Talking Heads (Band)

Friday Night: Local Natives at Fitzgerald's

Local Natives, Superhumanoids Fitzgerald's March 15, 2013 So... I was one of the three Rocks Off writers sent to cover Local Natives when the band first played Houston in April 2010. On one hand, my perceptions of the band haven't changed much since then; I supremely dig how tight harmonies, rock e ... More >>

The Best Concerts In Houston This Weekend: Blake Shelton, Tegan & Sara, etc.

Blake Shelton Reliant Stadium, March 15 After more than a decade of climbing country music's ranks to become one of its most successful and charismatic male vocalists, Blake Shelton found himself taking a little heat not long ago when comments he made about certain "old farts" clinging to country's ... More >>

Crappy Ringtone Tumblr Makes Indie-Someone's Music More Crappy

For the past two months, New York City-based composer/songwriter David Nyman has been turning back the clock and making MIDI versions of popular and current indie-rock and hip-hop jams. His Tumblr page, where he unloads his Soundcloud clips of these tiny wonders, is getting very popular, and was s ... More >>

Looking Back at Paul McCartney's Wonderful, Bizarre McCartney II

Next week's Paul McCartney show at Minute Maid Park is sure to be one for the books, as the former Beatle and lauded solo artist comes to Houston for the first time in years. Rewind: Who Is Paul McCartney?!: Rocks Off Tells You Comin' Up: Happy 70th Birthday, Paul McCartney His set lists are lar ... More >>

6 Cool & Cheap Weekenders: Dinosaur Jr., Some Stones, Big K.R.I.T., Optimo Radio, etc.

Dinosaur Jr. Friday, Fitzgerald's Dinosaur Jr. may be one of the most underrated indie-rock acts of the past 25 years. They weren't as sexy as Pearl Jam or as populist as Nirvana, but the music dripping from the instruments of the criminally-unsung J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph has ... More >>

David Byrne & St. Vincent

"The Smiths Are Never Going To Reunite Ever": When Are The Smiths Reuniting?

This week, Morrissey's possibly long-suffering publicist told Rolling Stone that "The Smiths are never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to reunite -- ever." The statement, meant to quell old rumors and quotes being dragged out on a slow music news week, was meant with smirks and laugh ... More >>

The 10 Best Guest Appearances On Other People's Songs

Have you ever had one of those moments when, you're listening to a song and hear something familiar, like maybe a familiar voice or wonder, "Okay, who is really playing this particular instrument?" Many times a band or an artist will guest star on a recording. Sometimes it's a well-known fact, such ... More >>

Neil Young's Ragged Glories

Jonathan Demme directs Journeys, a documentary aboout the Canadian singer-songwriter.

Santigold Goes Hard

Dance-pop provocateurSantigold is the polar opposite of the starlets she once co-wrote songs with.

App of the Week: Let iTranslate Voice Do Your Talking for You

App: iTranslate Voice Platform: iPhone Web site: iTranslate Voice Cost: $0.99 Back in the '90s, there was this cool band from Denton called Ten Hands. They were sort of a weird mix of the Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel and Frank Zappa. They had really quirky material and covered a wide range of style ... More >>

Friday Night: Dave Matthews Band At The Woodlands

Dave Matthews Band Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion May 18, 2012 On the way to Friday's Dave Matthews Band show, the question was raised as to the difference between what Radiohead is doing now -- the improvised jams that were birthed this past year -- and what the DMB does on a nightly basis. The o ... More >>

Welcome To My World: 10 Musicians Who Deserve Their Own Reality Show

Ever since The Real World hit the MTV airwaves in the early '90s, reality television has been all the rage. However, since The Osbournes debuted in 2002, some of that reality programming has catered to music fans. Even such music artists as country artist Tanya Tucker, rapper/minister Reverend Run ... More >>

Turn The Radio On: Top 10 Musicians Who Should Be DJs

A few years ago, Van Halen front man David Lee Roth filled in for Howard Stern on his nationally syndicated radio show. Roth also served a stint as a deejay for New York's 92.3 Free FM. This is nothing new, because many artists have at some point served as DJs, such as Greg Kihn of the Greg Kihn ba ... More >>

7 Songs Produced By Birthday Dude Jerry Harrison

If you know the name Jerry Harrison at all, it's most likely from his work as guitarist/keyboardist for Talking Heads. But he's had just as prolific a career as the owner of Sausalito Sound as he has had creating music with one of my favorite bands. After leaving Talking Heads and releasing a handf ... More >>

Songs For A Future Generation: Top 10 B-52's Deep Cuts

The B-52's are the quintessential alternative/New Wave/jam band. They can be both metaphorical and fun at the same time. However, what makes them different from other New Wave bands is that lead singer Fred Schneider provides a unique sprechgesang style to the genre. The band met after having a few ... More >>

This Station Is Now Operational: At The Drive-In Is Reuniting. Finally.

