Paul McCartney

Back In the U.S.S.R.: The Obsolete Beatles

The next time someone who's too "cool" to "get" the Beatles asks what makes them so important, ask that person what's so great about his or her nose. First, if you're lucky, you'll be treated to an entertaining look of befuddlement. Then, when you're done being amused by that, avoid launching into a ... More >>

Flashback: 1983

What buying concert tickets here was like 30 years ago.

The 10 Greatest Rock Bassists in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Geddy Lee Edition

I could sit here and write paragraphs about my appreciation of Geddy Lee. He was the first true influence I had as a bass player when I was in high school. For years after, I admired not just his talent as a musician, but his ability to improve and grow. He is also underrated for how great a "rock" ... More >>

10 Fun Facts Only Floyd Freaks Know About Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd's rock and roll masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon, turned 40 years old this weekend. If you don't already own a copy or three, consider checking it out. It's the best album by one of history's best bands, and you can find as easily in any record store in Phuket as you can in Philadel ... More >>

Jailhouse Rock: When Artists Face Hard Time

Nothing earns an musician instant street cred quite like a night or two in the pokey. It's basically a rite of passage -- a guarantee that if you sign up for the public eye, you will, indeed, screw it up at least once in order to delight us with your antics. From the likes of good ol' boys like Mer ... More >>

Top 5 Songs That Sample Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today we all have a nice long weekend thanks to the birthday of one Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many people just see it as a day off, others just don't seem to understand why we celebrate it. But Dr. King was a civil rights pioneer who still inspires many to this day. He inspires artists so mu ... More >>

Fitz Navidad's Bands Lay Out Their Favorite Christmas Tunes

Thursday night, a heavenly host of Houston's brightest and best musicians will spend a night playing Christmas music to celebrate the holiday season at Fitzgerald's. We decided to catch up with some of the musicians and find out what their favorite Christmas songs are, and why? Austin Smith (A Sea ... More >>

McCartney In Houston Update: 99 Percenters, Rail It Don't Park It

I just came back from snooping around the Minute Maid Park grounds to see what was shaking at the ballpark before tonight's Paul McCartney gig. I even got to sneak in a trip to the Astros team store. All the Altuve jerseys you can handle! There were already a few diehards milling around with signs ... More >>

What Was Your Favorite Concert at The Summit?

It must be music-venue day today. Rocks Off would like to thank Jon Harvey of Houston (@oompahead) for alerting us via Twitter to the fact that on this day in 1975, when I was a few weeks away from turning one year old, the sports and entertainment arena then known as the Summit opened in Greenway P ... More >>

The 5 Worst Cover Albums of All Time

I think when they're just starting out, every musician dreams of making a cover album at some point down the road. We all have our favorite songs that we wish we had written and we all fantasize about singing and playing them ourselves. It's why karaoke bars exist. Of course, everyone thinks they w ... More >>

The Rocks Off 100: Cliff Dotterer of Black Dog Records

Who? Cliff Dotterer is the co-owner and operating manager of Black Dog Records, which just moved to its new Bellaire location last week. The shop's inventory of records and collectibles includes a who's who of rock legends and current artists, as well as rarities, imports, T-shirts, record player ne ... More >>

Sir Paul McCartney, Rihanna Houston Bound

Rewind: Dear Paul McCartney: Please Come Play Houston Two pretty big concert announcements this Friday morning. First, Rihanna, last seen missing most of her hair at Thursday night's VMAs, is bringing her just-announced Rihanna Diamonds World Tour to Toyota Center April 15, according to Live Nati ... More >>

Death Be Not, Uh... True: The 8 Most Asinine Musician Death Hoaxes

Why do people perpetrate death hoaxes? Why would someone deliberately set out to spread rumors of a famous person's demise that they know simply aren't true? Is it some kind of Munchausen-By-Proxy thing, where they hope to absorb some of the residual sympathy and outpouring of goodwill? Is it a mad ... More >>

Who's Got the Power?: The Musicians On Forbes's Most Powerful Celebrities List

Fame and fortune might not be the ultimate goal for every person to ever write a song or learn an instrument, but it is for a lot of people out there. It would be lovely to believe that music is done 100% of the time for the "right" reasons, but most of us are cynical enough to know otherwise. Some ... More >>

