La Grange

Last Night: Better Than Ezra at House of Blues

Better Than Ezra, Papa Grows Funk House of Blues December 20, 2012 About 30 minutes into Better than Ezra's set, vocalist Kevin Griffin, clad in a black button-down and jeans, wiped a bit of sweat from his brow and told the crowd, "This is the second track off our album Deluxe," drawing fans into a ... More >>

A Feisty Texas Radio Road Trip with the Mike Stinson Band

Lonesome Onry and Mean hasn't been out on the road with his son, Mike Stinson Band guitarist Lance Smith, in quite a while. But due to a propitious routing that took us to my father's place in Gatesville for a couple of days, LOM hit the highway with the band last weekend. It is worth noting that L ... More >>

Tyler Stoddard Smith: Whore Stories

ZZ Top: A Double-Sided Take On The New Texicali EP

Craig Hlavaty: What a way to tease your first album of original material in nine years, ZZ Top. You managed to record three songs and one ballad that instantly fit into your canon alongside the rest of your ballbusters without sounding like a classic-rock act reaching for straws. This is no weak, m ... More >>

Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Last Night: ZZ Top At Reliant Stadium

ZZ Top RodeoHouston, Reliant Stadium March 8, 2012 See more photos from Thursday, even some without beards, in our slideshow. I admit, I had almost given up on waiting for ZZ Top to show me something new. Not even something from their new album - which is finally completed but caught up in the mus ... More >>

Rocks Off's Ultra-Hip Rodeo Concert Guide: ZZ Top

Date: March 8 Name: ZZ Top AKA: "ZZ Fucking Top" Genre: Tube snake boogie

37th Annual International Quilt Festival/Houston

New ZZ Top Tribute Disc Frightens, Titillates, And Confuses Us

Photo By Jim Bricker​If you don't know that Rocks Off is a ZZ Top-friendly place, then you have probably only been reading the blog for the past two or three hours. The two men who run this blog love Billy, Frank, and Dusty with the energy from one thousands suns, and their whole catalog runs ... 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 >>

Five Songs The Texas Legislature Will Never Make Official

Any day we end with a picture of the Texas flag is a good day in our book.​A while back, Rocks Off wrote about how, thanks to a combination of personal taste and certain technological twists of fate, our listening options at the office are somewhat limited. Quite limited, really: Basically The Arr ... More >>

Friday Night: ZZ Top At The Woodlands

Photos by Jim Bricker​ZZ Top Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion September 24, 2010 People talk all the time about the depleting ozone layer, melting polar ice caps, melting polar bears, ravaged rain forests, shortages of crude oil, but that can all go to Hell. When ZZ Top is gone from this Eart ... More >>

Last Night: Smashing Pumpkins At Warehouse Live

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Smashing Pumpkins Warehouse Live September 21, 2010 See photos from last night's jam-packed show. Tuesday night's nearly sold-out Smashing Pumpkins set at Warehouse Live should have been a greatest-hits affair, at least in the eyes of most people who haven't been keep ... More >>

This Week In Set Lists: Pixies, Kings Of Leon, Tom Petty, Rush, Etc.

GroovehouseKings of Leon, Toyota Center, October 2009​Rocks Off has been both eagerly anticipating and dreading this week for months now. Anticipating because several of our all-time favorite bands are playing within the span of a few days, as are a couple of our favorite newer bands (though n ... More >>

What Does Katy Perry Taste Like?

​Last week when we gave Kesha a bloggardly shellacking, we compared her and other female pop stars of her ilk to burritos. You may remember we said she was a gas-station burrito and Miley Cyrus was a Big Mac wrap. It was either a stroke of genius or the starved ramblings of a music writer subs ... More >>

What Does Katy Perry Taste Like?

​Last week when we gave Kesha a bloggardly shellacking, we compared her and other female pop stars of her ilk to burritos. You may remember we said she was a gas-station burrito and Miley Cyrus was a Big Mac wrap. It was either a stroke of genius or the starved ramblings of a music writer subs ... More >>

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Enjoy "I Will Always Love You" on key and sans squeaks

Two Houston Artists Named Finalists In John Lennon Songwriting Contest

myspace.com/alexanderleeLee Alexander​What do Fergie, Natasha Bedingfield, singing pop sisters the Veronicas, former Grateful Dead bassist Bob Weir, ex-MTV 120 Minutes VJ Matt Pinfield and legendary Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier have in common? They're all new fans of Houston Americana singer-so ... More >>

Kolache Crawl: Olde Towne

​While the poppyseed kolaches at Olde Towne Kitchen on Memorial near Kirkwood are a little too sweet for my tastes, I love the meaty bacon and cheese klobasnek. The generous filling requires more dough and makes for a larger-size pastry -- one is big enough for breakfast. Oddly, the skinnier s ... More >>

