Columbia Records

Charles Mingus: A Beginner's Guide to the Late Jazz Great

True story: once, we were entertaining some people at home and my rat terrier, Mingus, got loose and began mingling with the guests. Because he's an insufferable attention-seeker and since people are nice and tend not to be threatened by terriers, a woman petted him and asked what his name was. I t ... More >>

People Are Sure Excited About That New Daft Punk Album, Huh?

Daft Punk, the mysterious French EDM duo that doesn't tour, dresses like robots, has not performed live since 2007 and is more influential on pop music than at any point in its 20-year history, is currently schooling everyone on what a state-of-the-art contemporary music-marketing campaign looks lik ... More >>

The 30 Best Texas Albums

Ranking the 30 best Texas albums of the past 30 years seemed like an impossible task. We did it anyway.

Pink Slipped: The 7 Best Artists To Be Dropped From Their Label

Once upon a time, record labels were the most important thing to an artist who chose to work within the music industry. They could make or break anyone and even world renowned artists knelt at the feet of their masters. Getting dropped from a label was, at one time, a death sentence. Even today man ... More >>

Houston Scores Big Time In Latest Editon Of Encyclopedia Of Country Music: Part 2

Our second installment of Houston connections in the recently published second edition of The Encyclopedia of Country Music is a truly monumental list of writers, performers and performances that show that while Houston may not have been the musical business center that Nashville became, the Bayou C ... More >>

Bummer, Dude: The 10 Big Musical Disappointments of 2011

Photo by Marc BrubakerThis guy's crazy rant at Fun Fun Fun Fest made the list.​All things considered, 2011 was a pretty bitchin' year for popular music. It wasn't all high-fives and Grammies for our musical heroes, however. More than few steaming flops, blown gigs and sour notes made the yea ... More >>

Aretha Franklin

The Funky Chicken: Good Stuff in the Mailbox

Yeah, it's like that.​Once again our mailbox has filled to overflowing with CDs (and zip files). The desk looks like a Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of jewel cases, and the entire room is littered with (largely unread) piles of hype-and-tout. And while much of what comes over the transom ... More >>

Vintage Pics Of Destiny's Child, ZZ Top, Blue October & More

Photo by Steve Harris/Compadre RecordsHayes Carll before he was old enough to shave... not that he ever has.​The other day, one of the Rocks Off Crew was rummaging around in the Houston Press office and came across a bunch of publicity stills for various musicians. Allow us to explain what th ... More >>

10 Facts About Slayer's Reign In Blood

​Last week, Slayer's 1986 album Reign In Blood turned 25 years old. We were so wrapped up in doing that dog-ass Pink Floyd facts blog - that we paid dearly for in the comments section - and getting ready for our high school reunion, that we forgot all about this anniversary. We apologize for l ... More >>

What's The Leading Cause Of Poor Record Sales?

​Last week, the music world laughed up a hiccup as Lil Wayne pranced around the VMA stage in nut-suffocating, Le Tigre-inspired jeggings. While that performance affirmed that Wayne is no fashion guru, his chart performance a week later reminded us that he's very good at something else-selling ... More >>

RIP Alex Steinweiss: The Album-Art Inventor's Greatest Covers

Alex Steinweiss' first illustrated cover for Columbia, aka THE first illustrated album cover.​Rocks Off likes to think of ourselves as the cultured sort; in other words, it's not all booze and boobs around here. We also enjoy literature, the cinema, sometimes even the theat-ah, but our favorit ... More >>

The Devil in DMX

Can the celebrated rapper get out of trouble long enough to top the charts again?

Season to Risk