Cameron Crowe

Slip Slidin' Away: My Life as a Rock Journalist With the Houston Press

I had a hernia operation in the early summer of 2006, and had nothing to do all day but hobble around with cool cane a borrowed from Grandpa Hlavaty and play on the Internets for two months or so. I had developed the injury while working at Domino's, but it was cool because their insurance helped ... More >>

Paul McCartney Songs We Secretly Want to Hear at Minute Maid

Paul McCartney usually starts his set lists with "Magical Mystery Tour" and then lives up to it, hopscotching between Beatles, Wings, and his solo stuff. But there are a few cuts out of his 50-plus-year catalog that I want to hear out of total selfishness, songs that I know he could never probably ... More >>

The 20 Best YouTube Rock Docs You Can Watch Free (For Now)

**The 31 Best Music Documentaries of All Time So you don't have NetFlix, you hate the video stores (if you can even find one), you don't like going to the little red box next to the liquor store, but you do have an Internet connection, plenty of time on your hands, and an insatiable thirst for rock ... 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 >>

Exit Music (For A Film): At The Movies With Radiohead

While they have notoriously barred the use of their songs in advertising campaigns and initially resisted selling their music on iTunes, Radiohead has been more than willing to lend their vast brooding catalog to filmmakers, exposing mainstream culture to what might have otherwise remained a margina ... More >>

We Bought a Zoo Ticket Giveaway

We Bought a Zoo stars Matt Damon, Thomas Haden Church, Colin Ford, Scarlett Johansson, and Elle Fanning; Cameron Crowe directs. The Houston Press has ten passes to give away for the film We Bought a Zoo. These are passes for four, good any Monday through Thursday, except holidays, at any Houston A ... More >>

Animal House

Oh, don't be such a cynic. Matt Damon needs your love in We Bought a Zoo.

Awesomeness and Hearing Loss at the 2011 Texas BigBeat

How do a crapload of drums sound when playing in unison in an airplane hangar? Pretty freaking awesome. ​In the Cameron Crowe-directed documentary Pearl Jam Twenty, lead singer Eddie Vedder discusses the detrimental impact of the band's Spinal Tap-like replacement of drummers, equating each ch ... More >>

Your Biggest Fan: When Rockers Get Stalkers

cinemafestival/shutterstock.com​This past week a statement by pop institution Madonna helped put away one of her newest stalkers, Polish citizen Grzegorz Matlok, who broke into Madge's London home and the residence of her ex-hubby Guy Ritchie. Madonna submitted the statement to Southwark Crown ... More >>

Hail, Hail: 10 Things You Should Know About Pearl Jam

Mark C. AustinPearl Jam at ACL '09​Amongst all the Nevermind love running rampant this week, people seem to forget that Nirvana contemporaries Pearl Jam are also celebrating their 20th anniversary this year. Obviously the Nirvana tributes are different since one member is not living and the we ... More >>

Out Today: My Morning Jacket Back In Form, Vedder's Ukulele Slays

​This week brings a new My Morning Jacket album, an Eddie Vedder ukulele outing, the umpteenth Dave Matthews Band live collection, and Ozzy's past barks at the moon. We are just now hitting the busy summer release period, so these blogs in the next few weeks will be getting jam-packed. In th ... More >>

Save Ferris: Pop-Culture Origins Of 16 Famous Band Names

Groovehouse​This one's for the pop-culture junkies. For those who, like us, are tickled by all forms of pop media, whether it be literature, film or music... this list encompasses them all. A surprisingly high quantity of bands have named themselves after books, songs, and films; some are obvi ... More >>

Another Year

2010 is old news. Here are ten to watch out for in 2011.

Apathy For The Devil: Adrift In The Snowblind '70s

​Apathy for the Devil: A 70s Memoir By Nick Kent Da Capo Press, 416 pp., $17.95. While Cameron Crowe's wonderful but fictional Almost Famous told a sanitized story of music-journalist-meets-bands in the '70s, Former New Musical Express writer Nick Kent's memoir is a warts/coke spoons/social d ... More >>

Tom Petty's Ten Most Underrated Songs

​ "I Should Have Known It" Rocks Off has an especially acute case of clockwatcher's syndrome this afternoon, because as soon as we leave the office we're heading up to The Woodlands for the big Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers/ZZ Top show. Some of you out there might be doing the exact same t ... More >>

Loudon Wainwright III's Top Five Movie Roles

​Aside from being the dad of glam-folkie Rufus Wainwright and similarly talented sister Martha, Loudon Wainwright III is one of the most unsung singer-songwriters still strumming today. With his ex-wife, the late, great Kate McGarrigle, he was a part of a folk power-couple, and songs like "Ruf ... More >>

Top 5 Daniel Lanois Productions

​This past Saturday in Los Angeles, legendary producer Daniel Lanois, known for his trademark echo-heavy sound and work with the likes of U2 and Bob Dylan, was involved in a near-fatal motorcycle accident. Lanois was slated to soon begin work on Brandon Flowers of the Killers' solo debut and the u ... More >>

Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Apatow

Crude on the outside, sweet in the middle: Get Him to the Greek.

Get Lit: Blues & Chaos: The Music Writings of Robert Palmer

​Unfortunately, by the time that Robert Palmer (the writer, not the "Addicted to Love" guy) died from liver failure complications in 1997, his fierce brand of music journalism had been six feet under for years. Palmer was part of a loose cadre of scribes like Cameron Crowe, Greil Marcus, Lester Ba ... More >>

For World Toilet Day, the Most Creative Lyrical Uses of the S-Word

According to an email Rocks Off received from none other than the World Toilet Organization, today is World Toilet Day. We're told it's an "internationally recognized" occasion for drawing attention to the plight of the 2.5 billion people on the planet who lack proper facilities. To this end (heh), ... More >>

He Said She Said: Breakup Songs to Help You Bawl, Part 2

Ever since men and women set eyes upon each other at the beginning of time, there have been break-ups, and painful dissolutions of romantic escapades have made the best art in the world. Hell, somewhere in the world there is a probably a cave painting of a pretty young Neanderthal girl with devil h ... More >>

Almost Famous

Rolling Stone journalist Cameron Crowe gives insight into his days as a teenage rock writer

Schoolhouse: The Rocker

Rainn Wilson comedy is more childish pop than hardcore funny

Geekology 101

Judd Apatow explains himself.

Crowe Flies Home

Elizabethtown is a mess -- not that its director should care

Blood Money

Why John Cusack wouldn't do anything till he made this Hitler movie

Fallon Fast

Saturday Night Live's prime player is rapidly outgrowing television's small screen

Fight Club

When it comes to producing movies, it's a fine art (or Art Linson)

Eyes Half Open

Cameron Crowe takes Jerry Maguire on a dizzy trip through dreamland

Played Out

The filmmakers have consumed all the standard clichés and yakked them up in the humorless Rock Star

The Man Who

Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis is the guy behind the guys

Better in Pairs

Generally a letdown, the year in film offered some well-crafted works that are best viewed as double features

Stayin' Alive

Almost Famous writer-director gets by with a little help from Peter Frampton

People Try to Put Us Down...

Almost Famous talks about its g-g-generation -- of misguided rock and roll fans

A Fan's Notes

After Jerry Maguire, Cameron Crowe comes of age...finally

Cruisified