Stevie Wonder

The Rocks Off 100: K-Rino, South Park Coalition's Southside Maven

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. See the entire Rocks Off 100 at this link. Who? K-Rino has been such a longtime fixtu ... More >>

10 Great Hal David Lyrics: "Enough Germs to Catch Pneumonia"

The music world truly lost one of the greats when songwriter Hal David passed away at age 91 following a stroke this past Saturday in Los Angeles. To borrow an old joke, the lyricist wasn't from the old school, he was from the school they tore down to build the old school: The artists who covered hi ... More >>

Musically Speaking, What Is the Best Zodiac Sign?

Sometimes some musicians just can't even be put in the same sentence as one another. Depending on people's musical preferences. It's hard to compare and can be a bit confrontational. But one thing is for sure the day on which someone is born can't be changed. And then that's where astrology comes in ... More >>

The Beats Go On As Grammys Take Care Of Their Own

Hands up, everyone who is surprised.​The Grammy Awards on CBS Sunday night could have easily turned into a wake - or worse, a funeral. After Whitney Houston's death Saturday, the mood was appropriately somber until a dance party broke out, or perhaps a coming-out party for dance music. Foreve ... More >>

Predicting Your Future Half Time Show Performers

Photo By Marco Torres​All of the Super Bowl talk this week has given me a chance to ponder one of my favorite pop culture questions: how big do you have to be to perform at the Super Bowl half time show? When you consider the acts that have performed since the 2005 move to one act performances ... More >>

Rap Round Table: If You Could Only Listen To One Musician For All Of Time, Who Would It Be?

Some rappers happen to be thoughtful, intelligent people. Each week Rocks Off will have some of them here discussing issues relevant to their culture. This Week's Panel: Killa Kyleon, Zavey, kyle Hubbard, Brad Gilmore, Mac, Doughbeezy, A.D.D., Medicine Girl, more. Not Invited: The guy at our sons' ... More >>

Feast of Charles Borromeo: A Saint's Playlist

​Though we have no desire to live by the teachings of Cathol and his popular ism, we are huge fans of the saints. To us, saints represent God's Avengers, and yeah, some of them are in charge of stupid things like equestrians, but there are also plenty of them with real-life superpowers. Today ... More >>

ACL: Arcade Fire, Big As The Great Outdoors

Photos by Jim Bricker​Check out all our ACL 2011 coverage, including our hottest crowd shots and slideshow from Sunday featuring Randy Newman, Arcade Fire and The Walkmen. Arcade Fire Bud Light Stage, Austin City Limits Music Festival, Zilker Park September 18, 2011 Sunday night in a serene ... More >>

Five ACL Acts We're Totally Not Making Up

Aloha, Susan... Stevie Wonder Coldplay Arcade Fire Kanye Kanye Kanye blah blah blah yada yada yada. Rocks Off could write about this year's ACL headliners until we're blue in the face - and we probably will this weekend - but what's the point? The real fun of the festival is on the back roads of ... More >>

10 Things We're Probably Doing At ACL This Year

villagevoice.comBjork at ACL '07, when part of her staging caught fire.​This is the Rocks Off team's (well, Craig Hlavaty and Chris Gray) fifth year covering the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The first year this smart guy wore black jeans and a black shirt to try to look cool, which made ... More >>

No Smoking At ACL: Five Ways To Still Get Your Nic Fix

​That heavy sigh and occasional sniffles you heard on Monday was the Rocks Off team finding out the Austin Parks Department has banned smoking at the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend, for which we will all be leaving tomorrow evening. The team of smokers on this crew nearly canc ... More >>

A Dream Austin City Limits Weekend For Houston

Craig HlavatyColdplay at The Woodlands, July 2009​Summer is creeping in, which means the fall concert calendars are filling up fast, and we should know which Austin City Limits Music Festival artists will book side dates in our area sooner rather than later. The standard disclaimer: Rocks Off ... More >>

13 Lucky Songs For Friday The 13th

​Happy Friday the 13th, everyone. Unlike most Fridays, this one has gone pretty smoothly here at Rocks Off HQ, which means we must be in for a hellacious Monday. But hey, that's next week. Our luck may be holding up - for now - but we couldn't let the occasion go by unremarked (plus a couple ... More >>

Idol Beat: Male Fraud

​Steve Tyler wore a shirt with lips all over it. I couldn't decide if he was being knowingly self-referential or it was the work of the same costume designer who put him in that leotard in the "Love in an Elevator" video.neither way, it fulfilled its purpose of distracting me from the show for ... More >>

Top 10 Double Albums That Should Have Stayed Single

​Not all double albums should have been double albums, just as some albums had to be double albums in order for their point to be made. Each case is different with each band or artist. The Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia had to be double albums to tell their stories of teenage wastelands and po ... More >>

Loco for Loko

Readers doubt our rapid-consumption story.

Blogging Bonnaroo: GWAR, DJ Deadmaus And Cheesy Fries

Photo by Meghan Hendley/See the slideshowGWAR performs at the Bonnaroo Music Festival​Houston artist Tyagaraja recently won the Ford Fiesta Team Houston Battle of The Bands, the grand prize of which was a trip to perform at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. Meghan Hendley, keyboardist/ ... More >>

National Teacher's Day, Celebrated In Video And Song

Today is National Teacher's Day, a feast which ranks right up there with whatever they're calling National Secretary's Day in these modern times.Which is a shame, of course, since good teachers are some of the most indispensable people around.To celebrate their day, such as it is, we offer five piec ... More >>

Sentury Is Going To "Lose Control" All Over Your Ass

Welcome back to Five Spot. Every Friday, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and, albeit sometimes awkwardly, tie it to a bit of Houston rap. It's five videos and occasional cussing. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. ​ First, a qualifier: When we talk about Mo'Nique, same as when we t ... More >>

Can't Forget The Motor City: Our Favorite Motown Jams

​ She Said has always been a fan of Stax Records, the gritty Southern label started by a white brother-sister team in a movie theater in Memphis. Something about Stax' organic sound and integrated musical influences (this is the same city that gave us Sun Records) had always felt so raw and real. ... More >>

Chatter: Say Hey

Spearhead leader Michael Franti's Middle Eastern trip inspires an unlikely Top 40 hit.

