Subject: Katy Perry

• Rice Theatre Program Stop Kiss

  March 26, 2009

• SXSW 09 Imminent Already? Aaaarrrgh!

  St. Vincent, "Jesus Saves, I Spend" The 2009 South By Southwest Music Festival is still nearly four months away (March 18-22), but the first performers are already being announced. When Rocks Off saw this list on Friday, after we had been gorged senseless the day before, we shuddered. "Too soon!" we cried as we wrung our hands, thinking about the four-day boozin'-and-schmoozin' music marathon. We had just begun to clear the dust from our lungs after the Austin City Limits Music Festi

  December 1, 2008

• Remembering Bettie Page

  Yesterday in Los Angeles, pin-up icon Bettie Page succumbed to complications from a heart attack suffered almost three weeks ago. She was 85. Few women in modern history have incited such lust and reverence in men and women alike. To the rockabilly culture, she embodied the ideal woman - voluptuous and healthy, with that leveling sneer. She seemed to dare you to not stare at her. Her hairstyle launched a thousand girls to slice off their bangs and get out the black dye.

  December 12, 2008

• The Worst Lyrics of 2008: NCAA-Style Showdown

  And now it's time for the "I love you like a fat kid loves cake" memorial Worst Lyrics of 2008, March Madness-style tournament, this year a terrifying mélange of appalling oral-sex requests, bargain-bin philosophies, grammatical atrocities, and cringe-inducing pillow talk. To elevate the drama, I provided a trusted colleague with the 16 artists who qualified and had him assign seeds--Lil Wayne you expect to go deep into a showdown like this, but Lucinda Williams? Some fantastic match-ups result

  December 30, 2008

• Top Ten Pop Songs of 2008

  Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The following ten singles saturated the Top 40 -- or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate -- while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity.

  December 29, 2008

• Hitsville: The Year in Music, by the Numbers

  You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were demolished by a Midwestern black man, and gender barriers were hurdled by an Arkansan and an Alaskan.Democracy has a few awesome new dance moves rolling into the Obama presidency, and it'll be a feast for

  December 31, 2008

• Turning the Screw: Dustin Prestige, Lupe Fiasco, Katy Perry/Travis McCoy, Dr. Dre, DJ AM, Lil' Kim, Damon Dash/Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and More

  Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Thanks, homies. Single of the Week: "Funny Valentine," Dustin Prestige Wire To Wire Lupe Fiasco, whom you'll remember recently announced his retirement, is rumored to be putting out rock music as British-accented Percival Fats, lead singer of Japanese Cartoon. (Listen here; it's actually pretty good.) The band denies such claims, s

  January 5, 2009

• SXSW Update: Sonics, Bar-Kays, Black Lips, Young Mammals, Wild Moccasins Added

  The Sonics, "Psycho a Go-Go" Another week goes by, with yet gigantic list of SXSW performers coming to Austin in March. The final list comes out January 30, so be prepared for maximum bloggage. We're still crossing our fingers and polishing up the nondescript white van in the hopes that Katy Perry will be heading to the Capitol. She just dumped that dude from Gym Class Heroes, and hits Houston March 20 for a show at House of Blues - come on, there's booze all over town. Of course she'll b

  January 14, 2009

• Aftermath: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Super Bowl XLIII

  Part 1: "10th Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Born to Run" Score another one for the old folks. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's quarter-hour onstage at Super Bowl XLIII Sunday night may not have been the most contemporary booking the NFL could have landed - but, and we'll get to this in a minute, maybe it was - and yet it's hard to imagine Lil Wayne, the Jonas Brothers or Katy Perry putting on nearly as soul-stirring a performance, let alone one that wasn't upstaged by a fireworks

  February 2, 2009

• This Week in SXSW: Katy Perry Kisses the "Lake of Fire"

  There's now less than a month to go until we here at Rocks Off throw sobriety and sane living to the wind at this year's SXSW festival. This past week we learned of a boatload of new stuff about the weeklong liver-damaging voyage in March, so here goes... The list of bands keeps growing and growing, but we have noticed that some of the events are not as extravagant as years past. Many festivals, including the Vans Warped Tour, have scaled down their theatrics for the sake of saving cash. Th

  February 11, 2009

• Tonight: Kathryn Hallberg at Main Street Crossing

  I hate Kathryn Hallberg. I hate the fact that she is, at just 14 years of age, already a mature songwriter, guitarists, and singer of undeniable skill and exquisite appeal. I hate that her debut EP, No Surprise, produced by Harold Ruben and Kyle Hutton at Red Tree is four songs of perfect acoustic pop that expertly refuses to tread the trail of slime left in Miley Cyrus' wake. I hate how her songs show that she has seen the world's wheel roll over the butterfly of love and hope, and has onl

  February 19, 2009

• Meiko

  February 5, 2009

• New Year's Resolutions from a Few Big Musical Names

  January 1, 2009

• Crash Into Me: Predicting the Economy's Impact on the Music Biz

  April 16, 2009

• Think Buckcherry Has Mellowed? Crazy Bitch...

