​It started as a simple question: What albums would you leave your unborn children, if you knew you were on borrowed time and may not be around to show them the way. At first I asked for albums for sons, but then it grew broader, not out of needing to pacify the PC-thug in me, but to make sure everyone, regardless of gender, had a sort of Rosetta Stone of musical history in their hands.

You could leave them pristine vinyl versions of these, a collection of cassettes, or maybe just a diamond-covered flash drive, if are so inclined. As for me, I will also leave my unborn child my Rdio account. That's not a paid endorsement, that's just me being expedient.

To get some obvious picks out of the way, the entire Beatles catalog will come standard with being my child, like seat-belts in cars. As will George Strait's Strait Out Of The Box, and ZZ Top's catalog.

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Metal Bad Boy Kim Jong-il

​Kim Jong-il and '80s hair metal were almost synonymous, and last night when the world found out that the North Korean leader passed on to the big rock show in the sky, all I could listen to was hair ballads, driving through the city in tears. Looking at things he would never get to look at through my tear-stricken eyes.

The swagger, the passion, the cult of personality, the virile way he lead his people, his fans, just like Axl Rose on the Use Your Illusion tour, or at the very least, the late Jani Lane at a record signing after "Cherry Pie" came out. The Dear Leader had charisma for days, the wardrobe, the mythology - he invented the hamburger after all - and the adoration of millions and millions in his home country.

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​A few weekends back, Craig's Hlist spent his whole weekend driving around town running errands listening to 106.9 The Zone, Houston's newest "alternative gold" radio station. In those 48 hours, our entire adolescence flew into our ears, reminding us of most every good and bad moment, at least those related to radio-rock.

We are unrepentant '90s music junkies. There exists a pocket in that decade, from about the time Nirvana hit MTV until at least late 1999, permanently marked into our brain as ground zero for all that would come after.

Most things pop, rock, and hip-hop we cherish in 2011 are somehow divined from those eight years. All the music and entertainment magazines we pored over for those days, weeks, and months form a sort of bedrock in our musical knowledge, leading to what we do today.

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​It's funny watching new artists stumble over themselves trying to score coverage on popular blogs. Take the fast rising L.A. crew Odd Future, for example. Group captain Tyler, The Creator is almost as famous for his musical ingenuity as he is for his feud with revered rap blogs Nah Right and 2 Dope Boyz. After unleashing a slew of disses on the sites for ignoring his music, Tyler finally found a way to appear on the sites. He bought an ad for his Goblin LP. But when fans click on the ad, it brings up a teaser site which reads: "Fuck 2 Dope Boyz & Nah Right."

On the surface, it was a clever move, and Tyler is obviously having fun with the beef at this point. But it also betrayed his innermost desire to gain the cosign of those blogs, which is interesting, given that he's made it this far without their backing.

There are three main rationales behind the fervent pursuit of accolades from blogs: (1) visibility; (2) the appearance of legitimacy; (3) leverage. Question is, what's the actual worth of blog love? In the big picture, it is a currency with depressingly low conversion rates.

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Craig Hlavaty

​Detroit fuzz-punk-psych rockers Human Eye caught our ears as we walked down 8th Street last night, leaving TV On The Radio at Stubb's. First the sound reeled us in, naturally, and then the live show had us planted in front of them for the rest of their 1 a.m. set at Headhunters.

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Craig Hlavaty

​ Tomorrow night Lemmy Kilmister and Motorhead hit the stage at Warehouse Live, and Rocks Off will be there, at least physically. We don't plan on remembering the show so we have diligently trolling YouTube for videos to fill in any memory lapses we may have from heavy indulgence and fanboy euphoria.

The band is synonymous with danger and disarray. Their logo the "Snaggletooth" and all its interpretations denote something frightening and alternately free at the same time. Lemmy's distinctive facial features and grizzled contentment are pure rock 'n roll, even if both are subject to ridicule from their detractors. The band isn't metal and they aren't punk, but they contributed to both genres' disparate lineages and became the one group that each sub-culture could share a beer over.

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In 1988, few things were as cool or innovative on Saturday mornings as Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Each week, we screamed the secret word, connected dots, watched old weird-ass cartoons and saw Saturday Night Live star Phil Hartman play a surly sea captain.

The show was something five-year olds and hungover twentysomethings could all enjoy. But the Christmas special that came that holiday season is beyond understanding even 20 years on. Not until Drenched watched it again a few years back did he realize how utterly insane this thing was.

Even more interesting were all the gay cultural icons that were featured - people like Cher, k.d. lang, and Zsa Zsa Gabor all showed up around the playhouse. It was a fun and groundbreaking hour of television. Even Little Richard popped up out of nowhere.

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On Saturday night, overcome by sheer boredom and a gnawing morbid curiosity, we slinked into the Bret Michaels set at the Meridian. This concert was part of a tour to promote the sometime Poison frontman's ongoing televised quest for romance, the VH1 masterpiece Rock Of Love.

Predictably the audience was a motley crew (bad pun intended) of pop culture gawkers and aged former hair metal battle horses: ladies who may have been backstage the first time Poison hit town, now making calls, in between Jager Bombs with the girls, to the sitter to make sure the kids were in bed; dudes with luxurious manes that rivaled those in the equine family, sitting at the bar holding vinyl copies of Look What The Cat Dragged In hoping to get them signed.

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I can't enough of watching this random Mexican Nu Metal Dude lose his shit over emo kids. I hear they are beating the white jeans off these kids south of the border. Anyway, this guy gets so worked up he slips into English to say "fucking bullshit" for added emphasis.

Ya gotta give it up to these guys. We've been dealing with this caca for years now and the minute it hits their cities, they get all the cholos and metal heads together for a beat down that the Who would have written a rock opera about. Social commentators are likening this to the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the late 1930s. Is that seriously the best metaphor they could dig up? Seriously, comparing the Nazi Party to a rag-tag group of Sepultura geeks and dudes in oversized Dickies beating up pansexual mall nymphs?

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Dr. Pepper, that little old soda company from Waco, has jumped onboard the Chinese Democracy Hating Train that began sometime at the end of Bill Clinton's second term in office.

Everyone knows that Guns N' Roses frontman Howard Hughes (I mean Axl Rose) has been working on this Spruce Goose for the past 14 years. Recording has been the stuff of legend, with the sound said to change every few months to cotton to whatever is hot at the time. Be it trip-hop, rap-metal or that strain of nu-rock that's been permeating modern rock radio. You know, the Buck Seether stuff you only hear out here close to the coast. Cough Clear Lake Cough.

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