Subject: Guitar Hero

• Web Extra: Seven Magnificent Moments in Guitar Hero / Rock Band

  January 31, 2008

• Sole of Houston: Richmond Avenue, Houston’s Street of Dreamz

  May 1, 2008

• What Makes “Free Bird” So Damn Good?

  July 18, 2008

• Tonight: Journey, Heart and Cheap Trick at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

  July 26, 2008

• My First Guitar Hero Lesson

  August 27, 2008

• Artist of the Week, San Antonio Edition: Audiotap (and Mathew Barker)

  September 17, 2008

• Turning The Screw: Jay'Ton, Bushwick, Nas, Akon, Dre, Diddy, DJ Hero, Grandmaster Flash, The Kanye, T.I., Three 6 Mafia, Bubba Sparxxx, and more

  Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Thanks, homies. Single of the Week: "We Here," Jay'Ton feat. Trae and Yung Quis Wire To Wire: Nas is not a fan of Canada. Akon, who has been quite the spokesman as of late, speaks out about Anti-Gun Violence. I wonder why he never spoke out about throwing kids off stages. Oh, yeah, that's right, probably because of this.

  June 1, 2009

• Welcome Back to Work...

  So, the boss made you come in the day after Thanksgiving, huh? Yeah, and we're guessing there isn't a whole lot to do seeing as how everyone else's boss gave them the day off. (Luckily for us, the news never rests! ... or something.) Well, nod off not, Internet friends. Hair Balls is here with links to Web sites to help pass (read: waste) time until your boss says "Hey, since you came in the day after Thanksgiving, why don't you leave an hour early." Really, a whole hour? You shouldn't have. (

  November 28, 2008

• Five ( 3) Spot: Christmas With Weezer!

  Welcome back to Five Spot. Every week, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and list five reasons why it's either brilliant or dumb-assed. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Because God loves us: Weezer, one of our all-time favorite bands, has recorded six Christmas covers, the greatest musical holiday activity of all, to be used in an iPhone Guitar Hero-like video game, a game we totally own at. They've done this before ("Christmas Celebration," "Christmas Song") but doing more is c

  December 5, 2008

• Local Rotation: Gold Sounds' Gold Sounds EP

  The Gold Sounds' self-titled, debut EP is not an exercise in showoffery. There's no mind-bending guitar solos, no time signatures questioning standard musical notation and no quirky elements that smack of an effort to deny obvious influences. It's just four solid hard-rock tunes. True, it's easier to escape flaws when you're not trying for a higher degree of difficulty. And The Gold Sounds' tunes certainly wouldn't prove difficult in a Guitar Hero format - even on expert setting. But perhaps

  December 12, 2008

• Aftermath: AC/DC at Toyota Center

    Photos by Daniel Kramer In this season of hard times, there could have been no better band to close out Houston's banner concert year than original Aussie working-class heroes AC/DC, who still look the part to a T. And Aftermath can't think of a better way to begin his review of last night's sold-out Toyota Center stomping than simply printing the set list, so here goes: Rock and Roll Train/ Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be/ Back in Black/ Big Jack/ Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap/ Thunderst

  December 15, 2008

• Artist of the Week: Lamb to the Slaughter

  Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. We headed out to the Pitt, Pasadena's finest (and only) all-ages metal house recently, totally expecting to unleash a storm of snarky quips aimed at the baby-metallers. Somewhat to our dismay, though, the one full show we go

  December 24, 2008

• Happy Epiphany, Everybody

  "We Three Kings," a la Guitar Hero Time to take down that tree, y'all: Today is Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, the official end of the Christmas season. (It actually ended at midnight, so exhale... you made it.) Epiphany commemorates the arrival of the three wise men - or, in later translations of the Bible, the "three wiseguys" - to Bethlehem to pay homage to the manger-bound Christ child. Epiphany also celebrates other events in Jesus' adolecence, chiefly his baptism in the Jordan River by cousi

  January 6, 2009

• Rotation

  April 16, 1998

• Aftermath: Slipknot and Coheed and Cambria at Verizon Wireless Theater

  Photos by Mark C. AustinCorey Taylor never told his fans that everything would be OK. Not on an album, not in the press and most definitely not at a live show. The lead singer of Slipknot, the Iowa noise-metal band that set up shop at Verizon Wireless Theater Wednesday and tonight, instead always seemed to lend a bruised and bloodied hand out into the sea of his fans as a sign of solidarity. Saying, as had been so brutally intimated in so many of his band's songs, the world maybe total shi

  February 26, 2009

• Idol Beat: The Top 11

  Photo by Ray Mickshaw / FOXPictured: Matt Giraud, exquisite gumline Traditionally, I've concluded the first Idol Beat of any given week with predictions as to who the American Idol judges or viewing public will send home the next night. This week I'm upending that, and predicting that no one will go home. That's right: all eleven of the remaining finalists are safe as houses. "But how is that even possible," you ask, you cry, you pound the sides of your PC monitor. Well, the judges have that

  March 18, 2009

• ZZ Top, Aerosmith Hit Woodlands July 17

  Mark C. AustinMonday morning, word came down from Aerosmith and ZZ Top's respective camps, via Billboard, that the two boogie-rocking bands are teaming up for a massive world tour. After some digging, Rocks Off found out the tour makes its Houston-area stop Friday, July 17, at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. It won't be officially announced until next week (probably), but we have our ways. The tour, sponsored (or "presented") by Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, takes both bands across Europe

  April 14, 2009

• THE USUAL'S THE USUAL

  March 5, 2009

• Paleontology Field Trip

  February 5, 2009

• Moments the Grammy Awards Would Rather Forget

  February 5, 2009

• Crash Into Me: Predicting the Economy's Impact on the Music Biz

  April 16, 2009

• The Year in Albums

  December 25, 2008

• Chinese Democracy's Liner Notes Upstage Axl Rose's Would-Be Magnum opus

  Amuse Your Delusion

  December 4, 2008

• Metallica's Death Magnetic

  Fade to Plastic via Guitar Hero III

  November 13, 2008

• My Guitar Hero Gently Weeps

  They're not yelling "Bruce" this time. They're booing

  November 6, 2008

• Who Stole the Roll?

