Keith Urban

Urban Discontent

A Review of Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music by Dana Jennings

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Jon Byrd Tunes Up Country

Aftermath: Darius Rucker at RodeoHouston

Photos by Craig HlavatyAftermath always wondered what it was like to not be known to the public by your birth name, but by the name of your band. In the beginning, some club owners thought that David Lee Roth's name was Van Halen. I'm sure somewhere along the line Ian Anderson was called Jethr ... More >>

Split Lip Rayfield

Photos by Craig HlavatyAftermath always wondered what it was like to not be known to the public by your birth name, but by the name of your band. In the beginning, some club owners thought that David Lee Roth's name was Van Halen. I'm sure somewhere along the line Ian Anderson was called Jethr ... More >>

Don't Ever Count Britney Out — Just Like These Others.

Back in Black

Could Alternative Country Work at the Rodeo?

Back in Black

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. in Song

In the Name of Love

Zac Brown Band

In the Name of Love

Zac Brown Band

In the Name of Love

Never Go to a Party in Friendswood

Where does your town rank in the Houston-area good-taste stakes?

If It's Not Scottish, It's Crap!

Wack puts this whole Franz Ferdinand thing into context

Our top DVD picks for the week of September 27

Wack puts this whole Franz Ferdinand thing into context

David Allan Coe

Friday, September 2, at Texas Tumbleweeds, 13101 Kuykendahl, 281-872-7829.

The Return of the Houston Kid

Rodney Crowell comes back to town with yet another great album under his belt

Last Night at the Alamo

A Grammy party at a local theater turns into quiz night down at the local pub

She's Gone (Away from) Country

But Tift Merritt's latest release, Tambourine, is up for Best Country Album

Americana Pie

Grab a slice of 2004's best roots music while it's still hot

Americana Pie

Grab a slice of 2004's best roots music while it's still hot

Simon Bruce

Friday, February 28

Aftermath: Fleetwood Mac at Toyota Center

Photos by Jay Lee Every night the band goes onstage, Fleetwood Mac faces a concert onus only a handful of other groups need worry about: Are its songs too iconic? Is the rush of watching Stevie Nicks twirl out "Landslide" or "Rhiannon" live any match for the lifetime (or decades, anyway) of memories ... More >>

Creep Show

O Pioneers!!! turns growing up into unrelenting punk rock.

Idol Beat: The One

Mea culpa: Yi. I typed this entire post - then accidentally closed the Mozilla Firefox window and lost everything. Let this be a lesson to every blogger out there: compose in Word. For real.Photos by Ray Mickshaw/ FoxAmerican Idol winner Kris Allen practices his "Who, me?" showbiz face. Let's not be ... More >>

Hell on Earth

Long Island hardcore quartet This Is Hell thrashes till the sun goes down.

52 Pick-Up

Your guide to the 2009 Houston Press Music Awards showcase

StubHub: Houston Is More "Rockin'" Than Vegas, Less So Than Hartford and Milwaukee

Craig HlavatyThe Phish of the Southwest and king of Houston's summer concert hill: George Strait​Online ticket broker StubHub.com released its annual list of America's Top 20 "Most Rockin' Cities" Friday, with Houston holding steady at No. 17 for the second year in a row. We probably would have be ... More >>

RodeoHouston 2010 Entertainer Lineup Includes Mary J. Blige, Black Eyed Peas, Justin Bieber and Some Country Folks You Can Probably Guess

​Monday morning, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo announced the remainder of its Reliant Stadium entertainment calendar for this year's rodeo, which begins March 2. Debuting on Reliant's revolving stage this year are Jason Aldean (March 6) and Texans the Eli Young Band (March 19). Returning fr ... More >>

Game Time: Texas Tech Just Wasn't That Into You, Mike Leach Era

​In the end, Ruffin McNeill never had a chance.Despite an Alamo Bowl week where he managed to keep his team focused and united amidst the most bizarre circumstances and an Alamo Bowl game where he made some gutsy calls to get Texas Tech past a frisky, albeit depleted Michigan State squad, replacin ... More >>

Most Downloaded "Hope For Haiti" Texan? Although She Killed, Not Beyonce

Between fighting crime, reducing global warming, mending our socks and, you know, everything else Rocks Off does when we're away from the office, we caught a good bit of Friday evening's "Hope for Haiti" telethon. We didn't have much choice, because the George Clooney-organized, celebrity-packed fu ... More >>

Idol Beat: Houston, We Have a Contestant

Houston's Paige Miles made it to the top 24.​Last night's American Idol was rote even by Idol standards, and it's because the hour really should have been folded into Tuesday's episode. Trimming the 46 contestants 24 would have made a solid two-hour ep, but stretched to three it wound up feeli ... More >>

Idol Beat: Big Mike the Guy To Beat?