Texas Traveler: Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad

Photo by Brittanie Shey​Since the weather in Texas is finally what the rest of the world calls normal, nothing beats hitting the streets on two wheels. Texas Traveler can hardly explain the way everything looks and smells different when you get out of the cage (see entry number two). And we're ... More >>

Donut Patrol: Best Donuts

​The glazed old-fashioned at Best Donuts on Braeswood at Hillcroft in Meyerland was excellent. It was also much bigger than the sad, stale little raised and glazed donut I sampled there. While I stood at the counter, I could see hot donuts cooling on a rack in the back, but I couldn't convince ... More >>

A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: Houston and "Brazoria"

The final installment of our Five States of Texas project brings it all back home, to the new state of Brazoria, encompassing all of Southeast Texas from the Brazos Valley to Sabine Pass. ​Patron Saint: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. A master of rock and roll, country, Cajun/Creole, blues and jazz, n ... More >>

Food Fight: Battle Chicken Fried Steak

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt A contentious battle if there ever was one... Chicken fried steak (or CFS, for short) is up there in the great pantheon of Texas foods alongside cheese enchiladas, brisket and chili. But just because a food is inherently Texan doesn't mean you can always find i ... More >>

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 for ... More >>

The Best ZZ Top Videos (We Could Find Online)

Not one but two gentlemen with long beards may be sneaking down your chimney today. They will leave memorabilia such as guitar picks and signed drumsticks, and if you've been a good boy or girl all year, may even give you a free guitar lesson. Instead of milk and cookies we're told they prefer Lone ... More >>

Is the Honor System Dead?

Photos by Robb WalshDriving back from vacation, I noticed a honey stand along the highway in the town of Shirley, Arkansas with a sign that said "Self-Service." I pulled over and took a look. There was sorghum, local honey, bee pollen, beeswax and honey candy for sale. You took whatever you wanted a ... More >>

Our Favorite ZZ Top Covers: QOTSA, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Tina Turner and... Rapeman?

[Note: Now with added Ministry.] Counting down to Friday's ZZ Top/Aerosmith show in The Woodlands is starting to feel like the week Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played there last year: a steady build of anticipation and antsiness, until Friday we're flat-out squirming to get out of the office. ... More >>

Aftermath: SXSW

Aftermath: ZZ Top at RodeoHouston

Mark. C. Austin/ Click here for a slideshowAftermath can not begin to tell you how much of a beacon ZZ Top was for him over the past few days. The lil' ol' band from Texas' RodeoHouston finale may not have had anything to do with SXSW per se, but knowing the first thing he woul ... More >>

Aftermath: Alan Jackson at RodeoHouston

Photos by Mark C. Austin/ Click here for a slideshowAlan Jackson is like the world's most comfortable pair of boots. Over the past 20 years, the Georgia-born singer and songwriter has amassed an enormous catalog of songs loaded with self-deprecating modesty, gentle tongue-in-cheek humor and u ... More >>

La Grange Hotel Liked Ike, AG Says

La Grange has been heretofore known mostly as the home of the fabled "Chicken Ranch" immortalized by ZZ Top and The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. Now it can be known as the home of The Most Heartless, Coldest Bastard of a Motel In Texas (Allegedly). Texas AG Greg Abbott charged the Cottonwo ... More >>

Tonight: Maroon 5 and Counting Crows, Little Brother Project, Jack Ingram and Shooter Jennings, Ne Plus Ultra and More

Aftermath: Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

ZZ Top Signs to Rick Rubin's American Recordings

A Fall from Glory for Hruska’s Grocery & Bakery?

Marty Stuart's American Odyssey Does Houston

Drenched in Blog: Lily Allen Plus One

Houston's Very Best Songs Ever

...otherwise known as the H-Town 20

Fat Beats

The real reason Houston stays near the top of the chunkiest-city charts

Rotation

Handsome Boy Modeling School, Molotov and Rufus Wainwright

Beer Bond

Gourmet meets good ol' boy

Can I Get a Witnes?

DJ Witnes hosts a new hip-hop show on KPFT

First and Ten (Months to Go)

Block party kicks off Super Bowl countdown

Various Artists

Sharp Dressed Men: A Tribute to ZZ Top (RCA)

World Class?

Houston can't join the ranks of other cities until it has an anthem of its own

Got Legs

The perpetually self-doubting Todd Lewis stands tall on the Toadies' long-overdue second album

Eenie, Meenie, Minie...

With a menu boasting so many treats, decision-making can be difficult at Leibman's

Amplified

All People Considered

News of the Weird

Night & Day

April 16 - 22, 1998