Lou Reed

Metalachi

Rufus Wainwright

Set It To Blow: 5 Musical Bombs to Promote Internet-Jukebox Anarchy

Recently my Twitter buddy John Seaborn Gray wrote a blog for Rocks Off in which he gave the world five simple suggestions for how to use Internet jukeboxes more effectively. He makes a lot of good points and if you're good people you'll read it, digest it and put his rules in to practice. I am not ... More >>

10 Heavy Metal Double Albums That Make Us Want to Buy a Turntable

This week, one of our most highly anticipated albums of the summer was released: Baroness' Yellow & Green. We were already looking forward to hearing whatever came next from the Georgia rockers after the success of their epic Blue Record in 2009, but we got especially excited when we found out that ... More >>

Metalachi

5 Intentionally Bad Albums By Geniuses That Really Aren't So Bad

If there's one thing artists hate, it's record labels. Like managers, they were a necessary evil for the music business throughout much of the previous century, at least until piracy and digital uploading became a thing. The way it worked in the olden days, though, was that a record label would giv ... More >>

Lord Lordy, Look Who's Forty: The Best Albums Of 1972

Last week I told you about the best debut albums of 1992, making a lot of us feel old in the process. Hell, I was only nine when those came out and I felt feeble making the list. This week we look at the best albums of 1972, now four decades in the hole, but no less fulfilling and influential. Wha ... More >>

Bartender Chat: Matt Bradshaw of El Gran Malo

We stopped into El Gran Malo this week because nothing quite warms your chilled bones like a few shots of crushed black pepper, sea salt, cayenne and toasted Texas pecan-infused tequila. We sampled some of the bar's newest infusions, snacked on bacon-wrapped jalapenos that were so spicy my ears hurt ... More >>

5 Bands Lou Reed Should Have Called Instead of Metallica

As mentioned in Nathan Smith's "Bummer, Dude: The 10 Big Musical Disappointments of 2011", Lulu, the not-at-all-anticipated-by-me aural abortion resulting from the un-Godly union of The Progenitor of All Things Cool, Three Insufferable Man-Children & Kirk Hammett, SUCKED. This was crushing for me on ... More >>

Bummer, Dude: The 10 Big Musical Disappointments of 2011

Photo by Marc BrubakerThis guy's crazy rant at Fun Fun Fun Fest made the list.​All things considered, 2011 was a pretty bitchin' year for popular music. It wasn't all high-fives and Grammies for our musical heroes, however. More than few steaming flops, blown gigs and sour notes made the yea ... More >>

Roadtrippin': The Eight Track Museum In Dallas

Last week while this member Rocks Off was in Dallas for the 48th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and our annual trek to Dealey Plaza, we stopped in to the Eight Track Museum in the Deep Ellum district of the city. The opening rumblings of the small museum, located in the back of store fro ... More >>

For Labor Day: 10 Songs About Childbirth

kidzcareonline.com​Cyril Connolly said "There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." The famed English literary critic knew, like several here at Rocks Off, that having kids puts a hell of a dent in a parent's free time, and the constant demands of children can make at ... More >>

1986: Best Musical Year Ever?

​For almost two weeks now, Rocks Off has been obsessed with the year exactly 25 flips of the calendar backward from this one. It started when Steve Earle did one of his "Time Machine" shows, where the singer-songwriter who plays House of Blues Wednesday spotlights a dozen or so of his favorite ... More >>

Top 10 Hottest Jewish Musicians

​The Festival of Lights is upon us, as the eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah officially kicks off at sundown tonight. Some of music's leading bigwigs will likely be sparking up the menorah, among them Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Leonard Cohen, Diamond David Lee Roth, Perry Farrell an ... More >>

Tax The Wolf Agrees: Velvet Underground > The Strokes

Michelle Tovar/ Tax the Wolf on Facebook​For the night before Thanksgiving, there is a lot going on in Houston tomorrow. But with all due respect to Robert Ellis & the Boys at Fitzgerald's and the LAX/Young Girls show at Groundhall - not to mention, on an entirely different scale, both Bruno M ... More >>

Reduxion

Reduxion Returns Next Wednesday With Tax The Wolf

Michelle Tovar/ Tax the Wolf on Facebook​We're baaaaaaack! After a couple of months off - hey, things happen - Reduxion, Rocks Off's monthly series of local bands covering their biggest influences, returns just in time to get you nice and hung over for Thanksgiving dinner. (Kidding... we thin ... More >>

Top Five Musician/Journalist Feuds

"Like, what is your problem?" Jason Nocito​Hell hath no fury like a spurned musician, but a critic's vengeance doesn't lag far behind. This week in the Houston Press, you can read an interview Noah Bailey at our sister paper the Dallas Observer did with Dr. Dog's Scott McMicken, who says he h ... More >>

Is Ex-Velvet Moe Tucker A Tea Partier Or Not?

