Patti Smith

Versklaven: "A Cornered Animal That Lunges at Its Assailant"

It's a well-known fact that most band names are gobbledygook, but here at the Houston Press we're doing our best to find meaning in the oddest monikers. In general I try to avoid delving into the message in metal band's names as it always leads some place weird and horrifying. I still twitch when s ... More >>

Last Night: Lady Antebellum at Reliant Stadium

Lady Antebellum Reliant Stadium March 6, 2013 No doubt other critics do all sorts of mental gymnastics to rationalize listening to Lady Antebellum. This one decided the relentlessly sunny Nashville trio must function as some sort of control group, a way for folks like us to say of other pop-country ... More >>

Jazz Fest Scores With Willie, John Mayer, Frank Ocean, Fleetwood Mac, Patti Smith, etc.

Well, I never thought that I would have John Mayer and Patti Smith together in the same headline with Willie Nelson and Frank Ocean, but that's why I kinda love New Orleans Jazz Fest 2013, whose lineup was released earlier this morning. Rewind: A Texican in New Orleans: Lessons Learned from Jazz F ... More >>

It Came From the Bowery: Punk Magazine Returns

The Best of Punk Magazine Edited by John Holstrom It Books. 372 pp., $30. While the thought of a hardcover, slick-papered, coffee-table book anthologizing the decidedly low-rent, ragtag Punk magazine might seem the antithesis of punk, even a curmudgeon like Johnny Rotten would have to spit a gob in ... More >>

The 30 Best Texas Albums

Ranking the 30 best Texas albums of the past 30 years seemed like an impossible task. We did it anyway.

Dear Fox Sports Houston: Your Astros Broadcast Suck

Dear Fox Sports Houston: I realize this is your last season with the cable rights to the Houston Astros. I realize that at this time next year you'll probably be losing cable systems while justifying that Little League game you're putting on in primetime. I also realize that you're tied into Fox S ... More >>

Are SNL's Divisive Musical Guests Making It Relevant Again??

Even as sketch comedy tastes have changed, and a segment of the population has sadly written it off as an unfunny relic, NBC's Saturday Night Live is still pulling in cutting-edge, marquee musical guests each week, in the process creating national stars or pariahs. Or sometimes both. Case in point ... More >>

Happy Birthday, Jim Morrison: Top 5 Songs About the Lizard King

​We've always felt a deep connection with Jim Morrison, so much so that we'd rather read No One Here gets Out Alive than listen to any one Doors song. The poet and legendary front man left us far too soon, and in his wake is a wealth of stories and music that continues to echo down and find an ... More >>

Punk Rock's 10 Most Potent Women

David EnsmingerExene Cervenka at Cactus Music​Women are the resilient backbone of punk, providing creative DNA for the movement since the "zero hour," including Houston's own MyDolls and members of AK-47 and Bevatron, among others. Up 'n' comers like Vivian Pikkles keep the faith as Zipperneck ... 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 >>

Top Five Songs About Horses

​Rocks Off's regular readers presumably know by now that we love few things more than offbeat anniversaries, and recently we came across one of the oddest yet. Thirty-two years ago Monday, on Feb. 28, 1979, the "actor" who played the original Mr. Ed in the 1960s TV show passed away. Yes, we're ... More >>

Slutwave: Pop Phenomenon Or Feminist Scourge?

"Every generation needs a new revolution." - Thomas Jefferson Marc BrubakerKe(Dollar Sign)ha at House of Blues, July 2010​As one of the few women on the Rocks Off writing team, we were fervently proud to take an introspective stab at the new, curiously named micro-genre that 2010 bestowed upo ... More >>

Top 10 Rock Tell-All Autobiographies

​Craig's Hlist just cracked into his copy of Life, by Keith Richards. It's the first time that the Rolling Stones guitarist and god among men has taken time to document his rock and roll journey for anyone. Sure there have been Stones oral histories from the band, but this is Richards' chance ... More >>

Is Ex-Velvet Moe Tucker A Tea Partier Or Not?

​The Velvet Underground has certainly had an interesting second act. After Andy Warhol's favorite NYC "party" band soundtracked countless narcotic jags and laid the foundation for everything from punk rock to shoegaze, its members went on to very different lives: Lou Reed to street-life classi ... More >>

Top Eight Weirdest Saturday Night Live Musical Moments

​This past Saturday was Steve Martin's birthday and, if you're old enough, you may remember back to a time when the snow-capped comedian/actor/musician was more than just a comedy archaeologist, exhuming the corpses of classic comic franchises and defiling the shit out of them. No, he actually ... More >>

