been in a band for forty years still talking about a band he hasn’t been in for forty years?
Opinion: Bob Weir is irreplaceable so why not ask Sturgill Simpson to step in?
14 Views Billy Strings, Bob Weir, Bobby Weir, culture, Dead and Company, Further Festival, John Mayer, live music, opinion, Oteil Burbridge, Phil and Friends, Ratdog, Sturgill Simpson, The Grateful Dead Just for clarification, as I write this, my girlfriend, who is a massive Deadhead, is appalled.With the announcement of the passing of Bob Weir on January 10, the future of The Grateful Dead Empire is now in question.
Opinion: Eight predictions for Austin music and culture in 2026
20 Views Austin, culture, essay, live music, Music, music industry, opinion It’s turned to 2026 and it’s already been something else. Stranger Things imploded and Das Trump decided he wanted to be in charge of Venezuela. But if there’s one thing we can count on in Austin, it’s this: the music will always be here. Comedy isn’t the hot new kid in Austin anymore—it’s just part of the cultural tapestry now. Because it’s the beginning of the year, I wanted to try something new.
Eulogy to those we lost: It was a rough year for the Austin music scene
14 Views Alejandro Escovedo, Austin de Lone, Austin Music, Denny DeGorio, Dick Chalmers, essay, Eulogy, Joe Ely, mental health, music news, opinion, Raul Malo, SIMS Foundation, Speedy Sparks It was a rough year for the service industry and the Austin music scene. We lost plenty of global legends, but also some of the folks who make this city special — the ones who make Austin… Austin.
Live music review: Old school punks The Bouncing Souls and H2O played Empire last Sunday
13 Views 90s punk, concert, Empire Garage, H2O, live music, old school punk, punk rock, Review, rock n roll, The Bouncing Souls, Toby Morse, Warped Tour As an official Old Head, it’s an experiment in time for me: I got into punk in the early ’90s, and now that it’s 2025, I’m somehow in my fourth decade of this thing.
Live music review: Murder City Devils brought rock and roll fury to Mohawk
42 Views Coady Willis, concert, Dann Gallucci, Derek Fudesco, hard rock, hardcore, Leslie Hardy, live music, MCD, mohawk, Murder City Devils, punk, punk rock, Review, rock and roll, Spencer Moody, Sub Pop I love a show where the band is not there to fuck around. No small talk, no rare material, no rambling monologues about the world. Just pure rock and roll fury. At the Mohawk on Sunday, November 23, The Murder City Devils crashed into Planet Austin and left no survivors.
Live comedy review: Dave Attell at the Mothership - A masterclass in controlled chaos
10 Views Austin comedy, Brian Holtzman, comedy, Comedy Mothership, comic, Dave Attell, Insomniac, Joe Rogan, live comedy, Review, standup, Tom Segura Few times in life do we get to see a true master at work. Watching someone carve stone for a temple or fling paint across a canvas gives a glimpse into creation itself — that raw place art comes from before it’s polished and displayed.
Live music review: The seance will be televised - Queens of the Stone Age ACL TV taping
13 Views ACL TV, Alive in the Catacombs, art rock, Austin City Limits TV, cocert, episode taping, hard rock, Josh Homme, live music, performance art, QOTSA, Queens of the Stone Age, Review, rock n roll, taping Marcel Proust was a dark-minded poet-philosopher, once musing: “Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we...
Essay: Is Hip Hop dead or just resetting?
15 Views AI, analysis, essay, Hip Hop, Music, music sales, opinion, rap, rap decline, state of music, Streaming, urban music For the first time in a crazy long time, there were no hip-hop tracks in the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of October 25, 2025. The last time that happened was in February 1990 — Nirvana was still an indie band, and Run-DMC were already a nostalgia act. So what’s going on? Is hip hop dead or just resetting? Part of the problem isn’t just taste — it’s math.
Live music review: Patrick Sweany deserves a bigger stage
49 Views blues rock, Continental Club, Jack White, live music, Nashville, new music, Patrick Sweany, Review, rock n roll, singer, songwriter, soul Every time Patrick Sweany rolls through town, I ask myself the same question: how is this guy not bigger? It’s the eternal curse of music nerds — finding an artist you love and wondering what the hell is wrong with everyone else. But Sweany’s different.
