Bela Lugosi

A James Byrd Jr. Memorial Playlist

We all know the reason Jasper, Texas is famous... Butterflies! Oh wait, no, sorry. That's from Bizarro World, where the answer isn't "hate crimes and murder." It's one of those East Texas towns, like Vidor, that the rest of the state keeps waiting for someone to make a horror movie about. Barring th ... More >>

A Bloody Good Show: Theatre Southwest Takes on Dracula

Theatre Southwest's Dracula is an English neo-Gothic trip compete with mystery, sex and, of course, blood.

The Five Most Disappointing Goth Albums: Bauhaus, Go Away White

All this week we're going to look back over albums from undeniable goth icons and talk about their failures. Thus far I've been focusing on endings, what with Siouxsie and the Banshees' last album and another that made Robert Smith seriously consider ending The Cure. Now I'd like to bring up somet ... More >>

Happy Birthday, Ray Parker Jr.! Seven Songs That Aren't "Ghostbusters"

Today Ray Parker Jr. turns 55 years old, and many happy returns to the man. Likely the only thing most of us know about him is that he penned the ever-catchy theme to Ghostbusters... though Huey Lewis claims Parker just ripped off "I Want a New Drug" with the tune. You can certainly hear the similar ... More >>

Friday Night: Peter Murphy at Numbers

Peter Murphy Numbers April 25, 2013 Maybe Peter Murphy should get arrested more often. That may be a horrible thing to say, but if you had seen him at Numbers, you'd understand. This tour had been previously announced, but whether his March arrest in California for DUI and alleged drug possession ... More >>

Getting to Know Nine Inch Nails All Over Again Through Ancient YouTube Footage

With the coming return of Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails to the touring and recording grind, fan excitement is at a high. It's almost as high as it was when NIN finally followed up the massive Downward Spiral with The Fragile double disc in 1999, or when they returned again six years after that for ... More >>

Gangster Squad

retelling the stories of better movies.

The 5 Most Important Years In Goth Music: 1979

All this week, Rocks Off will be looking at the biggest years for goth music, and exactly what they meant for the genre. Like any good structure, goth is built on the foundations of other previous cultures. You can walk back through David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and all the way ... More >>

Christmas Past: Happy Gothmas! Top 10 Goth Christmas Songs

While we celebrate the holidays, Rocks Off is resurrecting a few of our best Christmas-themed blogs from the past few years. (Wait... resurrecting is Easter. Never mind.) This blog originally appeared December 23, 2011. "Dude, religious Christmas is pretty macabre. All kinds of scandal, sex with a ... More >>

Your Halloween Playlist: Don't Play That, Play This

Recently Rocks Off told you how to put together a solid party playlist. We're coming up on the time of year when people start throwing Halloween parties, so now it's time to get a little more specific. Don't be content to throw on the old 30 Spookiest Halloween Hits album and walk away, because gue ... More >>

The 20 Greatest Goth Albums: The Complete List

BY JEF WITH ONE F AND CHRIS GRAY 20. Marilyn Manson Antichrist Superstar (Interscope, 1996) So squalid and deeply unpleasant it's mesmerizing, Antichrist Superstar is such an intricate dissection of how to become a "rock star" it could have come from a biology lab. Then 24 or 25, Manson gets so fa ... More >>

Town Monster Releases Horrifying Short Film to Promote New Album

You remember Town Monster, right? I brought them up a while to celebrate the legacy of Bela Lugosi in song, then ended up doing a feature on one of the most brilliant independently produced music videos I've ever seen. It made No. 8 on our Best Music Videos list last year, beating out some pretty i ... More >>

The Top 20 Greatest Goth Albums of All Time, Nos. 10-1

BY CHRIS GRAY AND JEF WITH ONE F Rewind: The Top 20 Greatest Goth Albums of All Time, Nos. 20-11 10. Rosetta Stone The Tyranny of Inaction (Cleopatra, 1995) In 1995, Porl Young used a nice-sized record advance to purchase a multitrack digital recorder that changed Rosetta Stone's sound considera ... More >>

Dracula, the Music and the Film with Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble

Grave Babies Want You To "F*ck Off"

Making a low-budget gothic music video is a double-edged sword. Sometimes you get stuck with the soul-crushing awfulness of Candy Apple Blue's "Graveyard," which was so bad that its very existence birthed the Gothic Council just to mock it. Other times you get Town Monster's "Bela Lugosi," which wa ... More >>

Gothic Council Praises Lyrics, Bowie's Penis

Really there are two kinds of music fans. Those who are there for the music as a whole and those who are there to hear the words. Make no mistake, we're not saying that one side is better than the other, but we are definitely in the latter category. Being a melodramatic lot, most goths are. So we t ... More >>

Happy Gothmas! Top 10 Goth Christmas Songs

​"Dude, religious Christmas is pretty macabre. All kinds of scandal, sex with a ghost, strangers bringing mystical gifts, and everyone predicting this young couple's baby's death like its glorious wonderful thing. Oh and a decree to slaughter all male babies the next day... what could be more ... More >>

