Lollapalooza

Your 2013 Music Festival Outlook (Texas Edition)

I don't know about you, but I am not totally in love with winter weather. Yes, it affords you the ability to wear beanies and cool fingerless gloves and dress like a hoodlum, but it's the heat that I love the most. That's why I love thinking about music festivals, because that's where we all get t ... More >>

5 Simple Ways to Improve the Average Festival Experience

Music festivals are a bit of a no-brainer for live music fans. Getting to see a ton of bands for a mostly reasonable price? What's not to love? Well, a few things, if we're being honest. Don't get me wrong, plenty of little things that have happened over the last few years have made the festival ... More >>

6 More ACL Acts to Look Out For This Weekend

I'm what you can call a late bloomer when it comes to music festivals. Before coming to work for Rocks Off, my festival expertise was regulated to the Houston International Festival and that one SXSW that I spent bar hopping on Red River then somehow managing to sneak into Stubbs through the artist ... More >>

4 Reasons Lollapalooza Needs EDM

Note: This is part of our Twin Cities sister paper City Pages' coverage of Lollapalooza this past weekend in Chicago. -- ed. See Also: Lollapalooza 2012: The People BY IAN TRAAS With every year that passes, it feels like electronic dance music gains a bigger foothold in the summer festival circu ... More >>

25 Gorgeous GIFs From Lollapalooza 2012

Another Lollapalooza blog by our friends at City Pages -- ed. Lollapalooza 2012: The People BY REED FISCHER Ready for some GIFs? To quote Ozzy Osbourne, "I can't fucking hear you!" I said, ARE YOU READY FOR SOME GIFS?! This past weekend's running of Lollapalooza in Chicago was intense. The hea ... More >>

Lollapalooza Suspended, Resumed After Dangerous Weather Conditions

Note: Our friends at Twin Cities sister VVM weekly City Pages are covering Lollapalooza in Chicago this weekend. -- ed. By Erik Thompson, with additional reporting by Reed FischerThe 2012 installment of Lollapalooza has thus far brought the requisite extremes, in terms of performances and potent we ... More >>

Katy's Point to Infinity Wins Spot on Lollapalooza Stage

This is one of those stories that can't help raise even the most cynical journalist's cockles a few degrees: Band fresh out of high school, with a disposition as sunny as its melodic brand of pop-rock, wins a spot at one of America's biggest, most important music festivals. Any Hollywood producer wo ... More >>

Curated Festivals and the Changing Face of Summer Entertainment

While most Texans are spending their Friday counting down to ACL or speculating about the Fun Fun Fun Fest line up, I find myself thinking about a festival north of our fair state. We're halfway through June and that means that the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial should be dropping any da ... More >>

Jane's Addiction & Other Big 1987 Debut Albums

Tonight Jane's Addiction comes to the Bayou Music Center, touring behind last year's The Great Escape Artist, only their fourth studio album in their nearly 27 years as a band. A few weeks back Rocks Off talked to lead singer and Lollapalooza honcho Perry Farrell about the band's future and what cou ... More >>

Perry Farrell Is Doing Just Fine

Jane's Addiction and Lollapalooza mastermind on Bin Laden and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Bonna-What?: How 7 U.S. Music Festivals Got Their Names

This whole week, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, featuring the Black Keys, Radiohead, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, Pulp, At the Drive-In, the Shins, AVICII, David Guetta and maybe one or two others, will be all anyone who follows music these days will be talking about. Then early next week, it' ... More >>

BestFest Finalizes Lineup, Releases Schedule

​As much as Rocks Off has been talking about it, planning it, and writing about it these past two months or so, it doesn't seem possible that our first-ever Best of Houston® BestFest is only 10 short days away. By the time we finish coughing up all the dust from our trip to the no-smoking Aus ... More >>

NFL Draft Liveblogging, Starring Sean Pendergast

Rick Smith, you shall be judged immediately​The topic that has dominated sports talk radio lately -- at least in a city such as Houston that is experiencing a severe drought in anything worthwhile to talk about for its current franchises -- is the NFL Draft. It has turned into an off-season L ... More >>

ACL Day 3 Recap: Devendra Banhart, Band Of Horses, Other Beardos

Photos by Marco Torres​Aftermath doesn't know the bargain Austin City Limits promoter C3 Presents gets by booking both Lollapalooza and ACL, but to this dog-tired participant, this year's Zilker Park festivities ended up feeling less Austin weird and more something-something. Not that it's a ... More >>

Saturday Night: Matt & Kim At The HPMA Showcase

Jim Bricker​Matt & Kim Bud Light Outdoor Stage August 7, 2010 As the sun went down and the moon came up on the crowd at the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase main stage, a palpable sense of relief settled over everyone. The long, hot day was over and the throngs were preparing for Brooklyn' ... More >>

