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Exploring Songza: Four Offbeat Playlists From the Curated Music Service

We introduced you to Songza -- the service that acts as a "music concierge" -- a few weeks back. Using curated playlists sorted not only by genre and theme, but also by activity, Songza helps you pick the best songs for the occasion. More importantly to me, the playlists are expertly curated, mean ... More >>

Happy E-Day: What If Elvis Had Lived?

Note: Elvis Presley would be 78 years old today, if he had not (supposedly) died in Memphis in August 1977. This article originally appeared as part of Rocks Off's "Elvis Week" in January 2011, and still seems plausible two years later. Do you realize that Woody Allen, Julie Andrews, the dude who w ... More >>

The First Alt-Country Record? Flatlanders Rediscover The Odessa Tapes

A lot of stellar music came out of that flat land known as West Texas. Bob Wills, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, Guy Clark, and the Sparkles are just a few artists who found something in the wind, the dust, the heat, the cactus, the mesquite, the sandstorms, the blizzards, t ... More >>

Austin's New (C)KOKE-FM Can't Beat The Real Thing

Lonesome, Onry and Mean had been hearing about the new KOKE-FM progressive country station in Austin for a few weeks. One friend in particular kept raving about the station, so today we finally sauntered over to KOKE-FM (99.3) on the world wide web. Back in the day when we were in Radio/Television/ ... More >>

Marshall Lytle Rocks This Joint

Rockabilly pioneer headlines the Continenal's three-day Rock Baby Rock It festival.

The Gourds

5 Artists Whose Second Acts Surpassed Their First

Rocks Off has always had a soft spot for Rick Nelson. Although our oldest memory of him is probably hearing about the plane crash outside Texarkana that killed him, his band and his fiancee on New Year's Eve 1985, we're also old enough to remember actually his songs like "Hello, Mary Lou," "Lonesome ... More >>

Million Dollar Quartet

Nine Covers of "Heartbreak Hotel" on Its 58th Birthday

Exactly 58 years ago, Elvis Presley released Heartbreak Hotel on RCA Records, which had just bought his contract from Sun Records for a measly $35,000. Heartbreak sold 300,000 copies in its first week and would eventually become the King's first certified gold record. Also, it's worth noting that, ... More >>

R.I.P. Marshall Grant, Johnny Cash's Tennessee Two Bassist

Marshall Grant, the Memphis bassist who along with Carl Perkins' brother Luther, were the members of Johnny Cash's seminal band the Tennessee Two, died early Sunday in Jonesboro, Ark. Cash's daughter Roseanne reported via her Twitter account Sunday that Grant had died of aneurysm, and that she h ... More >>

Portuguese Men of War

The Walkmen jump-start their momentum on Lisbon.

Future Elvis: What If The King Had Lived?

​Do you realize that Woody Allen, Julie Andrews, the dude who was in the Darth Vader suit, and Ron Paul are all the same age as Elvis Presley would be on Saturday? Look at Woody Allen next time you see him on TMZ and just think, he's as old as Elvis. In order to get in the frame of mind to t ... More >>

Does Elvis Still Matter?

As part of our ongoing celebration of Elvis' birthday week, Rocks Off asked our writers the simple question in the headline. ​Chris Gray: Absolutely he still matters. When I was compiling that list of quotes and lyrics about Elvis earlier this week, I wasn't that surprised to see that even Be ... More >>

Last Night: The Pixies At Verizon Wireless Theater

Photos by Groovehouse​The Pixies Verizon Wireless Theater September 20, 2010 For more images from Monday's show, see our slideshow here. The Pixies are Costanza. In one episode of Seinfeld, a woman who had recently made George Costanza's acquaintance remarks to Jerry Seinfeld that there mus ... More >>

Howlin' Wolf Hits 100; Did He Ever Hit Houston?

​Like Tom Petty - heard the new album yet? - once sang, it's good to be king. While Rocks Off No. 2 is saddled with justifying his tendency to sing "Over the Rainbow" in the car when (he says) no one else is around, we've been looking into the local connections of someone else with a birthday toda ... 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 >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Songwriting Scholar Steve Young Blasts Nashville's "Yuppa-billys"

For Lonesome, Onry and Mean, they don't come much taller or wiser than Steve Young. Young has been in a love/hate relationship with Nashville and the major labels since he came to town in the early Seventies. Along with Billy Joe Shaver, Young wrote the major anthems of the Outlaw movement that tip ... More >>

Happy 75th Birthday, Elvis, Wherever You Are

Remember that scene from Pulp Fiction where Mia Wallace explains to Vince Vega that there are two kinds of people in this world - Elvis people and Beatles people? Well, Rocks Off is an Elvis person. We're not a fanatic or anything, but we have been to Graceland, have a huge hole in our heart for th ... More >>

