Last year on this date, in honor of what would have been late Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain's 45th birthday, I wrote a blog supposing where the grunge icon would have been in 2012. It got a lot of traction, and people loved and hated it. Imagining him as a dubstep DJ was really for grins and shock value. I mean, who would have thought Dave Grohl would be Dave Grohl as we know him now? The future is funny that way. For all we know, Cobain would be playing a solo noise show at Super Happy Fun Land tonight.

Had he not died in April 1994, by his own hand -- or at the hands of sinister forces working for Courtney Love (insert maniacal laugh) -- Kurt Cobain would have turned 45 years old today. The rock icon killed himself at the age of 27, not only leaving behind a daughter to fend for herself against the wiles of her widowed mother, but also abandoning a future that music fans can only shake their heads and imagine with great shattered expectations.

Still, some have written him off as an immature, drug-addicted suicide casualty who couldn't hack it at fame. Society has a way of lionizing people who have died in their prime. Who is to say that some of the most prominent members of the 27 Club -- Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Cobain -- would have done things as groundbreaking as the work they did before their deaths, had they lived on?

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Remember the '90s? When it comes to Houston's rock scene, a lot of people don't. Sure, local bands were drawing large crowds to venues like the Axiom, the Vatican and the Unicorn, but much of the music of that era never made it outside the Beltway, and those clubs have been closed down for decades.

Unlike the underground hip-hop classics that were being pumped out in Houston at roughly the same time, the city's Clinton-era rock scene has largely receded from memory. For those of us who weren't there, it almost seems never to have existed at all.

That's unacceptable to J. Schneider and Brent Himes. The two of them played smogged-out shows together in the punk/funk/??? band Taste of Garlic in the early- to mid-'90s, and now they've co-directed a feature documentary about the wild, passionate scene that they remembered. The film is called "When We Ruled H-Town," and it premieres at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Rice University Theater.

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The early to mid-'90s were good times for underground music in Houston. At clubs like the Axiom, the Vatican and Fitzgerald's, an eclectic mix of punk, metal, funk and ska bands like deadhorse, Sprawl and more regularly played packed shows in front of 500+ fans.

Much has changed since, but those of us who were stuck in junior-high detention back then are in luck. A fascinating new documentary called "When We Ruled H-Town," co-directed by J. Schneider from bong-toting rockers Taste of Garlic, takes a nostalgic look back at those heady days in the pre-Napster era when it seemed inevitable that someone, ANYONE from Houston's thriving underground rock scene would blow up big nationally and put the city on the map. That scenario never quite happened, but it wasn't for lack of talent. Check out the film's premiere on Thursday to learn more.

There was much more bubbling up from the underground in Houston in the early '90s than just rock, of course. The Geto Boys were helping to kick off the rise of Dirty South hip-hop, and DJ Screw and the Screwed Up Click were hard at work twisting rap in an incredible new psychedelic direction. Ask anyone about Houston's musical legacy of the past 20 years, and these names are bound to pop up.

There wasn't a lot of overlap between the rock and hip-hop scenes, but that's not to say there was none at all, according to Schneider.

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Rosie Flores, known these days affectionately by many as the Rockabilly Filly, has had several careers: Punk rocker, cowpunk alt-country badass, potential country star, rock and roller, and rockabilly queen. Born in San Antonio, she spent her teen years in San Diego before striking out to find a career as a performer, writer, and guitar player.

Over the last four decades, the Bloodshot recording artist has released 14 albums and is set to release her fifteenth, Working Girl's Guitar, in the next few months. As a producer, she has just finished an album on legendary early rock and roll singer Janis Martin, known as "The Female Elvis."

Flores' trio will be rocking the Continental Club Friday night. Rocks Off caught up with her at her home in Austin.

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Photos by Marc Brubaker

Toadies

Toadies, Helmet, Ume
House of Blues
July 20, 2012

The '90s were in high demand in Houston on Friday night. Up in The Woodlands, the Barenaked Ladies, Blues Traveler, Cracker and more packed 'em in to relive some of the decade's best one-hit wonders.

Downtown, the Clinton-era jams were a little harder. Texas' alt-rock kings, the Toadies, rolled into House of Blues on a co-headlining tour with Helmet, and they brought Austin's Ume along with them. If you'd seen any of these bands before, you knew this was a hot ticket.

