Robert Johnson

The Rocks Off 100: Dwight Taylor Lee, the Wandering Bufalero

Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. Who Are You? "I'm Dwight Taylor Lee, singer/songwriter/producer," Lee introduces himse ... 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 >>

Not Fade Away Soundtrack Offers Up a Fistful of Blues, Stones

Not Fade Away, Director David Chase's period piece about a burgeoning rock band in the '60s, is still playing on limited screens in New York and Los Angeles, but this week preview copies of the soundtrack hit mailboxes. It is a sprawling double-disc, double-LP collection featuring vintage Rolling St ... More >>

Coog Radio Celebrates a Year On the Street With Free Mango's Show Thursday

This Thursday night Coog Radio, the University of Houston's first-ever student-run radio outpost, will be celebrating a year of existence with a free and very killer show at Mango's. Last year our fall intern Charne Graham covered the station's rise here on Rocks Off. This past June, the station w ... More >>

Some Girls: Live in Texas '78

''One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer — Guitar Art, No Strings Attached''

The Best & Worst-Case Scenarios For The Future Of Musical Holograms

Like most night owls, I spent early Monday morning watching YouTube clips of a holographic Tupac Shakur playing Coachella with his friends Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg nearly 16 years after his death. It was at once creepy and crass, but altogether interesting no matter how you sliced it, and not just bec ... More >>

Todd Rundgren

The 10 Most Real Artists of All Time; The Anti-Milli Vanillis

Milli Vanilli​On this day in 1990, the manager for recent Grammy winners for Best New Group Milli Vanilli held a press conference to tell everyone his act was a fraud. They did not do any of the singing on their best-selling record and they lip synced their shows. It was a startling revelation ... More >>

HPMA Preview: Nobody Leaves Without Singing The Blues Edition

Photo by Brittanie SheyLittle Joe Washington​In the movie Adventures in Babysitting, Houston native bluesman Albert Collins inadvertently assists the getaway of young Elizabeth Shue (meow) and her charges from a gang of thugs, but only after she sings. Collins blocks the attackers with the sam ... More >>

Four Artists Who Died Before Playing Houston

theindependent.co.uk​When Amy Winehouse died Saturday, almost everyone noted how the troubled British soul singer had joined the "27 Club," the list of legendary musicians who passed away at that age that also includes Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, ... More >>

True Blood: Selling Your Soul in a Buyer's Market

Alan Ball was known for his masterful use of music in Six Feet Under. He's lost none of his touch when it comes to his current HBO series, True Blood - which happens to be set in the Louisiana swamps, not terribly far from Houston. ​What is a soul and, more importantly in this rough economic ... More >>

Lemmy & HeadCat Mates Walk The Rockabilly Walk

​You could say that the members of roots-rock trio HeadCat got together to pay tribute to the King. But instead of the baby Jesus of Bethlehem, these three wise men -bassist/singer Lemmy Kilmister (Motörhead), drummer Slim Jim Phantom (ex-Stray Cats), and guitarist/pianist Danny B. Harvey (ex ... More >>

Zoo Station: A Noah's Ark Of 75 Animal Songs

And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee ... More >>

Beautiful Chaos

Psychedelic Fur Richard Butler talks Talk Talk Talk redux.

R.I.P.: Remembering The 27 Club - Jimi, Jim, Janis, Kurt...

​As a student of rock music since he was born and sat in front of MTV and VH1, Craig's Hlist has grown up hearing constant aching throb of the number 27, the end-marker for a collection of rockers who died at that hallowed age, due mostly to their own chemical and/or personal misadventures. ... More >>

John Mellencamp

Six Things The White Stripes Leave In Their Wake

​In the wake of the White Stripes' official breakup last week, the music world reeled with the loss of one of the defining bands of the past decade. Some applauded the end of a band they saw as too simplistic, buoyed by a sub-par drummer and warbling attention-addict. Different strokes, y'all. ... More >>

Los Skarnales

The punk/ska band adds New Orleans funk.

Going Platinum: Artists We'd Pay $10,000 To See - And When

​It started one night on the patio of Big Star Bar in the Heights; over Lone Star and cigarettes, a handful of Houston music wags debated the shows they would pay top dollar to see from lartists, iving or dead. We argued the aspects of an At the Drive-In reformation, seeing Sam Cooke in 1963, ... More >>

Musical Theology With John Coltrane, Robert Johnson

​Naxos continues to release episodes from the Masters of American Music documentary series from the '90s, and here are two from the latest releases (the two others profiling Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie). Not a straight biographical doc or even a chronological one about his album releases, The Wo ... More >>

Aftermath: George Thorogood's Raucous Rock Party Destroys House of Blues

Photos by Groovehouse​ Since we have long since moved into a digital age of music journalism, Aftermath now takes notes on his cellphone or loads his thoughts onto Twitter. Sifting through our pecking from last night's George Thorogood and the Destroyers show at the House of Blues, we noticed that ... More >>

Get Lit: Delta Blues by Ted Gioia

Raw and untamed in its sound, performed by larger-than-life characters who might have popped out of fiction, and shrouded in a (often self-mythologizing) mystery, it's no wonder that the Delta blues attract such interest and scholarship, and is lauded as the most "true" distillation of the genre ... More >>

The Gourds land a real Haymaker!

Dead to Rights

The Collector: The Hoodoo Curse

Bluesman Robert Johnson's shadow stretches long and large

The Collector: Mack McCormick's Huge Archive of Culture and Lore

A great American folklorist has spent a life squirreling away bits and pieces of Texas culture. Now time is running out on him and his inventory.

Drenched In Blog: My Bloody Valentine Is Back

Get Lit: Rock & Roll Heaven, by Robert Dimery and Bruno MacDonald

Don't Fear the Reaper

The annual return of the Greil Marcus Rock Death Meter

Burnside Exploration

The Record

Brass Ball

Hurricane Mixtape

Music to drown by

Deep in The Throes

Tired of guitar-and-drums blues duos? You haven't heard Two Gallants yet.

The Real Deal

Who is the more "authentic" bluesman -- Bobby Bland or T-Model Ford?

The Way We Wore

Vintage Vogue shows how fashion went from pillbox hats to pantsuits

The Boob Scotch Tour

Staying abreast of modern trends in blues with Bob Log III

Master Blaster

Cody ChesnuTT sees rock and roll, and he wants to repaint it black

Elephants Versus RINOs

Party veterans sound alarms at the proposed GOP political-purity rules

Racket

Cedric Turner ventures into an abyss far deeper than ones traveled by most bluesmen

Racket

Tejano musicians aren't getting the same cut as their Anglo counterparts

Road Outrageous

The Coens take Homer on a Southern-fried odyssey in O Brother

Local Rotation

Harlem Slim: Delta Thug

Brother from Another Planet

Harlem Slim is what happens when a talented white guy with sales experience jumps into the blues

Down the Drain

Downsizing may not be treating city water workers -- or what we drink-- safely

Mo' Better Blues

Art imitates life in the music of Keb' Mo'

The Poetry Winners

Digging the Delta

McComb's Second Finest

Pretty Ugly

Brooklyn's Barkmarket tries to hack off every oppressively prettified, mass-market notion of music

New Blues

Alternative rock robs pop's cradle