Wednesday, Nov. 4 2009 @ 8:57AM
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| Marco Torres |
One of the true architects of hip-hop, Rakim stopped by House of Blues' Bronze Peacock Room Tuesday night to conduct a clinic in peerless lyricism. Rocks Off's lensman Marco Torres was there. Did you know Rakim is the nephew of R&B trailblazer
Ruth Brown? We didn't either.
Click here for a slideshow.
Monday, Oct. 12 2009 @ 4:58PM
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| Michael Pittman |
| L-R: Jesse Dayton, Mike Stinson and Davin James twang it up in Montgomery County. |
When the Conroe Cajun Catfish Festival says "rain or shine," they mean it. The rains poured Friday night and Sunday, but that didn't keep the festival from drawing a huge crowd on Saturday when the weather was cool and perfect. And the music was stellar from start to finish.
Click here for a slideshow.
Thursday, Oct. 8 2009 @ 3:00PM
As you may already know if you followed
Rocks Off's copious ACL coverage,
Austin's Zilker Park is a muddy ruin. We use the term "muddy" loosely, as much of the turf churned into muck by dancing festival-goers was a substance called "Dillo Dirt," which is part recycled sewage. As a salute to the brown soup created by the City of Austin's efforts to go green, we've put together a slideshow of album covers featuring dirt, mud and, of course, poop. Enjoy!
Wednesday, Sep. 30 2009 @ 10:15AM
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| Marc Brubaker |
Rocks Off's stable of reviewers are resting up for ACL now - or they'd better be, dammit - but that didn't stop intrepid photographer Marc Brubaker from braving the fake blood, ginormous codpieces and everything else GWAR to get scary-good shots like the one above Tuesday night at Warehouse Live.
Click here for a slideshow.
Monday, Sep. 7 2009 @ 2:00PM
Monday, Aug. 10 2009 @ 10:42AM
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| Amber Roussel |
Craig Kinsey (left) and Geoffrey Muller of Sideshow Tramps led a foot-stomping hillbilly hallelujah revival at Summer Fest Sunday, inspiring a mosh pit with overstimulated takes on gospel/blues standards like "St. James Infirmary" and "John the Revelator." Lots more where that came from:
Click here for a slideshow more than 140 pictures strong.
Friday, Aug. 7 2009 @ 2:01PM
Courtesy of our friends at the
Chron,
here is the heartwarming story of Houston's George Vera, a 500-lb purveyor of illegally bootlegged albums who managed to mule a gun past the guards at both the city and county jails. How did he do it? Vera squirreled the piece safely away between the folds of his flesh. They didn't catch him, either; he confessed to a guard while in the shower.
It makes you wonder: what kind of albums might a quarter-ton criminal be bootlegging?
Rocks Off has some ideas...
Wednesday, Aug. 5 2009 @ 3:00PM
For most rock acts, the traditional way to deal with success is to rework their lyrics, image and sound to become palatable to a larger audience. Usually this means brightening the subject matter, cleaning up the bad words, softening the sharp edges on those power chords and getting haircuts that cost more than the previous album.
This is a process commonly known as "selling out"; however, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the artist in question becomes angrier, more depressed and/or more confrontational. Here are some of those albums.
Thursday, Jul. 23 2009 @ 12:11PM
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| Henry Rizoh |
Once upon a time, before it was a shooting gallery, national news and the talk of Twitter, the first annual Trae Day celebration was just a rap concert and family festival. Bun B, Rick Ross, a newly shorn Slim Thug and Houston mayoral candidate Peter Brown all came out to salute the man of the hour
before things got all crazy.
See our slideshow here.
Tuesday, Jul. 21 2009 @ 12:31PM
Rocks Off thought we'd wait for all the hoopla surrounding the 40th anniversary of the moon landing to die down a bit before tossing in our two cents. Hell, the Apollo 11 capsule didn't splash down until July 24, 1969, so we figured the day after the anniversary is as good a time as any to show you
our favorite moon- and space-themed album covers. Enjoy.
Thursday, Jul. 16 2009 @ 1:45PM
One of the most influential Southern rock bands of all time, ZZ Top has, of course, been influenced by those who came before. You can see shades of the boys with the beards in each of the following bands - acknowledged by music critics, and in some cases the band itself, as huge influences on ZZ Top - but you can't deny it all adds up to a singularly unique sound. Bonus points if you know which of these bands actually contained members of ZZ Top before Dusty, Billy and Frank joined forces.
Click here for the slideshow.
