IN THE BEGINNING... the first shaggy-haired pretty boys of rock n' roll were The Beatles and Rolling Stones. They set the bar high, but many since then have tried to claim the mantle of the shaggiest and prettiest rocker of them all: Bee Gees, David Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Van Halen, Bret Michaels and, the reigning king of bouffant beauty... Bon Jovi.

Even newbies like Adam Lambert and Justin Bieber are splitting their 15 minutes in the spotlight evenly between pimping their songs and primping their hair.

Few, however, have gotten as far as lead singer John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls with little more than a handful of decent bar band ballads and rockers coupled with a head of hair fit for Zeus and Apollo.

Not that the Goo Goo Dolls haven't paid their dues, too. On the contrary, songwriting doesn't seem to come easy to the trio and they have made the most of a limited song vault.

The group has been together for 24 years but have labored to create only nine studio albums, including the new Something for the Rest of Us (scheduled for release on August 31). (Icons like Prince and Bruce Springsteen create nine albums worth of songs over a long holiday weekend.)

It's really only the band's three albums between 1995-2002, however (A Boy Named Goo, Dizzy Up The Girl and Gutterflower), most people remember. This trio of radio mainstays featured top 10 jangle-pop favorites like "Iris" and "Slide" and helped the Goo Goo Dolls sell around six million albums and earn four Grammy nominations.

Not coincidentally, this is also the about the time that Rzeznik coif started to swoosh across his face with such style and intent it's as if angels had placed each hair individually.

Strangely, the magic of Rzeznik's mop did not work for the group's last record, Let Love In, despite initially climbing into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums upon release.

Only time will tell if the Goo Goo Dolls can return to past glories with the new songs like first single "Home" from Something for the Rest of Us.

Houstonians at Sunday's show will be one of the first to get an advance live listen.

Just try not to look directly at Rzeznik's hair. It's too intoxicating.