We all hate the trope "Houston, we have a problem," but we do have a problem in Houston with talkative, inattentive crowds at live shows. Scanning back over reviews from the past two years, at least 20 percent of them mention crowd noise.

So what do the musicians think and, more importantly, what do they do? The last time we saw Steve Earle he pulled out Doc Watson's famous one-liner to silence a request screamer: "I remember my first beer, too, buddy." We've also seen Earle quiet two talkative ladies with the sarcastic, "Am I botherin' y'all?"

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Photo by Jason Wolter

Jason Isbell (left) and Amanda Shires (right) are both more deserving than Chorney.

​The small world of Americana music is all a-twitter over New Jersey woman Linda Chorney's nomination for a Grammy in the Americana category. In case you haven't been following the story, Chorney discovered a way to game the system and managed to convince quite a number of Grammy voters (who obviously are a little under-educated and under-exposed to the Americana genre) to vote for her tepid album, Emotional Jukebox, to get it on the final ballot in spite of it not having sold a single unit so far according to Sound Scan, the official industry tabulator of album sales.

According to interviews she's given, Chorney seems to have very little working knowledge of Americana or the artists in it. The Americana Music Association, which normally issues a boilerplate congratulatory statement to all the nominees, has not done so this year and speculation is that the association is not happy about Chorney's nomination since she is not a member of the organization and has never attended any of the annual events.

Frankly, we don't care if she's a member of the AMA or not; what bugs us about Chorney's gameswomanship is that she has knocked a number of exemplary albums out of a chance to win. And we'll bet she hasn't heard a damned one of them. So here's a list for you, Linda, of people you are basically screwing over. Like we said, do the right thing and withdraw your nomination.

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​Seattle Knows How Great Music Is Made

Three years after it was originally dreamed up, the Seattle Music Commission convened for the first time on Monday, featuring representatives from such musical mainstays as Starbucks, Amazon and Microsoft. There are also several record label reps on the SMC, and even a musician! Okay, so it's one of the guys from Presidents of the United States of America, but at least they let someone who actually writes and performs music on board. We can't wait to see what creative, intriguing musical concepts come from this supergroup of corporate titans and label shills.

The SMC's purported mission is "to support, promote, expand and encourage Seattle's vibrant culture of music," and here are some rumored first steps they're taking on that road:Flannel prices will be artificially boosted to create the illusion of relevance among the trendy and hopefully lead to an actual sales spike. No word on second-hand Doc Martens, but hope remains high.

Albums will no longer be sold in the Single Play, Extended Play, or Long Play formats; they will instead be sold as Venti, Tall, or Grande.

As a tribute to Seattle's trademark sound, all SMC meetings will start out really quiet, then get really loud, then get quiet again, then loud again, with intense feedback and distortion throughout.

An annual music festival will be held to raise funds, 3% of which will go towards various Seattle Music Commission public projects designed to bolster musicianship within the community and aid starving artists. The remainder of the profits will go to the record label executives.

As can be expected, there have been a few growing pains. Regarding the initiative to build a 200-foot marble statue of Kurt Cobain at the city limits, a deadlock was experienced between those who wished to soften the troubled grunge messiah's image, and those who wished to retain the integrity of his downcast demeanor. This resulted in an admittedly dubious compromise: the statue will portray a smiling Cobain shooting heroin into an adorable tabby kitten.

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Sorry, we couldn't resist...

​King of R&B. Ghostwriter supreme. Pop genius. Unabashed sex fiend. Bump 'n' grind horndog. Acquited pedophile. Ultimately, history will decide whether or not R. Kelly deserves some, all, or any of these labels, but here are two facts that aren't in dispute: 1) the guy has written and produced some of the sauciest, raunchiest, funniest songs in recent memory, and 2) that June's The Demo Tape mixtape - Kells' first - was an unforgivable piece of garbage.

Since doing his fanbase a solid with 2007's Double Up, Kells has been busy (improbably) beating a child sex-abuse rap and polishing the oft-delayed Untitled, due out December 1. Now he's embarked on a full-scale tour, which means his road crew will have to do tons of trim coordination and that you, the R. Kelly ticket holder, must exercise your unalienable right to demand unrealistic song covers during the show. Here are a few suggestions:

Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"

Doesn't matter that this is a no-frills, no-kink pop song about a lover's distress originally sung by a British songbird. Kells could kill this, just totally knock it out of the park. Obviously, "bleeding" could be swapped out for "skeeting," completely and utterly warping and tarting up the core message of the tune.

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​Singer/guitarist Joe "Joe Queer" King is the sole constant in The Queers, a pop-punk concern that's closing in on the big 3-0 and has shed more members than your dog's had fleas. As the name suggests, this band is pretty much about acting retarded, girls, acting retarded and girls; did we mention acting retarded and girls?

If you've heard any Screeching Weasel or Mr. T Experience albums, you get the idea, and already know whether or not this is your scene. Much like Bad Religion, Rancid and NOFX - all of whom would probably be aghast at the comparison we're about to make - The Queers are one of those cultural propositions that makes sense for a year or two, until one outgrows them without realizing it and is left wondering "Why did this shit ever matter to me so much?"

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​Lewd, crude, and equal-opportunity rude, Detroit's D12 are as nasty as they wanna be. Boasts about audicious rapes. Graphicly vicious psycho killer rhymes. Gratuitious brown-LSD overdose fantasies.

Extreme as the rundown nightmare metropolis they hail from, D12 are to rap what psychedlic acid-gobbling bands are to rock and roll, with a gruesome Friday the 13th twist. As the late Proof - Detroit hip-hop legend and Eminem hypeman/buddy - bragged on "Pistol Pistol," "I'm the hot nigga that's gonna put hell out of business."

Did D12 put hell out of business? Not quite, but they sure as heck tried. And now the surviving crew - Swifty, Bizarre, Kon Artis, Kuniva, and superstar/token white-boy/recovering addict Eminem - are touring in advance of a forthcoming third album.

One suspects that they won't be in the mood for the sort of song suggestions that Heckler's Delight advocated, but screw 'em: if you put down ducats for a ticket, you've got every right to capitalize on between-banger lulls to yell requests. Here are a few ideas.

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Who'd have imagined that Alan Thicke - he of Growing Pains fame - would sire a son who would grow up to be a multiplatinum R&B star? Not us, but we're sure glad he did. Robin Thicke's sultry vocal stylings are modern urban radio staples, with "Lost Without You" and "Magic" charting and dampening the undergarments of many a sweet, swooning young thing. He's the George Clooney of pop, and he'll be melting hearts and inspiring vivid masturbation fantasies May 17 Reliant Arena - a date Rocks Off only recently learned was rescheduled from tonight.

If you've got tickets, you're probably really excited about that. But what if you're mean-spirited? What if you want to toss a monkeywrench into Thicke's well-oiled gears? What if you smuggled a megaphone and a wishlist into Reliant? More importantly, what songs could you, now with a few extra days to mull them over, insist that Thicke cover? Below are a few choice suggestions.

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