Dusty Hill

Saturday Night: ZZ Top at Constellation Field

ZZ Top Constellation Field October 20, 2012 ZZ Top has been writing and performing music for nearly 45 years. Now, granted, there are a handful of other artists that have been around that long too, but most of them have a lot of baggage, the stuff of VH1 documentaries and that Oprah loves to talk a ... More >>

ZZ Top: A Double-Sided Take On The New Texicali EP

Craig Hlavaty: What a way to tease your first album of original material in nine years, ZZ Top. You managed to record three songs and one ballad that instantly fit into your canon alongside the rest of your ballbusters without sounding like a classic-rock act reaching for straws. This is no weak, m ... More >>

Rocky Hill: Ballad of a Lone Star Legend

The late Rocky Hill was a handful. Even his widow, Joy, told the small but attentive Saturday-afternoon crowd celebrating the (very) belated release of Hill's album Lone Star Legend at Cactus Music's Record Ranch that being his bride was "like being married to a tornado." Hill was a man of tremendo ... More >>

Happy Birthday Dusty Hill: ZZ Top's Bottom-End Boogie Man

ZZ Top's Dusty Hill turns 63 years old on Sunday, but who's counting? The Dust and his band mates have been around pretty much forever, with more than four decades of sold-out shows around the world under their belts. If Hill spends another 43 years playing his Fender bass in perfect precision with ... More >>

7 Cool & Cheap Weekenders: Prom Night, Rocky Hill, Yann Tiersen, Etc.

Sorry we're late this week, but the good ol' Allen Oldies Band wants to help you start your weekend by rocking your socks off this evening at Natachee's Supper & Punch. Also, it's Prom Night down the street at the Continental Club. Boondocks is promising "Nu Disco, Italo, Cosmic Synth, Nu No Wave, ... More >>

Who Should Induct Axl Rose And Guns N' Roses Into The Rock Hall?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony is coming up quick on April 14, and the presenters for the event have been announced, except for one artist. Just who will speak about and induct Guns N' Roses? Who is even qualified? Rapper Chuck D will induct the Beastie Boys, while funnyman Ch ... More >>

Last Night: ZZ Top At Reliant Stadium

ZZ Top RodeoHouston, Reliant Stadium March 8, 2012 See more photos from Thursday, even some without beards, in our slideshow. I admit, I had almost given up on waiting for ZZ Top to show me something new. Not even something from their new album - which is finally completed but caught up in the mus ... More >>

Rocks Off's Ultra-Hip Rodeo Concert Guide: ZZ Top

Date: March 8 Name: ZZ Top AKA: "ZZ Fucking Top" Genre: Tube snake boogie

And, Uh, Um, OOPS: The Third Members Of Great Musical Trios You Probably Can't Name

​Last night we all watched as Governor Rick Perry blanked on the third department he would do away with if he was elected president. It was one of those moments - a la Scanners - when we all tensely waited for his head to explode, figuratively. Of course we love the guy and he's too precious t ... More >>

ZZ Top Will Release New Album By Year's End, Gibbons Says

Jim BrickerZZ Top at The Woodlands, September 2010​After years of hemming and haw-haw-haw-hawing about how far along it is, who they are working with, and whether or not it even actually exists, ZZ Top singer/guitarist (Rev.) Billy F. Gibbons said the trio plans to release its first studio alb ... More >>

ZZ Top Debuts New Song... In Space

​The first bit of music from ZZ Top's long-awaited, long-delayed, semi-mythical forthcoming album has leaked... but not anywhere on Earth. Astronaut and friend of ZZ Michael Fossum, currently headed to the International Space Station on a Russian spacecraft, is carrying a copy of "Flyin' High ... More >>

Billy Bob Thornton Producing ZZ Top Biopic, Sources Say

Craig HlavatyBillys Gibbons (left) and Bob Thornton at Fitzgerald's, December 2009​How how how how will this not be Rocks Off's favorite movie of all time after it comes out? If the rumors coming out of Hollywood and last month's SXSW conference are true, the story of that Lil' Ol' Band from T ... More >>

Friday Night: ZZ Top At The Woodlands

Photos by Jim Bricker​ZZ Top Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion September 24, 2010 People talk all the time about the depleting ozone layer, melting polar ice caps, melting polar bears, ravaged rain forests, shortages of crude oil, but that can all go to Hell. When ZZ Top is gone from this Eart ... More >>

ZZ Top Takes Manhattan, Loudly And "Perfectly"

Mark C. AustinZZ Top at the Woodlands, July 2009​Rocks Off has had next Friday, when ZZ Top and Tom Petty play The Woodlands, circled in red on our Rhino Records wall calendar for months. God, is that next Friday already? We added a few more red rings this morning after we read The New York Ti ... More >>

How Ex-Runaways Manager Kim Fowley Stole The Mayor Of The Sunset Strip

​The Runaways opens nationwide next Friday and one of the things Hollywood Shuffle is most looking forward to when the film hits Houston theaters is how delicately director Floria Sigismondi will treat the character of Kim Fowley, whom HS likes to refer to as the Creepiest Man in Hollywood. Hey! A ... More >>

Aftermath: ZZ Top and Aerosmith at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

Photos by Mark C. Austin Make all the Guitar Hero jokes you want. Whatever it is that's kept ZZ Top and Aerosmith in the public eye for almost four decades - video games or beards-n-babes videos, Back to the Future cameos or Michael Bay ballads, bee-stung lips or cheap sunglasses - they've never for ... More >>

ZZ Top's Dusty Hill is 60 Today

You didn't think we'd get out of here without wishing happy birthday to Houston's own Dusty Hill, the ZZ Top bassist who turns 60 today, did you? Hell no! To celebrate - and give any neophytes an idea of just how widely loved the Top really is - here's a pair of covers from about as far apart as you ... More >>

Voodoo Healing

Stan Ridgway is still tuning in "Mexican Radio."

The Greatest Texas Rock Album of All Time

Billy Gibbons Tells an Awful Blonde Joke: Video and Pictures from ZZ Top's DVD Release Party

Classic Rock Corner: Mudcrutch, Golliwogs, Mynah Birds, Moving Sidewalks and More

Lingering Long on Love Street

Everybody Is a Starr

Two women hold a drawing to breathe some life into a stagnant Houston indie rock scene

Pop Quiz

Think you know local music? Take the Bayou City Music Mindbender and find out.

Oh, Won't You Stay

ZZ Top brings down the curtain at a venerable venue

The Anti-Clapton

Rocky Hill hopes to find a smooth patch on his rocky road

Amplified

Eliminated

Besieged by the Bay

Beset by skyrocketing tax assessments and wary of encroaching development, property owners in San Leon-Bacliff wonder if their "poor man's Riviera" may soon go the way of other waterfront zones along Galveston Bay.

Living the Unexamined Life, Happily

ZZ Top is still bad, but now they're planet-wide. And they ain't thinking too hard about it