Black Lips

The 10 Worst Things at SXSW This Year

This year Rocks Off and DC-9 at Night, the music blog at our sister paper Dallas Observer, teamed up to bring you only the most unfortunate moments from last week's SXSW madness. Security and Cops Gettin' Wild: Look, I get it. Every drunken dickhead in town "knows someone" or thinks he has pull at ... More >>

10 Signs Your Band Won't Make It at SXSW

Being a successful musician really has to be a slice of heaven. And of course the chicks are great. It's why from the beginning of time men (and women) have taken up instruments in the chance that they will be played in front of many, many others, some of whom could possibly want to have sex with ... More >>

Aboard the S.S. Coachella, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker Is a Popular Bloke

Note: Liz Tracy, Music Editor of our sister paper Broward-Palm Beach New Times, is aboard the S.S. Coachella cruise this week while Houston continues waiting around for winter. No one's really interested in reading about the actual performances taking place on this musical ship of contradictions, t ... More >>

Fun Fun Fun Fest Friday In Review: Bun B, Bob Mould, Against Me! & More

The first day of Fun Fun Fun Fest was marked by the oddball stylings of an in-character Val Kilmer terrorizing the stage with the Black Lips, and the triumphant return of rap legends Run-D.M.C. rocking the main stage to close out the night. In between there was Bob Mould, Converge, Houston's own Bun ... More >>

Rocks Off's Picks For This Weekend's Fun Fun Fun Fest

First off, the entire Rocks Off team agrees unanimously that we are all excited to see Run-D.M.C. at this year's edition of Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, even though writer /photographer Marco Torres has already seen them this year at Jay-Z's Made In America Music Festival. REWIND: Fun Fun Fun Fest ... More >>

ACL 2012: Friday's 12 Best & Funniest Moments at Zilker

Check out our slideshow of the crowds at Day 1 of Austin City Limits. In the interest of being tidy and not boring you with minute details of the three-day exercise in sweaty and human endurance underway in Zilker Park this weekend, Rocks Off is giving you a break. Our team on the ground at the Aus ... More >>

5 Bands to Avoid & 5 Bands to See at This Year's ACL

If you are lucky enough to be going to ACL this weekend, you have no doubt been sitting in front of your concert schedule plotting your movements for this coming weekend. Alternately if you are missing out on ACL, a lot of the bands playing have been through Houston lately, or will be in town this ... More >>

Coachella: Best Of Weekend 2, Day 2

More fun in the desert from our friends at LA Weekly and OC Weekly -- ed. Saturday at Coachella meant tributes, tributes, tributes. From Levon Helms to Biggie, everyone got a shout-out. In between all that, some nasty partying and a little recreational drug use. Read our highly-trained writers as t ... More >>

Coachella: The 10 Most Awkward Dance Moves In GIF Form

Note: This post was written by Rocks Off's friend and LA Weekly music editor Ben Westhoff, who obviously had a more interesting weekend than we did. See also: *"What My Spirit Hood Means To Me": Coachella-Goers Explain *Coachella: The Black Lips' Cole Alexander Goes Full Monty, Plays Guitar W ... More >>

Coachella: The Black Lips' Cole Alexander Goes Full Monty, Plays Guitar With His Ding-Dong

Note: We're running reports from our sister blog in LA, West Coast Sound, on the Coachella Music Festival. The Black Lips started off Saturday at Coachella with a bang. The flower-punk band from Atlanta, Georgia decided to pull a Jim Morrison-esque maneuver during their 2:15 set at the Mojave tent. ... More >>

Your 33 Black Angels Pick 10 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

​Sunday night, Notsuoh plays host to Your 33 Black Angels, a manic garage-psych group from Brooklyn, N. Y. The band sometimes boasts eight members, and reminds us of a less-pretentious Brian Jonestown Massacre or trance-driven Black Lips. And there's the "96 Tears" organ that chimes in here a ... More >>

Hip-Hop, Interrupted: 7 Rappers That Should Be More Active

Hip-hop is a genre full of guys who put out a new album or mixtape seemingly every single month. They just can't stop, even when they're incarcerated in some cases (see: Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, and TI). It's as if rapping really is as much of a competition as they make it out to be and they're in a r ... More >>

Baby Goose On The Loose: Ryan Gosling At Fun Fun Fun Fest, Catches A Fat Tony Set

Photo By Craig Hlavaty​Ryan Gosling, current Hollywood it boy and probable Oscar nominee for this year's Drive, is here in Austin with director Terence Malick filming scenes for the upcoming feature Lawless. You may remember that at Austin City Limits Festival in September that Christian Bale ... More >>

Our Top Ten Picks For Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011

Photo By Marc BrubakerBest Coast at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010​This weekend the Rocks Off team will cover their third Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, at the festival's new home Auditorium Shores. Each year this fest seems to get bigger and better, without losing it's grimy luster. Is it the Austin City ... More >>

Fun Fun Fun Fest Adds Spoon, Black Lips, Cannibal Corpse

​That probably spooked you all, huh, thinking we added those three to our own BestFest, right? In addition to previously announced biggies like Slayer, The Damned, Public Enemy, the Hot Snakes reunion gig, and the Danzig Legacy project, these new three only sweeten the deal for FFFF attendees ... More >>

Out Today: Arctic Monkeys Suck It And See, Black Lips Get Cosmic, Joe Ely Satisfied At Last

​This week of new releases brings a Mark Ronson-produced Black Lips album, the country debut of psychobilly idol Nick 13, an inventive career-spanning set from Randy Travis, and another Arctic Monkeys album, continuing their interesting progression from Brit garage brats into muscular rockers ... More >>

Out Today: My Morning Jacket Back In Form, Vedder's Ukulele Slays

​This week brings a new My Morning Jacket album, an Eddie Vedder ukulele outing, the umpteenth Dave Matthews Band live collection, and Ozzy's past barks at the moon. We are just now hitting the busy summer release period, so these blogs in the next few weeks will be getting jam-packed. In th ... More >>

Wanda Jackson Loves Jesus, Jack White & Adele

​Rocks Off conducted an unusual interview this week. We say "interview," when perhaps a better word is "exchange." Recently we have been tinkering with the composition of our interviews, in the hopes of avoiding boilerplate questions like "Who are your influences?" in favor of something, we h ... More >>

More Local Music News Than Half-Price Deals At Cactus

Another week, another teeming cup runneth over, full of local music news. Here's our latest installment of Magnolia City Mixtape. ​This week's soundtrack comes from Roosh Williams, whose Common Struggles of a Modern Man album just dropped. Roosh also has a video for the track "No Hard Feeling ... More >>

The Black Lips