Houston Music Blog

​Both Rocks Off and our predecessor in the music editor's chair have written about what a travesty it is that there is no official marker honoring perhaps the most famous and influential musician to ever call Houston home, country-blues icon Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins. Along the way, we've both mentioned that we're hardly the only ones that feel that way either.

Now Houstonian R. Eric Davis has taken the next step and filed the necessary paperwork with the Harris County Historical Commission to erect a Texas State Historical Marker on the Project Row Houses property in Third Ward. Known as the "King of Dowling Street," Hopkins is buried in Forest Park Cemetery, across I-45 from the neighborhood where he spent most of his time in Houston.

An Illinois native who moved to Houston in 1993, Davis and his daughter went to Forest Park last August to find Hopkins' grave and originally, he says, "couldn't do it." After getting some "very specific" instructions, they eventually did. Having been there ourselves, Rocks Off can say firsthand that it's pretty easy to miss.

"We were stunned," Davis says. "We found his headstone and it's this 12-18 inch slab of granite. I was taken aback that this was the only memorial this guy has, for all that he did."

The late Bob Claypool did exhaustive research for his book Saturday Night at Gilley's.

​Other than his adopted Los Angeles, Houston may be the most important city in country singer Dwight Yoakam's career. Yoakam's music finally found a rabid country audience in Houston when KIKK disc jockey and music director Joe Ladd began to spin Yoakam's cover of East Texan Johnny Horton's "Honky Tonk Man" in 1986. Houston went wild for "Honky Tonk Man," which gave Yoakam the national breakout he was looking for.

It also didn't hurt that late Houston Post music critic Bob Claypool was an early supporter of Yoakam's. Claypool, the consummate hard-drinking country-music writer, knew the real deal when he heard it. In his book Fifty Years Down a Country Road, legendary Nashville disc jockey Ralph Emery dedicated several pages to a remembrance of Claypool, even relating that Claypool used to ride around in an old Lincoln with Dwight Yoakam before Yoakam had made it: "I love the idea of Bob rocketing round Texas with Dwight Yoakam playing Buck Owens tapes."

We don't know if it's the election or what - actually it's not, but bear with us - but this afternoon Rocks Off got to wondering whether or not Houston had its own official song, lyrics and music officially sanctioned and ratified to embody the Space/Bayou City's hopes and dreams. This being Houston, we figured no way would a city so willfully ignorant of its abundant musical heritage and talent (officially, anyway) ever take such a radical step. Surely any composer who dared even suggest such a thing would be laughed right out of City Hall chambers.

Well, we consulted a couple of senior Press staffers who are wiser than us in such municipal musical matters, and it turns out we were dead wrong. Houston does have an official song. Houston has had the same official song since 1915, as a matter of fact.

Other events that happened in 1915: Typhoid Mary was placed in lifetime quarantine; D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation premiered in L.A.; Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis was published in the original German; Babe Ruth hit his first career major-league home run for the Boston Red Sox; and Rocks Off's late paternal grandmother, Lavonia Adelle Montgomery Gray, was born in Burkeville, Tex.

Last Friday, Rocks Off was hanging out with some friends at the West Alabama Ice House and ran into Ralph Ullrich, otherwise known as Ralph the Plumber, also otherwise known as one of Tuesday's mayoral candidates a little further down the ballot than the three (and a half) examined at length in the Press' recent cover story.

We didn't realize it at first, but eventually it came up that Ralph is also the former owner of Pik N' Pak, the beloved Montrose icehouse that used to be across Waugh from Rudyard's, where (we believe) a lovely parking lot is today. Rocks Off was busy graduating from our suburban high school at the time and didn't make it to a whole lot of Rusted Shut shows (yet), but in the early '90s Pik N' Pak was a hub of Houston's punk/noise scene, hosting legendary local bands like the Pain Teens and some, such as Linus Pauling Quartet and the Hates, that refuse to die are still around today.

