Hey 2013. We need to talk. You've already produced a number of good albums, some even by new bands. But I've got a bone to pick with you, and it's about this new song by Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams. It's called "Get Lucky" and it's making waves with its disco revival sound that I'm guessin ... More >>
One More Time: A Tribute to Daft Punk Stereo Live May 11, 2013 It's safe to say that Daft Punk fever is at an all time high. Fifteen-second clips of new music were enough to nearly break the internet and no major gathering of musicians can happen without rumors of a Daft Punk appearance spreading. ... More >>
With a perfect combination of sun, clouds, and breeze, It felt as if Houston was making love to me as I escaped the treacherous, life-sucking fluorescent lighting of my Westchase office and moon-walked my way towards a Friday night full of booze, buds, and Budweiser. (I'm more of a Saint Arnold's dr ... More >>
Ed. Note: Brought to you by our tired, dusty and very tolerant friends at LA Weekly and OC Weekly. Here's everything that bothered us about Coachella's second weekend. Hey, at least there was no dust storm! Native American Headdresses These have still not gone away. In fact, one particularly irrit ... More >>
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 >>
Ed. Note: Rocks Off proudly presents to our readers coverage of Coachella's first weekend courtesy of our sister papers LA Weekly and OC Weekly. Karen O's Outfit Karen O's wardrobe on Friday night was bad-ass. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs front woman appeared on the main stage in a technicolor cape draped o ... More >>
Ed. Note: Can't have a Best of Coachella without a worst, right? Thanks to our (tired) Southern California friends at West Coast Sound and Heard Mentality. The Daft Punk Fake-Out Friday and Saturday, all anyone could talk about was if Daft Punk was going to show up during Phoenix's set. Why? Becaus ... More >>
New Order Coachella April 13,2013 While over at the main stage the bulk of the Coachella crowd was enduring Phoenix with the hope that Daft Punk would come out -- they instead got R. Kelly -- a smaller but perhaps more enthusiastic crowd got a first-rate greatest hits set from New Order Saturday n ... More >>
Ed. Note: This one comes to us from our friends at LA Weekly's West Coast Sound. No, Seriously, Is Daft Punk Playing Coachella? This is, so far, the burning question of this festival, being asked everywhere from the campsites to the press tent. Even though the French dance-punk duo officially squa ... More >>
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 >>
Muse Toyota Center, March 12 The prospect of a new Muse album (The 2nd Law) was overshadowed by the band's dalliance with dubstep, which was a shame, but not surprising in the current musical climate. When one of the world's biggest stadium-rock bands' tinkering with electronics becomes a dealbreak ... More >>
This past weekend, I was honored to cover the Super Bowl XLVII festivities and game in New Orleans for the Houston Press and local TV outlet KIAH (Channel 39). Great fun, if not for locals in NOLA, who were ravaged by drunken football fanatics puking onto their 49ers and Ravens jerseys in the street ... More >>
Justice House of Blues October 28, 2012 "They told me if I brought out this flag they would kick me out," says a guy dressed like Hunter S. Thompson sitting next to me on the balcony last night at Justice. In his cargo pocket was a large French flag, in honor of the French electro duo who made thei ... More >>
Ghostland Observatory Warehouse Live October 25, 2012 Lasers. Costumes. Queen-like flights of fancy. Ominous, incredibly sassy beats. Lasers. A steadfast, almost militant, devotion to shaking your ass. And more lasers. No one will ever accuse Austin's Ghostland Observatory of ever putting on anyt ... More >>
Having just spent an afternoon absorbing the new kung-fu steampunk masterpiece Tai Chi Zero, I got to wondering on what the official gothic position was on the steampunk phenomenon. After all, we share an awful lot in common with the steampunkers, like a love of classic gothic literature, ornamentat ... More >>
Note: This is part of our Twin Cities sister paper City Pages' coverage of Lollapalooza this past weekend in Chicago. -- ed. See Also: Lollapalooza 2012: The People BY IAN TRAAS With every year that passes, it feels like electronic dance music gains a bigger foothold in the summer festival circu ... More >>
There are a lot of reasons why OG Ron C running Girl Talk's All Day through his "Chopped Up Not Slopped Up" purplefication process is fun, but one of them seems more substantial -- or, at the very least, more appropriate -- than the rest. To be entirely reductive: Girl Talk is a DJ from Pittsburg ... More >>
My prayers from 2007 have been answered. French electronic duo Justice is finally hitting Houston on October 28 at the House Of Blues. The pair, who just released Audio, Video, Disco. last fall, have never been to Houston, though every hipster bar in town played and still plays the hell out of their ... More >>
Ahhh, comic books! A place where you can escape into another realm. Most artists have somewhat cartoonish onstage personalities, but some have so much that they deserve their own comic book or graphic novel. Like these.
