​In even more touring news that will delight graying grungers, ukelele fanatics, and Pearl Jam freaks alike, Eddie Vedder is coming to Jones Hall on April 22 for a solo set, with Glen Hansard handling opening duties.

This Houston show is a part of a 13-city U.S. swing which... wait a hot minute. You mean Houston is actually for once going to be included in one of those tiny U.S. tours that I get PR emails about all day which never have any Texas stops on the itinerary? Very cool news. We thought Vedder forgot about us a long time ago.

Vedder's last solo album, Ukulele Songs, was just that, a collection of songs on ukulele. The album was a fun spin, and the last two songs, "Tonight You Belong To Me" and "Dream A Little Dream" were sweet little nuggets. "Tonight" also featured vocals by Cat Power. And yes, that was the song from The Jerk.

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Photos by Lauren Marmaduke

​A capacity crowd jammed into Blanco's Friday night for the return of 90s local favorites, the Hollisters. The dance floor was thronged, the beer line was long, strings were bent and twanged, and there was plenty of big hair.

Fronted by Mike Barfield, currently of the Austin roots outfit Stone River Boys, the band skated easily through essentially every song they know. And it was a typical mix of what made them so popular back in the day: Some up-tempo East Texas rockabilly-ish two-steppers, some mournful honky-tonky balladry, and short bursts of rock and roll with a touch of soul. All of this was punctuated by Barfield's occasionally hilarious asides and his "Texas Tyrant of Funk" dance moves.

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​Fred Ealesmith's latest release 6 Volts is rapidly becoming our most played disk since we scored a copy at his recent show at Mucky Duck. Recorded live as a band with ONE MICROPHONE(!) as one track mono to a reel-to-reel deck (oh, you want lo-fi!), the album has drawn frequent comparisons to the last Neil Young album, Le Noise.

As usual with Eaglesmith, the album is packed with memorable lines and hard-bitten characters. We recently spent a sleepless night lying in bed with "I'm dangerous, I'm dangerous / I'm dangerous to myself" running on repeat deep in the cranium.

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Mark C. Austin

Pearl Jam at ACL '09

​Amongst all the Nevermind love running rampant this week, people seem to forget that Nirvana contemporaries Pearl Jam are also celebrating their 20th anniversary this year. Obviously the Nirvana tributes are different since one member is not living and the weight that Nevermind still carries two decades later is undeniable.

What's interesting about Pearl Jam - Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Mike McCready - is their staying power, and their steadfast hold on their own career. The things they turned down in the '90s actually helped them last as long as they have: The fights with TicketMaster, the refusal to make obsessive amounts of music videos and media appearances, pushing albums instead of singles, all those things went against the music industry they came up in - foolishly, many said at the time.

Today though, their stubborn resolve is looked on with reverence.

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​Today officially marks 20 years, yes two decades, since Nirvana's Nevermind hit stores and started a whole new movement in music, er, well at least brought one further above ground. The past month the music world has been awash in articles and blogs about Nevermind, with the three living architects, drummer Dave Grohl, bassist Krist Novoselic, and producer Butch Vig looking back on the album they made in 1991.

Obviously it's an emotional time for all involved. Main man Kurt Cobain has been dead more than 17 years now, and is thus unable to reflect on the album. That only seems to stoke the fires of obsession for Nirvana devotees, though. We remember in 1991, 20 years after the death of Jim Morrison, the massive swell of Doors love that flooded pop culture.

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Photos by Jim Bricker

​Check out these '90s all-stars in our slideshow.

311, Sublime With Rome
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
August 12, 2011

Aftermath could smell the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion before we even crossed the street for Friday night's 311/Sublime With Rome concert. The whole place was like a giant white-rasta vaporizer. In fact, we probably had a contact high by the time we'd walked in the gate as SWR played "Wrong Way."

We're still not sure what to think of Sublime With Rome. Technically speaking, they're not a cover band; they have two-thirds of Sublime's initial lineup and just released an album of original songs called Yours Truly this past July. The venue was still filling up as the band played a few of their recent tracks; the crowd that was already there didn't seem into it.

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Photos from hedislimane.com unless otherwise indicated

Little Frances Bean, all grown up, tatted-up, and smoking cigarettes.

