5. Lightnin' Hopkins, "Merry Christmas Baby"

Besides Townes Van Zandt, who we wish had recorded the world's most melancholy Christmas album, Lightnin' is probably Houston's most critically exalted hometown artist. Lightnin' was born in East Texas but he died in Houston, and in between he became widely thought of as the greatest blues guitarist ever.

Lightnin' recorded a handful of incredible holiday songs like "Santa" and "Merry Christmas," and we've been listening to his version of "Merry Christmas Baby," co-written by Texas City native Charles Brown and available on the above 1991 Rhino compilation Blue Yule: Christmas Blues and R&B Classics, all week.

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Photo by Marco Torres

Scarface at Warehouse Live in September

It's Scarface's birthday, y'all. What, you didn't get him anything, either? Thank God. The humiliation of letting Houston's most lyrical, most respected and all-around best MC turn 42 without handing him something to unwrap was hitting us pretty hard, but since you dropped the ball, too, maybe we don't look as bad.

Here's the good news: While our wallets may be a tad light at the moment (damn Renfest!), we're never short of amazing gift ideas here at Rocks Off. Do us a favor and pick out one of these ten presents, wrap it up nicely, and put our name on it, too. We'll pay you back on the 15th, we swear.

Come to think of it, maybe just have it delivered. It's already late, and... well, Scarface is scary.

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wikipedia.org

Note: This is a rerun of a popular post from Mr. Allin's birthday last year. We'd be remiss in not sharing our some of the outlaw scumbag's best quotes on a day like this.

Today would have been shock-rock icon GG Allin's 56th birthday, making him a senior citizen. But hell, we doubt the man/force of nature would have made to the 21st century, unless he made a radical and annoying left-hand turn into normalcy.

The singer, born Jesus Christ Allin, died on June 28 1993 after a heroin overdose, not quite dying onstage the way he wanted, and was probably supposed to. We wouldn't mind dying while writing or seeing a concert ourselves. He left behind a band, The Murder Junkies, and a brother, Merle, who continue GG's stanky legacy to this day.

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Not pictured: Houston

Forty-seven years ago this week, full-scale Beatlemania descended upon Houston in all its glory. On August 19, 1965, the Fab Four played their only Houston concerts -- one in the afternoon and one in the evening -- at the Sam Houston Coliseum downtown.

The completely hysterical response to the Beatles during this period of the band's career, particularly by teen girls, was already notorious by the time John, Paul, George and Ringo made their way to Houston, but by most accounts, the city's adult population was still mostly unprepared for the mayhem. It began the second the Beatles' chartered plane touched down at Houston International Airport (now Hobby), when fans swarmed the tarmac.

Some Beatlemaniacs even managed to climb onto the plane's wings, knocking on windows and likely scaring the ever-loving shit out of the lads. It was this kind of unprecedented behavior that would soon lead John Lennon to declare that the Beatles had become "more popular than Jesus."

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Note: It took us a little while to track down pictures from the show. Thanks again to Mr. Adler for letting us use his. -- Ed.

Photos courtesy of Rich Adler

deadhorse; moshing

When We Ruled H-Town reunion
feat. deadhorse, Manhole, Tread, Wishbone Bush, Taste of Garlic,
Fitzgerald's
August 3-4, 2012

An interesting experiment happened in Houston over the weekend. Before Houston's top performers of 2012 took over ten downtown venues Sunday for the Houston Press Music Awards showcase extravaganza, a bunch of their counterparts from 1992 had their own thing going on across town.

To celebrate the release of When We Ruled H-Town, the new documentary about Houston's '90s rock scene by J. Schneider, Brent Himes and Robbie Conley, the filmmakers tracked down a slew of the old bands featured in the movie to relive a few glory days at Fitzgerald's. The goal seemed to be nothing less than to disappear back in time for two nights into a scene mostly forgotten until now.

That sounds excellent in theory, but the '90s were a long-ass time ago. Could these old dudes really still get onstage without embarrassing themselves? And would anybody care?

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Photos by Victor Pena

Kiss, Mötley Crüe
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
August 3, 2012

"I used to rock and roll all night and party ev-er-y day. Then it was every other day. Now I'm lucky to find half an hour a week in which to get funky."

Getting old can be a drag, to paraphrase some guy, but how you've treated yourself to that point can affect how well you manage the inevitable descent into decrepitude. Those who find acceptance in their station in life also tend to weather their autumn years more gracefully than those who cling to past glory.

