PAO Productions Blog

Ghosts of DFW music history: Pantego Sound Studio/Metal Magic Records

Posted on March 31, 2024April 11, 2024 by PAO Productions

This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks

Much has already been written to chronicle Pantera's early years, their formation, history in the Metroplex, and their subsequent rise to fame, and it's not my intention to duplicate that here. Rather, this post is instead going to focus on the story of their in-house record label, Metal Magic, and on the studio where they recorded their early output: how these came to be, the story and history behind them, and the role they played in helping launch the band's career. The story begins with Jerry Bob Abbott, a country music singer/songwriter, musician, producer, sound engineer, and the father of Darrell and Vinnie Paul Abbott. The tale of Metal Magic Records is as much the story of Jerry Abbott's early career in the music production industry as it is of Pantera's early rise to fame.

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Ghosts of DFW music history: Insomnia Coffee Bar

Posted on March 17, 2024April 11, 2024 by PAO Productions

This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks

Insomnia Coffee Bar in 1997 — Image courtesy of Central Motion Pictures

On an sweaty August evening in 1997, I headed down to Deep Ellum to meet up with some friends. After finding a place to park my car, I journeyed down Elm Street and made contact with my group, and although I don't remember whose idea it was, we ended up patronizing a coffee house to pass time before seeing some local music. In the group was my coworker, Heather, and her boyfriend at the time, Chris, her friend DeShanna, another co-worker named Glenn (a forty-something year old scenester who probably had no business being down there with a bunch of teenagers), and Björn, a former foreign exchange student turned annual visitor from Germany. Björn was excited at being able to buy brownies at the coffee shop, declaring to me that he was only able to get them when visiting America. I ordered a turkey sandwich, and after taking a few bites I realized that it contained real turkey and not the turkey slices I was accustomed to getting when ordering sandwiches. After leaving the café, our group finished off the night at Trees with a UFOFU and Bobgoblin show, and I ended up trying to bum $10 for a copy of UFOFU's with everyone coming up empty until Glenn was able to help me out. For the next few years I wouldn't recall much about that coffee shop, but I would always remember that sandwich and the brownies and the night's experiences that followed our visit. Thus was my introduction to Deep Ellum's premiere coffee house and hangout at the ripe old age of eighteen. Continue reading

Salvaging old film photos

Posted on February 25, 2024April 11, 2024 by PAO Productions

Back in 2010, I stumbled upon some 110 film for sale inside a Mesquite Walgreens while visiting my parents. I was surprised to see it there and even more surprised to see that it was unexpired. I hadn't seen the format anywhere in years, and hadn't shot a cartridge of it since 1995. I ended up buying several boxes of the stuff and actually shooting four cartridges of it not long afterward at the Mochalux open mic, Curtain Club, and just around my apartment. It then sat dormant on a shelf for thirteen years before I finally got around to getting it developed. I hadn't planned on this - on more than one occasion over the past several years I had looked online for a lab that could still develop and possibly print the film, but I just never viewed it as a priority. I never bothered to freeze the film cartridges, so when I finally took some of them to Garland Camera to be processed and scanned, I wasn't expecting pristine color fidelity or high quality results. And by then, save for some of the shots from Mochalux, I had long since forgotten what had been recorded. Continue reading

Scenes from my vintage photo collection

Posted on January 23, 2024September 21, 2024 by PAO Productions

I'm an informal collector of vintage and antique photo snapshots and slides. Professionally taken pictures of course have their own particular charm and value, but when I'm perusing antique malls and estate sales, it's the vintage stuff I'm on the lookout for. My tastes trend heavily toward depictions of places I have visited, historical oddities and one of a kind items, children/families, local history, and the occasional random, heartwarming or otherwise eye pleasing snapshot. I pick these up wherever I find them, whether at the aforementioned antique malls and estate sales, online listings, or anywhere else they happen to cross my path.

Here I present a selection of items from my vintage photo collection, all of which depict locations I've visited during my various road trips across the United States and Canada. They are accompanied by some of my own photos of the same or similar locations.

Grand Canyon, 1922

I visited the Grand Canyon's North Rim in October of 2021. The writing on one of my pair of antique photos identifies the views as having been recorded to film in June 1922, some 99 years prior to my visit.

Ghosts of DFW music history: Honest Place

Posted on January 15, 2024April 11, 2024 by PAO Productions

This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks

flyer for Process Revealed at the Honest Place — 1988 show flyer

The Deep Ellum neighborhood has been home to a dizzying number of music performance venues over the past century. In the early days of Ellum's renaissance, many an aspiring entrepreneur opted to roll the dice on a new venue. Some, like Charlie Gilder, were able to successfully circumnavigate the sea of red tape put forth by the City Council and obtain permits and liquor licenses; other, perhaps more bullish, entrepreneurs chose to go a different way, with all ages clubs and "unofficial" liquor on tap. Some of the resultant venues, such as the Prophet Bar and Theatre Gallery, achieved fairly long term success and drew a regular contingent of music fans and clubgoers, but Deep Ellum's history is also full of short-lived, fly by night venues that had their brief moments in the sun before flaming out and disappearing completely. And perhaps the most infamous of these long gone, also-ran hotspots was a hole in the wall off Commerce Street, a one time weighing scale and butcher equipment outlet turned punk club known as the Honest Place.

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