Gothic Council Debates Great Gothic Album Cover Art

​Gothtopia would like to firmly bitch-slap an old adage, that being the warning about judging a book by its cover. The lesson we are supposed to draw from that is that we should look deeper inside than just the surface in order to better appreciate the true character of whatever the subject is ... More >>

Our Top 10 Music Videos of 2011

​Our obsession with the medium of music videos remains as strong as its ever been, and we've done our best to bring as many of the best of the newest releases to you in the digital pages of Rocks Off over the course of the year. We're pleased to round up the cream of the crop as we did this ti ... More >>

Gothic Council Mutinies Over "This Corrosion" Cover

We still haven't gotten around to setting up our iTunes account on the new phone yet. Since we mostly listen to the NPR live stream in the car anyway it's not a big deal, but every once and a while we get a sudden urge for a certain tune. Usually YouTube solves the trick nicely, and it was during a ... More >>

A Very Goth Council Thanksgiving

​The great feast is almost upon us, America, and as usual we're looking forward to a lot of home cooking and a carbohydrate overdose induced coma in the papasan chair while old Bela Lugosi flicks play on the TV... or maybe it's Texas Tech football. It's getting hard to tell the difference betw ... More >>

"Bela Lugosi": Town Monster's Unapologetic Festival Of Sin

​Rocks Off has done lot of playlists over the course of our writing career, but last week's birthday tribute to the one and only Bela Lugosi may be our favorite. Finding songs about the beloved horror icon not written by Bauhaus wasn't easy, and one of the deeper tracks we uncovered was an Ohi ... More >>

7 Songs About Bela Lugosi Not By Bauhaus

​Today is Bela Lugosi's 129th birthday. The man who will probably always be remembered as the definitive Count Dracula starred in dozens of plays and hundreds of movies, mostly horror and thrillers. Typecasting, his heavy accent, and a drug dependency on morphine to treat sciatica from a milit ... More >>

Gothic Council Remembers Their First Dance

​Gothtopia has spent the better part of our free weekends over the last decade hanging out at Numbers whenever DJ Mina hosts Underworld. It remains the hub of all things goth in Houston, and Mina's dedication to the institution doesn't earn her nearly the praise it deserves. We'd like to take ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Music Videos Of All Time

​It's hard to fathom a time before music videos, and it's even sadder to remember when channels like MTV and VH1 were wall-to-wall music videos. In between there was a golden age, when with every clip that you watched could spark a revolution in you, or at least change your fashion sense. It's ... More >>

Gothic Council Debates How To Rule Our New Planet

​After years of searching, scientists have finally discovered a planet that may be able to support human life. Gliese 581d, as it is known is 20 light years from Earth, and though it's just a bit on the cool side for comfortable human habitation, it looks like a pretty good bet that he planet ... More >>

Saturday Night: Peter Murphy At Numbers

Photos by Jef With One F​Peter Murphy Numbers March 19, 2011 The way the main man of a solo act walks out onto the stage says a lot about the kind of show you're going to get. Some beg for accolades, some are utterly indifferent. The word that came to mind as Murphy took center stage, flanke ... More >>

The Cold One

Godfather of goth Peter Murphy helps Underworld celebrate 12 years.

The Seven Ages Of Goth

​This is not meant as a complete history of goth, as that would be a huge book. Instead, we're aiming to give a simple overview of the musicians, songs and albums that have most defined the genre. Many deserving artists have been left out, and some that we're sure some people feel are not wor ... More >>

Bands Named After Movies, Characters & Other Film Stuff

​Ever wonder which of your favorite bands are named after movies? So have we. So we went out and did a little bit of research. BANDS NAMED AFTER ACTUAL MOVIES My Bloody Valentine: The seminal shoegaze act took their name from a low-budget 1981 horror movie about a guy who really, really hat ... More >>

Dracula

Gothtopia: Searching for the Perfect Vampire Anthem

Note: Lost in all the inaugural hoopla this week was the fact that Monday was Edgar Allan Poe's 200th birthday. No better time, then, to debut Rocks Off's new Goth column... Recently, my wife and I made our way down to the Houston Public Library to hear a talk with Charlaine Harris, author of ... More >>

Music to Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil

Indian Jewelry: Free Gold

Aftermath: Peter Murphy at Meridian

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, Nosferatu: The Ultimate DVD Edition, Live Free or Die Hard and Manufactured Landscapes

New releases this week

Bauhaus

Bauhaus appears with Nine Inch Nails and TV on the Radio on Sunday, June 4, at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands, 281-363-3300

Houston Press' top DVD picks for the week of September 6

Call Him Al

An epic story turns human -- and fallible -- in Oliver Stone's Alexander

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Best Transylvanian Restaurant

Charivari

Peter Murphy

Thursday, May 30

No Storybook Ending

A ballet from the past hints at the company's future

Playbill

Sepultura

Vampire Music

The Kronos Quartet presents a Philip Glass score for the 1931 movie classic Dracula

Reunion Rigor Mortis

Going Batty

Ballet's sensual Dracula is deep, dark and a bit clotted

The Insider

Good Wood

Histoire(s) du Cinema