MySpace Inc.

The MySpaceification of Facebook: Do I Need a Smiley To Tell People How I Feel?

A funny thing happened last week in Facebook world. As a means of, I suppose, helping people better identify their moods or what they are eating at the moment, Zuckerberg Inc. added a new feature to status updates. They had already changed "Say something" to "How are you feeling?" in the status fiel ... More >>

An Open Letter to People I Un-Followed During the Election

MySpace? 5 Other Things Roger Clemens's Trial Judge Wants Jurors to Avoid

Being a juror for a long, high-profile trial can be a burden, as you're forced to severely limit your news-reading habits so as not to be influenced by stories. The judge in the Roger Clemens lawsuit has issued the standard warning for potential jurors, but he specifically included what might be th ... More >>

Dig This: Back To Back, Black Congress, dUNETX, Frants, and Ghost Mountain

The current volume of local music is staggering. New Houston bands are born daily, and all too often pass away just as quickly. Rocks Off wants to help you (and ourselves) keep up. Houston may have gotten colder, but that's just an excuse to hunker down with those headphones, discover some local m ... More >>

Dig This: Peloton, Coxcombs, Titan Blood, Papaya & Football, Etc.

The current volume of local music is staggering. New Houston bands are born daily, and all too often pass away just as quickly. Rocks Off wants to help you (and ourselves) keep up. Photo courtesy of PelotonPeloton​Houston's got a plethora of musical acts, and whether yours is layered loops of ... More >>

Dig This: Rivers, Children of Pop, Guilt Party, Bloombox & Cosmic Sound

The current volume of local music is staggering, so Rocks Off wants to help you (and ourselves) keep up. Dig This is back with round four of our perpetual local band profiling, reporting back on all the internet trolling we've done and the acts we've discovered in the process. Here's our latest col ... More >>

Common Social Media Mistakes Musicians Make

Note spelling in poster is different from band's actual name.​As we speak, Rocks Off is going through the concert listings one by one looking for something of interest for which to write amusing articles laced with the finest penis jokes. "What, ho?" says we. "This band Indiginis has a caprici ... More >>

Before Networking Was Social: Ten Early Social Websites That Are Dead or Dying

Who needs Classmates.com when we have Facebook?​Social networking today is a foregone conclusion. Many of us wake up and check Twitter on our smart phones or pull up Facebook on our laptops. We surf YouTube videos in our spare time, find dates on Match.com and spend hours reading music, politi ... More >>

An Ancient Impulse

Portraiture is alive and well.

V-Zilla, Shunned By HPMAs, Has A Lot To "Talk About"

The monster's been quiet. We haven't heard from V-Zilla in a good while, but the other day when the HPMA ballots hit the streets, we got an interesting text message. It was from Zilla. "There should be a "Best Lyricist category." Yeah, we won't argue. And if someone were to say that V-Zilla ... More >>

Johnny Hollywood: Aryan Brotherhood Poster Boy

"ya feelin lucky, punk bitch?" is the caption on MySpace​James Galloway, aka Johnny Hollywood, is a self-described "tat2 artist" who lives in Texas City and likes to decorate his MySpace page with pics of him glaring menacingly into his camera while brandishing a pistol in each hand. Th ... More >>

Cute Cats Used For Immoral Musical Purposes

Gashley and Nico of Cute As Hell​Cats. The Internet. Two unstoppable forces that have gone hand in hand over the years in order to brighten the drudgery of office workers across the English-speaking world. Even when MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and other Web sites are blocked by the big brothers of ... More >>

Mayalino's F*** These WetWacks: A Mixtape Must-Have

Mayalino - We Alive Now from Chase Rees on Vimeo. Rocks Off drowns ourselves in mixtapes, and we've come to one conclusion: It's hard to find a good one. But like a domestic violence-prone girlfriend, we keep going back to the mixtape circuit because we think, "he'll change." Mixtapes feel cheap, f ... More >>

Filipino Rockers Channel K Discover How To Get A Write-Up: Hurt Our Feelings

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to sheaserrano@gmail.com.​"I'm gonna be completely be ho ... More >>

V-Zilla is Houston's Hip-Hop Monster on the Mike

​ "The reason I want to be alone, is I'm tired of all the things that went wrong that would've went right if I had did 'em on my own." - Nas That quote is perfect for this story because Victor Gurrola, Jr., aka V-Zilla, was once the best rapper the world had ever seen who wasn't known by his own c ... More >>

