Nickelback

Today's 10 Most Predictable Acts to See In Concert

There's nothing quite as soul-crushing as a disappointing concert. We've all been there; shit rolls downhill the minute the dude behind you dumps his beer on your girl's shoes, or the security bro doesn't find your umpteenth "Freebird" request to be quite as funny as you did. It'll ruin the night wi ... More >>

Last Night: Muse at Toyota Center

Muse Toyota Center March 12, 2013 There are certain types of bands you expect to pack arenas: bands who have figured out the power of pop hooks (Maroon 5), bands who play the most populist modern rock imaginable (Nickelback), and the dinosaurs of classic rock (Fleetwood Mac). Muse could have been ... More >>

Top 10 Kitschy Pop-Related Gift Items to Give This Year

Thanksgiving is in ten days, and then we'll all be fully immersed in the holiday season. While shopping recently, I noticed that Taylor Swift now has her own greeting-card line featuring her photography and sweet words. If you were to receive one such card from a loved one, would you swell with fuz ... More >>

Wouldn't It Be Cool If the Houston Texans Only Played Texas Music at Games?

Much like most Houstonians, I will be in front of a television on Sunday watching our Houston Texans play the Miami Dolphins at Reliant Stadium. It's a big and promising year for our team, one of only professional sports franchises in town that are successful. Did you know that Billy Ray Cyrus is ... More >>

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Trying to Sneak Into a Nickelback Show

Rewind: So Chad Kroeger and Avril Lavigne Are Engaged: How Should You Feel? Saturday Night: Nickelback & Bush at Toyota Center I'd like to tell you a cautionary tale. A few weeks back Kevin Beaudette of Tupper Lake, N.Y., decided he really a) wanted to see Nickelback and b) wanted to see them for ... More >>

The 8 Most Bro-Tastic Bands of All Time

"Hipster." The word is older than you think: it pops up in an old Seinfeld episode where Jerry refers to Kramer as a "hipster doofus." It even predates that by many years. A few years ago, it was convenient shorthand to refer to someone who overcompensates, who tries too hard to be unique and inter ... More >>

Saturday Night: Nickelback & Bush At Toyota Center

Nickelback, Bush, Seether, My Darkest Days Toyota Center June 2, 2012 While the rest of the Rocks Off crew at Summer Fest was settling in for a long night of Snoop Dogg, Flaming Lips, and more, this guy was leaving the Fest and making the short trip over to the Toyota Center for Saturday night's bi ... More >>

Nickelback

Missed Connections: 5 Summer Fest Weekend Team-Ups We'd Like To See

In terms of pure variety, the weekend of June 1-3 may be the most stacked weekend of music Houston will see this year, and that's not just because of Summer Fest. In addition to the wide variety of acts playing Eleanor Tinsley Park there's the regular weekend mass of shows taking place across the ci ... More >>

Last Night: Steel Panther At House Of Blues

Steel Panther House of Blues April 12, 2012 See more Steel Panther pictures in our slideshow. In a week that saw Axl Rose decline a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and the continuation of the foggying of hard rock, it's easy to forget that beyond all the human drama and stubbornness inherent ... More >>

Roar of the Panther

Steel Panther singer Michael Starr talks scamming chicks backstage and hanging with Nickelback's Chad Kroeger.

30 Seconds With The Clouds Are Ghosts

Clouds are Ghosts put out one the greatest EPs we've ever heard in the form of Harbinger. Seriously, with all its shining brilliance, it's been on a constant loop in our house over the last three days. We hit pause just long enough to chat with vocalist Jason Morris. Here's what we learned from him ... More >>

Top 10 Possible Future RodeoHouston Performers

The hardest thing about making a list of possible future RodeoHouston performers is making sure to color inside the lines, which means the things that I want probably wouldn't work. Sure, the Black Keys on opening night and the Rolling Stones doing an-all country set to close out the season would be ... More >>

The Value Of Being Important: How Much Would You Pay for VIP Tickets?

Photo By Daniel KramerHow much would you pay to be in front of all of those hands in the air?​Very. Important. Person. For music fans those three words conjure up images of skipping out on standing in line, being at the side of the stage while the show takes place, and partying with the band ... More >>

Happy 2012!: Nickelback, Bush, Seether Hitting Houston June 2

Batten down the hatches, light a candle, make a voodoo doll out of human hair, and pray to whatever deity you subscribe to, because her comes the concert announcement of the year, one that may very well rip the space-time continuum in Houston into a million shreds. As you can see from the headline ... More >>

Nickelback Fights Back With Funny Or Die Clip

"Is it because we're Canadian?"​Check out yesterday's superb Nickelblock blog.... Call me a contrarian asshole, but I like Nickelback for what they are, not for who they aren't. The blunt-force studio magick of their riffs, the stoopid lyrics, the robo-drums, the Chad Kroeger...I just don't c ... More >>

Sick of Nickelback? Remove Them with Nickelblock

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.​The holidays are a time for miracles and small gestures of goodwill by your fellow man. It's also a time of pushing and shoving and trampling to save 15 bucks on a flat screen that has the resolution of an iPhone. It's a complicated time of year. But, so ... More >>

If Nickelback's Studio Walls Could Talk...