And that intro would've worked great if Mötley Crüe had put on as half-assed a show as Rocks Off was expecting on The Tour with Kiss last Friday night. Truth be told, they were better than anticipated, giving us probably the second best of the four Crüe shows we've seen (the first being 1987's Girls, Girls, Girls concert at the Summit), making a swampy August evening in the Woodlands a little more tolerable.

Oh, and Kiss was pretty damn good, too.

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Hi there. I'm Michael Jackson's Thriller and I am 30 years old.

So here's an interesting fact: according to Nielsen Soundscan, older catalog albums have officially overtaken brand-spanking-new albums in sales for the first time since Soundscan has been keeping track. That's only since 1991, but it's probably safe to say that this is the first time such a thing has ever happened.

It would be easy to say, "Well yeah, because new music sucks and old music is the shit! Hand me my prunes, get off my lawn, etc." (Yes, you would actually say "etc.") But before we start jumping to conclusions, let's really think about this and try to examine it from a few different angles.

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Not some of them... ALL of them.

Twenty-nine years ago today, Metallica released their debut album on Megaforce Records, Kill 'Em All. It wasn't a smash success initially--Mötley Crüe were the reigning kings of metal on the West Coast in 1983, and Kill 'Em All wouldn't go gold for another six years. By that time, of course, Metallica had proven to be just as influential as the glam godfathers in the Crüe, spearheading a worldwide metal movement known as thrash or speed metal.

Kill 'Em All was basically the first thrash album that everyone agrees is a thrash album. Songs like "Whiplash" and "Phantom Lord" featured hyperspeed riffs and solos that blew people's hair back, inspiring an entire subgenre of copycats. Bands like Exodus, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax were soon pulling the Kill 'Em All formula in all directions, leading to a competitive atmosphere that produced some of the decade's best music.

That's not to say Kill 'Em All was totally revolutionary, however. It was merely the culmination of a trend toward increasingly extreme explorations of volume and fury in underground rock. In fact, the roots of thrash date back much further, to 1974.

To celebrate the birth of the headbanging-est strain of heavy metal, Rocks Off has prepared a look back at the tunes that inspired a bunch of addled California teenagers to pick up a guitar and shred. None of these songs are thrash, exactly --They're more like the first mutant fish to grow legs and crawl out of the ocean and into the mosh pit. The influence of each can be heard on Kill 'Em All and the early thrash records to follow.

Bass drum-roll, please...

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Photo by Groovehouse

Slayer's Tom Araya at Bayou Music Center in 2010

The biggest traveling heavy metal festival of the summer rolls into the Woodlands Pavilion tonight. The annual Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival has stepped its game up significantly in 2012, dropping metal titans Slipknot, Slayer, Anthrax, Motorhead and more onto Houston's well-groomed northern suburb like so many canisters of napalm. There will be screaming, there will be pushing and shoving and there will almost certainly be some illicit drug-taking.

Basically, it's going to be chock full of all of the things that concern parents about rock concerts.

Which is kind of the point, of course. Bands like Slayer and Slipknot have cultivated a sound and image designed to shock and repulse parents, giving kids (and the young at heart) some much-needed space.

This fest promises to be crowded with skulls, pentagrams, Nazi imagery, blood and middle fingers, and that's just at the T-shirt tent. Everything will be deliberately ear-splitting, rude and decidedly anti-parent. But which act will top the others by annoying the most parents?

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Well, kids, summer has arrived. If you have ever noticed, all the good concerts seem to come during the summer -- with May being more like a pre-show.

My parents, when I was younger, took me to many concerts at some of these venues, mainly Contemporary Christian concerts. I myself had only been to the Sam Houston Coliseum twice, once for Steve Camp when I was five and lastly, a concert with Margaret Becker and the late Rich Mullins at age seven.

As for Hofheinz Pavillion, I went there once and that was when I graduated from the University of Houston in 2010. I have also been to the old Summit twice, both times were for the Handels Young Messiah tour back in 1992 and 1995.

Some of the best ones that I went to were in the summer. I can clearly remember as a child going to Joyfest at the Southern Star Ampitheater at Astroworld back in 1994 and twice in 1997 -- once to see Jars of Clay and another time to see Point of Grace -- my version of Wilson Phillips and the Spice Girls.

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