​The Velvet Underground has certainly had an interesting second act. After Andy Warhol's favorite NYC "party" band soundtracked countless narcotic jags and laid the foundation for everything from punk rock to shoegaze, its members went on to very different lives: Lou Reed to street-life classi ... More >>

Top 10 Pop Songs With Children's Choruses

​On the way home from ACL this past Sunday night, Craig's Hlist had his Rdio account humming over the speakers playing one of his playlists (phlayhlist?), but not the sad-bastard mix we rocks whenever we are at work alone. It was the life-spanning one we have been making since we got on the mu ... More >>

Cartoon Band To Play Toyota Center

My my, we're busy today. Rocks Off this sent this into the Twitterverse earlier, but for all you non-tweeters, Gorillaz, the UK hip-hop/electronica/rock band composed of Murdoc Niccals, 2D, Noodle and Russel Hobbs - the cartoon avatars of Blur's Damon Albarn and his pal Jamie Hewlett - are pencile ... More >>

Beavis And Butt-Head's Greatest Video Hits, Dillhole

​On the night of November 28, 1997, Rocks Off was sitting in his friend Chad's parents' house in Pearland, watching the final episode of MTV's Beavis and Butt-head. The boys had been a part of our daily lives since at least fifth grade, and as we marched into the second semester of ninth grade ... More >>

FAIL: "American Idols Live," Montreal Jazz Festival, George Michael, Suge Knight

Photo illustrations by John Seaborn Gray​Jazz Festival Audience Somehow Unprepared to Enjoy Aimless, Self-Indulgent Noodling: Lou Reed, John Zorn, and Reed's wife Laurie Anderson performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival recently, and treated the audience to improvisational jazz which the linked ... More >>

The 7 Most Polarizing Albums In Recent Memory

​This Monday night, MGMT hits the House Of Blues behind new album Congratulations, which has been getting one of the most tepid responses for a new album by a buzz band in recent media memory. The people that jumped on the bandwagon in 2008 after the Brooklyn-based then-duo released Oracular Spect ... More >>

Acts We Think - OK, Hope - Are Playing ACL Fest This Year

​By this time Tuesday, we will all know who is playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. Damn, it seems like we have speculating about the line-up since, well, we got the last of the "Dillo Dirt" out the middle of our toes after last year's muddy and rainy ACL weekend. Tuesday brig ... More >>

8 Songs Guaranteed To Get Those Damn Relatives To Leave Already

​But if I really say it, the radio won't play it, Unless I lay it between the lines! - Peter, Paul and Mary, "I Dig Rock and Roll Music" We know, we know. It's late Christmas evening, you've had a few too many glasses of nog. That turkey is starting to take its toll, and yet you've still got a hou ... More >>

Stuck In a Moment You (Still) Can't Get Out Of: Remembering 9/11 In Music

Just as none of us will ever forget where we were the morning of September 11, 2001, Rocks Off will never forget what he was listening to most of the day of the terrorist attacks. Sadly, he admits it was System of A Down's Toxicity, which had come out just the week before. For us the album conveyed ... More >>

He Said She Said: Songs for Getting It On

[Ed. Note: While we were off watching Night Ranger videos or something - which should tell you all you need to know about our own sex life at the moment - Rocks Off No. 2, Craig Hlavaty, and Web Editor Katharine Shilcutt started going back and forth about how men and women want to hear very differen ... More >>

Friday Night Noise: Caddywhompus and Alarmcock

Caddywhompus, "Fun Times at Whiskey Bay": If nothing else, this Houston/New Orleans noise-pop unit is a prime contender/offender for an international "worst name imaginable" contest. Singer/percussionist Sean Hart and singer/guitarist/keyboard player Chris Rehm are certainly more plugged-in than the ... More >>

SXSW: Echo & the Bunnymen at Stubb's

Photos by Chris GrayBy Friday afternoon, SXSW fatigue has taken hold. You're walking a little slower, less inclined to whip out the notebook to jot down every little observation - Rocks Off has seen many journos just typing notes into their BlackBerries, a trend that both intrigues and dismays him - ... More >>

Eat Your Vegetables: Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music

Consisting of nothing more than one hour of two overlaid tracks of guitar feedback, Metal Machine Music ranks near the top of music history's shit list in terms of total amount of critical bile received. Houston's own Ramon Medina summed up the album's status succinctly on the NonAlignment Pact ... More >>

SXSW: Lou Reed. Live. For One Song. Lou Freakin’ Reed.

South By Scavenger Hunt

SXSW Ephemera: Random Notes from the Field

Culturcide: Year One

Drenched in Blog: SXSW Rumblins'

Drenched In Blog: What Happens at Half Price Books....

Pavement

Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition

Sam Winch

The Lullabadeer

Antony and the Johnsons

I Am a Bird Now

Walk on the Wild Side

Meet Supestar diva Holly Woodlawn at the Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival

Biirdie

Wednesday, August 17, at the Proletariat, 903 Richmond, 713-523-1199.

Messing with Texas

Rockers bash Bush, with varying results

A.R.E. Weapons

Wednesday, July 9

The Strokes

Is This It? (RCA)

Mortal Soul

Scorsese and Cage elevate the EKG of the mean streets

Rotation

Static

Rotation

Wordy Jukebox