Carolyn Rodriguez: From Selling Crack to Prescribing "Medicine" for the Soul

One of the first things Carolyn Rodriguez, the Houston-based female singer and rap artist by way of Arkansas, by way of North Carolina, said to us is that she doesn't like bios. "When you make a bio you have to keep it politically correct," she tells Rocks Off. "You can't tell the real story." She' ... More >>

Our Most-Viewed Posts of 2009

Awwwwwww...​When we sat down to assess our most popular posts of the year, the result wasn't entirely unexpected -- a blend of the sublimely bizarre, the achingly silly and the shockingly outrageous news from the year. In short, the average American's news interests in a nutshell. Below are o ... More >>

Friday Night Noise: The Best Noise Recordings of 2009

Megafauna​ Not counting today, there are roughly 13 or 14 shopping days left until Christmas. In that spirit, this week's Friday Night Noise offers a rundown of the best ten noise recordings issued (or re-issued) in 2009 so that you, dear reader, can hook friends, family and despised co-workers up ... More >>

How To Become Famous on the Internet in 5 Easy Steps

​As evidenced by both the Art Crawl and Via Colori this weekend, there's a teeny, Joe Francis-penis-sized attention whore that lurks shamelessly inside almost each and every one of you, whether you care to acknowledge its loving inhabitation of your soul or not. But wine/cheese/warehouse-ena ... More >>

Google's New Music-Search Engine Will Be the Death of Us All

​ This past week, Internet search-engine giant Google introduced a new music-search tool that immediately opens a pop-up window for people searching for a song, where either the entire song or a snippet will play for them. It's still in the beginning stages, so not all songs are available. We star ... More >>

Hal Niedzviecki

See and be seen tonight with the writer of The Peep Diaries

While You Weren't Tweeting: It's Back to School Time

​Take a stroll down any aisle in Target.  Pirouette through the airy walkways at the Houston Zoo.  Squint your eyes in disbelief at a nearly abandoned Discovery Green.  Go ahead; try it.  There's something markedly different in the world today, isn't there?Oh, helloooooo, ... More >>

This Week in SXSW: Katy Perry Kisses the "Lake of Fire"

There's now less than a month to go until we here at Rocks Off throw sobriety and sane living to the wind at this year's SXSW festival. This past week we learned of a boatload of new stuff about the weeklong liver-damaging voyage in March, so here goes... The list of bands keeps growing and gro ... More >>

The Magpies

My Earlier, Horrible Band

After my displacment during Hurricane Ike, I found a CD with a demo from my pre-Black Math Experiment band, Hixon, which managed to survive when so much of my BME memorabilia was destroyed. This band was rightfully and thankfully ignored by all of you, and eventually I was kicked out for "hol ... More >>

I Set My Friends On Fire

The Homopolice

Houston's latest noise/punk band isn't big on explaining itself

Caught In The Net

Telecommuting Is The Way To Go

Reverberations: Garage Rock Downloads on MySpace

Wicked Poseur

These local rockers keep our attention with a mature, new wave sound

Golem

Navigating MySpace’s Musical Wilderness

Eve of Christmas Eve Party

‘Twas the night before the night before Christmas and there was plenty to entertain, including a band based on “pain.”

“Lawndale Has Many Friends”

Brian Piana creates an entire art installation to gain Top Friend status

Drenched In Blog: Hip-Hop Math is Dope

Drenched In Blog: Drenched in MySpace

Why Stop at Suspension When You Can Throw in a Porn Star?

The Western Civilization

Five-piece from the north side heads out on first tour

Welcome to MySpace: Joe Pags Gets Hacked

Insect Warfare

World Extermination

Sean Kingston, Lil Scrappy, Slim Thug, Paul Wall

Waking Up with High School Musical 2

Laptop Battles

Blogging: Hip-hop's new element?

Studio Magick Black

Studio Magick Black, Derty Bird and Goldcure perform Thursday, August 2, at Rudyard's, 2010 Waugh, 713-521-0521.

The Mink

The Washington Apple

Idol Chatter

Opening day for America's fourth national sport is upon us

Phat Promises for 2007

New Year's resolutions of the stars

Introduction to Nudity - 1301

On Your Top Eight?