Subject: Steve Van Zandt

• Reverberations: Amplified Heat, Born Liars, Black Black Gold and The Contrast

  April 9, 2008

• Q&A: Little Steven Van Zandt

  April 14, 2008

• Last Night: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Toyota Center

  April 15, 2008

• Album of the Week: Christmas a Go-Go

  One thing about Christmas songs, every single artist to ever pick up a guitar or drumstick seems to have recorded at least one, a company that apparently includes Joe Pesci, Soupy Sales (kids, ask your grandparents) and garage gods the Electric Prunes. Guaranteed, Christmas a Go-Go is the only place you'll hear Bob Seger and his pre-Silver Bullet band the Last Heard do a kick-ass James Brown on the Mitch Ryder-worthy "Sock It to Me Santa." It's a Little Steven production all right. No Springste

  December 11, 2008

• Aftermath: Robert Earl Keen at House of Blues; Dash Rip Rock at the Continental Club; Hayes Carll at Warehouse Live

  Photos: Hayes Carll/ Craig Hlavaty; Dash Rip Rock, Robert Earl Keen/ Chris Gray On their 1996 self-titled debut LP, Hee Haw-loving Nashville ironists BR5-49 cut a song called "Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)." Anyone who has read either the paper or this site in the past few weeks will no doubt know that little Rocks Off has likewise gone hillbilly nuts. He hasn't stopped listening to other kinds of music completely, but lately, to paraphrase someone who was most definitely not a

  December 29, 2008

• Holiday Gestures

  November 27, 1997

• Classic Rock Corner: Nils Lofgren, Sideman, Sideburns and Solo

  Guy AcetoIt's certainly an accomplishment for any rock musician to have a long and fruitful career either solo or with a band. Then it's icing on the cake to be further associated with a genuine icon. But to have two icons in your story? Just an embarrassment of riches. In the case with singer/songwriter/guitarist Nils Lofgren, all three roads are converging at once. He's celebrating 25 years since joining Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band as a lead guitarist (their tour in s

  April 8, 2009

• The Born Liars Set Sail

  February 19, 2009

• The Best Christmas Album of 2008 is... Metal?

  December 18, 2008

• Music's Ickiest of the Icky, Circa 2008

  Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

  October 30, 2008

• Rock The Bayou Is a Bust

  September 11, 2008

• Who Stole the Roll?

  August 28, 2008

• Various Artists

  Uptight Tonight! The Ultimate '60s Garage Collection

  October 27, 2005

• Jewels on the Box

  Getting past the radio gaga on Houston's airwaves

  June 24, 2004

• Bruce Springsteen

  The Rising (Columbia)

  August 15, 2002

• Back To Basics

  Steven Van Zandt is dedicated to garage rock

  April 11, 2002

• Object of Desire

  Liv Tyler toys with the tongue-hanging boys in One Night at McCool's

  April 26, 2001

• Don't Forget Record Store Day is Saturday

  Well, it looks like the weather gods are laughing at Houston again, and have decided to ring in iFest with a good round of drenching rain. So if you'd prefer to remain indoors, don't forget Saturday is Record Store Day - there's even a Web site. Be a good consumer and help out your neighborhood music merchant, won't you? Here's what they've got going on: Cactus Music (2110 Portsmouth): The mood at Cactus is positively post-coital these days after it got the stamp of approval from none other

  April 17, 2009

• Listening Room: What's Been Tickling Our Earholes Lately

  As Rocks Off has noted in our periodic Mail Call entries, even though the tide of promo CDs has been greatly reduced by the digital revolution - Rocks Off can count on one finger (the middle one) the times he's actually used the streaming/download email link publicists are ever more fond of these days - he still gets more new CDs via snail mail than any one person can rightfully be expected to audition. Most of these are eliminated either through gut instinct or a quick glance at the accompanyi

  April 27, 2009

• The Eagle Has Landed

  Rocks Off only listens to Houston rock radio in small doses, but when we do it's usually of the classic variety. When our usual diet of AM talk radio veers into the right-wing ditch and becomes annoying instead of amusing, we pretty much shuffle between Country Legends 97.1 or the 93.7 the Arrow. On June 1, Houston's other classic rock station, 107.5 FM (KGLK), turned into an Arrow clone. Previously K-HITS, "the best of the '60s and '70s," it was rechristened the Eagle, "Houston's Classic Hits."

  June 18, 2009

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: Another Record Store Day at Cactus Music

  Cactus Music and the Record Ranch is having another Record Store Day Saturday, with a lineup of events that borders on serious party happening. The highlight of the day will be a live appearance by red-hot San Antonio band The Krayolas (above). San Antonio's oldest and most respected rockero outfit has hit serious paydirt with their single "Corrido: Twelve Heads in a Bag," a tale based on the current wave of gruesome violence in Mexico. The song was first picked up by Little Steven Van Zandt on

  June 19, 2009

• Aftermath: The Krayolas at Cactus Music

  Photos by Chris Gray The coolest band in Houston this weekend couldn't find a club or venue to play. Not at night, anyway - San Antonio's the Krayolas did manage to play Dan Electro's during Saturday afternoon's live broadcast of KPFT's Joe's Roadhouse, and Cactus Music an hour or two thereafter. If you have any idea who Joe "King" Carrasco is - the Dumas-born rocker who fooled MTV and Stiff Records into thinking his Tex-Mex party music was New Wave in the early '80s - you would have loved the K

  June 22, 2009

• Aftermath: The McKenzies, the Howlies and Springfield Riots at the Mink

  Photos by Chris GrayThe McKenzies To Aftermath, the Mink's Backroom has always seemed more like a house than a music venue - especially inside, with the dark floors, corner bars and abundant, comfortable seating, it's like one of those cozy but spacious multi-resident dwellings where we all went to at least one party in college. Judging by the average age of the crowd at Tuesday night's show, that's pretty much what it was.

  July 8, 2009

• Progress Report

  July 23, 2009

• Inquiring Minds: Crown of Thorns' and the Plasmatics' Jean Beauvoir

  ​ With his distinctive blonde mohawk, Jean Beauvoir struck not just a memorable visual presence in the '80s, as his hard-charging singing and playing shone first as a member of notorious punks the Plasmatics, then Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul and finally a solo effort, 1986's Drums Along the Mohawk. His "Feel the Heat" ended up as the theme song from the Sylvester Stallone cop flick Cobra. And then, Jean Beauvoir just disappeared - or so it would seem to U.S. audiences. But over i

  August 5, 2009

• Summer Stock

  August 6, 2009