Nickelback on TwitterClick image to enlarge​Late Wednesday night, Nickelback tweeted a picture of a dry-erase board in their studio, with the line "If these walls could talk..." alluding to the bedevilment that a party-hard platinum-selling Canadian rock band must get into while making new mus ... More >>

New ZZ Top Tribute Disc Frightens, Titillates, And Confuses Us

Photo By Jim Bricker​If you don't know that Rocks Off is a ZZ Top-friendly place, then you have probably only been reading the blog for the past two or three hours. The two men who run this blog love Billy, Frank, and Dusty with the energy from one thousands suns, and their whole catalog runs ... More >>

Never Mind Arcade Fire: Bands Who Fit Other Houston 'Burbs

Gabriel Jones/Merge Records​Tonight's the night. Win and Will Butler of conquering indie heroes Arcade Fire finally return to the town that indirectly won them a Grammy, The Woodlands. On last year's The Suburbs, the Butlers and their Canadian compatriots reflected on the brothers' restless M ... More >>

Top 20 Despised, Yet Wildly Popular, Bands And Musicians

Scott Stapp, lead singer of Creed (above), stops at House of Blues tonight on his current acoustic tour. More than likely you have already clicked off this blog, or at least already gone on auto-pilot to call him a fuck-ass in the comments section. We'll wait a sec for you to come back. OK, the ... More >>

The Lyrical Crimes Of Nickelback's Chad Kroeger

Photos by Craig HlavatyNickelback at Toyota Center, April 2009​Today is Chad Kroeger of Nickleback's birthday. Huzzah. For years, Nickelback has been like those Nigerian bank scams; Dangerous, annoying and, frankly, not something anyone can do just a whole lot about. However, anti-Nickelback ... More >>

Tubby Chubcakes: Destroy Nickelback With Lasers!

"Chad Kroeger rides a pony in his house when no one's home/ It's a fact! I hid cameras in his house." ​And thus begins the video for Tubby Chubcakes's "Destroy Nickelback With Laserbeams." When you first see the video, you really begin to question whether the Internet is a good thing. Certai ... More >>

Five Groups We'd Pay To Break Up

​Why do people support so much bad music? What if people paid awful bands to quit instead? Weezer fans are willing to try. Sick and tired of being let down by his favorite band, last week a fan jokingly offered Weezer $10 million to split up. Naturally, this had Rocks Off thinking of other ac ... More >>

FAIL: Creed, Ice-T, Liam Gallagher

Photo illustrations by John Seaborn Gray​Creed Doesn't Get It, Guys: You know how some people just never seem to get the message, no matter how obvious you're being? Even if that message is "I hate your guts"? Not surprisingly, Creed are those guys. You remember Creed: four tribal-tattooed pu ... More >>

Nickelback Coming Back Again; All We Can Do Is Shrug

Craig Hlavaty​Rocks Off would like to think we've pretty much inoculated himself to "bad music" to the point where nothing fazes us anymore. We can roll into an Insane Clown Posse show, no problem. Kenny G? We'll shake dude's hand and talk shop with him. But Nickelback is a different story. ... More >>

Top 10 Worst Music-Related Tattoos

​As the sole in-house bearer of the Rocks Off tattoo load (aside from Brandon K. Hernsberger and Brittanie Shey), we get asked to do a lot of tattoo-related musical blogs. It's cool, because worse things could happen. We aren't killing dogs at the pound nor are we the lead singer of Slightly Stoop ... More >>

Five Songs We Don't Want To Hear At Buzzfest

​This Sunday, Craig's Hlist embarks on one of the most dangerous adventures of his music-journalism career, covering BuzzFest XXIV out at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. It will be our first go-round at the bi-annual modern-rock radio festival. This year's line-up was the first one that made ... More >>

American Idol: Idol Gives [Nickel]Back

​This is "Idol Gives Back" week, which means a curious mix of legitimate charity and Hollywood puffery: Money gets donated for worthy causes, but we also have to pretend like Fergie is an artist. So it made sense that the top seven contestants came down on both sides of the fence, with some gi ... More >>

American Idol: Idol Gives [Nickel]Back

​This is "Idol Gives Back" week, which means a curious mix of legitimate charity and Hollywood puffery: Money gets donated for worthy causes, but we also have to pretend like Fergie is an artist. So it made sense that the top seven contestants came down on both sides of the fence, with some gi ... More >>

Get In The Ring: How 7 Wrestlers Match Up With Their Rock-Star Lookalikes

​ While rock stars wrestle with their inner demons, the performers of the WWE wrestle with other people. A rock star may cut himself because he just needs to feel something; a wrestler will cut himself because it's the championship pay-per-view event and needs to look more intense. The rock stars ... More >>

Pop Rocks: What We Learned From The Olympics

Another edition of the Winter Games has come and gone, and while the last two weeks have been marked by triumph (the first American medals in Nordic Combined) as well as tragedy (Nickelback's closing ceremony performance), it's time to contemplate the important lessons we'll take away from Vancouve ... More >>

He Said She Said: Songs For A First (Perhaps Only) Date, Part 2

​He Said is going to admit right here and now that he has never been a master of the first date. True it is that we have dated some very awesome and artistic women, but we always lack when it comes to that first swing out of the box. He Said is way better at the weeks, months and years after that ... More >>

He Said She Said: "Fergitrocious" and the Worst Songs of the Decade

In a perfect world, The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" would actually be called "My Bumps," and it would be an ode to Stacy Ferguson's rampant misadventures with meth addiction, because that would be the only thing that could make that horrible, horrible song bearable. You might think it's harsh for Sh ... More >>

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 ... More >>

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 an ... More >>

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 S ... More >>

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 fooli ... More >>

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 ... More >>

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. ... More >>

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, Am ... More >>

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 p ... More >>

Drenched in Blog: March Madness, Rock-Style

Drenched in Blog: Nickelback DVD Collection! Yeah!!

Houston's Ten Worst Songs

…and we're still not as bad as Dallas

Hey, Look Over There

Building a Mystery

Hope Springs Eternal

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

Never Go to a Party in Friendswood

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

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