​After several weeks of semi-classical, jazz, and folk music, Leon's Lounge takes a major swerve tonight with spiky haired Hans Frank. The front man of cow-thrash punkers Glambilly, Frank looks like he just stepped out of a bad Roxy Music video, and it's just possible that Bryan Ferry may be a major influence on the Appalachian born wild man.

One doesn't have to dig too deeply into Frank's musical career to see the connection with some of the original glambillys, the Hickoids and San Antonio musical mover-and-shaker Jeff Smith. When we asked Smith what's the deal with Hans Frank, he let fly with his usual lack of reserve.

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​OK, Facebook finally went too far last night when it casually offered me a chance to "like" Yoko Ono. Six others I'm somehow connected with via F-book (and I'm starting to wonder why I'm connected to them at all) "like" the 78-year old Mrs. Lennon.

So when does an "artist" of Yoko's fame and fortune decide the time has come to stick up a Facebook page so people can "like" them? Yoko currently has some of her work showing at Colton-Farb Gallery here, so it seems she's still got plenty of connections to get her rather blasé art out to that section of the world with enough money in the bank to write her a fat check for the privilege of having something with "Yoko Ono" scrawled across a corner on their walls.

Could it be something on the part of her publicists or backers who (accurately) perceive that she is not and will never be as popular as her deceased husband? If she somehow gets 8,000,000 "likes" on Facebook, I'm willing to bet she'd still not have one one-hundredth of the "likes" John can pull in spite of his bad boy sneer.

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​Today Rocks Off continues our discussion with Concrete Blonde's bassist/lead vocalist Johnette Napolitano. Part One of our interview can be found here.

The band will perform at Fitzgerald's this Sunday, October 30, with Girl In a Coma.

RO: In talking about cultural differences between America and many other places I'm always struck by how immediate we are. You're talking about these Chinese people singing songs that have been passed down for generations, and I can only think how we're going to be be singing commercial jingles when we're old people because that's where we're headed.

JN: In fact we are, it'll never be the same again. When you look at all that stuff in China and you look at things like that and you hear the songs like that, the old people doing it: they didn't have TV, they didn't have shit like that. My power failed last night. I have this whole checklist of things to do and my power failed. I have an oil lamp, I have an acoustic piano, I have an acoustic guitar, you know? And half of me goes, all right! It's party time.

RO: But how can you watch Jersey Shore if the power's off?

JN: [Laughs] Well, exactly. But it's astounding how many people really don't have that. They're totally helpless and don't know what the fuck to do. I lived in Mexico quite a while, and very few people that I know in my life are capable of coming down and knowing how to live with a water tank, and knowing how to live without electricity. Very few people know how to do that, and that's how all the groovy stuff happens, basically.

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Photos by Amber Boggs

​Concrete Blonde emerged from the crucible of 1980s post-punk L.A., fueled by Jim Mankey's signature guitar riffs and the introspective lyrics and distinctive wail of singer/bassist Johnette Napolitano. Their early history is well known, down to the oft-repeated story of how Michael Stipe gave the band their name (it's not much of a story, actually, he just suggested the name "Concrete Blonde").

The group's biggest album was 1990's Bloodletting, a foreboding effort inspired by Anne Rice and the end of what Napolitano called a "particularly bad relationship." It spawned CB's only Top 20 hit ("Joey") and pegged the group as goth darlings, which was unfortunate. The band never enjoyed a repeat of that success, releasing two more albums before breaking up in 1993, reuniting (and breaking up) again, releasing two more albums (Group Therapy and Mojave) before finally, apparently, calling it quits for good in 2006.

Not to rely too heavily on the vampire metaphor, but Concrete Blonde are back from the dead again, playing a series of shows in the Lone Star State this week. Rocks Off talked to Napolitano about fatherhood, privacy, art, and what we can expect from Sunday's gig at Fitzgerald's.

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Photo by Marco Torres

​According to a recent Associated Press article picked up by everyone from The Huffington Post to Fox News, Day of the Dead celebrations are on the upswing, a trend attributed in part to the growing Latino population and Hispanic influence on the culture, as well as changing attitudes towards death in post-9/11 America. Featured prominently in the piece is Houston's own Carlos Hernandez, who agrees the holiday is becoming more mainstream, saying, "You can even get Dia de los Muertos stuff at Walmart."

