Chad Kroeger

Transcribing Is a Bitch: The Collected Craig Hlavaty Interviews

My last official day at the Houston Press is tomorrow, so these past two weeks I have been sifting through my body of work here at Rocks Off, almost seven years of words. I've been gleefully overdosing on nostalgia here at my desk, and I have (almost) no regrets. I'll have some more words on my depa ... More >>

Last Night: Styx at Reliant Stadium

Styx Reliant Stadium March 4, 2013 When Styx made the decision to open with "Blue Collar Man" last night at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, I couldn't decide at first if the band was pandering to its anticipated crowd at something as common as a rodeo or being clever. I vacillated when Lawren ... More >>

5 More Sudden Awful Musical Marriages We'd Like to See

Rewind: So Chad Kroeger and Avril Lavigne Are Engaged: How Should You Feel? Boy, that Avril Lavigne/Chad Kroeger engagement announcement came out of left field, huh? Who knows which other terrible music makers are secretly seeing one another right now? Why, it could be anyone! Even... Ke$ha and Sc ... More >>

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Trying to Sneak Into a Nickelback Show

Rewind: So Chad Kroeger and Avril Lavigne Are Engaged: How Should You Feel? Saturday Night: Nickelback & Bush at Toyota Center I'd like to tell you a cautionary tale. A few weeks back Kevin Beaudette of Tupper Lake, N.Y., decided he really a) wanted to see Nickelback and b) wanted to see them for ... More >>

So Chad Kroeger and Avril Lavigne Are Engaged: How Should You Feel?

So the lead singer of Nickelback and a punk-lite pop-star from the early '00s walk into a bar... Stop me if you have heard this one before. You won't, because you haven't, because no one expected that Chad Kroeger and Avril Lavigne would ever get married in a million years. Nevermind it's 2012, and ... More >>

These Are Serious Issues: A First World Problems Playlist

Twenty-seven seconds into the song posted above, Canadian rocker Matthew Good says the phrase "first world problems." It is, as far as most Internet detectives can tell, the first time that phrase was used in a piece of art. Good wasn't setting out to create a punchline that would be beaten to death ... More >>

Saturday Night: Nickelback & Bush At Toyota Center

Nickelback, Bush, Seether, My Darkest Days Toyota Center June 2, 2012 While the rest of the Rocks Off crew at Summer Fest was settling in for a long night of Snoop Dogg, Flaming Lips, and more, this guy was leaving the Fest and making the short trip over to the Toyota Center for Saturday night's bi ... More >>

Nickelback

Missed Connections: 5 Summer Fest Weekend Team-Ups We'd Like To See

In terms of pure variety, the weekend of June 1-3 may be the most stacked weekend of music Houston will see this year, and that's not just because of Summer Fest. In addition to the wide variety of acts playing Eleanor Tinsley Park there's the regular weekend mass of shows taking place across the ci ... More >>

Last Night: Steel Panther At House Of Blues

Steel Panther House of Blues April 12, 2012 See more Steel Panther pictures in our slideshow. In a week that saw Axl Rose decline a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and the continuation of the foggying of hard rock, it's easy to forget that beyond all the human drama and stubbornness inherent ... More >>

Roar of the Panther

Steel Panther singer Michael Starr talks scamming chicks backstage and hanging with Nickelback's Chad Kroeger.

In Ten Years, Will Indie Be Remembered Like Nu-Metal?

​What exactly do you remember from the summer of 2002? Stop and think -- of the music on the radio, the CDs you were most excited for, who won the Grammy for Best Album, and so on. What exactly stands out from 10 years ago? If you find that your answer is "Not much," then you're probably l ... More >>

The Value Of Being Important: How Much Would You Pay for VIP Tickets?

Photo By Daniel KramerHow much would you pay to be in front of all of those hands in the air?​Very. Important. Person. For music fans those three words conjure up images of skipping out on standing in line, being at the side of the stage while the show takes place, and partying with the band ... More >>

Nickelback Fights Back With Funny Or Die Clip

"Is it because we're Canadian?"​Check out yesterday's superb Nickelblock blog.... Call me a contrarian asshole, but I like Nickelback for what they are, not for who they aren't. The blunt-force studio magick of their riffs, the stoopid lyrics, the robo-drums, the Chad Kroeger...I just don't c ... More >>

Last Night: GWAR At House Of Blues

Check out our slideshow of GWAR's messy concert. GWAR has to be the most quintessentially American band that has ever existed. They play disgustingly loud hardcore-inflected thrash while covered in blood and gore, hating celebrities as much as your average citizen -- even to the point of wanting to ... More >>

If Nickelback's Studio Walls Could Talk...

Nickelback on TwitterClick image to enlarge​Late Wednesday night, Nickelback tweeted a picture of a dry-erase board in their studio, with the line "If these walls could talk..." alluding to the bedevilment that a party-hard platinum-selling Canadian rock band must get into while making new mus ... More >>

New ZZ Top Tribute Disc Frightens, Titillates, And Confuses Us

Photo By Jim Bricker​If you don't know that Rocks Off is a ZZ Top-friendly place, then you have probably only been reading the blog for the past two or three hours. The two men who run this blog love Billy, Frank, and Dusty with the energy from one thousands suns, and their whole catalog runs ... More >>

30 Seconds With Evans Blue's Dan Chandler

​Rocks Off sat down with Dan Chandler of the St. Louis rock outfit Evans Blue to find out what we could find out abut the new lead singer in 30 seconds. Rocks Off: What is the worst song in the world? Dan Chandler: That's a hard question. I think the songs I hate are probably the most bril ... More >>

