Music Festivals

Lights, Camera, Headaches

The quickest way to ruin a music festival? Get actors to show up.

How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Music Festival: Actors

So Ashton Kutcher allegedly got in a fight at the Stagecoach Music Festival. I know, it's a little mind-boggling, that whole idea. Ashton Kutcher was not only at a country-music festival, but reports say he somehow managed to stay true to his douche-roots and get into a fistfight with a security gua ... More >>

ACL 2013 Predictions & Rumors: Is This Jimmy Buffett's Year?

2013 marks the first year that the Austin City Limits Music Festival -- Texas' other large outdoor music festival, never to be confused with Houston's own Free Press Summer Fest -- expands to two consecutive weekends with identical lineups. At this point the lineup for the festival, scheduled for Oc ... More >>

Why Electric Daisy Carnival Texas Should Be In Houston

The largest music festival in the United States in terms of attendance is not Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, or Austin City Limits. While each sees thousands of music fans pass through the gates every year, the real attendance champ is Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas. The 2012 version of the e ... More >>

Jazz Fest Scores With Willie, John Mayer, Frank Ocean, Fleetwood Mac, Patti Smith, etc.

Well, I never thought that I would have John Mayer and Patti Smith together in the same headline with Willie Nelson and Frank Ocean, but that's why I kinda love New Orleans Jazz Fest 2013, whose lineup was released earlier this morning. Rewind: A Texican in New Orleans: Lessons Learned from Jazz F ... More >>

The Great Outdoors

Your 2013 music-festival outlook, Texas edition.

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 >>

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 >>

Friends, Colleagues Remember SXSW's Brent Grulke

Rewind: Brent Grulke, SXSW Music Creative Director, Dies of Heart Attack Tuesday afternoon, SXSW staff began posting testimonials to their late friend and colleague, Brent Grulke, who had been SXSW Music's Creative Director from 1994 until he died after suffering a heart attack Monday morning in Au ... 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 >>

Two Door Cinema Club

A Texican In New Orleans: Lessons Learned From Jazz Fest

This past weekend was the last for this year's edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which started way back on April 27. The festival runs over two weekends, usually Thursday through Sunday. Obviously since it is a uniquely Nawlins institution going back to 1970, it's not a festival t ... More >>

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 >>

Alert: SXSW Coverage Ahead -- 50 Cent And Much More

"What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area." -- Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive You don't have to spend much time at South By Southwest to know that all of the above building ... More >>

Chafing 101: Rocks Off's 2011 Music Festival Odyssey

Music festivals are now a part of our lives, just like deadlines, angry commenters, lack of sleep, and eye fatigue. And eating at our desk. That sucks. But at least we have food and a desk, right? Rocks Off ventured all over the state -- OK, really mostly Austin -- to cover festivals for the blog. ... More >>

Gary Clark Jr.

Graphic: When Festival Booking Goes Too Far

Garland RobinetteYes, this is the real Jazz Fest 2011 poster, and that's really Jimmy Buffett.​Every spring, New Orleans puts on something called the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. But as Jazz Fest has grown more and more popular, the headlining acts have had less and less to do with ja ... More >>

How Is Houston Doing ACL-Wise?

Marco TorresThe Eagles have flown, at least as far as Houston is concerned.​If you have even bothered to venture out of doors during these days of 105-degree heat indices and "Unhealthy" air-quality advisories, you may have noticed that things have been a little light on the roadshow front lat ... 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 >>

Blogging Bonnaroo: Meghan Hendley's Top 5 Festival Memories

Photo by Amber Roussell/See the slideshowTyagaraja performs at the Bonnaroo Music Festival​Houston artist Tyagaraja recently won the Ford Fiesta Team Houston Battle of The Bands, the grand prize of which was a trip to perform at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. Meghan Hendley, keyboar ... More >>

SXSW Aftermath: Here's To The Most Accessible, Personable Festival In Years

Katharine ShilcuttAt SXSW, everywhere is a venue, including the back alley where we came across these ladies Thursday afternoon.​SXSW is a festival that tries to beat you down like the drip-drip of acid on the blink-blink of an eyeball, and more times than not it succeeds. But if you're able to co ... More >>

"Why Can't It Be More Like Jazzfest?" Rick Mitchell Debunks The Top 10 Gripes He's Overheard About Houston's iFest

All photos courtesy of www.ifest.orgOzomatli: 8 p.m. Saturday, April 17, Bud Light World Music Stage​ A couple of days ago, Houston International Festival Director of Performing Arts Rick Mitchell emailed Rocks Off and asked us if we'd mind reprinting something he wrote for the blog on iFest's Web ... More >>

Music Cities

Texas has its own brand of March Madness

Coming of Age

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

Austin City Limits Goes Grunge; Tickets On Sale Today

Just in time for tickets to go on sale - as in now - leaks have conveniently begun to spring in C3 Entertainment's carefully under wraps lineup for this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival, scheduled for October 2-4 in Zilker Park. (Don't worry, Longhorn fans: Unlike last year, that's UT's ... More >>

Aftermath: SXSW

Houston's SXSW Strategy

Seeing the Elephant

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. "T ... More >>

Jose Miguel Yamal Latin Jazz Quartet

Da Camera opens its daytime concert series

The Octopus Project

Has ACL Festival Jumped the Shark?

The Last Word from the Press on SXSW 2008

We swear, we're done now

Overheard at SXSW

South By Flores Alvarez

SXSW, WTF?

The lowdown on Austin's music festival

Various Artists

Bonnaroo 2004

Cruel Summer

Are we hearing the death rattle of the sheds?

Dude Raunch

All-girl quartet Kittie has more balls than the rest of Ozzfest 2000

South by Southwest by Houston Press

Rotation

Mudhoney March to Fuzz

Static

Lilith Fair-ness

Sarah McLachlan had a brainchild, and it was a girl

Pop Moment

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