​There's a line from Knocked Up I think of often these days, when the doorman of a swanky nightclub tells big sister Debbie, "I can't let you in 'cause you're old as fuck... for this club, you know, not for the earth." I know I'm not old - you know, for the earth - but I have felt old as fuck on two separate occasions this year, and both involved Nirvana.

The first occurred on a Wednesday night in March, when my curiosity to see what kind of judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez made on American Idol outweighed my general dislike of the show. The remaining hopefuls were asked to choose a song from the year they were born, and the performances were all '80s fabulous and predictable until Casy Abrams, a little, bearded redhead with a crazy look in his eyes, hopped onstage with a guitar and began to sing those familiar words, "Load up on guns, bring your friends it's fun to lose and to pretend..."

And that's when it hit me. Children born the year Nirvana released "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are not only old enough to compete on American Idol, the are also capable of growing massively thick, wooly beards.

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The Ian Moore Band today (L-R): Ian Moore, Chris White, Bukka Allen, Michael Villegas

​Ian Moore had both the good fortune and misfortune to be a young, good-looking Austin guitar hero who came to prominence shortly after Stevie Ray Vaughan's death created an opening for the position. Joe Ely drafted the native Austinite for the recording and touring cycle behind 1992's Love and Danger, after which the eponymous group Moore founded with bassist Chris White, keyboardist Bukka Allen and drummer Michael Villegas became one of the top draws at legendary venues such as Steamboat and Antone's, rooms Vaughan had trod himself not too many years before.

That was enough to pique Capricorn Records' interest, and the Georgia-based label added the Ian Moore Band to a roster that, at one time or another, also included the Allman Brothers, the Marshall Tucker Band, Wet Willie, Cake and 311. Capricorn released two albums, 1993's Ian Moore and '95's Modernday Folklore, both of which got heavy rotation on stations such as Austin's KLBJ and Houston's KLOL, sending a handful of songs ("How Does It Feel," "Nothing," "Muddy Jesus") into Billboard's Mainstream Rock Top 25. Soon the band found itself sharing stages with the likes of Bob Dylan, ZZ Top and the Rolling Stones.

But Moore never wanted to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan. Fiercely intelligent and equally strong-willed, he had always been interested in power-pop and roots-rock, and when those sounds dominated the third album he handed in to Capricorn, Walden hit the roof. As Moore told Rocks Off in this week's print issue, the musician and the label owner even came to blows. That was the end of Moore's tenure on Capricorn, as well as the Ian Moore Band itself.

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This movie is old enough to drive.

​Summer is officially here, even though it's been ball-dripping sweaty since at least early May. This is also about the time that we are already steeped in big-budget Hollywood summer would-be blockbusters, the kind of movies that have fast-food promotions and shitty toys that break before Labor Day. You know, fun movies you don't need to think about until they come on one lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon. Like Matthew Broderick's Godzilla.

One of the best things about growing up in the '90s was the movie-soundtrack industry, which fed us all sorts of second-rate songs left off major albums, unlikely collaborations, and left-field covers. We bought most of the soundtracks of the movies we saw, even from the other seasons of the year, because no girls liked us, which meant extra cash.

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UPDATE AGAIN (June 21, 12:55 p.m.): Indeed, Michael Haaga has nothing to do with this deadhorse reunion. The lineup that released 1996 EP Boil(ing) is the one performing.

UPDATE (June 21, 11:30 a.m.): There is some dispute as to which version of deadhorse, if any, is playing this show. Rocks Off will update with a new blog as soon as we have some definite information.

​This is was pretty exciting stuff. The original lineup of legendary Houston tongue-in-cheek thrash-metal band deadhorse has confirmed a reunion show at Warehouse Live on Saturday, October 22.

You may also refer to them as Dead Horse - Rocks Off found the band's name spelled both ways numerous times when we searched the Houston Press archives. Because it's cooler, we'll go with deadhorse for the rest of this blog.

Over their near decade-long lifespan, deadhorse improbably became one of the most popular bands in Houston and built a sizable underground national following. One of our predecessors, Hobart Rowland, discovered this when he wore a deadhorse T-shirt (which were themselves legendary, particularly the "Farm Road 666" model) to SXSW one year.

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