The End of the Road: Digital Mourning in 2012

At the Houston Press office, I am usually the first person who finds out when a celebrity or musician dies, usually from a wire or, these days, the fine folks at TMZ. Hell, sometimes even when I am away from my desk I have to be the bearer of bad tidings, like when Adam Yauch passed on a few weeks a ... More >>

Burn! Music's 12 Best Insults & Jabs

One of the not-so-fun things in the world is to get insulted or, in the words of Kelso from That 70's Show, get "burned." Now, let's imagine what it would be like to be insulted by some musician on one of their albums -- that "burn" I can only imagine was magnified by a million. Nevertheless, som ... More >>

Sugarland Says It Will Play New BBVA Compass Stadium

Updated with comments from BBVA Compass Stadium Director of Marketing, PR & Booking Gina Rotolo -- 12:24 p.m. Pop-country duo Sugarland will be playing the Houston Dynamo's new stadium, BBVA Compass Stadium, the band announced in a set of tour dates on its Web site. The show, scheduled for Aug. 26, ... More >>

The World's Sexiest Wine for Valentine's Day

We've written about wine and sex here before: Since antiquity, wine and the cult of Bacchus and Dionysus have been associated with sexuality and intimacy. Wine -- red in particular, thanks to its polyphenols -- not only diminishes our inhibition ("I wanna tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta ... More >>

Lord Lordy, Look Who's Forty: The Best Albums Of 1972

Last week I told you about the best debut albums of 1992, making a lot of us feel old in the process. Hell, I was only nine when those came out and I felt feeble making the list. This week we look at the best albums of 1972, now four decades in the hole, but no less fulfilling and influential. Wha ... More >>

John Lennon's Imagine Turns 40: Ten Facts About The Album

​Forty years ago this past week, John Lennon's second solo LP away from the Beatles, Imagine, hit number one on the UK album charts. The album was released on October 8, 1971 in England and September 9, 1971 here in the States. The album was seen as a commercial answer to his previous outing ... More >>

Pop Rocks: A (Not Really) Canonical List Of Wardrobe Malfunctions (NSFW)

Bad idea.​The "wardrobe malfunction" is a phenomenon I confess I wasn't really aware of until Super Bowl XXXVIII. Half of us at the party were watching the actual Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime show, the other half were watching the South Park (or was it Family Guy?) episode running ... More >>

Pop Rocks: What's Your [Wardrobe] Malfunction? (NSFW)

Bad idea.​The "wardrobe malfunction" is a phenomenon I confess I wasn't really aware of until Super Bowl XXXVIII. Half of us at the party were watching the actual Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime show, the other half were watching the South Park (or was it Family Guy?) episode running ... More >>

Buddy Holly Raves On Into 21st Century

​Lonesome Onry and Mean's buddy doesn't like the new tribute to Buddy Holly, Rave On, which features a major-league lineup of artists ranging from Sir Paul McCartney, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Graham Nash to youngsters like Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, Black Keys and the unlikely inclusio ... More >>

Dear Paul McCartney: Please Come Play Houston

connect.in.com​Dear Paul McCartney, Hi. This is Craig Hlavaty and I write about the musics for the Houston Press Rocks Off blog here in the Bayou City. Lately I have been seeing on Twitter and the greater Internet that you are slowly piecing together a concert tour of baseball stadiums. Which ... More >>

Music's Five Most Notorious Killers, Besides The Band

​On St. Patrick's Day 1985, serial killer Richard Ramirez (right) murdered two women in Los Angeles, beginning a killing spree that would eventually tally over 14 people and leave him with the nickname "The Night Stalker." From a young age, Ramirez was fascinated and inspired by the occult and ... More >>

Love Through the (St)ages

Who's Too Old To Rock & Roll?

