Subject: Nickelback

• Screw October, Revisited

  January 18, 2007

• Hey, Look Over There

  September 26, 2007

• Drenched in Blog: Nickelback DVD Collection! Yeah!!

  January 29, 2008

• Drenched in Blog: March Madness, Rock-Style

  March 24, 2008

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

  June 25, 2008

• Artist of the Week: Without a Face

  October 15, 2008

• The Flairest One of All

  A hometown favorite rules Sherlock's "Quest for the Best Bartender"

  June 30, 2005

• Balls...Hair Balls: Bond's Five Best Henchmen

  November 11, 2008

• Damn the Torpedoes, Live Nation is Full Steam Ahead

  Start saving those nickels and dimes, kids, because the biggest tour of 2009 (so far) is headed for Houston. At a press conference in House of Blues' Foundation Room this morning, Live Nation President Bob Roux and Toyota Center General Manager Doug Hall announced Elton John and Billy Joel will bring their "Face 2 Face Tour" to the venue March 19. Sadly, Rocks Off will be in Austin covering SXSW, but he hopes all of you have a lovely time. Tickets go on sale Saturday, with a top price of $175.

  December 8, 2008

• The Worst Lyrics of 2008: NCAA-Style Showdown

  And now it's time for the "I love you like a fat kid loves cake" memorial Worst Lyrics of 2008, March Madness-style tournament, this year a terrifying mélange of appalling oral-sex requests, bargain-bin philosophies, grammatical atrocities, and cringe-inducing pillow talk. To elevate the drama, I provided a trusted colleague with the 16 artists who qualified and had him assign seeds--Lil Wayne you expect to go deep into a showdown like this, but Lucinda Williams? Some fantastic match-ups result

  December 30, 2008

• This Just In: Kings Of Leon To Hit Toyota Center In October

  Mark C. AustinIn the course of five years, Kings of Leon has managed to go from playing a Camel-sponsored show at the Meridian to possibly selling out the Toyota Center. KOL was just in Houston this past fall for a sell-out at Verizon Wireless Theater, and we thought the show was middling to fair and safe at some parts. The Tennessee-based boys announced just yesterday a massive national arena tour which brings them here again on October 6. The band is used to playing even bigger venues in Euro

  June 2, 2009

• Tonight: Broken Social Scene at Numbers

  Poster by Mr. CastilloSince 1999, Canadian indie rockers Broken Social Scene have made consistently brilliant and always original experimental baroque-pop music, enlisting the help of a myriad of artists along the way: Metric's Emily Haines, Leslie "1,2,3,4" Feist, Jason Collett, Amy Millan of Stars and Jason Tait of The Weakerthans. Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew, BSS' two founding members, both have solo records in the "Broken Social Scene Presents" series. Rocks Off

  February 2, 2009

• Aftermath: The Killers at Verizon Wireless Theater

  Photos by Torey Mundkowsky Next year this decade will be over, and very few new bands have distinguished themselves either at the turnstiles or the cash register. Even one of the main ones that has, the Killers, chose to hit the theater circuit this winter after releasing its third album, Day & Age, instead of risking arenas - in most places, that is; about two weeks ago, the Vegas quartet and friends acquitted themselves at Madison Square Garden quite nicely. In the pro

  February 3, 2009

• Suckfest - Sorry, Buzzfest - XXII Lineup Announced

  Hey, didn't Korn break up after this album? They didn't? Our bad.In the midst of getting our collective Rocks Off panties in a twist over SXSW next week and the impending sweat-stained Westheimer Block Party, it's easy for us to forget what it's like on the other side of the music-snob fence. That's the other, seamier plane where lame-ass tricks like Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and 10 Years can help sell out amphitheaters on bills headlined by Korn, Papa Roach and 311. Where masses of fake-tit

  March 13, 2009

• Who Stole the Roll?

  August 28, 2008

• Houston's Ten Worst Songs

  …and we're still not as bad as Dallas

  September 27, 2007

• Is Nickelback Really Worth Hating So Much?