Thursday, Jul. 16 2009 @ 11:07AM
The Beatles,
Yesterday and Today (1966)
We start with perhaps the best-known example of a "recalled" album cover. When advance copies were sent to stores and DJs, there was an immediate uproar over the cover, showing the band covered in baby parts and bloody meat. All copies were ordered to be returned to the manufacturer. These copies were "pasted over" with a new cover and sent back to stores. Only a handful of copies escaped the "repasting" and are of course valuable collector items. Many people tried to peel the new cover off, making an original "unpeeled" copy valuable, too!
Monday, Jul. 13 2009 @ 4:58PM
Monday is the 24th anniversary of Live Aid, the globally televised fundraiser for African famine relief organized by Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof (now Sir Bob Geldof) that revolutionized everything from satellite communication to concert promotion to the relationship between performers and charitable organizations. Live Aid turned U2 into superstars, almost broke up Duran Duran and the Rolling Stones, reminded the world of Freddy Mercury's onstage genius and featured entirely too much Phil Collins -- he played with Sting in London before hopping a Concord to Philadelphia to perform solo and with Eric Clapton and the surviving members of Led Zeppelin.
But inevitably, several Live Aid performers are all but forgotten in 2009. Step into Rocks Off's time machine and see who they might be, and whatever became of them...
Friday, Jul. 10 2009 @ 7:30AM
The rock star life is not known to be one of taste and self-restraint. That having been said, some rock stars (and pop stars, too) descend further into the depths than even their fellow musicians, and when you stand out as a disaster in such a field, it deserves recognition.
In honor of Courtney Love's birthday Thursday, here are some of the biggest train wrecks in the world of rock and pop. Accidental or carefully orchestrated, it doesn't matter. We like to stop and stare anyway.
Click here for the slideshow.
Monday, Jul. 6 2009 @ 1:31PM
Today marks the anniversary of the day in 1957 that John Lennon met Paul McCartney, when Paul happened to take in John's pre-Beatles band, the Quarrymen, at a Liverpool church picnic. Exactly seven years later came the London premiere of
A Hard Day's Night, the manic movie whose soundtrack cemented Lennon & McCartney as one of the greatest songwriting duos of all time.
Here's a look at some other great songwriting duos who got by with a little help from... each other, we suppose.
Monday, Jul. 6 2009 @ 10:49AM
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| Chris Gray |
| Hats off to a fine Fourth of July on the Island. |
With the sun beating down to the tune of 100 degrees in the shade and police checkpoints every mile or so, Rocks Off decided the most prudent way to spend his Fourth of July was to stay put. Luckily, the Island was hopping with a burlesque show and backyard barbecue at the Continental Club, garage-rock-versus-fatback-R&B DJ showdown at the Big Top and the usual case of Saturday night fever at the Mink. It turned out to be a fine Independence Day (and night) indeed.
Click here for a slideshow.
Thursday, Jul. 2 2009 @ 4:10PM
America's Independence Day is this weekend, where we salute the courage of our forefathers with controlled aerial explosions and small grease fires in our backyards. Nobody likes a silent holiday, so we found some album covers with plenty of American spirit, which illustrate in no uncertain terms why the words "patriotic" and "tasteful" are so rarely found together.
We've been advised by our legal department not to tell you the rules of our newly-invented Patriotic Album Cover Drinking Game, so all we will say is: we need to lie down right now. While we do that,
check out the slideshow here.
Friday, Jun. 26 2009 @ 4:45PM
Sounds like Houston is all set for its annual
Pride festival this Saturday. Rocks Off figured we'd chime in with a few (well, 20) of our favorite albums from gay/lesbian/bisexual artists or groups with at least one LGBT member. (Besides Elton, Bowie and Queen, that is... those are a given.)
These acts definitely have a lot to be proud of.
11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, June 27, Montrose (Yoakum and Commonwealth Streets). Free. The Pride parade down Westheimer starts at 7 p.m.
Monday, Jun. 22 2009 @ 3:42PM
The other day, the Rocks Off brain trust was sitting around talking, and one of us happened to mention whatever album it was we were talking about - it might have been Duran Duran's
Rio - came out the year one of us was born. That got us thinking, "How much have albums released within 12 months after our birthdays influenced our musical tastes?" Quite a bit, really.
Click on the Rocks Off staffer's name for their slideshow; release dates are based on the best information we could gather via
Wikipedia,
amazon.com and
allmusic.com.
