Photo courtesy of Spinlab Communication

Kirk Franklin

Even talking to Kirk Franklin makes you want to straighten up and fly right, not to mention feel a little lazy. The 43-year-old Fort Worth native is arguably the most decorated gospel performer of his generation, winner of close to 100 music awards across a wide variety of platforms: Grammys (nine), Stellar (39), Dove (16), NAACP Image (eight), and so forth. He's even won a Soul Train Award.

Furthermore, Franklin's singing competition Sunday Best is going into sixth season, he co-hosts Game Show Network's current No. 1 show, American Bible Challenge (with "You Might Be a Redneck If..." comedian Jeff Foxworthy). Oh, he's also a New York Times bestselling author for The Blueprint: A Plan for Living Above Life's Storms and has just signed a Houston family group called the Walls ("two brothers, two sisters") for his joint venture with RCA Records. Franklin, of course, is hard-pressed to take credit for any of it.

"Everytime you've gotta talk about yourself, it sounds so vain," he says.

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Photo by Marco Torres

Taylor Swift is apparently funnier than we would have taken her for.

You might think that it's a little bit early for April Fool's, but pranks go on between musicians and bands year-round. Given that musicians are an immature, jocular sort, tied inherently to an adolescent dream of being a rock star, it should be no surprise that they get into all kinds of crazy inside jokes. We probably don't even get to see the half of it, but when we do it's always equal parts hilarious and baffling.

We may be outside the longstanding jokes between band members, but some things are just laughable on their face, and those are the ones we can all enjoy. Though hundreds probably go on year-round, these are some of the best we've ever heard about, recently or not-so-recently.

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Last time Rocks Off caught up with the guys in thelastplaceyoulook, they were trying to get a new van. Like any other automotive purchase, the van wasn't going to be cheap so they turned to Kickstarter. That turned out to be a smart, albeit controversial, choice.

Some $10,000 later, the band got their new ride and hit the road, all without lead singer Justin Nava having to shave off his trademark beard. (For a $10,000 pledge, he was willing to shave and mail it off.)

Flash-forward a few months to tonight, where the group finds themselves at Warehouse Live for what is their largest headlining show to date. Not only are they celebrating the holidays, not to mention the end of the world, but they're also celebrating their first new release in four years.

With new music and a black and white van dubbed "Cha-mu," 2012 has been quite the year for thelastplaceyoulook. Rocks Off talked with Nava about the year that was.

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Florence and the Machine
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
September 29, 2012

Was it really a mere five months ago that local girl Florence Welch and her band were playing the (then) Verizon Wireless Center? Life moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller once said, and F+tM's rise has been meteoric indeed.

It was a wet Houston evening that greeted the band Saturday at the Pavilion, a circumstance that neither dampened the crowd's enthusiasm nor kept the singer and company from showing exactly why they deserve to play these larger venues.

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So you are disgusted, angry, and outright righteously pissed that your beloved 103.7 is gone with the wind, replaced by 24 hours of Christian music. Gone are your usual playlists full of Wilco, Soundgarden, Sheryl Crow and Death Cab For Cutie, not to mention your favorite DJs and personalities.

This week 103.7 FM changed over to Christian alternative format Air 1 Radio, playing cuts from Flyleaf, Thousand Foot Krutch, Switchfoot, and former DC Talk member TobyMac. The station is commercial-free and funded by pledge drives and carried on 105 stations nationwide and heard by more than two million listeners weekly.

What happens to displaced 103.7 FM fans now?

You may not have the luxury of a smartphone with online radio apps, or maybe your car doesn't have auxiliary inputs for said smartphone, and you hate/loathe every other terrestrial radio station in Houston.

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photo courtesy of Sean Horrigan

The Celebrity DJ" Fridays at Leon's Lounge take a turn from the secular to the sacred tonight when Father Sean Horrigan, pastor at Christ the Redeemer Church, commands the turntables.

Horrigan, whom we ran into last Saturday night at the Wagoneers show at McGonigel's Mucky Duck, was the music editor at the Daily Cougar at University of Houston during his Eighties college years and says his set will be primarily an '80s revue.

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Along with pickled pig's feet and a steady supply of Slim Jims, a good jukebox is a prime element for any great bar. But, like dinosaurs, jukeboxes are a vanishing breed. Unlike digital jukes, iPods or DJs, jukeboxes require love, care and maintenance, as well as -- among the truly great ones -- some thought.

Until recently, Poison Girl had a killer jukebox, but it went down and owner Scott Walcott hasn't been able to get a mechanic familiar with his type of machinery, so it's currently on hiatus. Last year Under the Volcano's dollar-swallower shorted out and caught fire, so there are perils that most civilians wouldn't necessarily consider.

But with that in mind, here are eight local jukeboxes that only make the party better.

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Photos by Marco Torres

Stone River Boys

Houston International Festival
Downtown Houston
April 22, 2012

With a slight north breeze keeping festival-goers from broiling under a cloudless sky, Sunday's iFest turned into a perfect laid-back Houston day of rest and entertainment excess. It didn't hurt that the music lineup was both diverse and stellar, that there were virtually no lines and that things ran with an almost informal efficiency that is so typical of the Bayou City.

We started the day with Austin's Stone River Boys and the hundred or so souls mostly scrunched under the big live oak tree which offered the only shade -- shade and sunscreen being in high demand.

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Delicate Cutters

We received the new Delicate Cutters 2011 album Some Creatures on the same day that we received the new Dead Fingers album from one of our favorite labels, Big Legal Mess, the offshoot successor to Fat Possum. Too bad for Dead Fingers.

The oeuvre of both bands is a mix of folksy indie rock from much the same musical realm as local favorites Literary Greats. But where Dead Fingers sounds contrived, over-thought and lyrically trite (and their vocals made us want to buy stock in companies that manufacture ear plugs), Some Creatures is quite listenable and interesting.

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Out of some of the most proudest moments of my five-year tenure here at the Houston Press - interviewing Rob Halford, talking to an agitated Chuck Berry on a couch backstage after a gig, shaking hands with Charlie Sheen - one of the best days ever was finding a Christmas card in the mail from Insane Clown Posse's Psychopathic Records about a year ago.

Just days after being bathed in Faygo at Warehouse Live during a December 2010 ICP gig, we got a card in the mail from Farmington Hill, Michigan with a tiny Hatchet Man Santa on the cover. It was a rather conservative card, save for the hatchet-wielding maniac for sure.

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