The Houston Press Music Blog



Add to Technorati Favorites

Blogroll

Local Music Blogs

Local Music Message Boards

Local Music Sites

Cool Local Radio

Local Music Stores

Historical Music Sites

Overnight Express: In Case You're Not Sick of Me Going on About Tom Petty...

Thu May 08, 2008 at 10:46:42 AM
I know, I know, I have a problem. I'm seeking help, I promise. OK, I'm not. But if you worship at the church of rock & roll, Tom Petty makes a decent bishop. This week's discovery, courtesy of Wolfgang's Vault, is a full-length Heartbreakers concert recorded at Houston's own Music Hall in December 1979, about a month after a little album called Damn the Torpedoes came out. Like Blondie almost said, streaming is free. If you're a member, that is - sign up here.

Petty scholars well remember Torpedoes as the album that proved to MCA Records he was a worthwhile investment. Everyone else remembers it for "Here Comes My Girl," "Even the Losers," "Don't Do Me Like That" and a not-so-minor flash of genius he decided to call "Refugee."

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 6 comments
 

Last Night: Roger Waters at the Woodlands Pavilion

Mon May 05, 2008 at 08:51:26 AM
Craig Hlavaty
Check out our slideshow of Roger Waters in the Woodlands.
Roger Waters
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
May 4, 2008

Better than: Getting an extra nickel in your dimebag

Download: Dark Side of the…wait, surely you already have this, right???

As only one of four U.S. dates and the last stop on the tour (perhaps to make up for the rained-out Rice Stadium gig years ago?), the Houston classic rock audience responded by rewarding the former Pink Floyd singer/bassist with a sold out show. I’d never seen the lawn so packed before, proving that sometimes a band’s catalogue of material is so strong that it can overcome any hesitancies about who is actually playing it.

For the show’s first half, Waters and his extensive, polished-to-a-sheen ensemble (including late-model Thin Lizzy guitarist Snowy White) offered up a heaping helping of Floyd warhorses (“Have a Cigar,” “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” “Mother,” “Wish You Were Here”), rarities (“The Fletcher Memorial Home”) and solo material (“Perfect Sense-Pt. 1” from Amused to Death).

But the best moments came at unexpected times. The heavily trippy early Floyd track “Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun” was a mindbending blowout, complete with projected footage of the then-young band frolicking on a beach (ah, Syd, so young and vibrant…).

Category: Live Shots
Add or View Comments | 64 comments
 

Classic Rock Corner: Mudcrutch, Golliwogs, Mynah Birds, Moving Sidewalks and More

Thu May 01, 2008 at 02:14:52 PM
This week Reprise Records released the self-titled debut by Mudcrutch, the Gainesville, Florida swamp-rockers formed in the early 1970s by Tom Petty and future fellow Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. Petty has been playing tracks from the album, like a trippy cover of the Byrds' "Lover of the Bayou," for several weeks on his XM Radio show Buried Treasure, which airs all day today on XMX channel 2.

Better late than never, right? In the spirit of Mudcrutch, here are some other classic-rock heavyweights' warmup bands.

The Beatles - John, Paul and George all got to know each other in the Quarrymen, the Liverpudlian schoolboy band Elvis-crazed John started in the late '50s. Only Ringo, who came aboard at the relatively late date of 1962, was always a Beatle.

Jimmy Page - Broke into Britain's touring ranks with Neil Christian & the Crusaders before an illness indirectly led to his signing on with the Yardbirds, also the future incubator of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. You know the rest...

John Fogerty - Pre-CCR, the 2008 RodeoHouston and ACL festival headliner formed the Golliwogs with brother Tom in the late '50s. Despite releasing several 45s, their career was, to coin a phrase, stillborn on the bayou.

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 3 comments
 

Last Night: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Toyota Center

Tue Apr 15, 2008 at 12:19:43 PM
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Toyota Center
April 14, 2008

Better than: Getting your fortune told by Madam Marie on the Boardwalk – accurately

Download: “Candy’s Room,” “She’s the One,” “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” “Badlands,” “American Land”

For two and a half hours and without a break, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band held a rock and roll revival meeting with a level of energy that can only mean he’s replaced some of his 58-year-old parts with bionic equivalents. Leaping, running, and spinning around his grounded mike stand, it was tiring just to freakin’ watch the show – much less be the one putting it on.