  Jeromeoh2301Somewhere over the past five years, Nickelback was deemed the unofficial "worst band in the world," usurping Creed as the rock snob's go-to reference for "awful." How did this happen? To date, the British Columbian quartet has sold close to 20 million albums, sell out arenas in every city, and have enjoyed massive radio play since first hitting the public's ears with 2001's "How You Remind Me." From what we can tell, they have written every bit of their six chart-topping

  April 16, 2009

• Aftermath: Nickelback at Toyota Center

  Photos by Craig HlavatyAftermath is of the mind that the best way to tackle something that is reviled or feared is to confront it head on. Like global terrorism, street gangs, or gingivitis, you must take it on at its source, even if doing so makes you feel insecure, vulnerable or wholly foolish. Maybe it's the military in us that pushes us to attempt things that others would cower at. Or maybe it's our continual drinking. For those reasons, and many others, Aftermath embedded ourselves i

  April 17, 2009

• Building a Mystery

  March 1, 2007

• Song Title Scrabble

  Mixed-up monikers

  March 1, 2007

• Honor Bound

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

  January 18, 2007

• Rogue Waves

  A new report cuts through the static on the radio industry

  January 11, 2007

• Houston Chopper

  Meet Roman Blum, the next TV biker star

  December 7, 2006

• Hope Springs Eternal

  A northern suburb tops our third installment of rating greater Houston's taste in music

  August 10, 2006

• Never Go to a Party in Friendswood

  Where does your town rank in the Houston-area good-taste stakes?

  February 2, 2006

• Rock Radio (and Rock Romano) Redux

  Bo knows good rock when he sees it. Do Houston radio programmers?

  February 10, 2005

• Smells Like Indie Spirit

  Music that made the world safe for the word ³alternative² again

  December 23, 2004

• Smells Like Indie Spirit

  Music that made the world safe for the word "alternative" again

  December 23, 2004

• Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum

  Christmas is the weirdest time of the year. Who better to musically document the season than John Waters?

  December 9, 2004

• Embrace the Darkness

  Forget the hype and the backlash -- listening to Permission to Land is the key

  April 8, 2004

• Belly of the Beat

  Clopping heels have got nothing on gyrating hips

  February 19, 2004

• Downie Fresh

  Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles travel down to Houston

  July 24, 2003

• Fallen Angels

  Charlie’s high-flying heroines kick ass, but not the sequel syndrome

  June 26, 2003

• Nü-School Drool

  Fresh out of rehab, Saliva's Chris D'abaldo hopes being on the Jägermeister tour won't make him Pavlov's dawg

  March 20, 2003

• Defending The Buzz: Does 94.5 FM Really Suck That Bad?

  What with Creed reuniting, BuzzFest coming up in a couple of weeks and, hell, maybe even the swine-flu scare - As in: What's worse than coming down with swine flu? A Houston radio that only tunes in 94.5 FM - Rocks Off sure has been thinking a lot about The Buzz lately. Probably too much. I mean, it's a radio station, which in an age when people stream Pandora on their iPhones - to say nothing of car stereos with iPod plug-in ports - makes it almost as big a media dinosaur as the printed page. T

  April 29, 2009

• Aftermath: Cake at Verizon Wireless Theater

  Photos by Craig HlavatyCake has never sounded like anyone else, and no one that came after has ever come close to sounding like the Sacramento band either. It's not like Nirvana or Green Day, with 1,000 copycat bands immediately coming out of the proverbial woodwork to shove out their own shingle. Even if you think all Cake songs sound the same (and most, in fact, do), one must admit that their greatest achievement is being utterly and completely unique. With our recent piece on 94.5 The Buzz an

  April 30, 2009

• This Week In Deliciousness

  Photo by Katharine ShilcuttPictured: Damn fine pie. Not pictured: Laura Palmer, Log Lady, backwards-talking jazz dwarf Welcome back to the weekly Eating Our Words round-up! This week started out with more Cinco de Mayo fare and the triumphant return of Robb Walsh with his Top 5 Cinco de Mayo Mariachi Requests which, intentionally or not, pretty accurately take you through the five stages of getting truly shitfaced. The article is marred only slightly by some very mild Willie-bashing in the comme

  May 8, 2009

• Local Self-Described Rap Supergroup Admires... Nickelback?

  Photo by Paul Knight Young Problemz, a self-described "supergroup" of local rap talent, joined Mike Jones Monday evening at the Arena Theatre, and the group's "Boi" was one of the high points, if not the high point of the night. The five Houston-bred performers - Chyco, Just-O, JM, J Yung and Star Struck - have talent. A lot. After a recent signing with Warner Bros/Asylum Records, the group seems to be at the breakthrough point. "We went from no shows to opening up for Mike Jones," Star Struck s