With the beginning of a Twitter account and an official website, heavily influential El Paso-based rock act At The Drive-In has announced their reformation today. What the future will hold for the group, which splintered into the Mars Volta and Sparta after their 2001 split, is anyone's guess. SXSW? ... More >>

The 11 Best Female Rock Bassists of All Time

seanyseult.com​While there are and have been so many notable women in rock-and-roll, and we'd like to honor them all, we've chosen the specific starting point of recognizing rock's best female bassists. As a bassist, I looked up to nearly each and every one of these women as I learned the bass ... More >>

Wild Moccasins: What They Can't Live Without On Tour

Still younger than springtime, the Wild Moccasins are getting to be old hands at this touring thing. (If you missed their set at BestFest - it was way early - you missed something special.) Lately it seems like the sunny Houston five-piece is either just getting off the road or about to go back on. ... More >>

ACL Last Night: Kanye West At Zilker Park

Marco Torres​By the end of the first night of this year's Austin City Limits, Kanye West had gone over his allotted set time by 15 minutes, turning in one of the most un-rap, rap shows, injecting a Bjork and Talking Heads stage-commanding sensibility into a collection of champion singles. It w ... More >>

The First Ten Videos MTV Ever Aired

​Closing out this week of celebration, and a little mourning, on the occasion of MTV's 30th anniversary , we reached back into the YouTube vaults to present to you the first 10 videos Music Television ever aired. On August 1, 1981, The Buggles' awfully prophetic "Video Killed the Radio Star" b ... More >>

Top 10 Most Underrated Music Video Artists

The Material Girl. The King of Pop (and his sister). The Chili Peppers. Mr. West. Very few artists have become the musical equivalent of the two-sport athlete: Making memorable music and monumental videos. When those people had a new video to premiere, it wasn't a just a video, it was an event. I ... More >>

Top 10 Music Video Parodies (Not All By Weird Al)

Weird "Al" As Lady Gaga​Two weeks ago while we were sifting through videos to make our 25 Most Influential Music Videos Of All Time list, we came across plenty of parodies of those 25 clips, mostly by Weird "Al" Yankovic and various Muppets, but there were a few crafty homemade ones as well. I ... More >>

Save Ferris: Pop-Culture Origins Of 16 Famous Band Names

Groovehouse​This one's for the pop-culture junkies. For those who, like us, are tickled by all forms of pop media, whether it be literature, film or music... this list encompasses them all. A surprisingly high quantity of bands have named themselves after books, songs, and films; some are obvi ... More >>

Ukuleles: Suddenly The Hippest Instrument Going

​Trends in music can be as prevalent - and subsequently fleeting - as they are in fashion. Though the eagerness to join trendy-indie bandwagons can be puzzling, music's most recent instrumental trend, the ukulele, grabbed our attention, especially after SXSW. Among the dozens of SXSW-related ... More >>

SXSW: The 10 Best Of The Fest This Year

Photos by Craig Hlavaty​

Why Is Thom Yorke Messing With Our Heads?

intimtorma.tumblr.com​It's been a week since Radiohead's new The King of Limbs came out directly to an online audience before getting a proper release. Besides some middling reviews (including our own), accompanying the album was the first single and video for "Lotus Flower," featuring lead si ... More >>

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm... What Does It Mean?

Happy Birthday to Brad Roberts, lead singer of Canadian folk-pop group Crash Test Dummies, who turns 47 years old today. If you were alive in late 1993 and early 1994, you no doubt remember humming along to the Dummies' hit "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" from second album, God Shuffled His Feet. Roberts has ... More >>

The Best Concert Movies Of All Time

​A quick note before CHL starts this hlist. We define a concert movie as a flick that documents one or more shows on a tour. More narrative-oriented rock flicks like D.A. Pennebaker's Bob Dylan mash note Don't Look Back, Charles Peterson's grunge chronicle Hype!, and of course the lighthearted ... More >>

What Is Classic Rock Today?

​What is classic rock in 2010? 15 years ago, it was was the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, anything Eric Clapton touched and every band your dad played in his car while he was making out with the girls he met before your mom. That's how we know classic rock: Big riffs, big voices, in ... More >>

What The Hell is That? Thanksgiving Edition

All photos from daniellespencer.com Flesh colored Jell-O is never (*ever*) okay. ​New York artist Danielle Spencer (a.k.a. Mrs. Russell Crowe) crafted her first faux Thanksgiving spread in 2005 using a Cornish game hen form, peach Jell-O, and evaporated milk. That initial flesh-colored mass ( ... More >>

ACL Day 2 Recap: Gaslight Anthem, Local Natives, Kinky, Muse

Photos by Marco Torres​ For more images from ACL Saturday, see our slideshow here. Complaining about crowds at an event like ACL is like complaining about the smell of livestock at the Houston Rodeo, but it does take some getting used to. And for the folks who think that Saturday was too hot ... More >>

Foals: The Beat Goes On For These Oxford Dance-Rock Scholars

Sub Pop Records​Hailing from Oxford, England, the five-piece group known as Foals have danced their way into acclaim with their second album, Total Life Forever. Musically, dance is where their rhythms lie, imitating beats from techno to funk to hip-hop. Instead of using conventional electroni ... More >>

Billy Corgan: Still A Smashing Pumpkin, But No Shrinking Violet

Kristin Burns​A couple of weeks back, Rocks Off spoke with the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan for our print edition about the state of the music world, who excites him now and the indie-rock "shell game." The initial interview was only scheduled for 15 minutes but we ended up chatting for a h ... More >>

I Wanna Be Your Dog (Or Cat): The Name Of This Blog Is I Wanna Be Your Dog (Or Cat)

Hair Balls was glad to learn that one of our musical heroes, David Byrne, is taking on The Man; namely, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, for using the Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere" in his U.S. Senate campaign without permission. (Crist is running as an independent, but historically has belonge ... More >>

Acts We Think - OK, Hope - Are Playing ACL Fest This Year

​By this time Tuesday, we will all know who is playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. Damn, it seems like we have speculating about the line-up since, well, we got the last of the "Dillo Dirt" out the middle of our toes after last year's muddy and rainy ACL weekend. Tuesday brig ... More >>

Little Joe Washington Is A National Treasure

Photos by Mark Britain​ For more pictures from Saturday night, see our slideshow here. Aftermath is still trying to get our heads around what we witnessed at Saturday night's benefit for the International House of Blues Foundation in House of Blues' Bronze Peacock Room. In a way, it was one of tho ... More >>

Aftermath: Three (Count 'Em) Takes On SXSW Heroes Local Natives At Mango's

Ed. Note: As anyone who followed our SXSW coverage would know, perhaps no band got as much critical love thrown its way as L.A.'s Local Natives. So much so that, when the Natives returned to Mango's this past Saturday, somehow Rocks Off wound up with three reviewers at the show. It might have been f ... More >>

Texas Traveler: Terlingua to the Park

Photos by Brittanie SheyFire at La Kiva​Ed. Note: This is the fourth part in a series of posts on traveling to Big Bend and back. Let me start off by saying that if you are a Big Bend virgin and you have the opportunity to visit the park for the first time with a seasoned veteran, jump on that ch ... More >>

He Said She Said: Our Christmas Musical Wishlists, Part 2 - LPs Nobody Can Buy

​When He Said was four years old, all he wanted for Christmas was big brown tape recorder that Play Skool put out so he could record his own imaginary radio shows and crazed ramblings about He-Man. Santa Claus brought it that year, and He Said wore that thing out over the next few months. For Chri ... More >>

Inquiring Minds: Simon Balthazar of UK Indie-Pop Tarts Fanfarlo

www.fanfarlo.com​ ​Reservoir, the debut album from London's Fanfarlo, is the kind of album that immediately grabs your attention with its unique and joyful spirit. From the stumbling, heartfelt swoon of songs like "I Am a Pilot" to the droll and upbeat wit of songs like "Harold T. Wilkins, Or Ho ... More >>

"My Son Is the Lizard King, and I'm an Admiral": Successful Rock-Star Parents

​Late Thursday, word came across the ticker that legendary comedian and TV star Soupy Sales had passed away at age 83. After a stint in the military and on radio, Sales went on to be one of the major pioneers of televised sketch and children's comedy. In 1965, he pulled a stunt where he asked his ... More >>

Pump Up the Volume

St. Louis post-punks So Many Dynamos are ready for battle with The Loud Wars.

Aftermath: David Byrne at Jones Hall

Photos by Craig Hlavaty David Byrne knows about living in the moment. The white-haired former Talking Heads frontman and unofficial U.S. ambassador for Third World pop, whose hair was as white as his (and his band's) wardrobe, was a genial host at Jones Hall Monday night. "It's nice to be in Mr. Jes ... More >>

Stop Making Sense

Talking Heads concert film is a good reason to stay up late

The Judy's Come Back

Just in time for SXSW, the Pearland New Wavers brush off the mothballs

Blue

Nona Hendryx’s music makes this production a must-see

Pop Goes the Dead

Fish Tales

St. Pete's Dancing Marlin's Long Island Iced Tea

Static