Billy Corgan

Your Billy Corgan Fix for This Year

Debonair Whigs

Alternative Notion Lollapalooza doesn't say much about its generation, but the music's fine

y Brad Tyer

Fight for Your Right

Does the U.S. belong with the Axis of Evil?

Wordless Wonders

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Matter of Importance

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Rotation

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Static

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Rotation

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

This Year's Model

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Rotation

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Shit Hole

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Pelican, with Thrice and Circa Survive

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

Lollapalooza, Year Four: The bloom is back

Death Valley does its talking through its playing

The Hanukkah Songs

Wherein we find the coining of our new favorite word: Jewpergroup

The Kids Aren't Alright

Fledgling director Jonas Akerlund spins the next hip dope flick

The Night a Well-Aimed Shoe Ended Smashing Pumpkins' Houston Goodwill

Today Rocks Off is starting a recurring series of local music urban legends; not so much 'urban legends' in the sense of oft-repeated stories that turn out to be false - though those are fine too - but actual legends: events and incidents that get talked about so much they become a part of local lor ... More >>

Tonight: Florida Indie Beach Boys Surfer Blood Sail Into Mango's

​Florida-based indie kids Surfer Blood pull into Mango's tonight, touring ahead of their upcoming Astro Coast LP. The band was recently anointed by Rolling Stone's online feature "Hype Monitor" as "bright and booming and hooky as FM radio in the late '70s." Rocks Off can hear traces of early "Blue ... More >>

No Turkeys Allowed

Our annual holiday shopping guide to recent local releases

Listology: Gold Sounds' Top 5 Seismic Love Songs for Valentine's Day

​This weekend, starting tonight with a gig at Walter's On Washington and tomorrow afternoon's 3 p.m. in-store set Cactus Music, Houston's Gold Sounds begins properly unfurling long-gestating LP, Seismic Love. It's fitting that the album gets it's proper debut over Valentine's weekend, seeing t ... More >>

Get In The Ring: How 7 Wrestlers Match Up With Their Rock-Star Lookalikes

​ While rock stars wrestle with their inner demons, the performers of the WWE wrestle with other people. A rock star may cut himself because he just needs to feel something; a wrestler will cut himself because it's the championship pay-per-view event and needs to look more intense. The rock stars ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Hope Justin Bieber Dies Before He Gets Old

​Oh, calm down. This isn't a call for the murder of American's favorite prepubescent pop idol. Sure, the former YouTube sensation from Stratford, Ontario who dresses and talks (and Tweets) like a diminutive Tupac Shakur has made more money in the last two years than you or I will see in ten li ... More >>

FAIL - Billy Corgan, Courtney Love, Justin Bieber, Celene Dion, Apple

If you're reading this, you're either on the Internet, or else you've mastered multi-dimensional thought-projection processes that would make Michio Kaku cry like a little girl. We'll assume the former, and just in case you don't already know, the Internet has decided that the word "failure" is too ... More >>

5 Rock Deaths That Shook Us Down

​It was sometime this past Saturday night that we first heard that Ronnie James Dio was dead. It was after midnight and we had just bellied up to the Mink's front bar when we checked our Twitter feed and saw that Dio had passed on. Our body froze every metal bone in our body ached for a few minute ... More >>

Top 5 Bands That Should Relax For A Bit

Craig Hlavaty​Wednesday, Rocks Off got an e-mail from the Dave Matthews Band PR team saying that the group would be taking 2011 off so they could come back in 2012. Whether or not this is to hasten the coming Apocalypse that year or just to live a normal life for a bit remains to be seen. God ... More >>

Courtney's Revenge

Nobody's Daughter propels Hole into the 21st century.

Last Night: Silversun Pickups And Against Me! At Warehouse Live

Photos by Faith SilvaAgainst Me!​Silversun Pickups, Against Me! Warehouse Live July 20, 2010 Against Me! opening up for Silversun Pickups would be like the Replacements opening up for My Bloody Valentine in 1991. Except that Against Me! isn't on the wane of their career and Silversun has way ... More >>

Mullets & More: 17 Signature Musical Hairstyles

​If you have hair, Craig's Hlist hates you. Not in a "you shot my whole family" or "you are the serial killer who dissolved my sibling in a vat of acid" way, more in a "you got the last sausage and cheese kolaches at the office" way. Our hair loss began sometime in high school, when we were ... More >>

Smashing Pumpkins

Billy Corgan's everlasting gaze

This Week in Deliciousness

Whoever said corn had no nutritional value obviously never fried it and smeared it with mayonnaise and salt.​Welcome back to the weekly roundup here at Eating Our Words, where we're going to revolutionize the natural sweetener industry with our newest invention, high fructose yam syrup. Keep y ... More >>

Billy Corgan: Still A Smashing Pumpkin, But No Shrinking Violet

Kristin Burns​A couple of weeks back, Rocks Off spoke with the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan for our print edition about the state of the music world, who excites him now and the indie-rock "shell game." The initial interview was only scheduled for 15 minutes but we ended up chatting for a h ... More >>

Will Concert Craziness Continue At Smashing Pumpkins?