According to this Facebook poll, Pik N' Pak is running slightly ahead of Rockefeller's (!) and slightly behind the Axiom, Fabulous Satellite Lounge and Power Tools in "Which of these Houston night spots do you miss the most?" (Emo's is the clear front-runner with a little less than one-third of the total votes; poor Cabaret Voltaire.) It seems to have been a very popular spot with Christian rock bands as well, as Rocks Off has found online records of the Jesus Lizard and Jesus Penis stopping by.

Andrew Brown/ Patrick Lundborg/ lysergia.com Walt Andrus in his studio, 1967

​

Walt Andrus, best known as the engineer of numerous Thirteenth Floor Elevators sessions, has gone where the pyramid meets the eye. Andrus, who engineered many of the most famous sessions for Houston's infamous International Artists label during the psychedelic period, was living in Truth or Consequences, N.M., when he passed away from melanoma. He was 72.

While Andrus is most famous for his Thirteenth Floor Elevators session work, he was also involved with recording seminal Texas psychedelic acts like Lost & Found, Golden Dawn, the Red Krayola's free-form psychedelic opus, The Parable of Arable Land, and Fever Tree's 1968 classic Another Time, Another Place. He also worked for a time with Don Robey at the Duke-Peacock label.

​Local legend Texas Johnny Brown is a living link to blues history. The 80-year-old was a key player in the genesis of the electric form of the genre, penning hits for the likes of Bobby "Blue" Bland, supporting stars like Ruth Brown and recording under his own name as far back as the late 1940s. Combine that with a childhood spent doing street performances across the South, and Brown has quite a biography.

You can hear the tale from the man himself when he appears tonight at the Jung Center for The Soul of Houston: Blues Stories. Music historian Roger Wood will host; Rocks Off spoke to Wood about what makes Brown, and this event, special.

Rocks Off: How is [the event] going to work?

Dr. Roger Wood: I'm going to do a brief introductory lecture about Johnny and what our topic is that night, and then he'll do an onstage interview. We'll probably play a few of his recordings and discuss them to illustrate certain points. Towards the end it'll open up to the audience for some Q&A.

Courtesy Justin Crane

What it is, bro: Snow (left) and U of H Park Party organizer Justin Crane

​Welcome to another installment of our still-unnamed, in-their-own-words series on musical goings-on in Houston that perhaps could have turned out better for some of the parties involved - coming soon: Riot at Mott the Hoople! - but probably couldn't have turned out quite as memorably. They usually involve someone getting punched or hit by some kind of projectile, perhaps a shoe (and then more shoes).

This week it's the former. Return with us to the summer of 1993, when some enterprising U of H students put on an outdoor festival that included Rev. Horton Heat in his pre-Motorhead-opening days and a certain Canadian who once promised to "licky boom-boom down" and, strangely enough, pretty much hasn't been heard from since...

"This was the 1993 Park Party at UH," begins longtime KTRU Local Show DJ Justin Crane (pictured with Snow pre-altercation), who says he's "not really doing anything notable nowadays."

"The whole lineup was L7, Snow, Rev. Horton Heat, Bad Livers, preceded by local bands Wazobia, Manhole, Planet Shock!, the Rounders, and Quoting Red. I was one of the concert chairs and was one of the people who worked crew for this show. The guy who actually put it together was Frank San Miguel, who now goes by Ernesto Aguilar and is currently KPFT's program director.

"Snow was an idiot. He showed up earlier that day just to make an appearance and then he disappeared. Nobody had any idea where he went. When his time slot came up and he was nowhere to be found, we thought we were just going to have to tell the next band to start.   

Bobby Weatherford

​It was (semi-seriously) billed as the Eighth Wonder of World, the brainchild of Judge Roy Hofheinz was the first domed ballpark and - for better or worse - ushered in the era of the homogeneous, multipurpose stadiums. The Structure Formerly Known as Harris County Domed Stadium sits unused now, its future (possibly as a hotel movie studio) still up in the air, but in its 44 years of existence, the Astrodome was home to the Astros and the Oilers (until 1996), Millennium '73, the Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs "Battle of the Sexes" and Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS.

Oh yeah, and it also was the site of a few concerts. Some great, some... less so.