"Simple. Fifteen years have gone by." Nineteen ninety-seven may have been one of the most magical years in trash-pop history. You had the Spice Girls, Hanson, Shania Twain, Puff Daddy, Toni Braxton and Aqua burning up the radio as old-timers like David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac and Elton John made retu ... More >>
REEEERRRRR WUB WUB WUB WUB REEEEEEERRRRRRR WUBBBBBBBBBBBBBMaybe all along, the Dear Leader's starvation and darkness deal with his oppressed people was just his way of keeping them slim and hot, for fun in the dark, because we all know only fun things happen in the dark right? Like that Lady ... More >>
Com Truise lends chillwave some credibility — not just anyone gets asked to remix Daft Punk.
Bright Lights, White House: Bright Light Social Hour in front of Obama's DC crib. With a sound influenced by Sly & The Family Stone, The Allman Brothers, Daft Punk and Muddy Waters, Austin's Bright Light Social Hour has become one of the city's most prominent party bands. Imagine Foxy Shazam ... More >>
Trent Reznor, you know, before the Oscar and all the weightlifting. As a music writer, we are asked constantly to compare the new with the old, to decipher the periphery where modern bands' influences come from to understand where we are going and what we are seeing. We can hear everything Ke ... More >>
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 >>
Photo illustration by Monica FuentesNow that's more like it.If you don't have tickets for tonight's Ghostland Observatory show at Warehouse Live, you are shit out of luck. Sorry to say, but the show is sold out, and when things sell out at that venue, they mean it. Seriously, you may have to ... More >>
"It's my sweet Satan ... Oh I will sing because I live with Satan." "Turn me on, dead man." "Turned out nice again." "Eat donkey crap." Every since the beginning of rock and roll, listeners and disgruntled parents alike have been searching for hidden meanings in music. Was Paul dead, w ... More >>
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 >>
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 >>
That's Plastic Bertrand, but you probably know that song better from the traveling sequence in National Lampoon's European Vacation or better yet, the basis for the Elton Motello track "Jet Boy Jet Girl."Quality French rock and roll has sometimes been hard to come by, but when it hits, it slays. ... More >>
The geniuses that first let you rock 'n' roll with guitar legends in Guitar Hero decided to bring out a new instrument for gamers to party on. This time, Activision brought out the turntables for their newest title, DJ Hero. Available for the Playstations 2 & 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii, DJ ... More >>
Blink-182: Wed., Sept. 23. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Clutch, Baroness, Lionize: Wed., July 15. House of Blues. Computer Club: Thu., June 18. Escobar. Crosby, Stills & Nash: Fri., Aug. 28. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. D. Ramirez: Fri., Aug. 14. Rich's Houston. "FallCore 2009": Sat., O ... More >>
Photos by Craig HlavatyThe thing about musical comedians is that if the humor is there but the tuneage is not, you can pretty much cash your chips in and give up and steal some of Louis CK's jokes and start selling out basketball arenas. New Zealand's Flight of the Conchords almost has too much musi ... More >>
Daft Punk duo make their big-screen debut
The Sixth Annual Austin City Limits Festival feels like home...almost
Sound of Silver
Ghostland Observatory will perform Thursday, January 25, at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, 713-225-5483.
An imaginary history of electronic music
LCD Soundsystem's brain trust happily loses his edge
Human After All
Saturday, January 31
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