Neil Young

The Five Greatest Daniel Lanois Productions

Late to the party as ever, I recently caught up with the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, Push the Sky Away, in light of the hype over their SXSW showcase last week. The album is fantastic, of course, but one thing that immediately jumped out at me upon listening to it was the interesting choi ... More >>

5 Folk Acts Who Wandered Down the Synth Road

Mandolin enthusiasts Mumford and Sons have been on top of the world the past couple of years, dominating rock-driven radio with a folk sound that apparently touches the hearts of hard-rock bros around the world. Given that they have an apparently winning formula, one wouldn't expect them to change i ... More >>

Bettye Lavette

ACL Last Night: Neil Young & Crazy Horse at Zilker Park

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Bud Light Stage Austin City Limits Music Festival, Zilker Park October 13, 2012 Rewind: SLIDESHOW: Neil Young, Jack White, The Roots: ACL 2012 Saturday Bands SLIDESHOW: Rainy Saturday at ACL 2012: Crowd Shots ACL 2012: Friday's 12 Best & Funniest Moments at Zilker With ... More >>

5 Bands to Avoid & 5 Bands to See at This Year's ACL

If you are lucky enough to be going to ACL this weekend, you have no doubt been sitting in front of your concert schedule plotting your movements for this coming weekend. Alternately if you are missing out on ACL, a lot of the bands playing have been through Houston lately, or will be in town this ... 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 >>

Friday Night: Neil Young & Crazy Horse at Outside Lands Festival

The following is a dispatch from San Francisco's Outside Lands Festival from our VVM Bay Area sister paper, SF Weekly. -- ed. While he's putting everything into a solo, Neil Young's face looks like his electric guitar sounds: Flush with feeling, vaguely threatening, and thoroughly aged. Not old as ... More >>

Crosby, Stills & Nash

Neil Young's Heart of Gold and (Musical) Balls of Steel

Neil Young FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Iconic and Mercurial Rocker By Glen Boyd 400 pp., $19.99, www.backbeatbooks.com While the title certainly gives you an indication as to the personality and whims of Canada's greatest musical export (sorry, Triumph fans), author Boyd wastes no time i ... More >>

Neil Young's Ragged Glories

Jonathan Demme directs Journeys, a documentary aboout the Canadian singer-songwriter.

The Ice at Discovery Green

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 >>

Tryptophanatics: Thanksgiving Lullabies For Your Post-Meal Snooze

You've finished your Thanksgiving feast and endured a few hours of awkward conversation with the extended family you never see and now it's finally time for a holiday hibernation. You deserve it, it's the third most important part of Thanksgiving, after overeating and overdrinking. No one really k ... More >>

Misty Mountain Blog: Led Zeppelin IV Turns Forty

​Today one of the greatest rock albums of all-time, Led Zeppelin IV, turns 40 years old, and it's still a vital, nasty, stanky, and heavy LP. Released on November 8, 1971, it cemented the Zeppelin legacy with cuts like, well, the whole damned thing. It's all good, and no doubt you can hear at ... More >>

Spice Up Your Labor Day With Five Songs About Sugar & Herbs

Rocks Off is grateful to Eating Our Words for sharing this blog with us; it was written by EOW contributor Ginny Braud. What smells so good in here? photo: elsaelsa.comEdison Lighthouse​While pondering the "Top 5 Songs about Food"...I figured, why not be a little more specific? I mean, I'm su ... More >>

The Best Episodes Of MTV's Unplugged

​MTV Unplugged was like health food for your soul during its heyday on the music channel, which was full of junk food. When artists stuck to the template and went untethered to electronic instruments and really dug into their music with new eyes it was amazing. Debuting in 1989 with Squeeze ... More >>

The Sour Notes Are Not Going To Save The World, It Seems

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. Photos via thesournotes.comR ... More >>

Neil's Nephews: Indie-Rock's Brightest Young Acolytes

​Neil Young has spawned many children in the indie/folk-rock community, many of whom have directly constructed their style based on the Canadian humanitarian's more acoustic oeurve rather than the ragged-glory feedback cues that goosed grunge gods like Pearl Jam a generation ago. In the tradi ... More >>

Blitzen Trapper

Dave Matthews Band's Seven Best Covers

Craig Hlavaty​Tonight the Dave Matthews Band hits the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion with Austin's Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears as their supporting act. Now into their second decade of massive touring schedules, the DMB is now a cash machine on wheels - a sort of cleaner and less hairy Gr ... More >>

Neil Young, Old Man, Loudly Looks Back At His Life

Photos by Jay Lee​ Even Neil Young, whose lyrics are generally among the most unironic in rock and roll, has to grasp the irony of singing "Old Man" from the other side of the mirror. But as he's gone from "twenty-four and there's so much more" to "look at how the time goes past," the 64-year-old' ... More >>

Neil Young, Fans Will Never Walk Alone

Photos by Jay Lee​ Neil Young is about to embark on one of the most grizzled and stoic phases of his career, and Houston got its first taste of it on Friday night at Jones Hall. He was loud, he was poignant and every word and note he wrung from his cast of guitars and various plinkers dripped ... More >>