Elvis Presley, February 1970: Elvis, more specifically Col. Tom Parker, chose the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo for Presley's first live shows outside of Las Vegas since the 1950s. It was around this time that the famous jumpsuit - modified from a "karate suit," as Elvis put it - made its first appearance. The Big E was still riding high on his 1968 comeback special and his record-breaking series of sold-out Vegas shows, and his svelte appearance and relatively clear-headed responses to reporters' questions in a news conference (after the last of six shows) give little indication this same man would weird President Nixon out by asking to be appointed a federal narcotics "Agent-at-Large" a scant nine months later.

​

More Beatles for you (and more to come). While researching the group's Texas history, Rocks Off stumbled across this gem: a live recording of the Beatles' one and only Houston appearance - though they played a matinee and evening show - at the Sam Houston Coliseum on August 19, 1965. Listen to those screams...

Find links to parts 1, 3 and 4 of this recording here.

Today Rocks Off is starting a recurring series of local music urban legends; not so much 'urban legends' in the sense of oft-repeated stories that turn out to be false - though those are fine too - but actual legends: events and incidents that get talked about so much they become a part of local lore. Know something that we should look into? Email chris.gray@houstonpress.com.

​In November 1993, Smashing Pumpkins were about to break big. The band had just released its second LP, Siamese Dream, and appeared on Saturday Night Live for the first time. But before "Today" and "Disarm" would dominate the radio that fall, winter, and all the way up through the group's headlining appearance at Lollapalooza 1994, they had a string of Southwestern club dates to finish off. Rocks Off was at their show at Austin's Liberty Lunch, and it's still one of the tightest-packed crowds we've ever seen.

That show was brilliant - it was obvious Billy Corgan and company were about to become superstars - but the Pumpkins' Houston show at Rockefeller's West (formerly Club 6400, now Planeta Bar Rio) didn't turn out quite so well. It did, however, prove once again that Houston audiences take no shit, whether talking over the entertainment or tossing footwear at them. Michael Bell, now a cameraman for Panavision specializing in HD cinema cameras, was there.

[Click here for an MP3 of Corgan himself talking about the incident in 2000, right before the Pumpkins throttle the Aerial Theater - that's Verizon now, kids - crowd with "Mayonnaise." Thanks to Jason from the Watermarks for sending us the file.]

"You always hear about what happened: 4 or 5 songs into their set, a shoe flew up on stage and Corgan said 'if anybody (did) it again, we're going home.' Immediately somebody intentionally threw a shoe and the show was over. I remember seeing shoes flying around, but it was 1993 and the Pumpkins still had some Sub Pop-like cred and grunge dudes liked them and frankly, flying shoes were just a part of that scene.

"The picture painted always suggests that the shoes were aimed at Corgan for some reason, but I was there and that's just not the case. Now, the offending final shoe was definitely aimed at him because he basically baited the crowd. After the show I said, 'Sorry that happened, you know, some people...,' and in the most dickish rock-star way you can imagine, he said, "Whatever. Don't talk about it."

The final installment of our Five States of Texas project brings it all back home, to the new state of Brazoria, encompassing all of Southeast Texas from the Brazos Valley to Sabine Pass.

​Patron Saint: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. A master of rock and roll, country, Cajun/Creole, blues and jazz, no one area musician sounded more like Southeast Texas. That he spent his life moving all over the area, on both sides of the Sabine, only serves as evidence in favor of one of our geographical hypotheses: In the grand scheme of things, Southeast Texas is less truly Texas than it is Greater Louisiana.

Lesser Icons: Destiny's Child/Beyonce, ZZ Top, Janis Joplin, George Jones, Clint Black, Tracy Byrd, Bobby Blue Bland, Big Mama Thornton, La Mafia, DJ Screw, the Geto Boys / Scarface, Devin the Dude, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Lil' Keke, Lil' Flip, Fat Pat, South Park Mexican, BJ Thomas, Roy Head, Kenny Rogers, Johnny Bush, Floyd Tillman, Johnny Lee, Mickey Gilley, Clifton Chenier, UGK / Bun B, Johnny Guitar Watson, Albert Collins, Johnny Clyde Copeland, Arnett Cobb, Milt Larkin, Illinois Jacquet, Kirk Whalum, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson.