  May 13, 2009

• Cattle Decapitation

  May 21, 2009

• Girl Star, Grown Up

  June 11, 2009

• Aftermath: Yanni at Toyota Center

  Craig Hlavaty Words like pageantry, wonderment, and spectacle aren't used very much in the Aftermath lexicon. It's hard to divvy out those special labels when we are covering bleeding dudes in bondage gear half-raping each other on stage, the weekly parade of washed-up alt-rock groups making another run at the brass ring, grizzled Americana crooners, or the indie flavor of the past five minutes. Which brings us to why Aftermath found themselves sitting mere feet away from the singularly-monike

  June 15, 2009

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: Taking a Shot at Cold Shot

  www.myspace.com/houstonsbestrockband LOM's significant other got a MySpace friend request from local cover band Cold Shot yesterday. Now I have about as much use for cover bands as I do a dull pocket knife, but everyone has to make a living, I guess, and we aren't all qualified to be pole dancers at the Colorado Club. Cold Shot's MySpace URL tag is quite simple: houstonsbestrockband. Yeah, that's what it says. No, really. Cold Shot's PR poop is even lamer (and the spellings are theirs): "Houston

  June 18, 2009

• Our Favorite ZZ Top Covers: QOTSA, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Tina Turner and... Rapeman?

  [Note: Now with added Ministry.] Counting down to Friday's ZZ Top/Aerosmith show in The Woodlands is starting to feel like the week Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played there last year: a steady build of anticipation and antsiness, until Friday we're flat-out squirming to get out of the office. By the way, if all you think Rocks Off does is sit around listening to classic rock, we'll have you know that Monday we blasted brand-new albums by the Dead Weather - that's yet another Jack White pro

  July 14, 2009

• The Katy Perry Experiment

  July 30, 2009

• My Ding-a-Ling: Iggy Pop, Tommy Lee and Rock's Other Dirk Digglers

  This album isn't called Fore! because Huey Lewis likes to play golf...​So the other day, Rocks Off wrote briefly about Huey Lewis in regards to the Back To The Future soundtrack, not even thinking to chime in just a little bit about his reportedly huge male member. You know that certain part of the male anatomy all those soft-core porn stars are always talking about on those late night infomercials for boner pills? That one. Which got us to thinking, what about other rock star penii? We have h

  August 28, 2009

• When We Was Fab: Rocks Off's Beatles: Rock Band Night Was a Smashing Success

  [Update: Click here for a slideshow.] The Pi Studios "blackshirts," sitting on a corn flake... Hate to quote Nickelback, but what the hell: We all wanna be big rock stars, live in hilltop houses and drive 15 cars. Rocks Off is still working on the hilltop house and 15 cars part, but we got a little taste of what it must feel like Wednesday evening at our Beatles: Rock Band party at Coffee Groundz. The Midtown java joint shut down its drive-thru so we could set up the game, and a good 75 to 90 p

  September 10, 2009

• 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 the same sense of hysteria that we would see that whole day, the rest of the week, the year, and for almost a decade later. Don't hate, we were also in a deep Lou Reed trench at the moment (stupid gi

  September 11, 2009

• It's 4:30 p.m. and Taylor Hicks, Clay Aiken, John Mayer, Nickelback and ICP Still Suck

  Er... no comment. OK, maybe one or two...​In the world of rock writing, there are just some artists' fans that you can't help but fuck with. While you're alternately enamored and disgusted by their chosen obsession, they exert a near religious fanaticism for their fixation of worship, making them all too open for mockery. In the past decade, the increasing omnipresence of the Internet and the advent of American Idol have created a new sub-species of rabid followers who take each barb thrown in

  September 14, 2009

• Aftermath: Kings of Leon, and Their "Fans," Trying Our Patience at Toyota Center

  Photos by Groovehouse/ Click here for a slideshow​ Aftermath has seen almost every single step on the road to fame Kings of Leon have taken since their debut album Youth and Young Manhood in 2003. We heard a track off that album in mid-2003, "California Waiting," on a radio show while living in San Diego that year and the band stuck with us ever since. The first time we saw them live was at Meridian in 2006 at a free Camel cigarettes show. The entire band was still hirsute and on fire, coming

  October 7, 2009

• Next Time You're Bored at a Party, Amuse Yourself With Some "Musical Profiling"

  ​ Recently, Rocks Off found ourselves skulking around the edges of a birthday party wondering what the hell we were doing there. The week had brutally kicked our ass, and the only place we really wanted to be at that juncture was sitting on our couch watching the Syfy channel with a very strong drink in our hands.​To put a finer point on that brutal-week thing, any fellow practitioners of amateur psychology may get a sense of what we mean by reviewing the day's playlist which had run from Am

  October 15, 2009