Kraftwerk

Transcribing Is a Bitch: The Collected Craig Hlavaty Interviews

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 >>

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 Biggest Houston Bands of 1992

Researching what the Houston music scene was like 20 years ago has been an eye-opening experience, to put it mildly. In that benighted era, the world was very analog. Musicians could design a gig flyer or type up some lyrics on their computers, maybe fiddle around with some primitive MIDI-type softw ... More >>

Blondie: The Best New Wave Band of All Time

Last Night: Radiohead At Toyota Center

Radiohead Toyota Center March 3, 2012 Radiohead just doesn't add up. The band has effectively turned its back on the music business, pioneering alternative methods of distribution of its music to fans (most of it online), short-circuiting the traditional promotional apparatus by releasing last year ... More >>

Dave Grohl Vs. Skrillex: Dumbest Music Feud Ever?

Sometimes it's very easy for Rocks Off's brain to go on autopilot while checking our email in the morning. If we're not weeding out actual spam to delete, we're wincing at messages hyping music whose wretchedness practically leaps off the screen. (Someone you've never heard of touted as a "legend" i ... More >>

The Best LP Side Ones Ever

Spurred on by the realization that both David Bowie's commercial breakthrough Let's Dance and Queen's News of the World had solid, sturdy side ones on their vinyl releases, I then began the hunt for other great vinyl slabs with amazing side ones. Of course, the idea is that this could only include ... More >>

Vive La France: 14 French Lessons From English Pop Songs

Shutterstock/faqs.org​Happy Bastille Day, everybody. Today France celebrates the day in 1789 when an angry mob stormed the eponymous (our new favorite word) prison in central Paris, freed all seven prisoners - they were really after the guns and ammunition, Clash-style - and touched off the Fr ... More >>

10 Albums We're Not Supposed To Like But Do

​In everyone's record collection there are junk-food albums, the ones that you feel bad for consuming but coat your ears with happy, because you have been conditioned by everyone else to either hate them or disown them. But when push comes to shove on that media player or stereo, the junk-food ... More >>

Devo And The 16 Other Best Bands In Uniform

Mark C. Austin​Devo hits Warehouse Live on March 25, the band's first Houston date since a 2006 appearance with the Psychedelic Furs - who, coincidentally enough, are also coming to Warehouse (April 23) to do all of 1981's Talk Talk Talk ("Pretty In Pink," "Into You Like a Train"), plus "Love ... More >>

Agent Orange Continues Carpet-Bombing Surf-Punk

David EnsmingerAgent Orange's Mike Palm at Rocbar earlier this year.​Rocks Off recently had the opportunity to speak with Agent Orange's Mike Palm, who founded the Southern California surf-punks in the late '70s and has remained in the trenches ever since. Agent Orange plays Fitzgerald's Sunda ... More >>

Friday Night: Nitzer Ebb At Numbers

Photos by Groovehouse​Nitzer Ebb Numbers November 29, 2010 It was an odd feeling, watching Nitzer Ebb at Numbers Friday night. It was an odd feeling, because of the déjà vu. Nitzer Ebb was the first band Aftermath ever saw live - ever - opening Depeche Mode's Violator tour at the Woodlands ... More >>

Aftermath: Metric's New Wave Coming-Out Party at Warehouse Live

[Ed note: Yes, we stayed for the entire show this time, but then... oh, never mind.] Photos by Marc Brubaker​ When Aftermath first walked into Warehouse Live Monday night, we figured there must be some sort of secret Canada-to-Houston information pipeline we'd never heard about. We didn't think To ... More >>

The World's Most Unfortunately Dressed Bank Robber

The FBI has put out the alert for a new bank robber, one who knocked off a Memorial Drive Wachovia and a west-side Bank of America last week.This is not just any bank robber, though. This dude has style. A very outdated, ridiculous style.Photo courtesy FBI​The FBI is calling him the "Sweatin' to t ... More >>

Tonight: Silver Apples at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Silver Apples' career has been defined by accidents, difficulties and deferrals. Formed when Simeon Coxe III of the Overland Electric Stage Band decided to bring an electronic oscillator to a show, causing the band's guitarists to quit in protest, leaving him and drummer Danny Taylor alone o ... More >>

Drenched in Blog: C'mere Miley Ray…

Joy Division's Expanded Reissues

Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Still, Control Original Motion Picture Sound Track

Tapes 'N' Tapes

Bringing strangers together via the International Mixtape Project

Aimless Attack

Daddy G on Massive Attack's meanderings

RIP, Syd. And RIP, 'Cid.

A psychedelic pioneer and the drug that helped do him in are both sorely missed

Eliot Lipp

Friday, April 21, at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, 713-629-3700

Van Gogh with a Resonator

Remembering Chris Whitley, the universal bluesman

Always Darkest Before the Dawn

Trotting out the clichés for a year-ender piece

Acid Test

Enter the warped world of the Linus Pauling Quartet at your peril

The South's Done It Again

Southern rock comes in for another revival

Black Gold

A gusher lay beneath the surface, but you had to drill deep

Tyrannosaurus Raps

Jurassic 5 will help you remember hip-hop the way it oughta be

Crap Shoot

Nothing's guaranteed at SXSW - not even a seat to Dee Dee Ramone's show

Local Rotation

Jody Hughes -- Japanic

Prog's New Face

Deadwood Forest isn't your father's progressive rock band

Rotation

Now They're Cooking

Rotation