A Few Bits Of Texas-Related Neil Young Trivia

"Comes a Time," live at Farm Aid 1986 at Manor Downs racetrack near Austin Both Rocks Off Sr. and Jr. are pretty pumped for tomorrow night's Neil Young show at Jones Hall, and have the over/under on the number of guitars he uses at eight. We combed the Internet for a little bit this morning and cam ... More >>

Win Two Neil Young Tickets At 4 p.m. Today

Ed. Note: Please check out Rocks Off's Facebook page at 4 p.m. SHARP today to find out how to win the two Neil Young tickets we're giving away. Remember, you must "like" us to win (hint hint). But for now, enjoy "Classic Rock Bob" Ruggeiro's review of the latest addition to the sagging Shakey booksh ... More >>

Musicians Do More In Bed Than Just... Sleep

​Today is the anniversary of one of the most unusual events in a most unusual decade. On May 26, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their "Bed-In for Peace" at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel. It was the second of such boudoir-bound protests (or, if you prefer, media stunts); the couple folded ... More >>

Be A Total Badass And Win Neil Young Tickets

Rocks Off has a few bits of exciting news we'd like to share with you just in time for the weekend. First of all, if you hurry over to our Facebook page, you might be able to grab a pair of Steel Panther tickets for the L.A. hair-metal satirists' House of Blues show tonight. Like we told you yester ... More >>

Neil Young Said To Be Playing Jones Hall June 4 With Folk Legend Bert Jansch

UPDATE (12:32 p.m.): Now Rolling Stone is reporting Houston has been added to the tour, so it MUST be true. UPDATE 2 (3:17 p.m.): Confirmed via press release from Young's label, Reprise Records. It's definitely happening. Ticket on-sale date still TBD. ​USA Today's "LifeLine Live" blog reported M ... More >>

"We're Ashamed The President Is From Texas" And Other Acts Of Career Suicide

Seven years ago this week, the Dixie Chicks had the No. 1 country single in the U.S. with Bruce Robison's lump-raising "Travelin' Soldier." Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the Bush Administration was putting the finishing touches on its Iraqi invasion strategy, which prompted Chicks lead singer Nat ... More >>

ACL 2009 Day Three: Spin the Black Circle

Photos by Mark C. Austin​It only took one song in to Pearl Jam's Sunday night closing set at the Austin City Limits music festival for it to dawn on Rocks Off that for way too long this band has been forsaken by back-handed hipster discount and radio-influenced apathy. No band from the grunge- ... More >>

Bonus MP3 of the Day: Whiskey Boat & the Supersuckers Do Neil Young's "Powderfinger"

​"Powderfinger" has always been one of Rocks Off's favorite Neil Young songs, up there with "Cowgirl In the Sand" and "Rockin' In the Free World." You know things are headed for trouble from the first line - "Look out mama, there's a white boat comin' up the river" - as a young man who just turned ... More >>

Slide Show: Albums That Went Darker

​ For most rock acts, the traditional way to deal with success is to rework their lyrics, image and sound to become palatable to a larger audience. Usually this means brightening the subject matter, cleaning up the bad words, softening the sharp edges on those power chords and getting haircuts tha ... More >>

Listening Room: Neil Young's Fork In the Road

Neil Young Fork In the Road www.neilyoung.comYa gotta love Ol' Shakey. Even moreso than fellow cantankerous classic rocker Bob Dylan, he goes where his muse leads him, everyone else be damned. Acoustic rock? Heavy rock? Country? Blues? Rockabilly? Unintelligible vocoders and synthesizers? He's done ... More >>

Going Viral

The infestation of classic-rock threatens the cultural legacy of an entire generation and must be stopped.

"Sweet Caroline," Complete With 10-Minute Guitar Solo

Man, we're sorry we missed the Grammys last night.Check out the bit of news in this Associated Press story, via the Beaumont Enterprise: "Neil Young, honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year for his aid to Hurricane Ike victims on Oak Island in Galveston Bay, performed his hit 'Sweet Caroline.'"T ... More >>

Classic Rock Corner: Neil Young's Sugar Mountain

Neil Young Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 Forget Chinese Democracy. The real will-he-ever-release-it story of this decade (and the last...and the last...) is Neil Young's Archives Vol. 1, 1963-72. The (so far) massive 10-DVD set will include music, video, photos and interactive med ... More >>

Happy Birthday, Shakey

Get Lit: Being Young, by Astrid Young

Blitzen Trapper

Quartet delivers classic Southern rock

The Drones

Gala Mill

Bring in the Trash

Rebel with a Cause

Dimebag lives on in these new recordings

The Examined Life

After a brush with death, Alejandro Escovedo cleans up, digs deep and resurfaces with a gem

Heart of Gold

Neil Young charts his Greendale via "a little love and affection"

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Greendale (Warner Bros.)

Still Young

Neil Young and Crazy Horse ride into town with Lucinda Williams

This False Note's for You

Rotation

Rotation

Rotations

The Future of Rock and Roll

We've seen it in a crystal ball and the pictures aren't pretty