Brian Wilson (Musician)

Transcribing Is a Bitch: The Collected Craig Hlavaty Interviews

My last official day at the Houston Press is tomorrow, so these past two weeks I have been sifting through my body of work here at Rocks Off, almost seven years of words. I've been gleefully overdosing on nostalgia here at my desk, and I have (almost) no regrets. I'll have some more words on my depa ... More >>

15 Notable Houston Concerts of 2012

As we look back over 2012 this week, it is now time to revisit some of this year's memorable shows. It wasn't easy narrowing the list down to 15. Concerts are in chronological order. CHRIS GRAY DAY, The Continental Club So much local talent and so much love. Uh, if I'm maybe a little too biased on ... More >>

The Top 10 Weirdest U.S. No. 1 Hits

It's not often that the pop charts will surprise you. After all, the average consumer in most countries doesn't have time to delve too deep into an artist's catalogue. They don't often pick up on songs that will stand the test of time. They like the ephemera record labels tell them is hot right now. ... More >>

The 10 Best Houston Concerts of the Summer

How awesome was that cool front that blew through this past Saturday? Finally, your average Houston afternoon has gone from being a blast furnace to mildly toasty, while the mornings and evenings have become sublime. Hey, we'll take it. This must be what they call "fall," so it seemed like the perfe ... More >>

Friday Night: "Last Summer on Earth" Tour at The Woodlands

"Last Summer on Earth" Tour Feat. Barenaked Ladies, Blues Traveler, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, Cracker Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion July 20, 2012 As Nathan Smith said a few hours ago, his partial '90s nostalgia show at House of Blues Friday was more than a sight harder than the throwback bill ... More >>

The Beach Boys Coming to Nutty Jerry's In Winnie October 6

If you missed the reunited and augmented Beach Boys a few weeks back in the Woodlands, you will have a second chance to see the band on October 6 out at Nutty Jerry's in Winnie. Yes, it's a long drive, but this tour is worth seeing. As Rocks Off confirmed from Nutty Jerry's PR, this will in fact b ... More >>

Comin' Up: Happy 70th Birthday, Paul McCartney

By now you all know that today is Sir Paul McCartney's 70th birthday. Over on chron.com, there is a wire story on the milestone with a curious headline: "Say It Ain't So: Mop Top Paul McCartney Turns 70." Now does this mean that it's a shame he made it seven decades of service, or does it suck that ... More >>

Friday Night: The Beach Boys at The Woodlands

The Beach Boys Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion June 8, 2012 The Beach Boys taught a generation of American kids how to be teenagers. With songs about the perils of love, the magic of cars, school ties, faceless authority, and depression and isolation, they wrote the book on high-octane hormonal roc ... More >>

When The Beach Boys Went To The Movies

The Beach Boys have embarked on a 50th-anniversary reunion tour this year, kicking off the media blitz with a Grammy performance featuring everybody from Maroon 5 to Foster the People. As one of the pioneering rock bands of their era, the Beach Boys made a return to the spotlight that was met with ... More >>

New Beach Boys Book Digs Deep Under The Sand

The Beach Boys FAQ: All That's Left to Know About America's Band By Jon Stebbins Backbeat Books, 400 pp., $19.99. Backbeat's FAQ series of books are the perfect addendum for those who are already familiar with a band's basic origin and career. Part biography, part compendium of trivia and odd fact ... More >>

Hipster Lessons: 5 Ways To Make Indie Bands Less Annoying

My girlfriend got a new car recently and it has satellite radio. The result has been a lot of channel-surfing and among the more regular selections is Alt Nation. Though there are certainly some God awful songs that get played on there, on the whole, it isn't bad and has even led me to some interes ... More >>

The '90s Dream Is Alive In The Woodlands This Summer

Barenaked Ladies, Blues Traveler, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, and Cracker are heading to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on July 20. The "Last Summer on Earth" will take the crew on over 30 stops through the United States, celebrating the last summer on Earth with some of the best bands who pu ... More >>