They Were Kinky Before Kinky Was Kinky: Musicians Who Have Held Public Office

From Ted Nugent to Bruce Springsteen to those adorable Dixie Chicks, "Masters of War" to "George Bush doesn't care about black people," musicians have never been shy about voicing their political opinions. But when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are and filing the necessary pape ... More >>

Aftermath: Everclear's Perfect Soundtrack to Imperfection at House of Blues

Photos by Jody Perry​While heading out of the House of Blues for some air, Aftermath and Mrs. Aftermath shared an elevator with Saturday's opener, Clayton Senne. Previously, we sat through his electric organ driven pop/soul act with annoyance and irritation. At the time, we found his banter ... More >>

Most Downloaded "Hope For Haiti" Texan? Although She Killed, Not Beyonce

Between fighting crime, reducing global warming, mending our socks and, you know, everything else Rocks Off does when we're away from the office, we caught a good bit of Friday evening's "Hope for Haiti" telethon. We didn't have much choice, because the George Clooney-organized, celebrity-packed fu ... More >>

On Its 40th Birthday, the Top 10 Sesame Street Musical Guests

Sing the blues, Kermit... or greens. We know how you feel. Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Elmo and Grover have something to celebrate. Sesame Street, their fictional New York borough, and the television show probably responsible for everything you knew as a kid, turns 40 today. Created ... More >>

Aftermath: More Drums and Drummers Than We Ever Thought We'd See at an Intercontinental Airport Hangar

Videos by Craig Hlavaty Any drummer jokes, say the one about Ginger Baker and coffee both sucking without Cream, pretty much have to go out the window when you enter an expansive warehouse that includes over 100 boys and girls, and men and women, pounding on their respective kits. Sometimes in tand ... More >>

Michael Jackson Funeral Coverage Coming Tomorrow

Somehow the folks at West Coast Sound, Rocks Off's sister music blog over at L.A. Weekly, have scored the hottest ticket in show business in years: a ticket to Michael Jackson's funeral Tuesday at Los Angeles' Staples Center. So far Stevie Wonder, Jackson's old Motown boss Berry Gordy, Brooke Shiel ... More >>

Michael Jackson, You Will Be Honored...And Twittered

The Most Important Event Ever....Will Be Twittered!!!!Our colleagues at West Coast Sound, the music blog of our sister paper L.A. Weekly, will be in attendance when The Nation Stops at noon tomorrow (Houston time) to give a final send-off to Michael Jackson at Los Angeles' Staples Center. So far St ... More >>

Tonight: Rozz Zamorano Jazz Trio at the Big Top

Big Sir Junior Super Live Zam RecordsRecorded during live sessions at Houston's Jet Lounge in early 2006, Big Sir Junior's debut release shows the power of three accomplished musicians firmly in their element. Local bassist Rozz Zamorano (Fondue Monks, Yoko Mono, Rozz Zamorano Trio) recruited former ... More >>

Joe Cocker

Leela James: Let's Do It Again

(Another) Local Album of the Week: Spain Colored Orange's Sneaky Like a Villain

Spain Colored Orange Sneaky Like a Villain www.myspace.com/spaincolouredorange Thanks to differences with Spain Colored Orange's former label Lucid Records, the songs on the local psych-pop quintet's brand-new disc Sneaky Like a Villain are already old hat to the band members. For the rest of u ... More >>

U2 Lace Up Their Dirty "Boots"

Among, you know, a few other things, the past 24 hours have been the start of a very, very big year for the band Rocks Off affectionately refers to as the Best Band Ever. U2 appeared alongside Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, "One" pal Mary J. Blige and many more as Barack Obama's opening acts at ... More >>

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. in Song

In the Name of Love

Aftermath: Spain Colored Orange at the Continental Club

Photos by Chris Gray Is Spain Colored Orange the Badfinger of Texas? Why not? Thursday at the Continental Club, the local quintet's heavy, lush pop was dense and intricate, but never at the expense of melody. Its members have also heard at least one jazz album in their lifetimes, evident in their ... More >>

Raphael Saadiq: The Way I See It

Mp3: The Tontons, “Sea and Stars”

MySpaced Out: European Discotheque

Goldfrapp inspires a cyber-search for the perfect beat

Tony Bennett

Hand It to Him

DJ Chicken George

Monday, May 29, at The Flat, 1701 Commonwealth, 713-521-FLAT

Free Movement

Music Awards Survey

A rundown of every act on this year's bill

Donny Hathaway

These Songs For You, Live! (Rhino)

Van Hunt

Van Hunt (Capitol)

The Gift of Gab

Fourth Dimensional Rocketships Going Up (Quannum)

Hip-hop Honky-Tonk

Local MCs make the scene on the Almeda drag

Super Mario Brother

The youngest Escovedo rides his sin-breathing Dragons into town

Eric Clapton

Reptile (Reprise)

Rotation