Green Day

Top 20 Things We Need to See at SXSW Next Week

Next week the Rocks Off Action Team goes to Austin for Ess Ex Ess Dubya for another four days of fun, sun, eavesdropping, and live music. And swag, of the free kind, not the kind that Justin Bieber is still trying to make happen. This year at SXSW we're looking forward to many, many things, includ ... More >>

MONSTERS, INC.

Lady Gaga brought her Born This Way Ball to Toyota Center January 31.

Fresh Cream and the Top 10 Power Trios of All Time

Forty-six years ago this week, British blues-rockers Cream unveiled their debut album, Fresh Cream, one of the most deeply influential rock and roll records of all time. The original supergroup, the band was intended to unite the "cream" of the late-'60s British blues scene, featuring Eric Clapton ... More >>

Bonus Rocks Off 100: Nortnii Rose, Houston Ska's Greatest Hope

Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. Who? Nortnii Rose is the pixie-like guitar player and singer in the experimental ska b ... More >>

Not Quite The Time of His Life: A Look at Billie Joe's Vegas Breakdown

For most bands, the week of their album release is full of excitement. It's the moment when people are most interested in what they're doing. They get to do the press rounds, fans get to hear the new songs, and the label waits to see if their investment paid off. Today Uno, the first of Green Day's ... More >>

Rock Arcade: 6 Musicians Featured In Video Games

Recently Green Day have been trying to promote their latest album by infiltrating all forms of mainstream media and somebody in the band must have realized that Angry Birds is a thing so why should it be left out? That is, presumably, how the world came to see Green Day members immortalized as gree ... More >>

Ever Heard of a $427,500 Mix CD?

Back in the dark ages of Internet piracy, a Rhode Islander by the name of Joel Tenenbaum made the choice of illegally downloading/sharing music online and the mistake of getting caught. The record companies wanted to make an example out of him and nine years later, it looks like they're getting what ... More >>

Ten Musicians Who Did Time On Broadway

Broadway has been known to make both actors and singers into legends. However, due to what is known as stunt casting -- which is essentially gimmickry in order to gain ticket sales -- some musicians have headed to Broadway, if only for a short period of time. Here are some of the musical artists fro ... More >>

Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone: A Back to School Playlist

I have been a teacher for six years now. I joke about it, but it really is the best job of all, and remains to be the only one I've ever had that didn't make me want to drive right the fuck into a tree after doing it for three weeks. Last week, teachers returned to campuses. We cleaned our rooms a ... More >>

Braving the Boos: Bob Dylan and 10 More Artists Unafraid to Piss Off Their Fans

Forty-seven years ago this week (wow!), a '60s folk icon by the name of Bob Dylan made his third and final appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I. It was a highly anticipated set -- Dylan was the de facto leader of the American folk-music revival at the time, and his folkie flock ex ... More >>

Holden's iPod: A Catcher In the Rye Playlist

J. D. Salinger's most famous novel, Catcher in the Rye, turns 51 years old today. In case you've forgotten -- because modern television will do that to memory -- the book is all about a whiny, privileged kid name Holden Caulfield who struggles for meaning in post-WWII America. He eventually ends up ... More >>

Drops In the Bucket List: 5 Venues To See a Show In Before You Die

I'm not much of a traveler. Outside of a few trips to Vegas, I've never been on a real grownup-type vacation. Every year it's a struggle to think of something to do with my vacation days, one that eventually leads to a few four-day weeks and a couple of midweek shows. Now that I'm getting older, I' ... More >>

Artist Suggestions For A New Saturday Morning Tribute CD

On of the few CDs I still listen to in this amazing digital age is Saturday Morning: Cartoon's Greatest Hits. The album, which is still not available on iTunes, was a tribute to all the best cartoon theme songs of the '60s and '70s. Things like Scooby Doo and Sigmund and the Sea Monster, but with ba ... More >>

Happy Birthday Billie Joe: An American Idiot Turns 40

"I'm not growing up, I'm just burning out"? Well, not quite...​Today, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day turns 40. Eighteen years ago, in the time known as 1994, he turned 22. Two weeks earlier than that, his band's major-label debut, Dookie, had hit store shelves. That album would go on to sel ... More >>

'90s Soundtrack Battle: Angus & Batman Forever Duke It Out

​The movies couldn't be any more different. One is about an obese, kindly high school guy with a heart of gold. The other is about an crime-fighting millionaire orphan inside a cartoonish world full of super-villains, cringe-worthy puns, and Jim Carrey at his muggiest. Obvious Angus is a bette ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Bands Of The '90s

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 >>

Musicians The Sedition Act Of 1918 Would Have Screwed

​Freedom of speech is one of the most cherished rights that Americans have, and the fight for that right has drawn some of the greatest legal battles in our history. We like to believe that, after 200-plus years of defense of that right, that we can take it as a given. However, this week mark ... More >>

Promoter Mike Kelley: "Numbers Is Houston's CBGB"

Marco TorresWu-Tang Clan's GZA and Ghostface Killah at Numbers, December 2010​Numbers' credentials as a concert venue are undeniable - everyone from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Green Day to Type O Negative has played there. It's hard to argue, though, that the past decade hasn't been a rough ... More >>

Five Songs That Huck Finn Guy Should Censor Next

gutenberg.org​As many of you probably already know, Alabama publisher NewSouth Inc. plans to release censored versions of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, replacing the words "nigger" and "Injun" with "slave" and "Indian," respectively. That's ... More >>

Wax Audio's Tom Compagnoni: Portrait Of A Mash-Up Artist

Courtesy of Tom Compagnoni​Rocks Off is quite keen on YouTube mashups. Whether it's famous ones like the contentious "Boulevard of Broken Songs," which melds Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" with Oasis's "Wonderwall" - and Noel Gallagher still says Green Day should pay him for ripping ... More >>

Five '90s Musical Fads We Remember Well, But Don't Really Miss

​A little over a decade ago, swing music made a strange comeback. You may remember seeing people all over dressing like '40s hipsters, jumping and jiving in Gap commercials and most every club or bar was offering swing lessons. It started with the release of the film Swingers, which still mi ... More >>

Top 5 Bands That Should Relax For A Bit

Craig Hlavaty​Wednesday, Rocks Off got an e-mail from the Dave Matthews Band PR team saying that the group would be taking 2011 off so they could come back in 2012. Whether or not this is to hasten the coming Apocalypse that year or just to live a normal life for a bit remains to be seen. God ... More >>

Listology: The First Albums Black Math Experiment's Jef With One F Ever Owned

Jordan Chan​ Rocks Off wasn't aware of this, but apparently the Press had to create a category for our annual Music Awards just to include the Black Math Experiment. The group, which combined punky New Wave pop with a lyrical sensibility best described as "extraterrestrial," went on hiatus shortly ... More >>

Aftermath: Green Day at Toyota Center

Mark C. Austin​ During "Minority," the motorized 2000 Celtic-thrash mash-up that closed Green Day's main set Saturday night, Toyota Center's video screen became a collage of flyers from the group's early days, before the platinum albums, roadies, Grammys and extra live musicians (there were four S ... More >>

Houston Remembers Green Day, Back In the Day

Photos by Rachelle Mendez and Matthew Juarez​Saturday night, one of the most polarizing bands of the past 20 years rolls into town. Since its 1994 mainstream breakthrough, Dookie, Green Day has been dividing fans and critics alike. Some damned the trio for leaving their punk-rock roots behind at 9 ... More >>

Know Your Enemy

Green Day follows their Bush-bashing smash American Idiot with the even more epic 21st Century Breakdown.

Rancid

Five Songs For That Glorious Last Day Of School

As Alice Cooper once sang, "School's out for summer." And we've heard that song played again and again and again on the radio on the last day of school ad infinitum every year since. And I'm sure we'll here it today, somehow, someway, somewhere...And just as you can't really avoid putting "Rock Yo ... More >>

Five Songs For That Glorious Last Day Of School

As Alice Cooper once sang, "School's out for summer." And we've heard that song played again and again and again on the radio on the last day of school ad infinitum every year since. And I'm sure we'll here it today, somehow, someway, somewhere. And just as you can't really avoid putting "Rock You ... More >>

Defending The Buzz: Does 94.5 FM Really Suck That Bad?

What with Creed reuniting, BuzzFest coming up in a couple of weeks and, hell, maybe even the swine-flu scare - As in: What's worse than coming down with swine flu? A Houston radio that only tunes in 94.5 FM - Rocks Off sure has been thinking a lot about The Buzz lately. Probably too much. I mean, it ... More >>

Single File

Highly Anticipated Albums of 2008

Drenched in Blog Extra: Foxboro Hot Tubs

Miss Pop Rocks: Sarah Silverman Makes Abortion Hilarious!

Lost Albums

CDs that deserve another listen

Downloading Music

Linking you to the best in legitimate, artist-approved exclusives

Scott Faingold Listens to Everything

And comes up with a random smattering of tortured musings

Letters to the Editor

Cold Cuts: Bun B vs. Byron Crawford

Our new recurring feature raids the deli tray of H-town-related rap beefs

Pop Rocks

Ten albums that'll snap and fizz in your ear buds all winter long

Scared Straight

Alkaline Trio gets clean on its pristine new LP

Green Day

Friday, August 19, at Toyota Center, 1510 Polk, 1-866-4HOUTIX.

Pop-Punk Penance

A cool kid seeks heavenly redemption

The American Plague

Thursday, February 7

Minibill

Thrice

The Offspring

Conspiracy of One (Columbia)

No Looking Back

Rotation

Whole New Posture

Alternative Notion Lollapalooza doesn't say much about its generation, but the music's fine

y Brad Tyer