Pete Townshend's Operatic Highs... And Lows

Won't Get Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia By Richie Unterberger Jawbone Press, 300 pp., $19.95 Following the release of The Who's ambitious rock opera, Tommy, Pete Townshend was faced with the inevitable question of any band cresting on a massive success: What's next? As ambiti ... More >>

Beach Boys Reunion Tour Hits Woodlands June 8

Dave Matthews Band opens new tour at Pavilion May 18 The Beach Boys, one of the most popular and celebrated bands to come out of America in the past century, announced a reunion tour this week, with Houston getting a set from Brian Wilson and the gang Friday, June 8 at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pa ... More >>

The Beats Go On As Grammys Take Care Of Their Own

Hands up, everyone who is surprised.​The Grammy Awards on CBS Sunday night could have easily turned into a wake - or worse, a funeral. After Whitney Houston's death Saturday, the mood was appropriately somber until a dance party broke out, or perhaps a coming-out party for dance music. Foreve ... More >>

Before We Cared: 10 Bit Players Who Became Superstars

On this day in 1965, British songstress Petula Clark reached number one on the charts with "Downtown," a pop classic with an unforgettable hook that has become a mainstay of oldies radio, film soundtracks and TV advertisements in the years since. The song even served as a plot point in an episode o ... More >>

Beach Boys Reunite for New Album, Ensure Armageddon.

Mason Lankford said, "There will come a day when we forget the Rapture ever even happened," but Rocks Off is keeping an eye out for signs of our impending Armageddon. We were wrong last time, but we're totally right this time! White House Photo OfficeThe Beach Boys with Ronald and Nancy Reagan̴ ... More >>

Classic Christmas: A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records

Over the holidays, we're looking back at some classic Christmas albums taking some track by track and just digging on others. ​Christmas music comes in all shapes and sizes. From jazz and blues to hip hop and heavy metal, everybody thinks they have an interesting take on holiday classics, but ... More >>

Music's Top 5 Dubious "Dr. Feelgoods"

ibtimes.com​To say that Dr. Conrad Murray had a bad day in court yesterday is probably something of an understatement. In addition to veiwing graphic pictures of Michael Jackson's autopsy, jurors in the involuntary manslaughter trial of the King of Pop's former physician heard damaging testimo ... More >>

Happy Birthday Don Was: His Five Best Production Jobs

Vicky Sapp​Nerds like us - you have to be a music nerd if you're reading a blog on Don Was - have favorite producers, like some sports guys have favorite coaches. Sometimes we listen to an album just because someone we like produced it, or it somehow gives it us extra cred even if we may not l ... More >>

Happy Birthday Leon Theremin: His Invention's Greatest Hits

You wish.​Today marks the 115th birthday of Russian inventor Leon Theremin, inventor of the theremin, one of the eeriest and ookiest instruments created in this past century. Mr. Theremin celebrated quietly with family and friends in his native Russia. Just kidding, he died in 1993. The ther ... More >>

The 10 Most Horrible Music-Biz Bosses

​The movie Horrible Bosses comes out today, and while the heinous supervisors in question all work in areas unrelated to entertainment, this shouldn't be taken to mean the music industry is free of bad managers and executives. Rocks Off knows if anything, the music biz has had more than its fa ... More >>

Happy Birthday Brian Wilson: His Modern Indie-Rock Offspring

Brian Wilson in watery repose​Today, ace pop-music architect and Beach Boys talisman Brian Wilson turns 69. In his nearly 50-year (!) wake of music he has helped give rise to generations of shameless copycats and other reverent rockers who find inspiration in his musical style. Obviously, th ... More >>

Weezer: The Good, The Bad & The Downright Ugly

​This Sunday night, Weezer headlines Free Press Summer Fest III, and the influential pop-rockers have been a part of indie lore for the past 17 years. With 1994's self-titled "Blue Album" and 1996's Pinkerton, the band created a cult following whom they would promptly weird the fuck out with s ... More >>