Last night's American Idol, in which the top eight guys performed, felt a lot like the girls' episode from Tuesday in the way it clearly defined who should stay and who should go, with one singer standing above the rest as the one to beat. Just as Crystal Bowersox is the best and most interesting ... More >>

American Idol: Big Mike the Guy To Beat?

Last night's American Idol, in which the top eight guys performed, felt a lot like the girls' episode from Tuesday in the way it clearly defined who should stay and who should go, with one singer standing above the rest as the one to beat. Just as Crystal Bowersox is the best and most interesting ... More >>

Rocks Off's Rodeo Concert Guide: Keith "That's Not A Knife" Urban

Date: March 16 Name: Keith Urban AKA: "The Betty Ford Center Presents..." Genre: Aussie country Best Known Song(s): "Somebody Like You," "You'll Think of Me," "No Really, I Loved Days of Thunder" Key Demographic: Women looking for concrete proof that they can change their man, people who mistakenl ... More >>

Rocks Off's Rodeo Concert Guide: Larry Harry Barry Terry Gary Allan

Date: March 17 Name: Gary Allan AKA: "The Media Assassin"...sorry, that's Harry Allen Genre: Latter Day country Best Known Song(s): "Man to Man," "Nothing On But the Radio," "If You Don't Know Me By Now" Key Demographic: Dallas Cowboys fans (sorry, that's

Aftermath: Keith Urban, Peculiar Superstar And Musician's Musician

Photos by Dave Rosales​ Keith Urban is a peculiar superstar. Take away the rugged good looks, and you'd still be left with a talented guitarist who, Tuesday night, gave every impression he'd be just as content jamming in the studio as headlining the rodeo before almost 60,000 adoring, possibly hyp ... More >>

KISS, Kid Rock, Janet Jackson Head 2011 Rodeo Lineup

​KISS, Janet Jackson and Kid Rock head the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo's 2011 concert schedule, which the rodeo announced earlier Monday morning. Among the other 13 entertainers rounding out this year's lineup are recent rodeo stalwarts Alan Jackson, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and Lady Antebe ... More >>

Upcoming: Dwight Yoakam, En Vogue, Kylie, OMD, Etc.

​Anders Osbourne: Fri., March 11. Last Concert Cafe. Anthony David: Sun., March 6. Numbers. Axwell: Fri., Feb. 4. Stereo Live. Bobby Long: Sun., April 10. Fitzgerald's. Civil Twlight, Mother/Father: Fri., Feb. 25. Warehouse Live. cEvin Key: Sat., April 16. Numbers. Chrisette Michele: Th ... More >>

Last Night: Keith Urban At RodeoHouston

Photos by Groovehouse​Keith Urban Reliant Stadium March 8, 2011 Aftermath was all set at 8 p.m. to go to the Rodeo and witness Australian country star Keith Urban perform miracles like the ones we'd been hearing about on the Internet for the past few days. We listened to some country love son ... More >>

Atlantis Wake-Up Music So Far: Ranking The Good, The Bad & The Ugly On The Last Shuttle Trip

What's with all the damn Coldplay?​NASA, always on the lookout for good publicity, has made a cottage industry out of the wake-up music it uses to rouse crews orbiting the earth. They recruit artists to record messages that are played after the song, because the first thing you want to hear ... More >>

Intergalactic: A Playlist For The Space Shuttle's Last Flight Home

NASA/Hair BallsNo more cool pictures like this for a long time :(​If you're an astronaut, you recently might have awoken you from a sound night's rest on the space shuttle to the sounds of U2, Beyonce, Electric Light Orchestra, Aaron Copeland, or even some old Coldplay. On those more unlucky d ... More >>

25 Unfortunate '90s 1.5-Hit Wonders

The bearded Mark Oliver Everett and his fabulous eels...​Rocks Off loves the '90s more than we probably should, especially all the dumb little things about the pop music that clogged the radio and MTV. We could probably write a book about the songs that helped shape our formative musical knowl ... More >>

Music from Big Pink

The road goes on forever for Texas Music upstarts Rosehill.

Why the Eff Are Ringtones So Effing Impossible To Get?

So elusive​It's safe to say I'm not the most tech-savvy guy around. A new iPhone coming out means as little to me as a new Keith Urban album. It's not a "get off my lawn" thing, it's just that tech stuff, to me, is too close to math. And I hate math. And if it's not too math-y, it's filled wi ... More >>

Peter Cetera & Richard Marx

So elusive​It's safe to say I'm not the most tech-savvy guy around. A new iPhone coming out means as little to me as a new Keith Urban album. It's not a "get off my lawn" thing, it's just that tech stuff, to me, is too close to math. And I hate math. And if it's not too math-y, it's filled wi ... More >>

Golden Throats: Rock Star Health Care in 2012

​Last June, current radio darling Adele was forced to cancel a large portion of her North American tour, disappointing scores of twenty-something year old easy-listeners in the process. The culprit? Laryngitis -- the age-old bugaboo of vocalists and recording artists. The diagnosis seemed ... More >>