​Also: Sippie Wallace, Peck Kelly, Big Moe, Slim Thug, Z-Ro, Trae, the Big Bopper, Blind Willie Johnson, Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin' Hopkins, Calvin Owens, Joe Scott, Fever Tree, Archie Bell and the Drells, Johnny Nash, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Rodney Crowell, Esther Phillips, Robert Earl Keen, the Judy's, Texas Johnny Brown, Goree Carter, Joe Guitar Hughes, Lil' Joe Washington, Percy Mayfield, Joe Tex, Ted Daffan, Jimmy "T-99" Nelson, Charles Brown, Lyle Lovett, Fito Olivares, Baby Bash, Amos Milburn.

And: Gene Watson, Mickey Newbury, Hersal Thomas, Harry Choates, Bubble Puppy, the Crusaders/Joe Sample, K-Rino, Brooke Valentine, Leela James, Hayes Carll, Dobie Gray, Ivory Joe Hunter, Yolanda Adams, Mark Chesnutt, Barbara Lynn, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Clay Walker.

Bastard Sons: Blue October, H-Town.

Reg Burns

​While the indie-rock world dodged lightning strikes Sunday afternoon, Houston's blues community gathered inside the Big Easy Social and Pleasure Club to pay homage to its most elder statesman, Big Walter "The Thunderbird" Price.

The venue was packed with dancers, drinkers and a plethora of players who were way into the spirit of the thing for a gig that started at 2 p.m. on a hot, thunderous afternoon.

After several hours of autographing copies of Dr. Roger Wood and James Fraher's Down In Houston for well-wishers and glad-handers, the 95-year-old Price, dressed in a subdued red blazer, took center stage in his wheelchair and belted out several songs that would've done Muddy Waters proud.

Photos by Rachelle Mendez and Matthew Juarez

​Saturday night, one of the most polarizing bands of the past 20 years rolls into town. Since its 1994 mainstream breakthrough, Dookie, Green Day has been dividing fans and critics alike. Some damned the trio for leaving their punk-rock roots behind at 924 Gilman for the glamour of MTV videos and catered backstages. Others championed them for bringing a youthful sense of humor to the dour grunge-saturated rock scene of mid-'90s.

The success of Dookie of in turning kids everywhere onto punk should not be underestimated. The band's 1994 release brought a new sense of snottiness that was missing in music at the time. Sure, the grunge bands were sarcastic and too cool for school, but even kids as young as eight could get behind the album's nihilistic and reckless noise. It was a fun record that tapped into a youthful energy missing in Alice In Chains and Nirvana; potheads are always going to have more fun than the dudes tying off a vein in the corner. It's also hella cheaper.

Smash Mouth had just finished playing, and not coincidentally, Rocks Off's brother John had just returned from a trip to the bathroom. It was November 1997, and we were watching the stagehands putting the finishing touches on U2's ginormous set in the Astrodome. The Irish rockers were touring behind Pop, an album as underachieving - and also underrated - as No Line on the Horizon, the reason for their October 14 stop next door at Reliant Stadium with Muse.

Suddenly Rocks Off caught a whiff of a most foul and unmistakeable odor. "Hey pal, do you smell shit?"

He sniffed a couple of times. "Yeah, I think so."

"Where's it coming from? It's pretty strong."

"I don't know."

Then he spied the bottom of his shoe. "Oh my God, I got shiiiiiiiiit on me!"

It seems someone had somehow managed to miss the toilet entirely while emptying their bowels - or, given the general state of the venue's facilities, had simply decided to squat on the floor.

[Note: this is the second in a series on the origins of Houston rap, to go along with this week's feature on wayward star Mike Jones.]

Mike Giglio

​As a local hip-hop writer and radio host, Matt Sonzala (also a former Houston Press Music Listings Editor) did what he could to promote Houston rap to a larger audience. Within the city, though, that part was always easy.

Ed. Note: To go along with this week's feature on Mike Jones, Mike Giglio takes a look at the origins of Houston rap's once and future calling card, "screw music."