Pet Sounds: Still Blowing Minds 45 Years Later

​Today is the 45th anniversary of the Beach Boys releasing the sonic and social landmark Pet Sounds The album influenced not only generations of bedroom producers and sad-eyed romantics, but also pushed the Beatles to create their own headphone masterpiece in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club B ... More >>

10 Uncool Artists Primed For Hipster Rediscovery

Tumblr"Aw, dammit, I grabbed Dad's iPod by mistake. Paul Simon... is that one guy, or two Beatles?" ​Remember emo kids? Only a few short years ago, the nation's venues of the nation were filled with kids in all black, wearing ultra-skinny jeans, eyeliner, white belts, and identical chopped-mea ... More >>

20 Musician Biopics Currently In Development Hell

Happy birthday, Janis.​News came down last week that Sacha Baron Cohen will be stepping into the rhinestones and glitter as Queen icon Freddie Mercury. It's been a long time coming for Cohen, the Borat and Bruno star who is slowly becoming his generation's Peter Sellers and has been rumored to ... More >>

Our Annual Hour In Sunny 99.1's Holiday Hell

​The day before Thanksgiving, Sunny 99.1, "Houston's Official At-Work Station" did its yearly change-over to all holiday music. It's now a Houston tradition to turn over the dial at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Eve to snort your first line of Burl Ives or Brenda Lee of the season, before you have ev ... More >>

What If The Beatles Broke Up After Revolver?

​Thursday is the 44th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' pivotal Revolver, an album that continued their growth away from their boy-band roots and into something stranger, better and far more complex. 1965's Rubber Soul had started the transformation with its multiple psychedelic influ ... More >>

5 Songs That Are No Day At The Beach

This past weekend, Craig's Hlist spent a good solid two days at the beach playing in the surf down off Mustang Island just south of Corpus Christi. It was one of those mental-health weekends that if we hadn't have taken, we would have ended up throwing beer bottles against the wall at an old folks' ... More >>

Summertime Blues: Songs As Sad As The Season

"The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose..." ​So reads the prologue to Ernest Hemingway's 1926 treatise on the horrors of existential dread. In the book, Jake Barnes and a band of entirely unlikeable expat misfits flit around the globe, from Paris to P ... More >>

At 4:20 On 4/20, Music's Biggest Burnouts

​ You should all know what today is. Today is the day pot-smoking amateurs giggle to one another about how high they're going to be all day, while the real potheads simply wait with stoic stoner patience for the magic hour to roll around. Yeah, you'll know the real burnouts when you see them. Not ... More >>

Buyer Beware: Bands With Different Lead Singers Are Almost Never Up to the Original Standards

A few Saturdays ago, Rocks Off was in the grocery store a few blocks from our house, slumming around Oak Forest wearing sandals and an old Misfits T-shirt when a group of junior-high punk rockers approached and applauded us for our good taste. We got to talking about the band, and they remarked tha ... More >>

Slide Show and Bonus MP3: Albums Influenced by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds

Sgt. Pepper's was only the beginning... To celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the Beach Boys' sonically revolutionary album Pet Sounds - released May 16, 1966 - Rocks Off is featuring a cavalcade of albums which have, according to critics, fans, friends of the artist or even the artists themselves, b ... More >>

News on the March

The Queers

Lost Albums

CDs that deserve another listen

Half Smile

Brian Wilson's long-delayed magnum opus fails to topple Pet Sounds from its pedestal

The Barenaked Ladies

Monday, November 17

Cody ChesnuTT

Wednesday, November 19

The Beach Boys

Hawthorne, CA: Birthplace of a Musical Legacy (Capitol)

The Imposters

Poseurs are performing under famous band names, including one with a Houston connection

Shored Up

Brian Wilson returns from hell to inhabit a self he hasn't seen since the '60s

Beach Gents

Good ole vibrations from the Beach Boys this summer

Rotation

Reconstructing Brian

The troubled creative light behind the Beach Boys salvages himself and -- to an extent -- his music

Rotation

Too Much Genius

Odd Man Out

Van Dyke Parks, the invisible legend of L.A. music, finally goes live

Sound Check