David Byrne

Different Tongues: 10 Foreign Language Songs That Rule the World

A couple of caveats to this list: first, it actually includes more than ten songs. Since one is sung primarily in English and another isn't technically a "foreign" language, they're considered halfsies, making up one whole. Also, no songs sung in Spanish are on this list. I'm not saying Spanish is ... More >>

UPDATED: Is ACL Festival Ignoring Houston? Does It Even Matter?

UPDATED (Thursday, 2:50 p.m.) to reflect the Houston-area roots of a few ACL performers this year, as pointed out by reader comments. We stand by our original point, though. As most of our readers no doubt know by now, the Austin City Limits Music Festival announced its 2013 lineup at the stroke of ... More >>

Acts You Shouldn't Miss at iFest's First Weekend

Rocks Off asked our staff members who will be covering the Houston International Festival for us this weekend to give us one or two choices for artists they don't want to miss. Forro In the Dark Bud Light World Music Stage, 2:30 p.m. Saturday/Center Stage, 6:30 p.m. Saturday As one of the first ac ... More >>

The 5 Worst Cover Albums of All Time

I think when they're just starting out, every musician dreams of making a cover album at some point down the road. We all have our favorite songs that we wish we had written and we all fantasize about singing and playing them ourselves. It's why karaoke bars exist. Of course, everyone thinks they w ... More >>

UPDATED: Memorable Houston Concerts of 1992

UPDATE (2:03 p.m.): Alice In Chains was advertised but dropped out, and was replaced with Australia's Baby Animals. The year 1992 was an important one for me as far as Houston concerts are concerned: It's the first time I went to a concert within the Houston city limits, the "Outside Broadcast" leg ... More >>

Neil Young's Ragged Glories

Jonathan Demme directs Journeys, a documentary aboout the Canadian singer-songwriter.

Why Do We Always Expect Our Favorite Bands To Reunite?

John Hammond, the billionaire CEO of InGen and the curator of Jurassic Park found out the hard way that sometimes things from another time and place don't mesh well with different surroundings. A guy even got eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex while he was taking a dump, and one of those spitting dinosaur ... More >>

Why Is Thom Yorke Messing With Our Heads?

intimtorma.tumblr.com​It's been a week since Radiohead's new The King of Limbs came out directly to an online audience before getting a proper release. Besides some middling reviews (including our own), accompanying the album was the first single and video for "Lotus Flower," featuring lead si ... More >>

Radiohead's King Of Limbs Unfocused, Fleeting

​This morning, Rocks Off unwrapped Radiohead's newest release, The King of Limbs, an album whose existence was just announced this past Monday. In the old-school music industry, a record would be announced and you would suffer through months of interviews, video premieres, and reading reviews ... More >>

The Best Concert Movies Of All Time

​A quick note before CHL starts this hlist. We define a concert movie as a flick that documents one or more shows on a tour. More narrative-oriented rock flicks like D.A. Pennebaker's Bob Dylan mash note Don't Look Back, Charles Peterson's grunge chronicle Hype!, and of course the lighthearted ... More >>

Karina Longworth's Top Ten Movies of 2010

What The Hell is That? Thanksgiving Edition

All photos from daniellespencer.com Flesh colored Jell-O is never (*ever*) okay. ​New York artist Danielle Spencer (a.k.a. Mrs. Russell Crowe) crafted her first faux Thanksgiving spread in 2005 using a Cornish game hen form, peach Jell-O, and evaporated milk. That initial flesh-colored mass ( ... More >>

Top 10 Recent TV-Show Soundtracks

​A few choice adjectives come to mind when musing on bawdy Eastbound & Down character Kenny Powers. "Inspiring" is not one of them. However, as Rocks Off watched this week's season finale of the side-splitting HBO series, we were pleasantly surprised as we heard indie troubadour Kurt Vile's a ... More >>

Os Mutantes: The Best Band You've Probably Never Heard Of

Pink Floit via Flickr​Os Mutantes were one of the most influential rock groups to emerge during the late '60s in Brazil. The band - initially a trio with Rita Lee, Arnaldo Baptista and his brother Sergio Dias) fell under the graces of the founders of the Tropicalismo movement, Brazil's respons ... More >>

Acts We Think - OK, Hope - Are Playing ACL Fest This Year

​By this time Tuesday, we will all know who is playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. Damn, it seems like we have speculating about the line-up since, well, we got the last of the "Dillo Dirt" out the middle of our toes after last year's muddy and rainy ACL weekend. Tuesday brig ... More >>