Live music review: Nuclear Daisies make a splash at Hotel Vegas
59 Views album release, Brit rock, dance party, First Taste of Heaven, hard rock, heavy rock, indie rock, live music, My Bloody Valentine, new music, Nuclear Daisies, Orbital, Review, rock n roll, Stereo MCs, uplifting music Every once in a while, you’ll be at a show and wag your finger because you just know.
Gallery review: Hunter S Thompson would have loved Meow Wolf
12 Views art, culture, experimental, gallery, Houston, Immersive art, Meow Wolf, Meow Wolf Houston, Music, Radio Taves, Review I take every chance I can get to escape the wheels of the capitalist death machine. My phone is constantly telling me someone’s been shot in a mall, or the asshole with the long red tie has done something to make me clutch my humanity pearls, so when an opportunity to melt away into dimensions unknown presents itself, I’m taking it.
Live music review: Calvera played Chaos A.D. in full at Come It Take It Live
64 Views Burton C Bell, Calavera brothers, Calvera Conspiracy, Chaos A.D., Come and Take It Live, death metal, Dino Cazares, Fear Factory, heavy metal, Iggor Calavera, live music, Max Calvera, metal music, Milo Silvestro, Review, Sepultura I’ve seen a lot of bands do the whole “playing the seminal album” thing over the years. For a long time, the gold standard was Roger Waters doing Dark Side of the Moon—an experience that was incredible both visually and sonically.
Opinion: Hear me out, Austin City Limits Music Festival at COTA
57 Views ACL Fest, ACL Festival, Austin City Limits Music Festival, COTA, essay, live music, music festival, opinion, Zilker Park I know you are going to hate this. But since ACL I’ve been thinking about something: the fest itself and how Austin handles it. First, I gotta get through the fine print: I’ve been to the Austin City Limits Music Festival exactly one time – for an hour. I went to see Duran Duran and left. I also got into a car accident trying to get there on time.
Live music review: Acid Bath, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol led Levitation 2025 metal day
11 Views Acid Bath, heavy metal, Levitation, live music, metal, music festival, Palmer Events Center, psych-rock, Review, Rickshaw Billie's Burger Patrol, rock n roll, stoner metal, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Sword Hats off to the folks behind the scenes at Levitation Festival. They pulled off a diverse event at a little-used location to great effect. The Palmer Events Center sounded great and showed a lot of promise for what the festival can be in the future.
Opinion: The kids are alright (they’re just getting their metal from TikTok now)
58 Views essay, hardcore, metal, metal bands, Metallica, music trends, opinion, Ozzy Osbourne, Social Media, TikTok, Yosemite in Black The passage of time is strange. One minute you’re crate digging for a Fugazi tape at the local record store, and years later, you’re the guy with gray in his beard, noticing a kid in a Misfits hoodie who’s never owned a CD but knows his “She Rides” because the TikTok algorithm keeps feeding them Danzig. Have no fear though.
Live music preview: Levitation Can’t Miss with Acid Bath
25 Views Acid Bath, concert, cult band, Levitation, live music, metal, metal fusion, preview, reunion shows, Slipknot, underground metal “’Acidic’ is my tip of the hat to one of my biggest influences, which is Acid Bath… The demo really made me feel like I was listening to something off 1994’s When the Kite String Pops … It’s my homage to the boys in Acid Bath.” — Corey Taylor, singer of Slipknot.
Live music review: King Yosef with Street Sects or How TikTok kids found real Industrial music
31 Views 29th Street Ballroom, electronic industrial, hardcore, industrial EDM, Industrial music, Insula Iscariot, King Yosef, live music, post hardcore, Review, Street Sects, Youth Code Can’t say I’ve ever seen someone whip out a chainsaw, haunted house-style, at a show before, and now, after seeing Street Sects, I have. Didn’t have that on my bingo card. But, fuck it man. Pop off. The kids are all right.
Opinion: Mark Lanegan should be in same conversation our greatest songwriters
66 Views Bjork, debate, essay, Jeff Buckley, John Prine, Leonard Cohen, Mark Lanegan, Music, Nick Cave, Nina Simone, opinion, Patti Smith, singer songwriter, songwriter, Tom Waits Recently, I was battering away on a piece in my local coffee shop (shout out to Epoch) and wasn’t in the mood to wear my headphones.