Sunday night we watched a rambling and, supposedly, elegantly wasted Scott Weiland confound a packed crowd of Stone Temple Pilots fans at the Woodlands. The comments are blowing up left and right, and even industry blog Pollstar took to quoting us on the occasion. Somehow even Rocks Off got accuse ... More >>

Last Night: Smashing Pumpkins At Warehouse Live

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Smashing Pumpkins Warehouse Live September 21, 2010 See photos from last night's jam-packed show. Tuesday night's nearly sold-out Smashing Pumpkins set at Warehouse Live should have been a greatest-hits affair, at least in the eyes of most people who haven't been keep ... More >>

The Top 10 Rock-Musician Film Scores

​David Fincher's Facebook creation tale The Social Network has been the No. 1 film in America the past two weekends, and no doubt it will continue that streak this weekend, barring an assault by Jackass 3-D which comes out today. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone is already hailing Network as a ... More >>

Top Five Musician/Journalist Feuds

"Like, what is your problem?" Jason Nocito​Hell hath no fury like a spurned musician, but a critic's vengeance doesn't lag far behind. This week in the Houston Press, you can read an interview Noah Bailey at our sister paper the Dallas Observer did with Dr. Dog's Scott McMicken, who says he h ... More >>

Top Five Musician Twitter Feuds So Far

​The times they are a-changin'. Gone are the days of musicians airing bad blood toward one another behind a lyrical veil a la Neil Young vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dandy Warhols vs. Brian Jonestown Massacre, Ice Cube vs. N.W.A. In our brave new world, Rocks Off has succumbed to the instant-gratific ... More >>

Exes On Tour: White Stripes, ABBA, Lindsey & Stevie...

​We're all familiar with the credo against intra-office dating, often crudely expressed as "Don't shit where you eat." Most of us subscribe to it, knowing the potential drama it could ensue. "How will this affect my work," we wonder. "What happens if we break up?" But all's fair in love and ... More >>

Smashing Pumpkins, Jimmy Eat World

​We're all familiar with the credo against intra-office dating, often crudely expressed as "Don't shit where you eat." Most of us subscribe to it, knowing the potential drama it could ensue. "How will this affect my work," we wonder. "What happens if we break up?" But all's fair in love and ... More >>

Last Night: Smashing Pumpkins And Jimmy Eat World At Verizon

Photos by GroovehouseStill bleeding: Jimmy Eat World​Buzzfestivus with Smashing Pumpkins, Jimmy Eat World Verizon Wireless Theater December 5, 2010 Ringing in the radio-friendly holiday spirit, 94.5 The Buzz welcomed Jimmy Eat World and Smashing Pumpkins to the first night of its annual "Buzz ... More >>

Top 10 Non-Traditional Christmas Songs

"Baby Jesus, born to rock..." ​Amidst the time of year when we're bombarded with cliché holiday tunes and trite Christmas-carol covers, Rocks Off will now take time to appreciate a few original nontraditional takes on festive songs. Whether they're dismal adaptations of holiday malaise, tale ... More >>

The Worst Local Crowds Of 2010

Jason Wolter​Editor's Pick: I am so sick of complaining about Houston crowds, ill-behaved as they are, but I will say to whoever decided it would be funny to take Bobby Bare Jr.'s glasses off the stage at Hayes Carll's Warehouse show Tuesday night and put them on: That was not cool. Neph Bas ... More >>

The 31 Best Music Documentaries Of All Time

​Hands down, above all of these following music documentaries, Craig's Hlist's two favorite of all-time are The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, and The Beatles Anthology. We can watch both on repeat for days and not complain. That will probably all change once we see ... More >>

Solo Albums: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

​Tomorrow night, former Audioslave lead singer and (thankfully) current Soundgarden member Chris Cornell will be at House of Blues for a long-sold-out acoustic show. Recent set lists have included a number of Temple of the Dog songs, some solo work, the usual 'Garden and 'Slave tracks, plus a ... More >>

Smashing Pumpkins Debut Song On Rocks Off Sister Blog

GroovehouseBilly Corgan at Verizon Wireless Theater, December 2010​California, look what you've done. This morning, the Billy Corgan Experience Smashing Pumpkins, who managed to visit Houston twice in less than three months last year, debuted the track "Owata" on West Coast Sound, the music b ... More >>

Top 10 Musician WTF Hobbies

Zazzle.com​Musicians are weird. Well, the good ones, at least. It's a little-known, beloved factoid. While artists' news, drama, and private lives are sometimes aired to the point of over-saturation, it becomes more interesting when we learn relatively kept insight into their rockers' offstage ... More >>

Life After Rock Stardom: 7 Artists' Post-Musical Careers

naylandhouse.comFuture ordained minister MC Hammer wasn't kidding on his 1990 hit single "Pray."​Let's face it. Not everyone is cut out for - or interested in - being a sixtysomething rock star. But what type of careers awaits a retired musician? Many rock stars stay in the music industry real ... More >>

It's Pi Day, Pi Day, Gotta Get Down on Pi Day

​In keeping with Rocks Off's latest obsession, compiling soundtracks for oddball holidays, we were tickled pink as a chorus girl's nipple to learn that this Friday is Pi Approximation Day. The holiday was first in 1988 by a physicist named Larry Shaw, who made everyone march in a circle then ... More >>

Ask Me Anything: What Would You Ask Your Favorite Artist?

"What do you love about music?" ​Part of the job here at Rocks Off - this daily Make-A-Wish kid circus - is talking to musicians and people in the musical know. One of the most fun parts of the job is booking an interview with an artist coming to town and cramming for a few days into the nook ... More >>

The 11 Best Female Rock Bassists of All Time

seanyseult.com​While there are and have been so many notable women in rock-and-roll, and we'd like to honor them all, we've chosen the specific starting point of recognizing rock's best female bassists. As a bassist, I looked up to nearly each and every one of these women as I learned the bass ... More >>

Van Halen, the New Walter's and Radiohead: Things We're Looking Forward to in 2012

Photo by Mark C. AustinRadiohead returns and we're stoked. Do people say "stoked" anymore?​There was a lot to be thankful for in 2011 in the world of music, but, in some ways, it was also a pretty tough year. We lost some great people and almost lost one of our own. It's a crazy, topsy turvy w ... More >>