There's an interesting supplement in the new issue of Texas Monthly, the one with all-but-declared gubernatorial candidate Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison on the cover. It's a 32-page mini-mag called Texas Bound for Music, and appears to be TM's attempt at... well, it's not really clear exactly what the magazine is trying to accomplish here.
It's always irked Rocks Off that for a publication that professes to love Texas so much, and how central music is to the state's cultural identity, the
Photos by Craig HlavatyEven while playing dissonant improvised bass in a trio consisting of himself, a shit-hot mandolin player, and a jazz drummer, Greg Ginn still sounds like Greg Ginn.
After almost a decade as the captain of hardcore mavericks Black Flag, Ginn embarked on a career as an improvised musician. During his tenure with legendary band, singer Henry Rollins complained that because of Ginn's erratic musical departures on every new release, fans never knew what to expect and thu
[Note: This week Rocks Off is looking at the musical heritage, highs and lows, for each of the five possible states that might result should Texas secede from the U.S. like Gov. Rick Perry wants it to. Yesterday we began with the Panhandle/West Texas "Palo Duro" territory; today it's northeastern quadrant "Trinity."]
View Five States of Texas in a larger map
Trinity
Capital: Dallas
Patron Saint: Blind Lemon Jefferson
Lesser Icons: T-Bone Walker, Alex Moore, Old 97's, Pantera, The D.O.C., Ray
Although Rocks Off had every intention of rambling about something different this week, we thought it would be a lost opportunity to not examine an issue that seems to have been revealed by readers' responses last week. Although many fantastic points were made, we were fascinated to detect that woven amongst the thoughtful insights was an ambivalence about how we as a community view the impact technology has had on our relationship with music.
This topic is pretty broad, so we're going to ha
Kicking the bucket at the age of 40 is bad enough, especially when, to this day, nobody's really sure how you died (everything from syphillis to rabies to political "cooping" has been thrown out there as a possible cause). But getting buried in an unmarked grave after a three minute "service" is an indignity usually reserved for pet rabbits that escape from their hutch and die under the sofa. That's why Rocks Off is happy to report that this weekend, 160 years after the fact, Edgar Allan Poe
