Kurt Cobain

Happy Birthday Kurt Cobain: Where Would He Be Today?

Last year on this date in honor of what would have been late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's 45th birthday, I wrote a blog supposing where the grunge icon would have been in 2012. It got a lot of traction and people loved and hated it. Imagining him as a dubstep DJ was really for grins and shock valu ... More >>

Fresh Cream and the Top 10 Power Trios of All Time

Forty-six years ago this week, British blues-rockers Cream unveiled their debut album, Fresh Cream, one of the most deeply influential rock and roll records of all time. The original supergroup, the band was intended to unite the "cream" of the late-'60s British blues scene, featuring Eric Clapton ... More >>

Where Have All Our Heroes Gone?: The Four Saddest Fallen Idols of Our Generation

When we're kids, we'll look anywhere for idols and role models. Most often, we look to pop culture and we find our heroes there by way of idolizing whoever's work we enjoy the most. We copy them in the worst ways. We adopt their style of dress, their opinions on music, their viewpoints on the world ... More >>

10 Iconic Final Concerts Plus The End Of Beatlemania

The Beatles' concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park 46 years ago today was the end of an era for the band. Except for a famously unannounced appearance on top the Apple building two and a half years later, it would be the final live performance that the Fab Four would ever play together. It w ... More >>

9 Rock Stars & Their Favorite Books

Musicians like to read as much as the next person and being a creative lot they tend to draw inspiration from their favorite books. Which pieces of literature have struck a chord in the hearts of our favorite rock stars? 9. Billie Joe Armstrong, Catcher in the Rye: This probably isn't a surprise si ... More >>

10 Things That Have Happened To Rock Stars' Ashes

Recently, I explored some of the strange things that musicians have been buried with. In the course of researching that article, I came across a lot of tales about the cremated remains of rock stars. Some very odd things have occurred with famous ashes, so being the resident morbid person on staff, ... More >>

Kurt Cobain At 45: Where Would He Be In 2012?

​Had he not died in April 1994 by his own hand -- or sinister forces working for Courtney Love (insert maniacal laugh) -- Kurt Cobain would have turned 45 years old today. The rock icon killed himself at the age of 27, leaving behind not only a daughter to fend for herself against the wiles of ... More >>

Before We Cared: 10 Bit Players Who Became Superstars

On this day in 1965, British songstress Petula Clark reached number one on the charts with "Downtown," a pop classic with an unforgettable hook that has become a mainstay of oldies radio, film soundtracks and TV advertisements in the years since. The song even served as a plot point in an episode o ... More >>

R&Grunge: Four Grunge Covers We'd Like To See (& One Actual One)

The '80s and '90s will never die as long as young artists continue to keep their influencers alive in song. When news broke earlier this week that D'Angelo of all people have decided to cover Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun", it marked one of the few times that R&B, a genre which now sadly revolves ar ... More >>

Cover Story: Uncle Charlie Is Houston's Poster Boy

​Uncle Charlie isn't just a Houston legend. Ask anyone in the poster-art scene the world over, and they'll know his work. Charlie Hardwick, the subject of this week's cover story, designs posters advertising some of the biggest names in music - from Wilco to Green Day to The Decemberists. But ... More >>

Meat Puppets

Drain You: The 10 Most Expensive Nirvana Items On eBay

​Today officially marks 20 years, yes two decades, since Nirvana's Nevermind hit stores and started a whole new movement in music, er, well at least brought one further above ground. The past month the music world has been awash in articles and blogs about Nevermind, with the three living arch ... More >>

Frances Bean Cobain's Sexy Shoot Reminds Us, Once Again, That We Are Old

Photos from hedislimane.com unless otherwise indicatedLittle Frances Bean, all grown up, tatted-up, and smoking cigarettes.​There's a line from Knocked Up I think of often these days, when the doorman of a swanky nightclub tells big sister Debbie, "I can't let you in 'cause you're old as fuck. ... More >>

Last Night: Panic! At The Disco At House Of Blues

Photos by Jessica Perry​Panic! At The Disco House of Blues June 15, 2011 Panic! At The Disco lead singer and main archtiect Brendan Urie comes from the ADHD generation, the one that got meds shoved down their throats. The strange byproduct of that generation, late Generation Yers, is that the ... More >>

10 Good Differences Between 2000 and 2010

​Note: This was written by Richard Connelly and Craig Hlavaty We take a look in the print edition this week at a decade most of us would just as soon forget, the period from 2000-2010. But we have to admit not everything was bad. Cell phones, for instance, got a hell of a lot better. So loo ... More >>

Top 10 Last Words By Famous Musicians

​Musicians tend to be a mouthy lot. It takes a certain kind of soul to want and express your own inner world to the outer world at large. So when the time comes for them to shuffle off this mortal coil, they often have some very interesting exit lines... 10. Ludwig Van Beethoven, "Friends a ... More >>