Chris Gray (December 18, 1974)
John Seaborn Gray (July 29, 1979)
Craig Hlavaty (April 19, 1983)
Kim Douglass (January 25, 1988)
Monday, Jun. 22 2009 @ 11:45AM
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| Marco Torres |
A who's who of rap talent from both Houston (Devin the Dude, Lil' Flip, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire) and out of town (Lupe Fiasco, the Cool Kids) turned up at Warehouse Live Saturday, June 20, to help the one and only Bun B "Swang on 'Em" for a couple of hours. Photographer Marco Torres was in the thick of the action. UGK for life!
Click here for the slideshow.
Tuesday, Jun. 9 2009 @ 3:50PM
 |
Nick DiFonzo |
Sengelmann Hall, a 115-year old saloon and dance hall in Schulenberg, has been closed up since the 1940s. Until last week, that is, when Houston entrepreneur Dana Roy Harper opened the doors to his million-dollar renovation on this sleepy main street halfway between Houston and San Antonio. The hall features an original downstairs bar, a biergarten and dining area, clam-shell-paved back porch and large upstairs dance hall. After a sold-out crowd on Friday, Saturday's turnout for Austin's Derailers (above) was a mix of curious local families, two-stepping old-timers, and a few big-city hipsters.
See our slideshow here.
Tuesday, Jun. 9 2009 @ 1:00PM
Rocks Off loves to put together musical slideshows, and if the response to
a few of our
recent ones is any indication (hi, Digg!), you like them too. Album covers are an almost inexhaustible resource that are always fun to look at and can be grouped together any number of ways.
So last night Rocks Off was sitting around listening to Sirius XM's
Classic Rewind channel and decided there's really no reason for him to hog all the fun. Just for a laugh, for five songs in a row he jotted down three potential slideshows per artist; all you have to do is scroll through the choices and vote in the comments. Rocks Off will tally up the votes Wednesday morning and do the necessary research to have a slideshow ready by 5 p.m. Have at it!
Friday, May. 22 2009 @ 1:30PM
Thursday, May. 21 2009 @ 4:30PM
It might not seem like it, but some musicians are actually pretty smart. And they read. Sometimes they'll even tackle a book or two and come away so inspired they have to translate it to their own medium. Iggy Pop's new
Preliminaires is only the latest.
Here, then, are
some albums based on works of literature, so you can rock out instead of quietly scanning all those tiresome words.
Monday, May. 18 2009 @ 4:34PM
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| Sgt. Pepper's was only the beginning... |
To celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the Beach Boys' sonically revolutionary album
Pet Sounds - released May 16, 1966 - Rocks Off is featuring a cavalcade of albums which have, according to critics, fans, friends of the artist or even the artists themselves, been influenced by Brian Wilson and Co.'s
magnum opus.
Click here for the slideshow.
If you've never listened to
Pet Sounds all the way through, though, you're in luck. A gentleman named Craig Robinson has constructed an MP3 wherein every single song on the album plays simultaneously. It sounds exactly like what we imagine Brian Wilson was hearing 24 hours a day as he spiraled into drug-fueled madness. Enjoy.
What did we forget? Tell us below.
Friday, May. 15 2009 @ 4:30PM
Ever wondered how to be a Jewish mother? How to play quarterback like two-time Super Bowl champion Bob Griese? Or - something all of us have wondered - how to stay the hell out of probate? Our man in the
Cutout Bin,
Nick DiFonzo, has all the answers.
Click here for the slideshow.
Wednesday, May. 6 2009 @ 12:32PM
We remember when we first saw a picture of Flight of the Conchords - playing tonight at Jones Hall - we thought, "Now those guys look funny." That was a compliment, because with many comedy acts, you can tell they're terrible just by looking at them. Turns out you
can judge a book by its cover; that's why books have them.
These comedy album/DVD covers look more likely to tickle the gag reflex than the funny bone.
Tuesday, May. 5 2009 @ 5:00AM
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| Mark C. Austin |
Didn't go to Jazzfest? Don't worry. Neither did Rocks Off, but that guy above sure did, and so did our intrepid photographer Mark C. Austin.
See what else he shot in the Big Easy right here.
Thursday, Apr. 30 2009 @ 4:31PM
In our search for pig-centered songs yesterday, we found that the little porkers have a bigger role as musical thematic material than we had ever dared dream. Here, then, are
some swine-happy album covers for you to enjoy, assuming you have Internet access in your flu-proof bunker.
Tuesday, Apr. 28 2009 @ 1:49PM
We're so stoked about
Creed reuniting and coming to Houston in September we can hardly contain ourselves. The more we gazed longingly at the cover of
Human Clay, the more it inspired us to put together a
slideshow of other buzz-killing graphics from heavily tattooed bands who, not so long ago, shared their pain with an entire nation (and still do on 94.5 FM).
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