Photos by Mike Giglio

Screw: The Next Generation (l-r): Randy, Big Bubb, Bird

 Wearing corn rows, a wife beater and green courdoroys, and holding a bottle of windex, Bird washes the glass doors at the Missouri City's massive Kingdom Builders church.

"Your hair looks nice today," he says to a woman in a dress and high heels, as he holds open the door. "Real nice."

Back in the day, when Bird first started rapping on his friend DJ Screw's legendary mix-tapes, he wore a flattop. And at the height of the craze surrounding the sub-genre of music that Screw created, he sometimes held an AK-47.

"That shit got scary," he says.

Deron Neblett

The Hollisters at the Fabulous Satellite Lounge, circa 2000

For a solid decade, Washington Avenue's Fabulous Satellite Lounge was Houston's go-to spot for roots-rock, alt-country and pretty much anything else that might get covered in the late, recently resurrected online No Depression magazine. Though he was living in Austin throughout the Satellite's run (it closed in January 2003), Rocks Off remembers a Dick Dale/Drive-By Truckers gig that was especially sick.

Turns out other people remember it as well. Reflecting on his love of Wilco (hear hear), attorney and Paste magazine contributor Jeff Leven shared a few florid memories of the Satellite - which he says "scurried at the frayed edges of Austin's shadow, literally on the wrong side of the tracks on the deader side of downtown's outermost sprawl" - on L.A.-based music blog Aquarium Drunkard last Saturday. Reminiscent of the Truckers' "I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I did see Molly Hatchet" lyric, Leven never saw Wilco at the FabSat, but he did see Son Volt.

"If my teenage bedroom was the cauldron where my obsession with music was concocted," he says, "for a time the Satellite was one of my most consistent markets for new ingredients."

scarletdukes

Can you guess which one is Billy Gibbons?

Chris Gray

What goes around comes around. The same week ZZ Top is playing The Woodlands (which you may have read about on Rocks Off once or twice this week), the Buffalo Bayou Partnership announced it's renovating the International Coffee Building (right), site of legendary if fuzzily remembered psych-rock club Love Street Light Circus. Along with joints like Liberty Hall, Catacombs, the Old Quarter and Of Our Own, Love Street was a cornerstone of the Houston music scene in the late '60s and early '70s - the scene that birthed first the Moving Sidewalks and then ZZ Top.

A while back, Rocks Off No. 2 stumbled across the Flickr pool of one "scarletdukes," which contains almost 150 examples of vintage Houston hippieland artwork that will totally blow your mind, man - flyers, handbills, underground rags like Space City News. There's ads for the Family Hand restaurant, KAUM-FM, the Mr. Fantasy clothing store and head shops like the Grass Hut (which was at 1200 W. Alabama, if you're curious). The ZZ Top stuff Rocks Off pulled is just a tiny representation. This stuff really belongs in a museum somewhere.

Photos by Chris Gray

Class has begun, school is in session and all the pupils are attentively waiting to hear what the teacher has in store. But there are no desks, tests or No. 2 pencils anywhere in sight. These H.I.S.D. students are seated at a special assembly to receive a lesson of great importance: Music appreciation, specifically the blues.

Uprooted from a typical school day, Friday morning these Houston-area kids left their traditional schools behind and enrolled in what House of Blues likes to call the "School of Blues," a program begun by HOB founder Isaac Tigrett to teach a kid-friendly version of the music's origins and history. After sitting through the program, it's easy to see the reason for SOB's formation was to bring children closer to a culture they might not be exposed to on a daily basis, and raise awareness among teachers and parents about how necessary music appreciation still is in a child's life.

Wood Newton

So over the weekend I reconnected with my stepfather Chip Phillips. As a good friend of the late Townes Van Zandt and a decades-long friend (and former long-time roadie for) Steve Earle, Chip's got plenty of good tales from the old days, such as this one from about 1978...

Back then Townes was living in the hills outside of Nashville in an unheated country shack with no running water at the end of two dirt roads. He shared this retreat with his red-haired teenaged bride Cindy, his hyper-intelligent wolf-dog Geraldine, a cat, the hens Eenie, Meenie and Miney and the rooster Moe. Not to mention whatever guests would crash there on any given night.