Our Decade In iTunes, Ol' Dirty Bastard Through the Fleshtones and Good Ol' Morrissey

​Maybe the biggest evolution in music this decade has been the availability of online downloads, starting with Napster and ending with half a dozen legitimately - licensed venues for purchasing music over the tubes. Rocks Off will admit it. Back in the day, we were illegal downloaders. Waiting 20 ... More >>

American Central Dust: The Americana Class of 2009, Part 1

​We spent 2009 sorting through piles of folk and Americana releases, revising this list in our heads till the bitter end and failing repeatedly to understand the hype behind the Avett Brothers in the process. While a year of listening brought no shortage of pleasant surprises, our hands-down favor ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Last Men Standing

​Lonesome Onry and Mean vaguely remembers someone telling us a couple of years ago that Las Vegas bookies actually had a line on whether Chuck Berry would die that year (we think it was 2007). The macabre factor aside, remembering this Wednesday got LOM to pondering about the Godfathers of Rock an ... More >>

Aftermath: Drive-By Truckers' Cathartic, Down-Home Halloween Redemption at House of Blues

Photos by Jay Lee​ It took Aftermath most of Friday to figure out why we were in such an awful blue funk after Thursday's Pogues show, especially after the band delivered a more brilliant set than even this 20-year fan thought they were capable of. But after leaving work early and relaxing for a w ... More >>

Aftermath: Th' Legendary Shack Shakers at Rudyard's

Photos by Chris Gray​ Th' Legendary Shack Shakers are a sort of Blue Ridge Parkway answer to Los Skarnales, mining Anglo-American roots music and all things Memphis - Sun Records, Beale Street and the Oblivians - to create a turbo-charged, gypsy-flavored, punk-speed rockabilly dynamo with a metric ... More >>

Houston 101: Magnolia Gardens -- Houston's Rockin' Little Riverside Beach

It may not look like much today, but back in the '50s and '60s, Magnolia Gardens was the place to be if you liked country music and rockabilly. The open-air dance hall/bandstand on the banks of the San Jacinto River was in a resort-like setting, with a restaurant or two and a few boat ramps scatter ... More >>

Pretenders: Break Up the Concrete

Album of the Week: Pretenders, Break Up the Concrete

Pretenders Break Up the Concrete www.thepretenders.com Old punk rockers - or, in this case, post-punks - never die, they just go country. On the Pretenders' first album since 2002's barely-registering Loose Screw, Chrissie Hynde confronts middle age by revisiting the musical styles of the mid-2 ... More >>

The Top 10 Reissues of 2008

[Note: This is the first in a series of articles that constitute Village Voice Media's year-end music package. The others - pop, indie-rock, dance mixes, Latin, country, alt-country/Americana, metal, rap/hip-hop and special graphics breaking down the year in charts and 2008's worst lyrics - will be ... More >>

Get Lit: Hot Burritos: The True Story of the Flying Burrito Brothers by John Einarson with Chris Hillman

Texas supergroup the Flatlanders (although it still exists) may have been "more legend than a band" but the same could also be said for the Flying Burrito Brothers (above, with female friends). The pioneers of country-rock were a short-lived act that went though numerous lineup changes, but record ... More >>

Aftermath: B.B. King at House of Blues

Photos by Mark C. Austin   B.B. King deserves a break. If the genial Buddha of the blues, now 83, would rather spend the bulk of his two-hour set bantering with the sold-out crowd about Viagra (groan) and the wayward ways of womankind instead of, you know, singing and playing, he's earne ... More >>

Roy Orbison: The Soul of Rock and Roll

Aftermath: Drive-By Truckers at Meridian

Drive-By Truckers, A to Z

Alabama Ass Whuppin'

Hello, He's Not Johnny Cash

Walk the Line never strays from the dull telling of a tall tale

Rock Death in 2003

Exhuming and scoring last year's pop-music demises

Dead, Not Buried

Townes Van Zandt left behind great songs for people to fight over

Keep On Truckin'

Two Tons of Steel has gone from cover band to kings of the Texas dance hall

Subterranean Astrodome Blues

Bob Dylan drops the mask and comes to town with his happiest album in years

Rock and a Hard Place

Music can free your soul, but can it spring the West Memphis Three?

Local Rotation

Local Music Reviewed

Rotation

Rotation

Under(ground) Achievers

Can Nashville's creative underbelly save country from Music Row?

Wanted Man

Johnny Cash may just be a legend, but he's never sounded better

Quick Study

Can a middle-class Midwestern white guy play the blues? Yeah, if he's Mark May.

Rotation

Blues Without Blinders

Blues, soul, rock, country? Who cares? To Little Milton, it's just music.

Rotation

Keeping His Cool

Nick the Knife's regained his edge, and the world's a better place for it

Live Shots

PSAs for the People

Fried fish, jazz and Zappa memorabilia: Consume mass quantities