My Chemical Romance

UPDATED: Stephen King's Five Best Rock and Roll References

UPDATED (Friday, 11:50 a.m.) to correct the ID in the top photo. This past week saw the release of Stephen King's latest short novel of hard-boiled crime fiction called Joyland, by my count his 70th overall, not counting reprints and compilations. What fuels output like that? By King's own admissio ... More >>

Street Knowledge

The Geto Boys MC is also Rocks Off's brand-new advice columnist.

Last Night: Imagine Dragons at House of Blues

Imagine Dragons House of Blues February 12, 2013 I've been wracking my brain to find the words to summarize last night's Imagine Dragons sold out show at House of Blues, and the only thing phrase that seems fitting comes from no other than Lil Wayne: Smack it like a muthafuckin' bass drum. An un ... More >>

Where Are They Now?: Emo's 10-Year High School Reunion

Mainstream emo in the early 2000s was a harsh mistress to keep. For those of us into the true underground form of it, it was an offensive burden to deal with, but at least some good bands were getting some mainstream success. Others? Well, we'd just have to deal with them. Of course, all that's ove ... More >>

5 More Bizarre "Basement Tapes" We'd Like to See

Recently over in England, someone dug up some old tapes of a band called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, a band who may have gone largely unheard of for the rest of time, were it not for the fact that their drummer was one Ringo Starr. Yes, two years before he started drumming for The Beatles, Ringo ... More >>

5 More Great 9/11 Songs

Rewind: The Top 5 Best & Worst Songs About 9/11 Looking at it now, 11 years to the day of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the al-Qaeda-led terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, it's still difficult to underestimate how much the world changed that day. The real ... More >>

Last Night: Blink-182 At The Woodlands

Photos by Matthew Keever​blink-182, My Chemical Romance, Matt & Kim Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion September 26, 2011 Surely, there have been murmurs about blink-182's reformation. Surely, many people have thought, "Oh, they're only getting back together because Angels & Airwaves and 44 are ... More >>

Our All-Time Fantasy Vans Warped Tour Lineup

Photos by Marc BrubakerWarped Tour 2010​Since 1996, the Vans Warped Tour has been a staple of punk and youth culture all over the world, uniting kids of all stripes under the violent heat of the sun one day out of the year in cities across the map. The traveling festival is responisble for bre ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Bands Of The '90s

Trent Reznor, you know, before the Oscar and all the weightlifting. ​As a music writer, we are asked constantly to compare the new with the old, to decipher the periphery where modern bands' influences come from to understand where we are going and what we are seeing. We can hear everything Ke ... More >>

Friday Night: My Chemical Romance At House Of Blues

Photos by Marc Brubaker​My Chemical Romance House of Blues May 20, 2011 See Friday's Black Parade in our slideshow. Less than a third of the way through Friday night's show, as the dark and ominous riffs of "Mama" faded out, vocalist Gerard Way dropped to the floor, and the stage lights abru ... More >>

Cage Match: Fired for Walking vs. My Chemical Romance

Fired for Walking​Ladies and gentlemen, this weekend a battle will be waged for your very musical soul. In this corner, weighing about as much as three small ponies, wearing black, but not in that cool way, the band that made emo what it is today, My Chemical Romance. And in this corner... He ... More >>

Rockin' In Plain Sight: Our Favorite Hidden Album Tracks

​In the days when compact discs and tapes ruled the world, hidden tracks on albums were like secret gifts from your favorite bands. Off the liner notes, not in the original track listings, and totally unassuming, sometimes tucked away after minutes and minutes of silence on a disc. With the ... More >>

Shot In The Dark: How The Whole Mess Started

Mark C. AustinKings of Leon at Verizon Wireless Theater, October 2008​Just a couple of days now before Rocks Off - the person and the blog - proudly presents Shot In the Dark: Houston Press Concert Photography, our first-ever exhibit of live pics we've collected in about three and a half years ... More >>

A Musical Field Guide To National Bird Day

yourfashion.com​Today is National Bird Day, and we are all gonna celebrate. Every year bird enthusiasts pick this day to promote bird watching, XTREME bird watching, bird adoption, and just plain ol' loving the unholy hell out of birds. All kidding aside, the holiday is dedicated to raising aw ... More >>

Top 10 Worst Top 10 Lists Of 2010

​Now that's a headline, ladies and germs. It has the added benefit of being succinct as well. That's exactly what we're summing up here, the worst Top 10 lists our peers have written this year. Let's get started, as we've got a lot of ground to cover. 10. This One Not really, this is just t ... More >>

Guns N' Roses, Rolling Stones, Prince Coming In 2011?

