Photo by Jim Bricker

Lucas Gorham at Grandfather Child's CD release show at Fitzgerald's, September 2012

"Maaaaan, I'm doing OK," says Grandfather Child's Lucas Gorham over the phone. "A lot better than I was a couple of weeks ago, that's for sure."

On Martin Luther King Day, the popular Houston roots/R&B band's vocalist/steel guitarist was riding his bicycle to his mom's house about ten miles away. Almost there, he rode over something on the railroad tracks he was crossing that stopped him abruptly. Gorham flipped over the handlebars and landed on his shoulder.

"I broke my collarbone," he says.

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Rarely does an album cover so accurately reflect real life.

For most bands, the week of their album release is full of excitement. It's the moment when people are most interested in what they're doing. They get to do the press rounds, fans get to hear the new songs, and the label waits to see if their investment paid off.

Today Uno, the first of Green Day's new trilogy of records, hits stores but this week will not be the victory lap the band hoped for. Instead of being all over the national press the band instead had to put out a press release explaining that their lead singer was headed to rehab.

How could it go so wrong for one of the biggest bands in the world?

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Rock stars are just like the rest of us. They eat, love, poop, age, and sometimes they just embarrassingly go ass over tea kettle.

Rewind:

When Gravity Attacks: 13 Memorable Onstage Stumbles

The difference between them and us, besides, you know, money, fame, security, and the like, is that when we do it the exposure is limited to whoever saw us at the moment. In the Age of YouTube, though, every unfortunate onstage mishap is immortalized for mass consumption.

Yes, it's juvenile, but today we're going to offer our ten favorite falls by famous rock stars. Take comfort, though, ever single person who fell ended up more or less fine. That's why it's a comedy and not a tragedy.

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Rewind: Insane Clown Posse Incites Spiritual Debate, Asks "Where's God?"

Here's a Video of the Entire Geto Boys Show From Saturday's Juggalo Gathering

It's been a pretty good week for both the Insane Clown Posse and Juggalos across the country. Aside from an argument that led to a Texas ninja getting stabbed, this year's Gathering of the Juggalos appears to have gone off without a hitch, while ICP made national headlines for making it known they plan to eventually lose a lawsuit against the FBI.

Mostly lost in all of this is the fact that Detriot's favorite facepainted duo just released a new album. This makes sense, because ICP stopped making music for the rest of us years ago.

Still, I came across the video for one of their new tracks and it killed a lot of the goodwill the Posse had built up with me over the last few years. For wrestling fans, there are two words that give us pause, and those two words just happen to be the title of the song in question: "Chris Benoit."

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The Internet -- whaddaya gonna do? The Houston Press has been having difficulty merging onto the Information Superhighway all morning, but we hope to resume our regular blogging schedule shortly.

Stay tuned.

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The comments sections on several articles about Linda Chorney, the woman who gamed the system and social networked her way onto the final Grammy ballot in the Americana category, tend to be pretty negative, although Chorney's publicist, husband and a few friends are trying to staunch the flow of irate bile that has gushed like BP's Gulf well last year.

Lonesome, Onry and Mean has been following Americana music since long before we first went to work in country radio in the early Seventies, and we've never witnessed anything quite as shameful as Chorney's calculated internet march to the Grammy ballot. We were revolted by our first listen to Chorney's tepid folky Emotional Jukebox. We can think of a handful of women in Houston who could kick Chorney's musical ass with one arm behind their backs.

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The subtle front page of Chorney's website.

As if the Grammys didn't have enough credibility issues, NARAS, the organization that controls the process, has left a loophole large enough for a complete unknown to manipulate her way onto the final ballot in the Americana category.

The news broke two days ago in Variety that virtual unknown Linda Chorney had employed the organization's interactive Grammy 365 site to connect with voting members and get her music heard. Somehow she got enough members to vote for her to get her album Emotional Jukebox on the final ballot with Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, Ry Cooder, and Lucinda Williams, who have collected among themselves 23 Grammys.

On one hand, we have to applaud Chorney for her effort and determination and for her ability to work the system to her advantage. On the other hand, after hearing her music, we want to projectile vomit.

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Photo via lunatic-fridge.com

Say you're an elementary school music teacher singing Christmas carols, specifically "Deck the Halls," with your class and every time the lyric "don we now our gay apparel" comes up, the kids look at each other and giggle hysterically because the word "gay" is super funny to eight year olds. What do you do? Do you take control of your class like an experienced educator or do you, in an attempt to curb the outbursts, change the lyrics of a 150 year old song and replace the word "gay" with "bright"?

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Lady Gaga kept a poker face after her Montreal fall.

Concert performances and award shows can sometimes really put the pressure on artists, who often get so nervous or excited that they may just faceplant the stage. We've complied you tube clips of some of the best mid-performance stumbles. Some are a little shocking, but they are all amusing in the end

13. Wiz Khalifa: While performing in Boston last year, Wiz lifts his shirt to flex for the ladies. At the 0:17 mark, he takes a tumble and roll. He was pretty good at getting back on his feet as if the fall was apart of his act.

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brightestyoungthings.com

The sign officially known as "Love Symbol #2"

Sunday marked the 18th anniversary of the date Prince changed his name to that confounded "Love Symbol", and we can't help but wonder if he would have had more success had he waited a decade or two.

Like it or not, in today's highly compact, smartphone-addicted culture, abbreviations are becoming the norm rather than the exception, with RHCP and ICP, CCR and STP seen more frequently than the bands' full-length names. Then again, LMFAO can be found on any standard keyboard, whereas the Love Symbol - an unpronounceable, highly stylized combination of male and female gender signs - exists only in Prince's frilly, purple velveteen mind.

Prince made the change in an attempt free himself from Warner Bros Music, saying "Prince is the name that my mother gave me at birth. Warner Bros. took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music that I wrote." Yet the general bewilderment over how to represent the singer verbally and in print resulted in his being referred to instead as "the artist formerly known as Prince," alienation of his audience (or rather, the people formerly known as fans), and a rich buffet of material for comedians around the world.

Changing your name to a symbol is just one of many ways to thwart a successful music career, four more of which are listed below.

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