Birmingham

Napalm Death's Barney Greenway on Thatcher, Nostalgia and the Pursuit of Happiness

Most of the people who pass Mark "Barney" Greenway in the street every day almost certainly have no idea what the man does for a living. His sensible haircut, unassuming demeanor and soft-spoken Birmingham accent betray nothing of his status as one of the most ferocious and accomplished voices in th ... More >>

No Wrist-Slap: Dereon Kelley Gets Almost Three Years for Texas State University TSU Bomb Threat

Kids, if you're thinking of getting out of that final you never studied for by phoning in a bomb threat to the school, think again. Dereon Tayronne Kelley, 22, may not have been trying to miss a test, but he communicated a bomb threat to Texas Southern University Texas State University last October ... More >>

Friday Night: Hamilton Loomis at Dan Electro's

Hamilton Loomis Dan Electro's December 14, 2012 It never quite feels like Christmas until the kids come home. That seemed to be the sentiment behind the Christmas show at Dan Electro's on Friday, which brought Galveston native Hamilton Loomis, the ex-wunderkind guitarist who was jamming with Bo Did ... More >>

Join Us for Cocktails & Covers at House Of Blues Fridays This Summer

The other day, Rocks Off was researching another blog, and we stumbled across Duran Duran's 1995 all-covers LP Thank You on Spotify. Then we listened to it all the way through, on purpose. Recorded when the Birmingham-born band was at a post-"Ordinary World" fork in the road, Thank You wasn't the D ... More >>

The Warning: The 10 Heaviest Albums Before Black Sabbath

Forty-two years ago today, on Friday the 13th, the gates of hell opened up and belched forth Black Sabbath. Upon its release, the Birmingham band's eponymous debut album instantly became the heaviest, scariest, most evil record of all time, and it still ranks right up there. Calling this record "in ... More >>

Tony Iommi: Music's Other Man In Black Proves His Heavy Mettle

​Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath By Toni Iommi with T.J. Lammers Da Capo Press, 416 pp., $26. Imagine this passage being read in your best "Behind the Music" narration: It was in the center of a dirty, grimy sheet-metal factory in Birmingham, England, when a 1 ... More >>

Last Night: Duran Duran at Warehouse Live

Photos by groovehouse​Duran Duran Warehouse Live April 6, 2011 Check out our slideshow from the show. The Duran Duran frenzy began last night before the band even took the stage. Droves of women indiscreetly huddled around the band's tour bus before the show, anticipating a mere glimpse of t ... More >>

The 10 Best Rock Samples In Hip-Hop

​Rocks Off just finished reading Ian Christe's 2007 Van Halen biography, Everybody Wants Some, which chronicles the band's history from the Van Halen boys' entry into the U.S., the upbringing of David Lee Roth, and devastating, fatal 1985 crash into Mount Sammy Hagar. Sad stuff if you're a Rot ... More >>

Miranda Lambert Added To Rodeo's 2011 Lineup

Trace Adkins, Martina McBride, Hideout schedule also announced ​Miranda Lambert, the Lindale native currently nominated for five Grammys, including four for her album Revolution, will return to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo March 16 at Reliant Stadium, the rodeo announced this morning. ... More >>

25 Weird And/Or Hilarious Soccer Chants

​Rocks Off spent June 2006 in Salamanca, Spain during the World Cup, and we can tell you it's difficult to exaggerate what an event this is to pretty much every country in the world but America. (Although the U.S. is reportedly gaining.) While watching the games, we would leave the window open ... More >>

Back to the Future: The Musical Lineage of the Sword

Craig HlavatyThe Sword at Free Press Summerfest 2009​This Sunday night, Austin's The Sword pulls into Warehouse Live to lay waste to our city's collective eardrums. The band was in town last August for Summerfest and was shit-hot, coming right off of an opening slot for Metallica over in Europe. T ... More >>

SXSW Adds Wild Moccasins, Roky Moon & BOLT, White Stripes' Northern Lights Doc

This week Rocks Off is pleased to announce that Houston pop kids Wild Moccasins will be playing the Houston Press' SXSW showcase. So you guys can now mark the Moccs down as another local band set to bear down on Austin in March. We will have the names of the other performers coming by next week or ... More >>

One to Grow On

What we'd like to see happen in Houston music this year.

The Daily Beast: Houston -- You Are "Mildly Retarded"

​The Daily Beast has ranked the IQ of each of America's 55 metro areas with populations over a million. Here is how they arrived at the concept of a municipal IQ.They measured how many residents had bachelor's and graduate degrees, nonfiction book sales, the ration of institutions of higher educ ... More >>

The 100 Best Bars in America: None For You!

Hey, Esquire, stick to covering topics like this and we'll all be happy.​The venerated Esquire has released its list of the Best Bars in America, compiled after what we imagine was some serious and excessive binge-drinking that had either mind-erasing or mind-altering effects on the editors ... More >>

Aftermath: Judas Priest and Whitesnake at Verizon Wireless Theater

Photos by Eric Sauseda​Rust never sleeps, and metal never ages. Not when it's being worked over by Judas Priest's hammer and tongs, anyway. Friday night at Verizon, the Birmingham blacksmiths smelted a sold-out, juiced-up, colors-sporting crowd - metal bands always have the best merch - with ... More >>

The English Beat

Artist of the Week: Soulbrotha

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. Sitting in the ornate ... More >>

John Birmingham

The author of Without Warning just might be giving us one

Duran Duran

A Short History of Shrimp Grits

Shrimp grits started out as a seasonal fisherman’s dish of shrimp cooked in bacon grease served over creamy grits in the Low Country where they were also known as “breakfast shrimp.” The simple seafood breakfast became an iconic Southern dish after Craig Claiborne wrote about it in the New Yor ... More >>

Classic Rock Corner: Mudcrutch, Golliwogs, Mynah Birds, Moving Sidewalks and More

Get Lit: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Joel McIver

NYE, HS Style

The Houston Symphony says goodbye to 2007 with style

Duran Duran: Red Carpet Massacre

The College Football Preview, Week Eight: More Babes. And More Babes.

Alt-Weeklies Provide Web Links to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Home Address

Action Taken in Solidarity with Phoenix New Times

Patty Larkin

>Patty Larkin Patty Larkin performs Saturday, June 16, at McGonigel's Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk, 713-528-5999.

We Really Don't Understand How This One Made It Past Our Spam Filter

The Beat Goes On

The Hype of March

Who will be the band of 2006, and why you shouldn�t care

Capsule Reviews

A picture of our opinions on local exhibitions

Los Skarnales

Pachuco Boogie Sound System

The Meat Market

Photogs and reviewers cruise each other at the Meeting Place

Citizen Arcane

Broadcast mines Czech vampire films and French library music to create lush electronica

The South's Done It Again

Southern rock comes in for another revival

Whatcha Gonna Do?

Houston's Neutral Sisters look white, sing black and move to a reggae rhythm

No Fear

The Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera redeems Skynyrd and the South

Playbill

Steel Pulse

News Hostage

News of the Weird

Punk Drunks

In The Dark

The Blacksmith Webmaster

Rotation

Press Picks

Fast Eddie's Getaway

Insider deals. Outrageous perks. Exorbitant salaries. No wonder Eddie Webster's taken a permanent vacation from the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Stupid Is as Stupid Sells

The Ozz man is back, as dreadfully (and delightfully) dumb as ever

Press Picks

Duran, Again

The pretty boys return from the '80s, and insist they've never been away