Rick's Picks For iFest's Second Weekend

Ed. Note: Here are Houston International Festival Director of Peforming Arts Rick Mitchell's choices for can't-miss acts for the festival's second weekend, spread over five categories. Rick should know; he books all the artists. Rocks Off will follow with a few more picks of our own a little later o ... More >>

Aftermath: Yeasayer's Tribal Future Shock And Benevolent Manipulation At HOB

Photos by Groovehouse ​Your brain balls bounce to the bang-bang as you skip through the flash fantastic and your goo-goo ears drip dreamlike while they try to find your face and your tongue stays tied in a twist fist spooning sinews just attacked by a snare snake made of sound leaving litt ... More >>

Some New Stuff From Our "Washington Shore" DJ Dave Wrangler

Rocks Off is pleased as punch to announce that Houston mash-up maestro Dave Wrangler will be providing the tunes for our douche-tastic "Washington Shore" party at the Washington Avenue Drinkery on February 11. Wrangler also agreed to craft some custom Washington Shore mash-ups we'll be bringing you ... More >>

Live with Me

The best Houston concerts of 2009: U2, George Strait, Kid Cudi, Jandek, Peaches and even T-Pain.

He Said She Said: Music From the Past Decade of Our Lives, Part 2

​ She Said remembers being a little kid, thinking to herself, In the year 2000, you're going to be 20 YEARS OLD. Thinking of how old that would feel like and how far away it seemed. In truth, She Said feels no different today than she did ten years ago, but one look at her musical tastes over the ... More >>

He Said She Said: Songs from the Year We Were Born That We Still Listen To

Yes, we are older than MTV. Shut up.​The thing that struck She Said most when researching this list of songs that came out the year we were born (May 1980) was just how much of this music we regularly listen to now. 1980 marked the end of disco, the middle of New Wave and punk, and a damn good tim ... More >>

A Typical Venezuelan Dance Band

Caracas's Los Amigos Invisibles are anything but.

Aftermath: Santigold at House of Blues

Photos by Kim Douglass Puff-paint, splatter-paint, welcome to the hospital - the sterility of a trash heap greets you. Santigold = the moment hipster-embraced globalism became a commodity, and why globalism doesn't matter anymore; i.e., we're all the same.  Seeing her at House of Blues is ... More >>

Got Live If You Want It

Our Spring/Summer concert preview, part deux

Aftermath: Jandek at Rudyard's

Photos by Mark C. AustinAftermath had literally no idea what to expect at Sunday afternoon's Jandek show at Rudyard's, the first-ever public performance in Houston by one of the world's leading "outsider" musicians (who just happens to live here). From the little he knows of Jandek's prodigio ... More >>

The Distillery: N.A.S.A.'s The Spirit of Apollo

Truth be told, we envy N.A.S.A.'s bumptuous production acumen almost as much as we envy principal astronauts Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon the depths of their Rolodexes - even if, somehow, they couldn't rope Lil Wayne into their genre-mashup free-for-all. Seriously - as you'll see below - N.A.S. ... More >>

Top Ten Dance Collections of 2008, Both Mixed and Unmixed

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry ... More >>

Get Lit: The Pitchfork 500

Yo La Tengo in Hoboken

A Hanukkah pilgrimage

Councilman Peter Brown, Astronaut Mike Fincke, Old Coach Jeff Van Gundy and New Coach Rick Adelman

Four days of hell for a councilman

Free Jazz at the Dollar Store

Jimmie's Place

Willie Nelson stories and shoeshines at Jimmie's

Last Night: Dan Deacon at Walter's on Washington

Terry Allen

The Raw Power of Really Smooth Music

Climb aboard the Yacht Rock revolution at this week's Michael McDonald/Steely Dan show

Various Artists

Tropicália: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound

Of Montreal, Tilly and the Wall, with Spain Colored Orange

Saturday, June 11, at Mary Jane's Fat Cat, 4216 Washington Avenue, 713-869-5263.

Rogue Bosoms, Bouncing Booties and Pac-Man Raps

Looking back on the '04

Playbill

Flesh for Fantasy

Dreamy Red Dragon completes the Hannibal boxed set

Deep Thoughts

Richard Linklater's Waking Life is as frustrating as it is stimulating

Oh, Doctor!

Robert Altman takes a well-aimed swipe at Dallas's shallow society set

Dead Man Walking

Minus his female soul mate, a young politician loses his spiritual way

People's Art

Personalities are as diverse as the art at Blaffer Gallery

Rotation

Rotation

Squeezebox Serenade

Dollars for Discs

Introducing a shopping guide for sounds

Ely, Allen and BBQ: The next best thing to Lubbock

Lady Sings the Pinks

Self-created disco-diva Pinque: If this is camp, it's camp with a guilelessly straight face