6 Ideas: How to Dress Like A Rock Star

​This Saturday we'll be Partying Like A Rock Star with Allen Hill and DJ Psychedlic Sex Panther... and maybe Tina Turner, Pink, Zombie Michael Jackson, and probably a few Elvii... or at least some people in attire inspired by famous singers. The event at House of Dereon is a fundraiser benefit ... More >>

Van Morrison

Aftermath: Patti Smith, Not Quite As Mythic As Her Music, At U of H

Eric Hester/ photos courtesy of Voices Breaking Boundaries​Have you ever gone to see an artist, but then wished you hadn't? Not because of a bad performance, but just because the real-life person didn't fit so neatly into the tiny box you'd made for them in your brain? That's how Aftermath felt ab ... More >>

Drink With Mike Stinson, Help Terrible Eagle, Learn How Weed Won The West, Buy Summerfest Tix At Urban Outfitters

MCM's boss came across the above video of Mike Stinson's "I've Got No One to Drink With Anymore," from the local honky-tonk transplant's brand-new (and excellent) album The Jukebox In Your Heart, while he was waiting for her to turn in this article. As a staunch proponent of Coors Light, he strongl ... More >>

Patti Smith On KPFT At Noon; At UH Tonight

​The iconic photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of her first album, Horses (1976), was taken by her longtime friend and sometime lover Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer who died in 1989 from AIDS-related complications. Five years later, Smith's husband, MC5 co-founder Fred "So ... More >>

Magnolia City Mixtape: All The Scoop In One Fell Swoop... ACL Starts Us Off

Mark C. AustinWe sure hope this doesn't happen two years in a row at ACL.​ Austin City Limits will be October 8-10 this year, and MCM expects the line-up to be released in the next month or so. You can sign up for the e-list to get first notice of who's playing. If your profile is updated by today ... More >>

What About Bob?

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

Looking for Trouble

Jemina Pearl breaks free of Be Your Own Pet on Break It Up.

Live with Me

The best Houston concerts of 2009: U2, George Strait, Kid Cudi, Jandek, Peaches and even T-Pain.

Westheimer Block Party Listology: The Watermarks (Minus One) Choose Their Favorite Duets

All this week, Rocks Off is previewing Saturday and Sunday's Westheimer Block Party by asking WBP performers to fill out a list from Lisa Nola's Music Listography book we're so fond of. Next up, four-fifths of local electro-tinged post-punks the Watermarks choose their favorite duets. Jessica Brand ... More >>

On the List: Jonx Drummer Danny Mee's 11 Favorite Female Vocalists

​The other day, Houston Press Night & Day editor Olivia Flores Alvarez - whom we're so glad is feeling better and back at work again - handed Rocks Off Lisa Nola's new book called Music Listography: Your Life In (Play)Lists, and the wheels started turning like "Proud Mary." Because we're not q ... More >>

No Exit

Blondie casts a wide net indeed on the band's Last.fm station.

Five Ways to Improve 107.5 the Eagle

Paging the Purple One... the Eagle Needs You!For Houston music commentators, picking on the sorry state of the city's commercial airwaves is even more fun than sportswriters must have making fun of the Astros. But on the rare occasion a new format does come along - even if it's hardly "new" - it sti ... More >>

10 Ways To Solve the Impending Astros Attendance Crisis

Photo by Peter Rieke There's a new study out there claiming that there is going to be a big drop in attendance for major league baseball this season. And as we've seen from another such report, our own Houston Astros are expected to have one of the major's biggest attendance drops. So Drayton McLa ... More >>

10 Ways To Solve the Impending Astros Attendance Crisis

Photo by Peter Rieke There's a new study out there claiming that there is going to be a big drop in attendance for major league baseball this season. And as we've seen from another such report, our own Houston Astros are expected to have one of the major's biggest attendance drops. So Drayton McLa ... More >>

Get Lit: The Pitchfork 500

Aftermath: Recession Thursday at Numbers, with Blackie, The Mathletes, The Goods, Giant Princess, Reverse X Rays and Generation Landslide at Numbers

Steve Earle and Allison Moorer

SXSW: Fourteen Bands in Eight Hours

Various Artists

Healing Force: The Songs of Albert Ayler

Honor Bound

A fictional look at the future of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Duke Spirit

Saturday, May 27, at Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas, 713-230-1600

Exene Cervenka & the Original Sinners

Friday, April 7, at the Meridian, 1503 Chartres, 713-629-3700

Now Dirtier than Ever

Morrissey

Live at Earl's Court

Roadie Royalty

Houstonian author and Webmaster Karl Kuenning is a prince among road dogs

Special Delivery

Punk rock queen Patti Smith finally gets some respect from the art world

Patti Smith

Land (1975-2002) (Arista)

Best Bookstore for Poetry

Bookstop

Rotation

Static

Surrealpolitik

Stages' Tango dances around a serious subtext

Sound Check

Live Shots

Rotation