  August 28, 2008

• Video Gaming at the Games? Not This Year, Pal

  Olympic Scold

  August 7, 2008

• Hero We Go Again with Guitar Hero: World Tour

  Fake-instrument overload offers plenty to fret about

  June 12, 2008

• Graveyard BBQ

  Winners of the 2005 “Be a Guitar Hero” contest, this four-piece dirtcore band features twang, sleaze and scantily clad dancers

  May 29, 2008

• Paging Freaks: Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2008

  April 3, 2008

• What's the Problem Houston?

  The city's skuzzy alt-rock scene thinks it is dying

  March 13, 2008

• Gamers Become Stars with Rock Band or Guitar Hero

  January 31, 2008

• Rock Band

  It's never been easier to start your own (fake) band

  December 13, 2007

• The Blank Tapes

  Great Southern rock straight outta San Francisco�no, seriously

  November 29, 2007

• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

  You wanted the best — you got the best: Guitar Hero III

  November 15, 2007

• Encore Performance

  Don't fret. Guitar Hero II kills the opening act

  November 23, 2006

• Puddle of Fun

  LocoRoco is the perfect one-night stand.

  September 21, 2006

• Beat Down

  This DJ simulator is nothing to rave about

  May 11, 2006

• For Those About to Rock

  Guitar Hero cranks rhythm-gaming up to 11

  November 24, 2005

• Pasadena Strawberry Festival

  May 14, 2009

• Hit Hermann

  May 21, 2009

• Talking With Air Guitar Master Bjorn Turoque

  For the past six years, Dan Crane, aka "Bjorn Turoque" has been the preeminent ambassador for the world of air guitar. He retired from competition in the Air Guitar World Championships in 2005 and made a lateral move to being the touring roadshow nightly MC - or the "Master of Air-emonies," as he calls himself. The world of competitive air guitar actually goes back to the early '80s in Sweden, when a few metal fans began performing in front of folks, and the phenomenon soon reached the States in

  June 12, 2009

• 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 forgotten that eventually it all circles back around to the stage. And never been unable to deliver when it does. Formed half a continent but not many years apart, ZZ and Aerosmith found common ground e

  July 20, 2009

• The Return of Mystical Houston Rocker Tyagaraja

  In 2006, Million Year Dance won the award for Best New Band in our annual Houston Press Music Awards, and followed the next year by winning Album Of The Year for Liberation. It seemed that the band and their enigmatic leader Tyagaraja (a.k.a. Jonathan Welch) would be Houston's next hope for national notoriety. MYD was awarded a Guitar Hero package for winning the latter award, standing in stark incongruence with the band's space-y blues elevated by Tyagaraja's soaring and reedy Thom Yorke-style

  July 22, 2009

• Men of Steel

  July 23, 2009

• HPMA Aftermath: MELOVINE, the Snake Charmers, LL Cooper, Peekaboo Theory and Buxton

  Mark C. AustinThe Snake Charmers take a breather after bluesing up Martell's.​ It was hot as hell when the Houston Press music staff met up at the Flying Saucer ordering different shades of exotic beers and several different kinds of cheese. Bands were divided up between writers, and pretty much everyone got to go see the Tontons but us. Aftermath has never seen metal in the afternoon before, so it was nice to have MELOVINE start the evening off with a first. After being sorely disappointed a

  July 27, 2009

• Turning the Screw: Surreall, Asher & Cudi, Eminem vs. Mariah, Slum Village, Young Jeezy, Ghostface, Nas, DJ Hero, Guerilla Maab, etc.

  Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Thanks, homies. Single of the Week: "#1 Dame in the Game," Surreall Wire To Wire Kid Cudi continues his rapid ascension to stardom, scores gig acting on an HBO sitcom. Saw him in concert this weekend. That's a bad boy fa sure. And Bun B cosigned Asher's performance, which makes Asher good in our book. And the award for the best example o

  August 3, 2009

• Crüefest

  August 6, 2009

• Random Notes from ACL: The Grass Is Always Greener...

  Chris GrayIt's a little more crowded than this at Zilker now, but it was fun while it lasted.​ The grass is especially sweet at this year's ACL festival. The new turf at Zilker Park is nice too.Now we are in the media tent, surrounded by friends and family: Rocks Off's Austin Chronicle mentor (and Lucinda Williams wedding date) Margaret Moser is here, Trail of Dead and Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights and Ron Byrd from Prescott Curlywolf, our favorite musical doctor, just stopped by. D

  October 2, 2009

• Master P

  Fabio​Plinio Sandalio is the pastry chef at Textile Restaurant on 22nd in the Heights. He invited me into his kitchen for a short interview about all things Plinio. Eating Our Words: What would you say your signature dessert is that screams "Plinio Sandalio made this"? Plinio Sandalio: I don't know if this is the right answer, but any dessert with a meat product. EOW: You are trained in sweet as well as savory (obviously). How did you get so dynamic in your recipes? PS: No one e

  October 19, 2009