Whoa! 21 Famous Musicians' High-School Yearbook Photos

Willie Nelson, the LAST time he had his hair short.​While Rocks Off was seeking out the best rock star yearbook photos for this blog, we came to a conclusion: Everyone was ugly in their yearbook photos, except Gwen Stefani and Beyonce Knowles. Everyone else looks weird as hell, or nothing like the ... More >>

Fights! Musicians Mixing It Up

Earlier this month, Craig's Hlist witnessed no fewer than four fights during Limp Bizkit's Buzzfest set while covering the day-long festival of titties and beer. Funnily enough, those are the two (three?) things on Earth that are most likely to start fights. You drink too much of one and ... More >>

Five Memorable Artist-Audience Altercations

Chris GrayWilco's Jeff Tweedy in a much better mood, March 2008There may be a very good reason Van Morrison said practically nothing from the stage Saturday night at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Judging from the plentiful comments here, here and over at the Chronicle's review, it would have ... More >>

Aftermath: Houston Radio Friendly Unit Shifters Bid Nirvana's Kurt Cobain Happy 43rd

Photos by Jay Rascoe​This past Saturday would have been Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's 43rd birthday, and to celebrate, a band of some of Houston's best indie and hardcore cats got together to throw down a set of covers at Big Star Bar in the Heights, billing themselves as Danneurysm. Opening wit ... More >>

What About Bob?

Patti Smith's new book makes good on her 20-year-old promise to Robert Mapplethorpe.

The Top Rock-Star Death Conspiracies: Elvis, Michael, Kurt, Tupac and More

It seems that the stranger and weirder our world gets by the day, humanity struggles to find reasons behind all this calamity and tragedy. We try our best to find conclusions to why bad things happen, and when we can't fully fathom that the awful truth is just that, instead try to blame the influen ... More >>

Shonen Knife

Halloween Countdown: How Best To Go For The `90s-Nostalgia Look

Halloween is coming, and that means many, many costuming mistakes will be made by normally sane adults. To help stop this scourge, each Thursday we will be offering tips and analysis of what to avoid, or possibly what to do. Check out past entries here and here. If VH1 has taught us nothing else, it ... More >>

ACL 2009 Day One: Kings Of Leon Rage Against The Fame

Photos by Mark C. Austin​Funny thing happened last night. It was the same thing that happened to U2 in 1987 in the wake of The Joshua Tree, and the same thing that killed Kurt Cobain in 1994. Fame has finally overtaken Kings Of Leon, leaving their core boots 'n flannel crowd in the proverbial pop ... More >>

Six More Mysterious Musical Deaths We'd Like to See Reopened

That's Brian Jones, who is still dead, in the lower right corner.​Original Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool 40 years ago. It was declared "death by misadventure," a cause of death that probably didn't come as a shock to those who had been aware ... More >>

Houston Remembers Kurt Cobain, 15 Years Postmortem

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of a Seattle electrician discovering the dead body of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in a small room above the musician's garage. The man who busted indie and punk out of their respective undergrounds had killed himself days prior, with a shotgun that Earth fr ... More >>

Aftermath: Rascal Flatts at RodeoHouston

Photos by Mark C. AustinAnyone who thought that '80s-style power ballads had long gone away with Kurt Cobain's green sweater and Crystal Pepsi is dead wrong. They are kept alive, nightly, by Columbus, Ohio's Rascal Flatts. Bundled-up couples of all ages walked hand-in-hand, and apple-lot ... More >>

Our top DVD picks scheduled for release this week

Drenched In Blog: Nirvana’s Unplugged on DVD

Drenched In Blog: Hip-Hop Math is Dope

The Melvins

KOBAIN

ITALIAN MARGARITA

Nirvana

Nirvana: In Utero -- A Classic Album Under Review

Nine Black Alps

Tuesday, March 21, Walter's on Washington, 4215 Washington Avenue, 713-864-2727

Can't Touch the MMMBop

A new boxed set excavates the '90s

Drain You

An often-exasperating boxed set offers the final word on Nirvana's legacy

Cobain in Clubland

Recollections of Nirvana's three Houston shows

Number One with a Bullet

Our take on "rare" Nirvana

Love Bane of Cobain

Kurt and Courtney overcomes serious flaws for an intriguing, offbeat documentary

Rotation

Out of Zion

The Future of Rock and Roll

We've seen it in a crystal ball and the pictures aren't pretty

Hole on Halloween

Where's the Beef?

A humble Meat Puppet talks about why his band is so great

Young, Gifted and Dead

Gallows humor at some club, and the attack of the killer accordions

Rotation

Japanese Catnip

Osaka's Shonen Knife cuts a pretty slice of alternative pop

The Pop Moment

Astral Dejection The Shonen Knife/Breeders/Nirvana tour blows through Houston's hall of shame