Matt & Kim Talk Lady Gaga, Erykah Badu, Naked Videos And New Music

Right On! PR​This weekend the Houston Press welcomes New York indie duo Matt & Kim to town to headline this year's edition of the Houston Press Music Awards, along with Trae tha Truth and Jonathan Tyler & The Northern Lights. Rocks Off will be giving away a bunch of HPMA wristbands today and t ... More >>

Inside GhoulsFest, Houston's Newest Music Festival

​This weekend the first annual GhoulsFest was announced for October 30 out at Tom Bass Park in Pearland. Things like this usually get telegraphed in a big way from bands leaking things out on Facebook and the like, but not this time. The event is thankfully set for one of the cooler parts of ... More >>

FAIL: Courtney Love, KeSha, Beta Band, Rock And Roll Lawyers

Photo illustrations by John Seaborn Gray​Courtney Love Melts Down Onstage... No, We Mean More Than Usual: We're hoping our Rocks Off counterpart Craig Hlavaty gets to witness his fantasy Hole show next week, but judging from the performance Courtney Love put on last Sunday night at Washington ... More >>

Matt & Kim, Jonathan Tyler Sign On To Music Awards Showcase

myspace.com/mattandkim​Today Rocks Off is pleased to announce that we have two special guests for this year's Houston Press Music Awards showcase, all day Saturday, August 7, inside and outside along Washington Avenue. After the locals do their thing, we have indie duo Matt & Kim and Texas boo ... More >>

2009 Concert Rewind: Backtracking to Free Press Houston Summerfest

Craig Hlavaty"Hippie Mike" may have been a bigger hit at Summerfest than any of the bands.​ Craig Hlavaty: "The two-day concert reminded us of a fun-size Austin City Limits Festival, with the best bits of Westheimer Block Parties of yore thrown in for good measure, with sprinkles of Houston's ... More >>

The Night a Well-Aimed Shoe Ended Smashing Pumpkins' Houston Goodwill

Today Rocks Off is starting a recurring series of local music urban legends; not so much 'urban legends' in the sense of oft-repeated stories that turn out to be false - though those are fine too - but actual legends: events and incidents that get talked about so much they become a part of local lor ... More >>

Coming of Age

Against long, long odds and punishing heat, Free Press Summer Fest is a hit.

Aftermath: Free Press Summer Fest at Eleanor Tinsley Park

Photos by Amber Roussel/ Click here for slideshows from Day 1 and Day 2​ They said it couldn't be done, that no one in Houston would dream of spending two days in the punishing August heat at an outdoor music festival.An anonymous Of Montreal member shows off his tiger style.​Rightfully (somewha ... More >>

Bayou Beat: Movie Night at the Mink, Scout Bar Beaumont Shut Down, Yeah Yeah Yeahs at ACL? and More

Seems the Mink has found an old movie projector and is planning to put it to good use this evening. After a couple of Charlie Chaplin shorts, the bar will screen the superb 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, and even provide free popcorn. "A makeout row can be provided on reque ... More >>

Jane's Addiction: Will They Or Won't They? Houston DJs Will

Sounds like Jane's Addiction is more or less a lock to play tonight's Playboy/C3 Presents super-exclusive late-night party at an old supermarket at 1107 N. IH-35 this evening starting around 11. It's pretty much the most popular rumor making the rounds at SXSW at this point - Rocks Off has heard it ... More >>

Beastie Boys, Cypress Hill and the Roots of Alt-Rap

Beastie Boys, "So What'cha Want" Today is one of those cosmological coincidences so uncanny it may be no coincidence at all: the Beastie Boys' Mike D and Cypress Hill's Sen Dog were both born this day in 1965. (Scorpios represent!) In the late '80s and early '90s, from opposite sides of the U.S., ... More >>

The Octopus Project

Welcome back, Toadies

No Deliverance from Evil

High Gas Prices Still Hurting Touring Bands

Notes toward a post-cheap-gas touring economy

Has ACL Festival Jumped the Shark?

Overheard at SXSW

Eels: Meet the Eels: Essential Eels Vol. 1Useless Trinkets

Freestyle Fellowship

Sometimes awesome live bands also make magic in the studio

Various Artists

Bonnaroo 2004

Wax Fantastic

Electro-phenom DJ Keoki spins by Numbers

Cruel Summer

Are we hearing the death rattle of the sheds?

The Mooney Suzuki

Rose, By Any Other Name

Jim Rose got a makeover, but he still has fans rolling in the aisles

Rotation

Mudhoney March to Fuzz

Rapumentary

Static

Prankster Punk

Chixdiggit make a mockery of everyone -- including themselves

Northern Exposure

Canada's favorites, The Tragically Hip, try to conquer the lower 48 without violence

Folk the Odd, Old Way

Palace makes new songs that sound like they've been around forever

Letters

Puke Sick

Thoughts of Sonic Youth, kid's shows and animal testing with sick body and warped mind

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

y Brad Tyer

Lollapalooza, Year Four: The bloom is back

Cover Boys

For Houston's cover bands, the party never ends and the songs remain the same