Category: Live Shots
Add or View Comments | 6 comments
 

Q&A: Little Steven Van Zandt

Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 09:09:34 AM
NBC Photo / Heidi Gutman
With James Brown no longer around, Steven Van Zandt might just have the title of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. In addition to hosting/producing the syndicated 2-hour weekly “Underground Garage” radio program (heard locally on Sunday nights on KKRW, 93.7 FM), he also directs the 24-hour “Underground Garage” and “Outlaw Country” channels on Sirius satellite radio; founded his own record label (Wicked Cool); production companies for live concerts and television programs (Renegade); an internet lifestyle site (Fuzztopia), and now even a educational program to teach rock history in public schools.

Oh, and then Little Steven makes records and tours around the world with his childhood buddy, some guy named Bruce. It’s a good thing that “The Sopranos” is finally over…

The bandaned whirlwind stopped moving long enough to talk with Houstoned Rocks about a wide-ranging variety of topics and why Michael Jackson is a member of a club he shouldn’t be in.

HR: You just did a Springsteen gig last night in Canada, and now you’re in L.A. this afternoon. I’m surprised you have time to do an interview.

LS: Well, I am operating at close to capacity! (laughs). I’ve got a lot of help and people doing things. You know, I love everything I do. I couldn’t do it if were an obligation! But a lot of my energy is spent with [Wicked Cool] trying to redefine what the music business is these days. These questions take up a lot of time! I find that I’ve had to stop being creative just to spend more time on the business end. I know I should be writing more music.

HR: The Underground Garage is such a great concept for a radio station. You hear a lot of older music that the classic rock stations don’t touch, and new tunes that modern rock stations won’t.

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 0 comments
 

Get Lit: Instamatic Karma: Photographs of John Lennon, by May Pang

Sat Mar 29, 2008 at 06:06:56 AM

Work-103%20copy.jpg

In Beatles lore, a woman named May Pang is forever linked to the phrase “Lost Weekend.” That 1973 “weekend,” which lasted 18 months, is when John Lennon left Yoko Ono and, according to legend, wandered drunkenly in a haze until she took him back. (He was thrown out of LA’s Troubador nightclub twice, once for heckling the Smothers Brothers and once for walking around with a Kotex on his forehead.)

But May Pang, the young personal assistant he was living with, remembers the time differently. Lennon, she says, was mostly happy and productive, working on Walls and Bridges and his oldies album.

Category: Get Lit
Add or View Comments | 2 comments
 

"Foxy Lady" to "Bitch": Dayna Steele's Houston Radio Odyssey

Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 11:22:50 AM
For almost 20 years, she was the First Lady of Houston Rock Radio. On the air, across the stage and in the dressing rooms, KLOL’s Dayna Steele rubbed shoulders and interviewed plenty of rock icons. And her loyal legion of “Steeleworkers” made her one of the city’s most recognizable media personalities.

Since shutting off her mike, Steele has headed up a marketing and PR firm, ran and sold an online space-memorabilia Web site, and created Smart Girls Rock, an online community for young girls.

Steele has distilled much of her experiences in her new book, Rock to the Top: What I Learned About Success from the World’s Greatest Rock Stars (Brown Books, 192 pp., $17.95). It’s equal parts music memoir, self-help, business advice, and band primer book—and there were “hundreds” of rock and roll lifestyle and celebrity anecdotes that for reasons of space (or modesty) didn’t make it in. Houstoned Rocks spoke with Steele about business, pleasure, and why Lanny Griffith could have a second career as a wedding planner.

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 1 comments
 

Be of Good (Blue) Cheer

Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 06:42:44 AM

Dickie%20Peterson.jpg

For more than 40 years he’s been making eardrums ring and, according to his physician, growing calluses on his own. But Blue Cheer founding bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson shows no desire to turn down the volume knob on his power trio. Houstoned Rocks recently spoke with the sage stoner while he was somewhere on the East Coast, touring to promote the band’s surprisingly powerful new record, the aptly titled What Doesn’t Kill You…

Houstoned Rocks: Your Houston show piggybacks on Blue Cheer’s SXSW showcase and appearance at High Times magazine’s “Doobie Awards,” where you’re getting the Lifetime Achievement nod and have been nominated for “Best Pot Song.” How did you feel when you heard that news?

