Foo Fighters

God Hates Idiots: Westboro Baptist May Protest the Rockets/Thunder Game Wednesday Night

In yet another startling display of idiocy from Fred Phelps and the members of the Westboro Baptist "church," they have threatened to protest game five of the first round series between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder Wednesday night because Jason Collins came out as gay this week and ... More >>

Saturday Night: Red Hot Chili Peppers at Toyota Center

Red Hot Chili Peppers Toyota Center October 20, 2012 The Red Hot Chili Peppers have stuck around long enough -- through drugs, overdoses, creative strife and changing musical tides -- to have 30 years of hits they can knock out into the nosebleeds at any given live show. Saturday night's Toyota C ... More >>

Knights of the Fire Kingdom

Top 5 Singular Musical Forces

Great bands are a dime a dozen. How often has a great band broken up, only to have the individual efforts of the ex-members lambasted by critics and public alike? Sometimes the chemistry of a band, collectively, makes them great, but sometimes it's "The Talent," a singular musical force. When I sp ... More >>

A Texican In New Orleans: Lessons Learned From Jazz Fest

This past weekend was the last for this year's edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which started way back on April 27. The festival runs over two weekends, usually Thursday through Sunday. Obviously since it is a uniquely Nawlins institution going back to 1970, it's not a festival t ... More >>

Top 5 Ways EDM Is Now Mainstream

1997 provides us with an interesting cautionary tale about the pursuit of the next big thing and how it doesn't always play out the way we expect. From MTV's Year In Rock: Music fans were restless, record sales were stagant... Then, a new music emerged... one that captivated listeners, created new ... More >>

5 Bands George Clooney Likes

Boy, the Houston media is in a tizzy about George Clooney today. The King of Hollywood is in town this evening as part of the "Brilliant Lecture Series" at the Wortham Center. (Celebrity With a Cause Alert: Clooney, who will be interviewed by Houston socialite Lynn Wyatt, will probably discuss his a ... More >>

Buzzfest XXVIII Coming April 21: Korn, Blue October, MuteMath, Cage The Elephant & More

"Which button do I push to make R's go backwards?" ​Yes, we are now on the twenty-eighth Buzzfest in Houston history, with the all-day show on April 21 boasting a lineup that includes Korn, The Dirty Heads, Blue October, Evans Blue, Evanescence and Cage The Elephant, plus undercards Foxy Shaza ... More >>

Pop Rocks: So Who's Going to Perform at Next Year's Super Bowl Halftime Show?

If Janet Jackson's nip slip in 2004 threw ice water on the practice of using current entertainers for Super Bowl halftimes, M.I.A.'s middle finger salute dumped it in the Bering Sea. Finally, after eight years of K. Billy's Sounds of the '70s and Pete Townshend's belly (which somehow didn't draw *an ... More >>

Predicting Your Future Half Time Show Performers

Photo By Marco Torres​All of the Super Bowl talk this week has given me a chance to ponder one of my favorite pop culture questions: how big do you have to be to perform at the Super Bowl half time show? When you consider the acts that have performed since the 2005 move to one act performances ... More >>

Is Dave Grohl Rebooting Probot With Hair Metal Kings Ratt? Maybe So...

Dave Grohl and Ratt team up​When Dave Grohl released his Probot project in February 2004, it opened a whole new world of metal to a new legion of kids whose only exposure to the hard stuff may have been whatever was on MTV or VH1 Classic. Here was Grohl teaming up with crusty scumlords like Le ... More >>

Rocks Off Lists Our Favorite Downloads of 2011

It's getting to be that time of year, when the temperature drops and the lists start rolling in. Read any blog, magazine or newspaper and you're bound to run across at least a handfull of year-end lists, particularly when it comes to music. We all like to talk about the stuff we like. It's just what ... More >>

Top 10 Most Underrated Music Video Artists

The Material Girl. The King of Pop (and his sister). The Chili Peppers. Mr. West. Very few artists have become the musical equivalent of the two-sport athlete: Making memorable music and monumental videos. When those people had a new video to premiere, it wasn't a just a video, it was an event. I ... More >>