Live music review: Bonnie Raitt at CMAC - Still in the Pocket and Giving a Damn
19 Views Americana, blues rock, Bonnie Raitt, CMAC, CMAC venue, country, guitar legend, Jimmie Vaughan, John Prine, live music, Review, songwriter Generally, something is lacking in spirit when attending a legacy show. Artists who’ve been in the game forever can feel mechanical, each town’s performance no more meaningful than a plumber moving on to the next toilet.
Music News: The Mighty Lost Well Returns from the Dead
55 Views Austin Music, live music, Marcello Murphy, metal, music news, music venue, punk rock, reopening, Robert Dean, The Lost Well After a tumultuous few months, the cavern in our hearts is about to close: The Lost Well is finally ready to (re)open. After some nefarious Austin money shit went down, the famed heavy metal haven for weirdos and castaways was forced to close, leaving many in the city feeling like a friend had died. Yet, the mighty Lost Well returns from the dead.
Live music review: Coalesce Invented Your Favorite Band and You’ve Probably Never Heard of Them
19 Views Chicago, Coalesce, hard rock, hardcore, live music, metalcore, Pelican, Porcelain, post metal, post rock, Review, Thalia Hall One of the joys of the chaotic internet is that legendary bands never truly die—they just slumber beneath the surface, waiting to drag themselves from the muck like Godzilla and roar back into the stratosphere. Coalesce, the Kansas City hardcore pioneers who helped birth metalcore in the ’90s, has been one of those beasts.
Music news: celebrating Ozzy Osbourne in death is saying goodbye to an old friend
52 Views Black Sabbath, heavy metal, King of Metal, metal music, music news, obituary, Ozzy Osbourne, RIP Ozzy, rock n roll, tribute Music is like an emotional sledgehammer to our lives; it’s the soundtrack to moments, to milestones. Everyone has those songs that, upon hearing them, transport them back in time. Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” is that time machine for many, a raucous small rip of mind fuck that fuels speeding cars, hot sex, or wild montages of cocaine and whiskey medicine.
Live music review: Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath - The Tired King of Metal Gets His Final Bow
1160 Views Alice In Chains, Back to the Beginning, Bill Ward, Black Sabbath, Chad Smith, Disturbed, final concert, Geezer Butler, Guns n Roses, heavy metal, live music, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Review, rock n roll, Tom Morello, Tommy Iommi Someone online said something profound about Ozzy’s final performance with Black Sabbath at Villa Park in their hometown of Birmingham, England on July 5: they called him a tired king.
The job market, anxiety, and a dumpster fire of an economy
By Robert Dean For the Carter County Times When the doctor told me my blood pressure was through the roof, I wasn’t shocked. My face had tinged recently, my head swam with fog, and I would break out with hot flashes daily. I knew something was wrong. Like, real wrong and I was just able to do something about it finally. I’ve dealt with anxiety my whole life, but it wasn’t till I was around thirty that I knew that what I went through daily had a name.
Forced to sell due to Prop. 19
My family has lived in Carpinteria for 54 years and now we’re forced to sell our home. My parents bought our home in 1970 and paid it off in 2000. We have wonderful memories of growing up in Carpinteria and my father frequently told us “never sell this house.” Sadly my father passed away in 2021 and my mother passed away a few weeks ago.
Lewis & Clark, Pompeys Pillar, and bison in Montana
Returning home from the Pacific Ocean and a wet winter at Fort Clatsop in Oregon, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery was delighted to enter the thick grasslands of eastern Montana. Instead of rain they had sunshine, and instead of “pore elk,” vast bison herds stretched in all directions on both sides of the Yellowstone River. On a sandstone bluff high enough to see for miles to the east and west, Capt.
Houston native changing how Texans see and experience food
Impact isn't an overnight story. Instead, to advocate real change takes time and someone driving the ship who's dedicated to solving problems. Joi Chevalier, living and working in Austin, kept seeing systematic factors reoccurring repeatedly, resulting in populations not getting the nutritious food they deserved. So, she did something about it: She quit her high-profile tech job of almost two decades. "Technology rooms get intense. I was often the only Black woman in a meeting.