Often enough it was Steve and Chip, as it was on the night this crazed tale took place. In the wee small hours, Townes made a grave announcement.

Unless you were around here almost 30 years ago and traveling in the music scene, Mickey Clark probably means nothing to you. But the inside liner sleeve on Clark's new album, Winding Highways, is the Anderson Fair music calendar for March 1980. Nanci Griffith and John Grimaudo both had two-day stands that month, Lucinda Williams played the 13th and 29th. Lyle Lovett played the 20th, then opened for Eric Taylor the 21st and 22nd. Clark headlined the 23rd. So suffice to say that he traveled in fast company in those days.

You've got to love Clark anyway. His backstory - an integral part of the NYC folk scene in the early '60s with the New Village Singers, a respected Nashville songwriter in the '70s, a long association with Louisville Cardinals basketball, and an executive at the now defunct WorldCom - is interesting enough to write a novel about. Like he sings, "This ain't my first rodeo," but Highways is Clark's first album in 25 years - because he lost his singing voice for 20 years.

[Note: Click on the numbers for parts 1, 2 and 3.]

Fifth Ward music mogul Don Robey was so taken with Gatemouth Brown's talents that he built his entire Peacock label around him. Robey already owned the Bronze Peacock night club and various other business interests, but it was his meeting of Brown that truly launched them both into Texas and world music immortality.

Although their relationship would sour by the end of the '50s, along the way the genre-smashing multi-instrumentalist Brown would lay the groundwork for a Grammy-winning, globe-spanning career as a purveyor of "American and world music, Texas-style." He was the Duke Ellington of the Gulf Coast. Above, he's performing "Okie Dokie Stomp," an anthem of his from the Duke-Peacock days and one of the finest instrumentals of the rock and roll era.

[Note: Part 1 of The Nickel is here, and Part 2 is here.]

Almost as forgotten as Hersal Thomas, Goree Carter was a Fifth Ward guitarist who was credited by late New York Times pop critic Robert Palmer with being the creator of the very first rock and roll record. This was his obscure 1949 single "Rock Awhile," of which Palmer wrote:

"The clarion guitar intro differs hardly at all from some of the intros Chuck Berry would unleash on his own records after 1955; the guitar solo crackles through an overdriven amplifier; and the boogie-based rhythm charges right along. The subject matter, too, is appropriate - the record announces that it's time to 'rock awhile,' and then proceeds to show how it's done. To my way of thinking, Carter's 'Rock Awhile' is a much more appropriate candidate for 'first rock and roll record' than the more frequently cited 'Rocket '88'..."

"88" was released almost two full years after "Rock Awhile."

[Note: Part 1 is here, and the Eating Our Words entry that inspired this series is here.]

To tell the story of music in the Fifth Ward with anything like the sweep it deserves, we will have to go way back to the 19th century.

On a November day in 1898, Beulah Thomas was born to Fanny Bradley and George W. Thomas, a deacon at Fifth Ward's Shiloh Baptist Church. Thanks to a childhood lisp, her parents would call her Sippie, and a marriage to a man named Matt Wallace would give her the name she would enter history with: Sippie Wallace.

After she worked the tent-show circuit out of Houston for a few teenaged years, the 1920s found Wallace resettled in Chicago, where she often performed with her piano prodigy of a kid brother - Hersal Thomas, as well as her older brother George. Meanwhile, she was also recording with New Orleans jazz pioneers like Kid Oliver and Louis Armstrong and earning the nickname "The Texas Nightingale."

Back in its heyday, the corner of Jensen Drive and Lyons Avenue was known as "Pearl Harbor, the Times Square of the Bloody Fifth." You wouldn't know it today - the entire area is a vast wasteland of tired and abandoned lots and boarded-up shacks, but for much of the 20th Century this area was the nexus of one of America's most musical neighborhoods.

It was Harlem in Heavenly Houston: Club Matinee - "the Cotton Club of the South" - was right around the corner, and right down the street from that was Duke-Peacock Records, before Motown the most important black-owned record company in America.

