Grapevine

Beer Nuts: State Alcoholic Beverage Laws Front and Center with Lege This Week

No doubt some of you may want to know the many ways the Texas legislature is going to improve your opportunities this session to drink alcoholic spirits. Toss the kids and forget Medicaid, there's always one or two more ways to tinker with the state's alcoholic beverage code each session. No doubt, ... More >>

Gays In The Boy Scouts: Texas Elected Officials Are Signing On To Say Hell No

A conservative group called "Texas Values" is taking a new approach in the battle to make sure that no Lone Star boy scout ever, ever gets cooties from being near a gay person -- the group is circulating a letter urging the Boy Scouts of America to reject gay scouts, it's getting elected officials t ... More >>

Eastbound and Downtown

The top 10 restaurants in EaDo.

Openings & Closings: Green Grocers Come to Katy and Hooters Enhances Its Seats

Congratulations, Katy -- your grocers have officially gone green. Two new grocery stores are opening this week in Houston's far west suburbs, starting with the Whole Foods Market that's opening this coming Wednesday, January 30. The newest Whole Foods will feature 34,000 square feet of organic good ... More >>

The Dan Marino Restaurants

The 13 restaurants that nearly made our 30 essential Texas restaurants list.

Last Night: Dukes of September Rhythm Revue at The Woodlands

Dukes of September Rhythm Revue Featuring Michael McDonald, Boz Scaggs & Donald Fagen Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion July 17, 2012 This show could have been a punchline waiting to happen. Somebody must have thought "Dukes of September" was a more regal name for this tour than the "Superstars of So ... More >>

Support Staff: 10 Of Pop History's Greatest Backing Bands

Being behind the scenes is what most musicians who don't write songs or sing expect of their lives once they start seriously playing. A career backing someone up can be extremely rewarding, particularly if you are part of a transcendent group of musicians that goes from simply backing up an artist i ... More >>

Duff McKagan Remembers Guns N' Roses' First Tour

Former Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan is now, among other things, a columnist for Rocks Off's sister music blog in Seattle, Reverb. This month Touchstone Books will publish Duff's memoir, It's So Easy: And Other Lies, and he agreed to publish an excerpt on Reverb. In turn, Reverb agreed to share ... More >>

Saturday Night: Boz Scaggs & Michael McDonald At Verizon

Boz Scaggs & Michael McDonald Verizon Wireless Theater October 1, 2011 Now, Classic Rock Bob doesn't want to come off as some sort of out-of-touch curmudgeon ("What do you mean you don't sell cassettes anymore? Hey! You kids get off my lawn!"), but one of the reasons to love classic rock is very si ... More >>

Honey Honey: Banjos Plucked Like Foreplay

It's a well-known fact that band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're working hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers. Trang An​Publicist Renee Harrison has a knack for finding us at our most vulnerable (hint: it's when we've almost reached the answer at the bot ... More >>

Five '60s Soul Stars Jay-Z & Kanye West Should Hit Next

thelocal478.comWelcome back to Billboard, Otis.​Say what you will about Watch the Throne - and people, including several members of Team Rocks Off, have said a lot - but it's all anyone in music seems to be talking about these days. Which makes sense; it's not every day that two megastars (the ... More >>

Idol Beat: Detroit, Shlock City

​In spite of Idol Beat's absence last week (I was undergoing treatment for nose hemorrhoids), Fox's karaoke juggernaut steamrollered on, topping the ratings once again for Wednesday and Thursday night. Last week's casualty, MySpace's Karen Rodriguez, wasn't much of a surprise. I mean, the bili ... More >>

Gladys Knight

Get Your Passport Stamped Along the Texas Wine Trails

​While the trail riders rode into town last Friday, you could be riding out one weekend soon to hit one of Texas's 11 wine trails just as the bluebonnets are beginning to bloom this spring. The fifth most productive wine-producing state in the nation, Texas features more than 200 vineyards wi ... More >>

Can't Forget The Motor City: Our Favorite Motown Jams

​ She Said has always been a fan of Stax Records, the gritty Southern label started by a white brother-sister team in a movie theater in Memphis. Something about Stax' organic sound and integrated musical influences (this is the same city that gave us Sun Records) had always felt so raw and real. ... More >>

Can't Forget The Motor City: Our Favorite Motown Jams, Part 2

​ Rocks Off - sorry, He Said; we're still getting used to this whole identity-shift thing - is sure some of our readers think we do nothing except sit around and listen to the Drive-By Truckers all day. To which we say: Have you heard Bettye LaVette's The Scene of the Crime or Booker T's Potato Ho ... More >>

American Idol: Miley As Mentor

​There were many dark and torturous moments in last night's American Idol. If forced to pick just one, I would have to go with the selection of Miley Cyrus as this week's "mentor" to the singers. The mentor thing, I am gathering, is a regular feature in which a recording artist stops by to lis ... More >>

Idol Beat: Miley As Mentor

​There were many dark and torturous moments in last night's American Idol. If forced to pick just one, I would have to go with the selection of Miley Cyrus as this week's "mentor" to the singers. The mentor thing, I am gathering, is a regular feature in which a recording artist stops by to lis ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: I See Hawks in L.A. Soar on Shoulda Been Gold

I See Hawks in L.A. are perennial roots-rock favorites in Southern California. Their Shoulda Been Gold 2001-2009 compilation on new Collector's Choice Americana imprint American Beat Records drops today and covers some of their most well known work like "Humboldt," one of the best odes to the sweet ... More >>

Idol Beat: Tryouts Burn Atlanta All Over Again

We're all in our happy places... Keep smiling.... The day is almost over...​Going into the second audition episode of American Idol, I worried that it might not be any different from the first one. And while the bottom line is that I was right on a technical level -- it was 90 minutes of good ... More >>

American Idol: Pants On The Ground

We're all in our happy places... Keep smiling.... The day is almost over...​Going into the second audition episode of American Idol, I worried that it might not be any different from the first one. And while the bottom line is that I was right on a technical level -- it was 90 minutes of good ... More >>

Digitalia: Microsoft Songsmith Corrects Artists' Glaring Oversights

Billy Idol, "White Wedding"... sort ofMicrosoft Songsmith, a music-making computer program, has already racked up plenty of Internet accolades based on its eerily terrible commercial, wherein normal, everyday people dealing with normal, everyday problems - such as being tasked to write an ad campa ... More >>

The Judy's Come Back

Just in time for SXSW, the Pearland New Wavers brush off the mothballs

Red Hog Saloon

When the jukebox is an art form

Four Women Walk into a Bar...

A tour of Galveston nightspots

I See Hawks in LA

Sig's Lagoon in-store at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 15, 3710 Main, 713-533-9525; Continental Club at 10 p.m., 3700 Main, 713-529-9666

Playbill

What Was Going On

At long last, the spotlight replaces the Shadows that obscured the Funk Brothers

The Mall That Ate Katy

Big money, big lobbyists, big tax breaks. The Mills Corporation is bringing one of its "megamalls" to Katy, and it's hardly business as usual in the little town on the prairie.

Rotation

Press Picks