10 Albums Guaranteed To Blow Your Car Speakers

G N' R: Keeping Best Buy In Business Since 1987​It started innocently enough, leaving a friend's house in the Heights, when during one of our epic air-drum solos to the Foo Fighters' "Bridge Burning," we heard the speakers on the left side of our car, a hearse-like HHR, just pop and die, reduc ... More >>

Top 10 Musician WTF Hobbies

Zazzle.com​Musicians are weird. Well, the good ones, at least. It's a little-known, beloved factoid. While artists' news, drama, and private lives are sometimes aired to the point of over-saturation, it becomes more interesting when we learn relatively kept insight into their rockers' offstage ... More >>

Songs To Soundtrack Your Rapture Experience

​This Saturday is the Rapture, that biblical calling home of all the saved and righteous Christians, living and dead, here on dirty, sinful Earth. Luckily, Craig's Hlist has been saved since, like, second grade, so you other guys who aren't are sort of screwed. Besides, when the Rapture rolls ... More >>

Out Today: Danger Mouse In Rome, Nick Cave & Queen Reissued

​It's back to the usual grind for Rocks Off after last night's late-night Austin City Limits Festival lineup announcement. Sadly, we will not be seeing the Foo Fighters play songs from Wasting Light in Austin come September. And yes, still playing it, along with a steady diet of Guns N' Roses. ... More >>

Out Today: Beasties Bite Back, Stevie Nicks Gets Witchier

​What's the best way to celebrate the elimination of Osama Bin Laden? Listening to the Foo Fighters' latest album Wasting Light for the fourth week straight, of course. Send help, or at least the announcement of a late-summer or early fall tour date. Come on, man, just one hit. This week's n ... More >>

Out Today: Steve Earle Is Alive, Bootsy's Aged Funk, And The Late Poly Styrene's Last Disc

​Yep, it's the third week now that we have been listening to the new Foo Fighters album, Wasting Light. We even acquired it on vinyl this weekend, so we are doubly screwed. Now we just need it on cassette tape and one of those toothbrushes that play music in your skull like you are schizophren ... More >>

Punching a Wall

Jessica Lea Mayfield goes from a bluegrass childhood to buzzworthy "goth-blues drama queen."

Record Store Day: If You Take A Dump, Don't Tell The Staff

Marco TorresCarlos Hernandez and Los Skarnales' Felipe Galvan at Cactus Music's "Day of the Dead" opening last year.​Today is Tax Day (boo), but it's also payday for a lot of people, which comes in handy because tomorrow is Record Store Day. In a few short years, RSD has become one of the bigg ... More >>

New Music Releases April 5: Leon Russell, Robbie Robertson, The Ravonettes, The Kills, Etc.

​Last week brought new releases from Britney Spears, Radiohead, and a few Pearl Jam re-issues hitting store shelves amid reports that the industry was finally starting to see some improvement. Spears' Femme Fatale is currently projected to enter the top spot of the Billboard 200 chart with sal ... More >>

SXSW Music, Day One, Minus One...

Craig Hlavaty​Tuesday marked the first full day that Rocks Off was on the ground for this year's South By Southwest in Austin, and it was also the last day of the interactive and film portions of the ten-day festival. This made for some fun culture-clash, as the typically tech-driven and nerdier h ... More >>

SXSW Video: Dudes Fighting Over A Foo Fighters Drum Stick

Bill Jensen​Tuesday night at the Foo Fighters gig at Stubb's, which Rocks Off only heard, drummer Taylor Hawkins through a drum stick out into the crowd, as per the norm for the smiley rock skinsman. But the best part was hearing about what happened after the stick hit the crowd. Bill Jensen, ... More >>

Gary Numan: Five Essential Songs On His Birthday

​At the gym where Rocks Off wastes time and money every few days, there is a dude that looks like Gary Numan from the cover of his solo Pleasure Principle album, so much so that we want to ask him daily if he is a part of a Houston Numan/Tubeway Army cover band we don't know about. Any idea? ... More >>

First SXSW 2011 Bands Announced: Uh Oh

A Place to Bury Strangers​It's here, folks. And not a moment too soon. Not even a month after ACL, and before Thanksgiving, the folks at from South by Southwest sent out there first missive detailing the 2011 event, scheduled for March 16-20. Rocks Off is shuddering already, but in a good way. ... 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 >>

Buzzfest Brings The Noise, And The Pain

Photos by Marc BrubakerBreak Stuff: The Bizkit is back!​ For many, many more shots of Sunday's bands, see our slideshow here. For the really fun stuff - crowd shots! - see our slideshow here. Sunday, Aftermath spent ten hours wading in Buzzfest XXIV's radio-rock and classic nu-metal at the Cynthia ... More >>

Get Behind the Mule

Gov't Mule main man Warren Haynes swears he takes time off, but we don't really believe him.

Still Not Sold On SXSW? How About Smokey Robinson, High On Fire, She & Him, Band Of Horses, Drive-By Truckers, Deer Tick, Anya Marina, Black Angels, Major Lazer...

Today the organizers of the SXSW Music Festival announced their showcase schedule for the music portion of the industry fest starting on March 17. This is the news Rocks Off has been looking for, so let's get it on. We are now one month away from Sixth Street and one of the world's biggest conglome ... More >>

The Last Place You Look, Metavenge, Peekaboo Theory, American Fangs Lead Local Texas Buzz Nominees

Megan E PhotographyThe Last Place You Look​ It's no secret that sometimes Rocks Off likes to rag on Houston's, ahem, "New Rock Alternative," 94.5 FM The Buzz - let's see, according to www.yes.com, last hour the station played Green Day's "Longview," Foo Fighters' "My Hero," Pearl Jam's "Even Flow" ... More >>

The Music of True Blood, Episode 2: Austin's Vallejo Lies Down With a "Snake In the Grass"

​Vallejo is a rock and roll band of the highest caliber from just a few miles away in El Campo. The band started as a trio of three brothers who moved to Austin in order to pursue their dream of being the next Santana. Once in the "live music capital of the world," they added a rhythm guitarist an ... More >>

Aftermath: Them Crooked Vultures at Stubb's in Austin

Photos By Craig Hlavaty​Just a few short hours ago Aftermath saw the rock world's newest supergroup in action as Queens of The Stone Age's Josh Homme, ex-Nirvana drummer/current Foo Fighters helmer Dave Grohl, and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones took the stage at Stubb's in Austin for a warm- ... More >>

The Shredder Returns

One show, one sentence

Recent Super Bowl Halftime Highlights and Lowlights

Backfield in Motion

Aftermath Extra: The Best Concerts of the Year, Part 1

[Note: Aftermath attended all these shows and reviewed most of them. Even he couldn't see them all.] Six Organs of Admittance, Walter's on Washington, January 18: "[Ben Chasny's] quieter moments reminded me of the softer side of bands like Pavement and Guided by Voices, and the mournful specte ... More >>

Analyzing Bocephus's "McCain-Palin Tradition"

Elephant Walk

Reverberations: Bellrays, Power-Pop and Chevelles

Last Night: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at Super Bowl XLII

Tight Fight: Bring Back the Summit!

Beat the Crowd

Dinosaur Jr.

Dinosaur Jr performs Sunday, June 17, at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel St., 713-225-5483.

Encore Performance

Don't fret. Guitar Hero II kills the opening act

The Sounds, with Morningwood

Monday, April 3, Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, 713-225-5483

Between the Cracks

Profiling local bands

Year of the Concept

Green Day opens the Idiot-ic floodgates

The Fire Theft, with Dios, Grandaddy and Saves the Day

Sunday, March 14

College Bored

The Perfect Score adds a neat twist to the heist movie, then bungles it

Rock You like a Hurricane

The Press Music Awards Showcase brings a category-five storm of tunes