In Sig Byrd's Houston, the eponymous mid-century chronicler of Houston's beautiful losers and no-'count boozers devoted an entire chapter to Pearl Harbor. Much of it focused on a scuffling, obscure R&B singer who wanted to join the ranks of "all the other Fifth Ward boys who had functioned right and gone high in the world of boogie, jive, and bop: Illinois Jacquet, Gatemouth Brown, Arnett Cobb, Goree Carter, and Ivory Joe Hunter."

Why, oh why, didn't I know about Sprawl? Back in '93 and '94, when the bulk of this disc was recorded live, I was a teenager adrift in the populist crapulence of alternative radio, searching for identity and a sense of belonging. Despite its omnipresence and conviviality, even toward the under 18 set, Sprawl somehow eluded my burgeoning musical consciousness.

On this most momentous of days, it's hard to imagine any song on Earth sounding better or more appropriate than this Houston classic:

Ex-Voto, "I Never"

I turned down several New Year's Eve employment opportunities this year (some of them legitimate), and spent the last hours of 2008 quietly with family, friends and an excitable Papillion. Among the small group of relaxed revelers was a visiting Spleen, in town for a family holiday. Spleen, who occasionally deigns to answer to her birth name of Heather Stanley was, until recently, part of the small coterie of Goth musicians in Houston.

She started out as the singer of Larry Rainwater's side project Ardour of Angels, before being incorporated into his main creative engine, Ex-Voto. The two bands are more or less united these days, as are Spleen and Rainwater, who will marry next Halloween. Rainwater's day job has whisked them away from Houston to Arkansas, and, believe thee me, the city is much poorer for their absence.

Though both bands played only a handful of shows in the Houston area, I don't remember a single one with less than a hundred people in the audience screaming their heads off. True Death-Rock is hard to come by in this damn dirty Emo world, and now it's extinct in Houston.

L-R: Jerry Lightfoot, Texas Johnny Brown, Joe "Guitar" Hughes, "Spare Time" Murray (obscured) and Pete Mayes

James Nagel/www.jerrylightfoot.com

Veteran Houston bluesman Pete Mayes, a guitarist and singer whose uptown jump-swing style a la Louis Jordan belied his rural Texas roots, has passed away at his Northside home, his friend, chauffeur and caretaker Art Dietz told Rocks Off this morning. The exact time and cause of death are unknown; "I'm not sure if he died during the night or if his wife [Shirley] found him this morning."

Mayes, 70, had been in poor health for several years. Both of his legs were amputated due to diabetes, and he underwent quadruple-bypass surgery in 2001. Despite his health problems, he continued performing until a few months ago, Dietz said. "Toward the end, it was pretty physical getting him in and out of the vehicle."

Pete Mayes was born in the Chambers County community of Double Bayou, a blue-collar African-American and Creole settlement near Anahuac. Through his family, he inherited the Turtle Bayou Dance Hall, where Mayes hosted a Christmas Day afternoon blues show for 54 years through last year. Due to his declining health, no show was scheduled for this year.

Mayes idolized T-Bone Walker as a teenager and eventually worked his way up to Walker's bandleader. He also played behind Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Junior Parker, Little Milton and Bill Doggett ("Honky Tonk"), and also led his own band, the Houserockers, for 50 years. Mayes is survived by his wife and son, Michael; another son was killed several years ago in an industrial accident.

"God gave me the gift to put a swing in the blues," Mayes told Dr. Roger Wood in a 1998 Press article marking the release of his CD For Pete's Sake (Antone's). "It's just natural." - Chris Gray

There was a time, but a decade ago, when there were roving groups of "rude boys" running the Houston streets. They wore things like creepers, wingtips, high-water slacks and pork-pie hats. They "skanked" in moshpits and drank Red Stripes.

They co-existed with the punks and the non-racist skins in harmony (somewhat). Drinking always played a big part in scuffles. The skins had more in common with the rude boys, tracing their true lineage back to the youth cult in England in the late '60s. Most bands had the word "ska" in their name too: Mephiskapheles, Skarmy of Darkness, Ska Trek, to name a few.

Then somewhere along the line the scene sort of just stopped.