​It's entirely possible that the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney will each go on tour this year. With ages ranging from 63 to 69 among the four remaining core Stones, the band is obviously the oldest continuing touring rock act, capable of breaking ticket records almost 50 years into the gam ... More >>

Day Of The Dead: Music In Memoriam 2009-10

itscactus.com​Rocks Off doesn't mean to be morbid, but today is the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday and festival honoring those who have gone before. So instead of waiting until the end of the year, the more traditional time for such things, we wanted to compile a list of the notable name ... More >>

FAIL: Morrissey, Scott Weiland, Whitesnake, Conspiracy Theorists

​Morrissey Loves Animals So Much It Makes Him Racist: Morrissey has been one of the biggest ambiguously snarky pussies in all of rock music for some years now, popular among 15-year-old bisexuals of all races and creeds. Sometimes, however, the former Smiths frontman likes to make a straightf ... More >>

Five Reasons Your Bass Player Hates You

​John Entwistle. Paul McCartney. Cliff Burton. Flea. John Paul Jones. Geddy Lee. Les Claypool. Geezer Butler. Lemmy. Lemmy! These are just some of the best bassists that rock and roll has ever seen. But not all is bright for these folks, thumping or picking away on their rumbling four-string ... More >>

He Said She Said: The Sweet, Sweet Sounds of Revenge, Part 2

​For someone who wears motorcycle boots and carries a knife, the bald(ing) He Said rightfully looks like he should be one of the most vindictive cats in the world. But in reality, the only revenge we have ever taken has been of the emotional variety, and that's probably much worse than any windows ... More >>

New iPhone? Rocks Off Has an App for That.

Photo illustrations by John Seaborn Gray​ We know a ton of you got iPhones over the holiday break. Well, good news: Rocks Off has spent the last few months developing our own iPhone applications (or "apps," as the urban kids are saying) and we're thrilled to debut them here. All inquiries, critici ... More >>

KISS Off

The makeup-clad rockers may be hilarious, but they're hardly metal.

Congratulations to Our Live Nation Club Passport Winners, and More Background on That John Entwistle Photo

​ We finally have a winner in Rocks Off's photo contest for those Live Nation Club Passports we started giving away back when George W. was president. Not really, but it seems like it. Congratulations to Houston's Mitsy Parsons, whose shot of her with NYC up-and-comer Ryan Star at September's Coll ... More >>

Five Direct Beatles Connections to Texas

Four postcards included in the limited edition of The Beatles: Rock Band​ Looks like Beatlemania 2.0 is in full swing. Rocks Off may have mentioned how excited we are to play The Beatles: Rock Band at Coffee Groundz tonight, with prizes, drink specials and much laughter as we try to gnash our way ... More >>

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 >>

Remembering 1969, Part 3: The Beginning of the End for the Beatles

Note: see Part 1 here and Part 2 here. For most of 1969, the Beatles were pretty much comatose - after the disastrous Get Back sessions (which would later spawn the Phil Spector-produced Let It Be), they reconvened to the studio that spring to record the music for what would become their final reco ... More >>

Remembering 1969, Part 1: Altamont, Rosemary's Baby, Santana at Woodstock and More

1968 might have been - at least politically - one of the most turbulent years of the '60s. Students rioted left - specifically, the Left Bank in Paris - and right against the war in Vietnam, while back home racial tensions escalated, especially after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The po ... More >>

Tonight: Windsor Drive EP Release at Fitzgerald's

Windsor Drive Bridges EP www.myspace.com/windsordrive The second EP, Bridges, from local indie darlings Windsor Drive (currently signed to Ping Pong Music) drops this Saturday at what promises to be a spectacular show. Luckily, Rocks Off managed to snag an advanced copy in electronic form so ... More >>

Get Lit: Beatles for Sale by John Blaney

Another Beatles book? Doesn't the world already know everything it possibly can about the Fab Four, from the nickname of their favorite Hamburg pill dealer to the mustache style of the cab driver who took George through the streets of Rishikesh? Well... no. And as long as interest in the band ... More >>

French Kicks: Swimming

The Blog of Lists: 25 Vegan Musicians

Sarah Tollemache

Local funny gal jokes about video games, prosthetics and porn-star hairstyles

Girl Talk

I Want My MP3

Musical Food Groups

If singers were cheese, what kind of cheese would they be?

Super Furry Animals

Wednesday, September 24

Tale of the Tape

KHOU gets defensive about airing a blurry spring break tape

Static

The Song Remains the Same

The Smithereens don't have a hot new angle, only solid old sounds