These days Hernandez is a very busy guy. In addition to opening Burning Bones Press in the Heights and churning out a steady stream of concert posters for major touring acts like B.B. King, Arcade Fire, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the former Flamin' Hellcats drummer puts on Day of the Dead Rock Stars, a yearly tribute to departed music legends in the form of Dia de los Muertos folk art.

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Photo By Tony Morelli

Bill Graham in 1974

​Twenty years ago this week, legendary concert promoter Bill Graham went to the big backstage party in the sky after the helicopter he was riding in flew into a high-voltage tower in Vallejo, Calif. Also killed in the crash was Graham's girlfriend, Melissa Gold, and pilot Steve Kahn. Graham was en route to his home after sealing the deal for an appearance by Huey Lewis & The News at a benefit concert bill for folks in Oakland and Berkeley who were affected by an intense and damaging firestorm. Graham was just 60 years old.

Graham, who was only 60 years old, helped usher in a new world in concert promotion with his strong-arming work in the '60s, '70s and '80s. He operated three venues: San Francisco's Fillmore West and Winterland Ballroom, and the Fillmore East in New York.

Besides the music, his Fillmore West concerts in the '60s were known for their great posters, made by some of the best artists in the scene. Great colorful psych jobs full of swooping letters and cosmic designs, they are still influential and sought after to this day. Let us not forget the great bills those posters advertised, either.

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Photos by Baron Wolman

Ike & Tina Turner

​Every Picture Tells a Story - Baron Wolman: The Rolling Stone Years
Omnibus Press, 176 pp., $37.50

If you could point to one thing that makes today's music journalists most jealous, it would probably be the music journalists of the '60s and '70s. Back then, writers and photographers might spend days or even weeks hanging out with acts onstage, in studios, and at parties to get a story.

Complete access was the norm, and the artists themselves were often unguarded and accepting. Simply impossible to fathom in today's world of 15-minute hotel-room phone interview - that a frantic publicist usually cuts off just as they get interesting - and first-three-songs-no-flash photography.

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Photo by Steve Harris/Compadre Records

Hayes Carll before he was old enough to shave... not that he ever has.

​The other day, one of the Rocks Off Crew was rummaging around in the Houston Press office and came across a bunch of publicity stills for various musicians.

Allow us to explain what those are: They're photos, usually 8X10, that artists' management and publicity teams would send in the mail in case the paper needed it for an article, calendar listings, etc. In order to do that, these photos had to be scanned into a computer by the paper's art or production department, then they were tossed aside and usually forgotten about.

Any paper of any size probably has a file cabinet or two of these things sitting around, we're sure. (Even we're not sure how they went from photo stock to newsprint in the days before scanning.) A sure sign the publicity shot's day has come and gone is that they are now considered collectibles - for a while, Sig's Lagoon had a huge stack by the counter selling for about 5 bucks a pop.

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Photos by Monica Fuentes

​Houston Press Art Director Monica Fuentes took these photos of the Best of Houston® BestFest construction going on down at the Midtown superblock earlier this morning. Rocks Off is impressed.

Here's some more. A lot more.

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Mike Porter

Bathe, hippies, bathe!

​Rocks Off can't do anything about the drought, but this weekend we will be breaking our own personal drought and returning to the Austin City Limits Music Festival after taking 2010 off.

But long before ACL, there was another massive musical gathering in Texas - the Texas International Pop Festival, which took place on Lake Lewisville a couple of weeks after Woodstock over Labor Day weekend 1969. Among the headliners was Led Zeppelin on their first-ever U.S. tour, as well as Janis Joplin, Santana, Sly & the Family Stone, Johnny Winter, Delaney & Bonnie, Sam & Dave and (separately) both B.B. and Freddie King.

Today the Dallas Observer's news blog, Unfair Park, reported that Richard Hayner, who has kept Texas Pop's fragrant flame burning via his Web site texaspopfestival.com, has finally succeeded in his long-running efforts to get a marker for the festival. The marker will be dedicated October 1 and located at Hebron Station, a train station in Denton County now under construction southeast of where the Texas Pop stage once stood.

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