Joy Division

Last Night: New Order at Coachella

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 >>

Now Houston Baseball Fans Know What It's Like to Hate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Before I became enamored of rock stars, rock journalists, punk rockers, metal mavens, or DJs, the first idols in my life were Houston Astros players, namely Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell and the late Ken Caminiti. So on Wednesday, when the Baseball Hall of Fame failed to induct Biggio or Bagwell, or ... More >>

The 20 Greatest Goth Albums: The Complete List

BY JEF WITH ONE F AND CHRIS GRAY 20. Marilyn Manson Antichrist Superstar (Interscope, 1996) So squalid and deeply unpleasant it's mesmerizing, Antichrist Superstar is such an intricate dissection of how to become a "rock star" it could have come from a biology lab. Then 24 or 25, Manson gets so fa ... More >>

UPDATED: Friday Night: The Wiggins, Wicked Poseur, etc. at Walters

UPDATED (Monday, 11:50 a.m.) to reflect proper Wicked Poseur personnel. The Wiggins, Wicked Poseur, Fiskadoro, Hearts of Animals Walters Houston September 28, 2012 Four local acts, zero drummers. That was the promise of Friday night's show at Walters headlined by the Wiggins. If that sounds like a ... More >>

Happy Birthday, John Peel: Our 10 Favorite Sessions

Today would have been the 73rd birthday of John Peel, one of the planet's most legendary, eclectic and flat-out best radio disc jockeys of all time. He died in 2004, but the nearly 40 years of outrageously good music that he helped bring to the masses at BBC Radio 1 beginning in 1967 form a pretty d ... More >>

Gothic Council Legitimizes Gothic Porn as Art (NSFW)

This debate starts, as many debates do, with your humble narrator taking a poop. Our usual bathroom reading fair is Lovecraft, the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and our own Liisa Ladoucuer's Encyclopedia Gothica. No book is better for suited for a quick, random flip-through than her exhaustive list of a ... More >>

Happy Birthday Bernard Sumner: Our Favorite New Order Songs

For about the past month I have been in a New Order phase, which started in earnest the day that I picked up their 1993 documentary, New Order Story, in it's expanded form with a separate disc of all their music videos, at a thrift store. With lead singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner's birthday to ... More >>

No Surprises: Rock Hall Set To Induct Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys

Photo By Marco TorresGuns N' Roses are Rock Hall bound, but which version of GNR will show up? ​This morning (well, it leaked last night) the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland announced their 2012 class of inductees. Included on the list are Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Bo ... More >>

Playbill: What's In The DNA Of Titan Blood?

​I get a lot of local music across my desk, mostly defanged and bloodless. Things that I feel an obligation to enjoy, an act which is starting to take it's toll on a soul. I'm too nice to say something sucks because something-something social contract. Cool story, bro. Like James Hetfield sang ... More >>

G N' R, The Cure & Chili Peppers Could Be Hall Of Famers Next Year

Oh, this will be a fun induction ceremony...​This morning, The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland announced the list of nominees for its Class of 2012: The Small Faces & The Faces, Freddie King, The Cure, Guns 'N Roses, Heart, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Spinners, War, Joan Jett and the Bl ... More >>

Echo & the Bunnymen

Raising Goth Kids In Today's Disney Society

​Gothtopia is currently sitting on an advance copy of the Girls Rock Camp Houston DVD, which was filmed at Walter's and showcased several bands of young girls performing their original compositions. We are currently waiting for a firm release date on the disc before bringing you our take on it ... More >>

Friday Night: Batusis At Mango's

Photos by David EnsmingerCheetah Chrome​Batusis feat. Sylvain Sylvain and Cheetah Chrome Mango's December 10, 2010 "Everything was as it always had been ... the years were a mirage and there had been no years," E.B. White once wrote, describing the collapse of time. This is what Batusis effor ... More >>

Fitzgerald's Reopens With A Hint Of Things To Come

Photos by Jim Bricker​For more photos from Thursday's reopening, see our slideshow here. "I want this place to be the nexus of local music. It's going to be the anti-Mangos," Omar Afra told Rocks Off as he points out the changes made to the second floor of Fitzgerald's on Thursday night as it ... More >>

The American

Turning the thriller inward.

Aftermath: An Exuberant Pre-Halloween Show With The Factory Party, Ringo Deathstarr and Springfield Riots at the Mink

Photos by Adam P. NewtonThe Factory Party​In Aftermath's opinion, there are few things more enjoyable than spending an evening together with friends at the beloved haunt that is the Mink. We're able to toss back a drink or four, catch up on each other's lives, and hopefully hear some really great ... More >>

Ain't No Party (Around Here) Like Houston's The Factory Party

www.myspace.com/thefactorypartymusic​ It always amazes Rocks Off how we'll start liking one band - Bunnymen-loving London post-punks White Lies, in this case - and then a little while later, stumble across a local band who could be their twin. If only, you know, they weren't from halfway around th ... More >>

Season of the Witch

U2's awe-inspiring Reliant Stadium show prompts a search for the unknown — and unknowable — in music.

Artist of the Week: Electro-Proggers The Live Lights Assure Us the "Sky Will Fall"

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com.Photos by Elias Ibanez​ S ... More >>

He Said, She Said: Gone Too Soon

A rash of recent musical deaths (Michael Jackson and DJ AM among others) have led us here at Rocks Off to do some speculating of our own: Which musicians do we feel were taken from us too soon? Obvious answers like the Famous Js (John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) or the dual ... More >>

A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: "New Texas"

In the third in our continuing series on the music of the five states of Texas, we examine the fictional state of New Texas, comprising Austin and the Hill Country. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here. New Texas Capital: Austin Patron Saint: Willie Nelson ​Lesser Icons: Roky Erickson/Thirteenth Floor ... More >>

He Said She Said: Breakup Songs to Help You Bawl, Part 2

Ever since men and women set eyes upon each other at the beginning of time, there have been break-ups, and painful dissolutions of romantic escapades have made the best art in the world. Hell, somewhere in the world there is a probably a cave painting of a pretty young Neanderthal girl with devil h ... More >>

Personality Crisis

The New York Dolls aren't too long in the tooth to sing "Jet Boy."

Eat Your Vegetables: The Pop Group

This noisy, caustic band with the smartass name was founded in Bristol, England, in 1978. The group broke up 1981, and members went on to other notable yet now-obscure projects. During that period of less than four years, the Pop Group produced two albums and another album's worth of singles and on ... More >>

Aftermath: SXSW

Bayou City Buzz

Houston's SXSW class — and we mean class — of 2009

Election Eve With Fred

Music to Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil

Weekend Music: Nine Inch Nails, Lyle Lovett, the Gougers, Arthur Yoria, Studemont Project and More

Balaclavas: Balaclavas (EP) Inferno (EP)

Being There

The Sixth Annual Austin City Limits Festival feels like home...almost

“Thunderstruck” on I-45

Our top DVD picks for the week of November 2

Best Served Cold

She Wants Revenge made the journey from hip-hop to new wave...Just don't compare them to Interpol

Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague

Sharp-Dressed Men

So Interpol's natty and into British post-punk. You got a problem with that?

Rock and Roll Dream Team

Forget the office-football draft, dude. Here's a far cooler way to waste your time and your employer's money.

The Fall, with Low Flying Owls

Sunday, May 2

The Rapture and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Sunday, April 18

Embrace the Darkness

Forget the hype and the backlash -- listening to Permission to Land is the key

Nashville Star

The voice that wooed George Clooney comes to town

Country Teasers, with NTX+ Electric Deth

Friday, January 23

The Shins

Chutes Too Narrow (Sub Pop)

Kill Hannah

Sunday, November 2

'80s Babies

The twentysomethings in Longwave resurrect the Reagan era's cool underbelly

Berry Talented

Charlie Berry performs at Porky's

Dark's Shadows

DJ Dana Dark shepherds Houston's goths to blacker pastures

No Monkey Business

Rotation

Hip and Hawaiian