  December 4, 2008

• Katy Perry: One of the Boys

  August 21, 2008

• Before We Go: Odds and Ends on Mechanical Boy, Katy Perry, George Strait, Future Blondes and More

  "SWING LOW AND CARRY ME HOME" By Mechanical Boy from Michael Fodera on Vimeo. It's about time for Rocks Off to head off to the bunkhouse for some much-needed R&R, but first here's a few final tidbits that have recently come to our attention. Mechanical Boy just released its first video, "Swing Low and Carry Me Home" (above) and heads off on tour after its June 5 show at Fitzgerald's with Windsor Drive, Lake Charles' Magnolia Sons, the Testyclactics (ew), Better Luck and Spain Coloured Orange

  May 8, 2009

• All the Katy Perry You're Going to Get, Because She Just Canceled Her Show

  Update: Tonight's Katy Perry show at House of Blues has been CANCELED due to Perry's illness, says promoter Live Nation. Perry is expected to announce a make-up date soon, and all tickets for tonight's show, which was itself postponed from March, will be honored. She'll be here eventually, we guess, though Rocks Off is starting to wonder... Katy loves Flickr...One of the few people to make the transition from relative obscurity to legitimate pop stardom in the past 12 months, Katy Perry struck t

  May 12, 2009

• Idol Beat: The Top Three Results

  Photos by Frank Micelotta/ Fox Homeward Bound: Danny Gokey's exit didn't prompt a whole lot of tears."I think we've had enough suspense, enough commercials - let's just get to it." This is what Danny Gokey told Ryan Seacrest, and, by proxy, America. We were in agreeance - Wednesday night's show was almost over, and at the point Gokey said the above, Katy Perry's appearance was the last roadblock standing in the way of everybody on Earth discovering whether the Idol axe would fall on MOR

  May 14, 2009

• Before We Go: A Thousand Cranes, the Muses, Johnny Bush, the Old Quarter, Katy Perry, a Numbers Documentary and More

  The above cartoon - give it a minute; it'll show up - is somehow tied into Saturday's show at Avant Garden featuring A Thousand Cranes, How I Quit Crack and Metal Rouge. Rocks Off wishes he could tell you how, but he digs the Monty Python and the Holy Grail homage. Colorado traditional Celtic duo the Muses will play a free show Wednesday, May 27, on the plaza in front of the main branch of the Houston Public Library (500 McKinney) at 6 p.m. "Whiskey River" author Johnny Bush will play this week

  May 14, 2009

• Gossip Girls

  June 18, 2009

• The Katy Perry Experiment

  July 30, 2009

• Inquiring Minds: Pop Princess Katy Perry

  Mike Ruiz​They say man can't exist on indie-rock and metal alone, or something like that. Rocks Off firmly agrees, so when we hear good mainstream pop we ride that horse for all it's worth. That's why a little over a year ago, when Katy Perry hit with her single "Ur So Gay," we were enamored with the raven-haired California native. It wasn't quite bubblegum, and it wasn't quite rock and roll, but it was catchy as hell. Plus it was delivered in such a non-plussed pinup/rocker-girl motif, that m

  July 31, 2009

• Aftermath: Katy Perry at Verizon Wireless Theater

  Photos by Kim Douglass​ Katy Perry kissed a girl. She liked it, and now she's a huge pop star. If things broke the same way for boys, Aftermath would have been a huge pop star for the past 19, 20 years. But we're not bitter.​After bailing on two previously scheduled Houston shows - once due to illness suspiciously around SXSW (though she canceled those dates too), the other the day before appearing on the American Idol finale - Perry greeted the more-or-less sold-out crowd at Verizon Wireles

  August 3, 2009

• It's 4:30 p.m. and Taylor Hicks, Clay Aiken, John Mayer, Nickelback and ICP Still Suck

  Er... no comment. OK, maybe one or two...​In the world of rock writing, there are just some artists' fans that you can't help but fuck with. While you're alternately enamored and disgusted by their chosen obsession, they exert a near religious fanaticism for their fixation of worship, making them all too open for mockery. In the past decade, the increasing omnipresence of the Internet and the advent of American Idol have created a new sub-species of rabid followers who take each barb thrown in

  September 14, 2009

• Fix Your Face

  September 24, 2009

• Heckler's Delight: R. Kelly at Reliant Arena

  Sorry, we couldn't resist...​King of R&B. Ghostwriter supreme. Pop genius. Unabashed sex fiend. Bump 'n' grind horndog. Acquited pedophile. Ultimately, history will decide whether or not R. Kelly deserves some, all, or any of these labels, but here are two facts that aren't in dispute: 1) the guy has written and produced some of the sauciest, raunchiest, funniest songs in recent memory, and 2) that June's The Demo Tape mixtape - Kells' first - was an unforgivable piece of garbage. Since do

  October 30, 2009