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 3 comments
 

Grateful Coogs

Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 11:26:28 AM
The Grateful Dead’s seemingly bottomless music vault will ensure live releases long after the band actually resembles their skeletal doppelgangers in the “Touch of Grey” video. But their most recent issue has an H-town connection sure to spur memories of packed seats (and packed bowls) all across the city.

Unlike the long-running Dick’s Picks series, which presents full shows, the newer Road Trips cherrypicks choice cuts from several concerts played around the same time. The just-released Volume 2: October ’77 features five tracks from the band’s October 14 gig at U of H’s Hofheinz Pavilion: “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo,” a cover of Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” a 17-plus minute “Playing in the Band,” “Brokedown Palace” and a reprise of “Playing.”

In addition to being the coolest year ever in the history of the universe because it saw the release of Star Wars, 1977 saw the Dead’s profile reach a pretty high level - albeit not often to the liking of their diehard fans.

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 0 comments
 

Get Lit: Ronnie, by Ron Wood

Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 12:00:59 PM
A band has some kind of amazing longevity if you can still be “the new guy” after 30 years in the lineup. But that’s exactly the case with Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood, who puts down his life story here.

Unfortunately, Wood’s recollections consist of precious little about the music and fewer anecdotes about his fellow Stones than one might reasonably expect. Instead, chapter upon chapter detail Wood’s drinking / drugging / fucking / palling-with-Keith escapades that run together and, frankly, grow tiresome after awhile.

By the time Wood locks himself in the family bathroom for two days straight to freebase with a friend, you half hope that the ghost of Brian Jones would show up and never let him emerge.

Category: Get Lit
Add or View Comments | 1 comments
 

Over the Hills and Not That Far Away

Thu Nov 08, 2007 at 04:20:01 PM
Led Zeppelin rocked the Sam Houston Coliseum the night before this 1975 show in Baton Rouge.
Led Zeppelin has been in the news so much lately it’s getting hard to remember they broke up 27 years ago. Of course there’s the big reunion show at London’s O3 Arena, with late drummer John Bonham’s son Jason taking over his dad’s stool, which has been moved to December 10 after hammer of the Gods Jimmy Page fractured one of his magic fingers last week. More than one million people have already put in for the ticket draw, and O3 only holds 10,000, so at this point it’s probably best to see if the concert shows up on YouTube or wait for the inevitable DVD.

That’s hardly all the Zep news. Banshee-like vocalist Robert Plant’s new collaboration with Americana/bluegrass siren Allison Krauss, Raising Sand (Rounder), is No. 6 on this week’s Billboard 200. And just today, XM Radio debuted its first dedicated artist channel, something rival Sirius has been doing for a while with Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffett and the Rolling Stones, to name a few. Guess who XM picked? XM LED, channel 59, signed on at midnight and is running the sound track to 1975’s The Song Remains the Same, which Rhino reissued last month, on a loop all day. Alongside the Song DVD and its two-CD sound track, Rhino’s brand-new two-CD compilation Mothership will be in stores Tuesday for all your hard-rocking holiday shopping needs. For those who prefer shopping by mouse, the band’s entire catalog will be available from all major online retailers starting Tuesday. (A review of Mothership will be posted soon on Houstoned Rocks’s new recurring installment, “Classic Rock Corner.”)

Category: Classic Rock Corner
Add or View Comments | 1 comments
 

Rotation: Chicago, The Best of Chicago: 40th Anniversary Edition

Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 01:29:52 PM
When, exactly, did Chicago jump the shark? Since the good people at Rhino were kind enough to arrange this double-album greatest hits package chronologically, we have the opportunity to arrive at a conclusion more or less scientifically.

Of the fact that Chicago jumped the shark there can be no debate. Few bands have ever done so with such appalling clarity. It still seems hard to believe that even some of the people who were involved with such toe-cringingly vile schmaltz as “Hard to Say I’m Sorry,” “Hard Habit to Break” and “You’re the Inspiration” were also involved win the creation of “Saturday in the Park,” “Beginnings,” and “25 or 6 to 4,” which is still cool even after you realize that the guitar riff is a blatant rip-off of Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.”

