Punk Rock

2013: The Year Post-Punk Broke Again

Almost halfway through the year, we've seen a lot of huge music news already. David Bowie came back and put out a new record, Neutral Milk Hotel reunited, and Daft Punk put out their first proper record in eight years. It's definitely been a big year already, and it promises to continue with the upc ... More >>

Bring Your Black Flag Tattoos to Vinal Edge This Saturday

Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m., tattooed Black Flag disciples are encouraged to stop by Vinal Edge in the Heights for sweaty fellowship with their fellow "barred" brethren to celebrate the release of Stewart Dean Ebersole's Barred for Life: How Black Flag's Iconic Logo Became Punk Rock's Secret Handsh ... More >>

Hates Singer Looks Back on 35 Years of Houston Punk Rock

As the singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter for the Hates -- Houston's most enduring punk rock band and a local institution -- Christian Kidd (nee' Christian Arnheiter, Christian Oppression, and Christian Anarchy) has seen a lot. And with the band nearing its 35th anniversary (with Kidd as the ... More >>

Battle of the Black Flags: Which One Is Better?

This past week the Internet was abuzz with the news that two different versions of the 1980s hardcore-punk pioneers Black Flag are reuniting. Since Black Flag is so iconic to almost any punk fan, this is big news indeed. But there's a catch: neither of the two versions is the complete, real version ... More >>

The Cavern and the Top 10 Iconic Rock Clubs In History

Last week back in 1957, the most famous rock club in England opened in Liverpool. There was absolutely no rock and roll on the bill that night. The Cavern Club was originally opened to mimic the cellar jazz bars that owner Alan Synter visited in Paris. There was a strict jazz-only policy in place ... More >>

Today's Top 5 Female Punk Rockers

Neo-Riot Grrrls: Today's Top 5 Female Punk Rockers

There have been punk-rock chicks as long as there has been punk rock. That much is true, but what is also unfortunately true is that the genre can all too often be a boys' club. Consider that emo, an entire genre based around angsty young men bemoaning their troubles with women, spawned from punk. T ... More >>

Island Reunion

The Rocks Off 100: Bill Fool, Punk Lifer, Dad, Good Guy to Know

"Bill Fool was born in Chicago, Illinois and spent his entire youth living near Wrigley Field and really never left that particular area as a kid, ever..." says local luminary and punk lifer Bill Fool in an email. What follows is a short primer on this beloved curmudgeon. Mr. Fool has been a part ... More >>

Top 5 Hardcore Bands That Should Make New Music

Last month, Bad Brains announced they would be releasing a new album, Into the Future, in November, their first since 2007's Build a Nation. Five years is a long time between albums, but for aging punk rockers, it's just about the standard. Some seem to take even longer. What is it that's so hard ab ... More >>

Dust Off Your Flannel

Does the looming '90s revival presage a Nirvana-style breakthrough?

ZZ Top Sucks. There, I Said It.

Last Night: Devo & Blondie at Arena Theatre

Blondie, Devo Arena Theatre September 19, 2012 What a week for New Wave around here. Psychedelic Furs and Go-Go's still to come, and Blondie and Devo teaming up for the "Whip It to Shreds" tour Wednesday night at the Arena Theatre. New Wave is as good a term as any to describe a style of music tha ... More >>

Keith Morris Talks OFF!, Politics & Touring In 2012

Next Thursday night, punk legend Keith Morris comes to Warehouse Live for his second Houston visit in a year with his group OFF!. The band is made up of Morris, Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, drummer Mario Rubalcaba, and guitarist Dimitri Coats, also front man of Burning Brides. OFF! was birthed o ... More >>

Blondie: The Best New Wave Band of All Time

The Clash In Houston, 1979: A Case of Legionaire's Disease

By the time The Clash hit Houston's Cullen Theater on October 5, 1979, Lester Bangs had described their tour-de-force as "desperation uncontrived, unstaged, a fury unleashed on the stage ... real pain that connects with the nerves of the audience." Yet Texans had already been enthralled by the Sex ... More >>

Fun Fun Fun Fest Releases Daily Schedule

This morning Fun Fun Fun Fest organizers released the daily schedule for November's three-day orgy of booze, denim, and loudness in the middle of Austin's Auditorium Shores. The color-coded stages -- black, yellow, orange, and blue -- are set up according to genre and size of the act. Last year th ... More >>

Happy Birthday, John Peel: Our 10 Favorite Sessions

Today would have been the 73rd birthday of John Peel, one of the planet's most legendary, eclectic and flat-out best radio disc jockeys of all time. He died in 2004, but the nearly 40 years of outrageously good music that he helped bring to the masses at BBC Radio 1 beginning in 1967 form a pretty d ... More >>

Explaining Classic Rock Bands to Kids

This past Sunday, The New York Times ran a piece by Paul Greenberg where the author explained how important the Beatles were to music and pop culture to his five-year old son. The child didn't know that the band had albums, but only knew the Fab Four from iTunes playlists. "When the Beatles record ... More >>

Braving the Boos: Bob Dylan and 10 More Artists Unafraid to Piss Off Their Fans

Forty-seven years ago this week (wow!), a '60s folk icon by the name of Bob Dylan made his third and final appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I. It was a highly anticipated set -- Dylan was the de facto leader of the American folk-music revival at the time, and his folkie flock ex ... More >>

Kill 'Em All and the Origins of Thrash

Twenty-nine years ago today, Metallica released their debut album on Megaforce Records, Kill 'Em All. It wasn't a smash success initially--Mötley Crüe were the reigning kings of metal on the West Coast in 1983, and Kill 'Em All wouldn't go gold for another six years. By that time, of course, