The Beach Boys

The Top 10 Houston Music Stories of 2012

Looking back over the major music-related stories around Houston the past 11 and a half months, 2012 was light on the kind of headlines you'll usually see in a year-end "music scene" recap: Obituaries, arrests, venues closing down, malfeasance, bad behavior, that sort of thing. There was some of tha ... More >>

The Republican Candidate's Guide To Picking Campaign Music

This week Republicans from around the country gather in Florida to celebrate all things conservative and curse Issac for stealing the national spotlight. For me the 2012 Republican National Convention marks the true start of the presidential campaign season, the playoffs to the primaries' regular se ... More >>

RIP Scott McKenzie: A Flower-Pop Playlist For the "San Francisco" Folkie

This past Saturday, the world lost Scott McKenzie, the folk songwriter known best for his 1967 hit "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," which would end up becoming one of the bedrock anthems of the flower-power generation. The song was written by John Phillips of the Mamas & the P ... More >>

Hank Williams Jr.'s Top 10 Patriotic Lyrics

As 2012 reaches the halfway point, one of the most gratifying musical comebacks has been none other than Bocephus himself, Hank Williams Jr. It's not a very long list, either - the Beach Boys, Fiona Apple, and now the late-breaking Blur; we're still not sure Chris Brown and Beach House count as "com ... More >>

Playing for Keeps: Vinyl Essentials

Here's our must-haves if you're kick-starting a record collection.

Last Night: Girls At Fitzgerald's

Girls, Young Man, Fanfarlo, Unknown Mortal Orchestra Fitzgerald's March 13, 2012 San Francisco's Girls kept it going strong last night, touring in support of their album Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Another vaunted acted of the Pitchfork set, they held up even better live than their 9.3 album prepared ... More >>

Happy Birthday Leon Theremin: His Invention's Greatest Hits

You wish.​Today marks the 115th birthday of Russian inventor Leon Theremin, inventor of the theremin, one of the eeriest and ookiest instruments created in this past century. Mr. Theremin celebrated quietly with family and friends in his native Russia. Just kidding, he died in 1993. The ther ... More >>

Rock & Roll's Top 10 Brawlin' Brothers

Note: Not real brothers. We just liked the picture.​Brothers share a link that is unique and special. Same DNA, same familial backgrounds, quirks, talents, and sometimes musical taste. They can also argue, get physical, try to overpower one another, and hold grudges over years that are hard to ... More >>

Capsule Stage Reviews: The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Opening the Box

Capsule Stage Reviews: To Kill a Mockingbird, Opening the Box, Wonderland! The Misadventures of a Girl Named Alice

Capsule Stage Reviews: Opening the Box, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Murder at the Howard Johnson's, Wonderland! The Misadventures of a Girl Named Alice

Last Night: Panic! At The Disco At House Of Blues

Photos by Jessica Perry​Panic! At The Disco House of Blues June 15, 2011 Panic! At The Disco lead singer and main archtiect Brendan Urie comes from the ADHD generation, the one that got meds shoved down their throats. The strange byproduct of that generation, late Generation Yers, is that the ... More >>

Capsule Stage Reviews: Opening the Box, Raising the Barre, The Threesome

Sgt. Pepper & Three Other Bum Albums By Rock Icons

​It was 40 (four) years ago today - in the UK, and tomorrow in the U.S. - that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, history stopped, the Summer of Love began, and critics freaked the fuck out. When the Beatles released their LSD-soaked counterpunch to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in June 1967, K ... More >>

Surfer Blood

20 Musician Biopics Currently In Development Hell

Happy birthday, Janis.​News came down last week that Sacha Baron Cohen will be stepping into the rhinestones and glitter as Queen icon Freddie Mercury. It's been a long time coming for Cohen, the Borat and Bruno star who is slowly becoming his generation's Peter Sellers and has been rumored to ... More >>

Bare Bones

Lo-fi crushers Woven Bones would remake Pink Floyd's The Wall if they could.

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 >>

Summertime Blues: Songs As Sad As The Season

"The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose..." ​So reads the prologue to Ernest Hemingway's 1926 treatise on the horrors of existential dread. In the book, Jake Barnes and a band of entirely unlikeable expat misfits flit around the globe, from Paris to P ... More >>

News on the March

Aftermath: Off Night for Girls Is Neither, for Openers or Audience

Photos by Brittanie SheyBennett Foster of openers The Magic KidsGirls first came to Aftermath's attention this fall when we watched the raunchy cut of their video for the song "Lust for Life." No, not that "Lust for Life," and the video is extremely NSFW unless you work at a place where one dude use ... More >>

Inquiring Minds: Talking Christmas Music With Aaron Neville

​Even for a stone-cold atheist (which Rocks Off is not), listening to Aaron Neville sing "O Holy Night" has to be one of the true pleasures of the Western world. The best-known voice of New Orleans' No. 1 soul-funk family dynasty thanks to songs like "Tell It Like It Is" and Linda Ronstadt duet "D ... More >>

I Wanna Be Your Dog (Or Cat): Singing This Song For You

Hair Balls was talking the other day with an acquaintance who has incredible luck with the ladies. Scratch that -- it's not luck, really, because "luck" suggests that a dude who looks like Quasimodo could get lucky some day and hook up with Heidi Klum.No, this dude's situation is based more on confi ... More >>

Buyer Beware: Bands With Different Lead Singers Are Almost Never Up to the Original Standards

A few Saturdays ago, Rocks Off was in the grocery store a few blocks from our house, slumming around Oak Forest wearing sandals and an old Misfits T-shirt when a group of junior-high punk rockers approached and applauded us for our good taste. We got to talking about the band, and they remarked tha ... More >>

Sinking Ship

Pirate Radio gets a tame U.S. release, but we still love rock and roll.

Defending the Jonas Brothers: You Got a Problem With That?

​We have spent days wrestling throw pillows and chain-smoking cigarettes in the sun, sweatily contemplating why it is that we can't hate the Jonas Brothers. We can honestly say this isn't some crass devil's advocate playing rock journalist devilry. We can't find a reasonable flaw in the wares they ... More >>

Phil Spector Sentenced To 19 Years In Prison

Phil Spector, preeminent music producer and architect of the famed "Wall of Sound" made popular by such artists as The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers and John Lennon, was sentenced to 19 years in a California jail this past Friday for his alleged part in the death of ladyfriend Lana Clarkson in ea ... More >>

An Hour in Sunny 99.1's Holiday Hell

Band Aid: Do they know it's Christmastime at all? Most people I know hate Sunny 99.1, but not me. And I should really hate it. Any radio station supported by the American Dental Association has to suck. But every time I listen to it, I either hear something so corny and half-baked that I can't tur ... More >>

Elf Power, with Lazy Horse and the Missing Files

Last Night: Negativland at Rice University

Yesterday Afternoon: Westheimer Block Party at Numbers, Mango's and Avant Garden

Goldfrapp: Seventh Tree

Boxed Out

Do we really need to hear every last studio detail?

Okkervil River

The Shins

Wincing the Night Away

Albert Hammond Jr.

Albert Hammond Jr. performs Friday, January 19, at Verizon Wireless Theatre, 520 Texas, 713-230-1666. Incubus also performs.

Dance of the Penguin

That whole talking animal genre? Let's be done with it

Joanna Newsom

Ys

Andy Partridge

Fuzzy Warbles Collector's Album

Stay Young and Stupid

Dear Lord, please stop the Stingification of Beck

John Davis, with Sam Ashworth

Wednesday, March 23, at the Meridian, 1503 Chartres, 713-225-1717.

Playbill

Playbill

Joey Ramone

Don't Worry About Me (Sanctuary Records)

The Langley Schools Music Project

Innocence and Despair (Bar None)

Playbill

Chomsky

The Mother Flavor

With its fresh masa and mole straight from Puebla, La Bamba Meat Market gets in touch with its ancestral tastes

Press Picks

Sound Check