Ume's set at Free Press Summer Fest was one I was disappointed to miss, so it was great to see them back in town again so soon. One of the best bands that Houston has lost to the brighter lights up 290 in the last few years, the three-piece fronted by guitar-shredding dreamgirl Lauren Larson came ready to make some new fans. It was nice to see the venue already full when they went on.

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Above: Al Anderson (l) and World Famous Headliners in the studio.

There are people in Nashville, highly successful people, the average fan or casual music listener has little if any clue about. Chris Stapleton comes to mind. Mike Henderson is another. Everyone in Nashville knows and admires them, from Music Row to the East Nashville hepcats, but they're most often flying under the radar.

In spite of his 20 years in critics' darlings band NRBQ, "Big" Al Anderson is not exactly a name the average person is probably familiar with in spite of the fact that he has written numerous hit songs, played umpteen thousand gigs, and made some of the coolest, most idiosyncratic records of the past 30 years.

Anderson has written an amazing and varied string of hits for mainstream Nashville acts; here are just a smattering of the most recognizable: "Every Little Thing" (Carlene Carter), "Poor Me" (Joe Diffie), "The Cowboy In Me" (Tim McGraw), "Trip Around the Sun" (Jimmy Buffett), "Powerful Thing" (Trisha Yearwood), and the Mavericks' signature hit "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down."

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Living most of his adult and professional life in Tuscon, Arizona, former Sidewinders/Sand Rubies front man Rich Hopkins has recently relocated to Houston.

For those who don't remember, Hopkins and his mates in the Sidewinders hit the charts at the tail end of the '80s with "Witch Doctor" (1989) and immediately followed up with "We Don't Do That Anymore" (1990). They got lots of spins on VH1 and MTV.

But a legal dispute with a cover band called Sidewinder led to the band changing labels and names in 1991, and while they made fine records as the Sand Rubies, they never found the charts again although the band continued to tour for some years and has performed numerous reunion shows.

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Photos by Jason Wolter

Lumineers
Fitzgerald's
May 30, 2012

Denver-based Lumineers packed Fitzgerald's to the rafters Wednesday night, turning the upstairs stage into a 90-degree cauldron of sweat. I still don't understand why, although I think I understand why the band is named after smile-enhancing denture products.

One of the longest lines I've ever seen at Fitzgerald's -- and that includes shows for Stevie Ray Vaughan and Joe Ely -- stretched down the street halfway to Onion Creek. In fact, it was the longest line of freshly scrubbed twentysomethings I'd maybe ever seen outside Disney World. Women seemed to outnumber men, and it was one of the most homogeneous crowds I've encountered anywhere in the nation's most diverse city.

When I finally got in the building, it was near 10 p.m. and angst-y opener Gregory Alan Isakov was being thoroughly ignored by a talkative crowd. I thought maybe it was the cello -- but wait, the Lumineers have a cello.

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Since moving to Nashville in 1995, 52-year-old Darrell Scott has had a career most who take that Hillbilly Highway to Music City USA would envy. A triple-threat talent, Scott was for years a session warhorse, a guy who could play about anything with strings on it as well as possessing a fantastic ear for harmonies and an angelic voice.

He also wrote songs, lots of songs. Many were picked up by mainstreamers like Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Travis Tritt, Faith Hill, Brad Paisley and Martina McBride. The Dixie Chicks had hits with two Scott songs, "Long Time Gone" and "Heartbreak Town."

His song "Hank Williams' Ghost" was Americana song of the year in 2007, and "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" has been covered by a bevy of artists such as Paisley, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and Zakk Wylde and been featured twice on episodes of FX's Justified.

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Pearl Jam vs. Ticketmaster: No Contest.

Do you hate Ticketmaster convenience fees? If you don't, it's because you've never been to a concert. The various fees tacked onto admission prices by the global ticketing behemoth can add a pretty penny in a hurry to the face value of a chance to see and hear our musical heroes, and they're one of the biggest inconveniences associated with live music today. The fees are nothing new, either -- fans and artists alike have been complaining about the practice for decades.

Few have ever gone to such extreme lengths to try to eliminate service fees as Pearl Jam did 18 years ago this week. The Seattle-based grunge icons took a stand against Ticketmaster in 1994, filing a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department over the company's abusive service fee practices and growing monopoly over ticketing distribution.

They flat refused to sell tickets through Ticketmaster unless the fees were ditched. At the time, Pearl Jam was the biggest rock band in the world -- there was no hotter ticket in live music. If any artists could force Ticketmaster to change its business model, it would be them.

Long story short, they couldn't.

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