So on what night did old, good Chicago die? It’s tempting to say it was June 14, 1976 – the release date Chicago X, which included Peter Cetera’s cheesy hit ballad “If You Leave Me Now,” the seeds of the destruction of the band’s legacy.

Category: Rotation
Add or View Comments | 4 comments
 

Hittin' the Note with Gregg Allman

Fri Oct 19, 2007 at 02:00:48 PM
"Hi Greg. It's Gregg."

I felt a rush and a little bit of a chill. Gregg Allman, the man who was my gateway drug into the world of blues and soul, was on the line.

I asked him where he was calling from, and he told me he was in New Orleans and that it was raining. I told him it was raining here as well. "It's raining all over the world," he said. He then launched into a bit of Brook Benton's "Rainy Night in Georgia," finishing up with a detailed description of how the label looked. He might have given me the catalog number if I hadn't interrupted him.

I told him how he had introduced me to the music of Bobby "Blue" Bland and any number of other R&B greats. "I've got a 30-gig iPod within arm’s reach right now,” Allman said. “I was a CD guy until one day I was on the road movin' pretty good in my Corvette. I had two big ol' visors full of CDs and I was pickin' one out when I looked up and saw an 18-wheeler headed straight for me. I managed to dodge it and went out and bought an iPod the next day. I asked Derek [Allman’s guitarist Trucks] to load it up for me because he knows what I like. I've got Bland's whole catalog on there. Muddy and the Wolf too."

Category: Playbill
Add or View Comments | 3 comments
 

Last Night: Arrowfest at the Woodlands Pavilion

Mon Oct 15, 2007 at 11:59:43 AM

Arrowfest
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, The Woodlands
October 14, 2007

Better Than: A Sunday with Matt Schaub, Jesus Christ or mainstream commercial radio.

Download: “Good Girls Don’t” (the Knack); “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll” (Blue Öyster Cult); “This Ol’ Cowboy” (Marshall Tucker Band); “Jane” (Jefferson Starship); “The Kid Is Hot Tonight” (Loverboy); “Carry On Wayward Son” (Kansas); “Ready for Love” (Bad Company)

This year’s Arrowfest, assembled and sponsored by KKRW-FM, “The Arrow,” had probably the widest variety of bands and styles of its ten-year run. Running times were on or very close to schedule for the mostly 45-minute sets, and an overcast sky kept things cool for the all-day classic rock blowout. Here’s a blow-by-blow, band-by-band rundown:

Category: Live Shots
Add or View Comments | 4 comments
 

Paul Rodgers: All Right Now

Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 02:30:45 PM
With one of the most soulful and distinctive voices in rock history, Paul Rodgers has fronted not one but two of the genre’s great bands in Free and Bad Company. He also helmed a short-lived collaboration with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page as the Firm.

But when it was announced a few years back that he would join guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor for something called “Queen + Paul Rodgers,” multiple heads were scratched as visions of the tough-sounding, blue collar Rodgers taking over the flamboyant Freddie Mercury’s role – much less his harlequin tights or yellow military jacket – seemed downright… odd.

However, the end result (both onstage and a live album) proved not an abomination, but a surprisingly worthy classic-rock mash-up. In addition to further work with Queen, Rodgers has been touring solo, and recently released the CD/DVD Live in Glasgow, featuring tunes from across his entire career.

Sunday at the Woodlands, he’ll soon be headlining the 93.7 FM’s annual Arrowfest show, along with the current lineups of Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult, the Marshall Tucker Band, Loverboy, the Knack and Starship with Mickey Thomas. Houstoned Rocks recently talked with the leather-lunged power singer about old days, new days and what his real motivation for keeping in shape is. - Bob Ruggiero

Houstoned Rocks: Here in Houston, you’re the final act on an all-day outdoor festival bill. Will you approach picking your material any different from, say, a solo gig indoors at night?

Paul Rodgers: Not really. This is my opportunity to put all of the material from my bands together, plus some blues and new songs. Wherever we are, when we open up with the chords to, say, “Shooting Star” or “All Right Now” they’re recognized immediately and that’s great. And I do like the audience participation.

HR: What made you decide to put together Live at Glasgow?

Category: Playbill
Add or View Comments | 0 comments
 

Houston Press Insiders

  • Local food, music and news blasts
  • Free Stuff