Sind Axl und Slash wieder Freunde geworden?​Rocks Off is in the concert business for all intents and purposes. We scour Pollstar and other Web sites and almost hourly looking for new shows and tours to tell you about around the clock. In the span of writing this introduction we just listed Luc ... More >>

Today's High Schoolers Shrugging Off New Music

​During this part of the year, your humble narrator treks from school to schools selling contest music to bands and orchestras. It's a good gig, and it enables us to get a good gander at what the next generation of musicians look like. However, after several years of doing it, we started noti ... More >>

Top Eight Worst Musician Vanity Film Projects

​Rocks Off won't speak for everyone, but if we ever found ourselves a platinum-selling artist, we kinda doubt we'd press our luck by veering off into the world of acting. We mean, it hardly ever works from the opposite direction (right, Don Johnson?), so what good can possibly come from assumi ... More >>

Last Night: Gaslight Anthem At Warehouse Live

Photos by Jason Wolter​Gaslight Anthem Warehouse Live October 7, 2010 Quite a great deal of press - too much, really - has been given to the similarities between New Jersey's Gaslight Anthem and that other guy from the Garden State - Jon Bon J... er, Bruce Springsteen. Both Springsteen and GA ... More >>

Can Escape The Fate Outrun Eons Of Mythology?

It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to decode music's oddest monikers in order to find a little meaning. P.R. Brown​Escape the Fate is a band whose career may actually be pre-destined. The Vegas post-hardcore pow ... More >>

Foodies Or Hipsters: Who's More Obnoxious?

Okay, we're discussing Hipsters vs. Foodies, not Hipsters Vs. Food. That's your first mistake.​Okay, first up, a little clarification, since a bunch of you just got pissed off at the terms used in the headline and won't even read the article before leaving enraged spittle all over the comments ... More >>

Foodies Or Hipsters: Who's More Obnoxious?

Okay, we're discussing Hipsters vs. Foodies, not Hipsters Vs. Food. That's your first mistake.​Okay, first up, a little clarification, since a bunch of you just got pissed off at the terms used in the headline and won't even read the article before leaving enraged spittle all over the comments ... More >>

Don't Start A Band, Unless You Have Some Clue How To Market Yourself

​ Rocks Off has been bad, very bad. In our last two "Don't Start a Band" blogs, we ragged on our bassist, our drummer and our guitarist. We meant it all in good fun, but we have yet to rag on ourselves, and that's just not fair. So here's to equality and journalistic integrity. We joined the band ... More >>

SXSW As It Happens: Surfer Blood Makes Waves at the Village Voice Media Party

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt​A series of texts from Brandon K. Hernsberger starting at 12:41 p.m.: I'm in line at Village Voice. Shit is CRAZY long. Most people here to see The xx. 5 in 5 out. Surfer Blood up next. Dudes are effing HUGE. I see people eating inside and I'm jealous. Next door ... More >>

Mommy's Little Monster: Songs To Remind You That Children are Inherently Evil

​Like you, as Rocks Off grows older we have to come to terms with the fact that many of our friends are having children. Usually we can just scroll quickly past the offspring-related Facebook updates or send those 12-MB emails containing brood photos into the Trash folder unread. No harm, no foul. ... More >>

Songs for Naughty Children

As Rocks Off grows older we have to come to terms with the fact that many of our friends are having children. Usually we can just scroll quickly past the offspring-related Facebook updates or send those 12 MB emails containing brood photos into the Trash folder unread. No harm, no foul. But the hol ... More >>

Sorry Dave, We Had To: Top Ten Songs to Listen to While Having Sex With Co-Workers

If The Late Show with David Letterman hasn't seemed very funny lately, it's probably because Dave has been spending more time apologizing for banging his subordinates than he has making fun of Paul Shaffer. Admittedly, it was a bold move: coming forward and confessing his past missteps in order to ... More >>

Five Spot: Jack White, The Edge, Jimmy Page and the Mediocrity of Your Life

My First Guitar Hero Lesson

The Kids are Alright: Seventh Grader Reviews the New 3 Doors Down

The Kids are Alright: Seventh Grader Reviews Weezer's "Red Album"

The Wayback Machine: 15, 10, and five years ago in Houston music

Would Morrissey Approve

SXSW Extra: What's In My Pockets (Again)?

Make It a Funky Weekend

Rock and Roll Autobiographies

Stars' tell-all stories

Live Shots: My Chemical Romance

Song Title Scrabble

Mixed-up monikers

Honor Bound

A fictional look at the future of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In with the New

Despite doom-and-gloom predictions, 2006 wasn't at all bad

Slay Bells

An X-mas mixtape from hell

Best Albums of the Year, 2006

Roses on Your Grave

Punk-o-Rama

Our intrepid reporters set out to experience the Vans Warped Tour -- so you don't have to

Screw October

Justin Furstenfeld orders us to hate him. We obey.

Taking Back Sunday

Louder Now

The Academy Is..., with Panic! At the Disco, Acceptance, Hellogoodbye

Wednesday, February 22, at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, 713-629-3700.

This Game Bites

The new Castlevania is the last nail in the franchise's coffin

Pop Rocks

Ten albums that'll snap and fizz in your ear buds all winter long

Scared Straight

Alkaline Trio gets clean on its pristine new LP