Last Night: Britney Spears & Nicki Minaj At Toyota Center

Photos by Jim Bricker​Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj Toyota Center July 13, 2011 Check out pictures of bad girls Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj in our slideshow. So far in 2011, Aftermath has seen Ke$ha, Kylie Minogue, Nicki Minaj, Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, and in two weeks we should be standing ... More >>

Never Mind Arcade Fire: Bands Who Fit Other Houston 'Burbs

Gabriel Jones/Merge Records​Tonight's the night. Win and Will Butler of conquering indie heroes Arcade Fire finally return to the town that indirectly won them a Grammy, The Woodlands. On last year's The Suburbs, the Butlers and their Canadian compatriots reflected on the brothers' restless M ... More >>

Top 20 Despised, Yet Wildly Popular, Bands And Musicians

Scott Stapp, lead singer of Creed (above), stops at House of Blues tonight on his current acoustic tour. More than likely you have already clicked off this blog, or at least already gone on auto-pilot to call him a fuck-ass in the comments section. We'll wait a sec for you to come back. OK, the ... More >>

Flying V Hall Of Fame: Saluting One Rockin' Guitar

thestoneband.com​Today is the 53rd birthday of the Gibson Flying V, which since its debut has become synonymous with metal and hard rock of all stripes. The image of that V-shape is as iconic as the power chords it generates. Rocks Off has seen reverse V's and even bass V's in our time, and ha ... More >>

The Lyrical Crimes Of Nickelback's Chad Kroeger

Photos by Craig HlavatyNickelback at Toyota Center, April 2009​Today is Chad Kroeger of Nickleback's birthday. Huzzah. For years, Nickelback has been like those Nigerian bank scams; Dangerous, annoying and, frankly, not something anyone can do just a whole lot about. However, anti-Nickelback ... More >>

Tubby Chubcakes: Destroy Nickelback With Lasers!

"Chad Kroeger rides a pony in his house when no one's home/ It's a fact! I hid cameras in his house." ​And thus begins the video for Tubby Chubcakes's "Destroy Nickelback With Laserbeams." When you first see the video, you really begin to question whether the Internet is a good thing. Certai ... More >>

Five Groups We'd Pay To Break Up

​Why do people support so much bad music? What if people paid awful bands to quit instead? Weezer fans are willing to try. Sick and tired of being let down by his favorite band, last week a fan jokingly offered Weezer $10 million to split up. Naturally, this had Rocks Off thinking of other ac ... More >>

Top 10 Celebrity Music-Video Cameos

​Ratt, "Round and Round" Thursday night, Ratt hits up Warehouse Live with what passes for their original line-up. At their peak, the band was a gritty and decadent alternative to bands like Poison, skewing closer to Motley Crue in terms of excess and drug abuse. ​The band managed to ... More >>

The Top 10 Reasons We Love Ted Nugent

​Sunday, Rocks Off is going to the Pasadena Fairgrounds to see Ted Nugent and the Charlie Lucas Band headline a charity event to raise money to secure homes for wounded military vets and their families. It's for a great cause and benefits the Bay Area Home Builders Association's "Operation Fin ... More >>

Top 10 Worst Music-Related Tattoos

​As the sole in-house bearer of the Rocks Off tattoo load (aside from Brandon K. Hernsberger and Brittanie Shey), we get asked to do a lot of tattoo-related musical blogs. It's cool, because worse things could happen. We aren't killing dogs at the pound nor are we the lead singer of Slightly Stoop ... 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 >>

He Said She Said: "Fergitrocious" and the Worst Songs of the Decade

In a perfect world, The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" would actually be called "My Bumps," and it would be an ode to Stacy Ferguson's rampant misadventures with meth addiction, because that would be the only thing that could make that horrible, horrible song bearable. You might think it's harsh for Sh ... More >>

Stuck In a Moment You (Still) Can't Get Out Of: Remembering 9/11 In Music

Just as none of us will ever forget where we were the morning of September 11, 2001, Rocks Off will never forget what he was listening to most of the day of the terrorist attacks. Sadly, he admits it was System of A Down's Toxicity, which had come out just the week before. For us the album conveyed ... More >>

Things the Devil Should Have Done Besides Go Down to Georgia

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia." The song, which climbed all the way to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and lives on today as a "boss battle" in Guitar Hero 3, made its first appearance on the group's 1979 album Million M ... More >>

Local Self-Described Rap Supergroup Admires... Nickelback?

Photo by Paul Knight Young Problemz, a self-described "supergroup" of local rap talent, joined Mike Jones Monday evening at the Arena Theatre, and the group's "Boi" was one of the high points, if not the high point of the night. The five Houston-bred performers - Chyco, Just-O, JM, J Yung and Star S ... More >>

Aftermath: Nickelback at Toyota Center

Photos by Craig HlavatyAftermath is of the mind that the best way to tackle something that is reviled or feared is to confront it head on. Like global terrorism, street gangs, or gingivitis, you must take it on at its source, even if doing so makes you feel insecure, vulnerable or wholly fooli ... More >>

Is Nickelback Really Worth Hating So Much?

Jeromeoh2301Somewhere over the past five years, Nickelback was deemed the unofficial "worst band in the world," usurping Creed as the rock snob's go-to reference for "awful." How did this happen? To date, the British Columbian quartet has sold close to 20 million albums, sell out arenas ... More >>

Artist of the Week: Without a Face

Drenched In Blog: Somebody Help Bob Goulet

Houston's Ten Worst Songs

…and we're still not as bad as Dallas

Rock Radio (and Rock Romano) Redux

Bo knows good rock when he sees it. Do Houston radio programmers?

Downie Fresh

Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles travel down to Houston

Nü-School Drool

Fresh out of rehab, Saliva's Chris D'abaldo hopes being on the Jägermeister tour won't make him Pavlov's dawg