How Joe Rogan convinced a Michelin-star chef to move to Texas
Sushi by Scratch Scratch Restaurants/Handout One thing you need to know about Philip Frankland Lee is that the dude is obsessed with sushi. If you ever talk to him, you’ll learn why the cuisine is more than just fish and rice, why preparation is detail intensive, and why he uses not one but three different cuts of tuna to showcase the diversity of the fish. He’ll also tell you sushi was actually invented in China, somewhere along the Mekong River in the 5th century.
The War Machine Keeps Turning: Lost Lives in the Middle East - Rebel Noise
I’m sharing memes with my friends while people are dying. The stories populating my social media feed are mixed with outrage coupled with good ole’ thirst traps, people promoting their events, and the occasional snap of that brisket sandwich dripping with sauce.
Beyond Mechanistic Assumptions
The meteoric rise of AI systems, particularly large language models (LLMs), has ignited fervent discussions about their true capabilities. A central question looms: Can machines genuinely possess intelligence and consciousness? Instead of a binary perspective, it might be more enlightening to envisage intelligence as a continuum rather than an absolute trait. Indeed, LLMs exhibit remarkable linguistic prowess.
Try To Remember the Weird Sh*t Your Kids Say
One of the biggest challenges of being a parent is keeping your shit together around your kids. Sure, When they’re little, they do little kid stuff like drawing on themselves, the couch, the wall, and the dog in a very black, thick, and hard-to-get-off Magic Marker. Or they whizz in their pants when you’re a whopping five minutes from the front door. Or if you’re raising boys, they pee everywhere that isn’t a toilet.
Why is Crowd Work Comedy so Popular Now?
Article by: Robert Dean “I helped with some “skits” at church today because they know what I do…and the director asked me how to get Matt Rife tickets.” And that’s what you need to know about the rise in crowd work. It’s everywhere, and the comics who are good at it are seeing their shows sell a lot more tickets. I’d asked Allison Wojtowecz her opinion on why going back and forth with the audience at a comedy show has gotten so big.
Why is Crowd Work Comedy so Popular Now?
Article by: Robert Dean “I helped with some “skits” at church today because they know what I do…and the director asked me how to get Matt Rife tickets.” And that’s what you need to know about the rise in crowd work. It’s everywhere, and the comics who are good at it are seeing their shows sell a lot more tickets. I’d asked Allison Wojtowecz her opinion on why going back and forth with the audience at a comedy show has gotten so big.
Austin artist profile: Filmmaker Issac French Embraces his Dark Half
The thing about Austin is that there’s talent hidden in plain sight. Door guys are some of the best comedians in town if you hit the clubs to catch standup, while the city’s musical history is alive and well due to the musicians holding down the kitchens or wrenching on your car. But when you hit Red River Street for a night of service industry mayhem, one of the best bartenders in town has a pedigree that few others have in the Capital City: award-winning filmmaker, Issac French.
Think You Hate a Lot of Stuff? Read This.
Article by: Robert Dean When Game of Thrones was the show every human on earth was obsessed with, I just… did not give a fuck. Every week, people would invite me to a watch party, and my ex-wife would devour it - super wizards all tits out with dragons flying high above nuking towns and shit. I’m not too cool for school, but zombie ice battles and Jason Mamoa don’t tickle my fancy.
Comedy review: Game Bang Bingo is the best new thing on Monday nights
Things in my life I never expected: watching a 1960s Batman-themed porn in a group setting. And that’s precisely what happened last night at the Vulcan Gas Company. And that was just one of the moments drowning in the sleaze that is Game Bang Bingo, possibly one of the best things to do in Austin.
Live music review: Live Nation nails Two Step Inn Festival and T-Pain carried the day
When attending festivals, there’s a game of cat and mouse between security and journalists. And at the Live Nation-produced country music fest, Two Step Inn in Georgetown April 15-16, me and my media brethren bonded like a pack of wolves. I went into the gig with wholesome intentions to capture the heart and soul of the event, despite the sun’s rays beating down on me while my boots gathered layers of dust.
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