John Lee Hooker

True Blood: John Lee Hooker and the Home-School Blues

Alan Ball was known for his masterful use of music in Six Feet Under. He's lost none of his touch when it comes to his current HBO series, True Blood -- which happens to be set in the Louisiana swamps, not terribly far from Houston. We're down to the last two episodes of True Blood this season. Wit ... More >>

''One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer — Guitar Art, No Strings Attached''

Promised Land

SXSW 2012, from Bruce Springsteen to Buxton.

The Best of SXSW Music: Thursday 3/15/2012

If you're familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in the random acts of shit on Earth, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day at SXSW. To break down the bright, scintillating chaos, Village Voice Media's roving music e ... More >>

Top 5 Songs About Whiskey

Whether it's rye or bourbon, straight or blended, Irish, Scotch or Canadian, rock, country or classical, whiskey and warblers go way back. Even Stravinsky was quoted as saying "My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey." In whiskey-related weird news ... More >>

Zoo Station: A Noah's Ark Of 75 Animal Songs

And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee ... More >>

Buddy Guy

13 Lucky Songs For Friday The 13th

​Happy Friday the 13th, everyone. Unlike most Fridays, this one has gone pretty smoothly here at Rocks Off HQ, which means we must be in for a hellacious Monday. But hey, that's next week. Our luck may be holding up - for now - but we couldn't let the occasion go by unremarked (plus a couple ... More >>

Detroit Leanin': Who Is The Best Motor City Artist Ever?

detroitrockcity.altervista.org​Some places breed music. Due to sheer size, any big city will produce its fair share of talented musicians, and some - Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago - seem to have music in the water supply. But none, arguably, more than Detroit: John Lee Hooker, the Motown dias ... More >>

Five Essential Boogie-Rock Albums

​Boogie-rock has probably been derided by critics more times than people have torched a doob while listening to BTO. Intellectual types tend to write it off as guys with feathered bangs, mustaches and shirts open to their navel playing songs about cars, girls and partying (and partying in cars ... More >>

You Talkin' to Me? Seven Musical Moments in Martin Scorsese Films

​We scoured the Internet, like we do for at least nine hours a day, for an excuse to embed Scorsese clips into one, organized blog post. Lucky for us, we found that timeliness was applicable: the 35th anniversary edition of Taxi Driver is out on Blu-Ray! We'll probably stick to our used copy t ... More >>

Jack Williams

Picnic, Phoenicia-Style

​Every trip I take to Phoenicia (12141 Westheimer) for basic grocery shopping somehow culminates in a giant picnic at my house afterwards, owing to the bounty of ready-to-eat food in Phoenicia's deli section (which is getting ready to move out of the store itself and into its own, adjoining sp ... More >>

No, We Didn't Realize There Were This Many Songs About Groundhog Day, Either

​Today is Groundhog Day, and it's easy to forget - after listening to your co-workers droning "Phil? Phil Connors!?" all day - the reason for this special season. After all, isn't this day supposed to be about the groundhogs? Trouble is, there's not a lot of musical material out there about Marmo ... More >>

Hit the Road, Jack: 10 More Notable Musical Deaths From the Past Decade

​ Looking back, this past decade wasn't too kind to rock and roll as a whole. We lost plenty of people who weren't exactly disgustingly huge as Michael Jackson or as monolithic as Johnny Cash. This decade took its share of people who were massively influential and iconic, but not on the grand worl ... More >>

Ghosts of Washington Avenue

Noise goes whistling through the scenester artery's music venue graveyard.

Hello, Houston!

Noise breaks down the months of live music ahead

For April 15: Five Movies About Taxes

April 15 each year brings with it the journalistic challenge of covering yet another "last-rush filers" story, or some clever way to say that it's the deadline for getting your return in. (We still wonder if anyone's ever been prosecuted because their return had an April 16 postmark.)The subject of ... More >>

Get Lit: Delta Blues by Ted Gioia

Raw and untamed in its sound, performed by larger-than-life characters who might have popped out of fiction, and shrouded in a (often self-mythologizing) mystery, it's no wonder that the Delta blues attract such interest and scholarship, and is lauded as the most "true" distillation of the genre ... More >>

"The Sounds I See: Photographs of Musicians"

This MFAH exhibit features live shots of popular music's greatest contributors

Juneteenth Revisited

Two arts organizations attempt a new spin on an old event

Boogie Chillun

Blues Clues at The Big Easy Social and Pleasure Club

Alan Haynes

Even in Austin, this blues guitarist stands out

Get Lit: Rock & Roll Heaven, by Robert Dimery and Bruno MacDonald

The Houston 100: From Charles Brown to Sippie Wallace

Grady

Grady performs Saturday, July 28, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9899. Studio Magick Black is also on the bill.

Taking Liberty's at Fitzgerald’s

James "Blood" Ulmer

Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions

The Tommy Castro Band

Painkiller

Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt appears Saturday, October 7, at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins Dr., The Woodlands. Call 281-363-3300 for more info.

Akiyama and the Ax

Burnside Exploration

The Record

Hidden Treasures

Introducing some of the best discs you've never heard

Hurricane Mixtape

Music to drown by

Canned Heat, with Diunna Greenleaf & Blue Mercy and the Daddylongnecks

Saturday, April 9, at the Hawg Stop, 11335 Sheldon, 281-456-7867

Money Waters

The Porch (Soullsys Music/Noir Sound)

What Was Going On

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

Racket

"The Big E" isn't your typical DJ

Best Jukebox

Warren's Inn

Rotation

Rotation

Digging the Delta

Rotation

Happy Trails

A cowboy's name hasn't kept bluesman Roy Rogers off his chosen range

Critic's Choice

Good Guy

Rotation

Goodbye to Lanny Steele

New Blues

Alternative rock robs pop's cradle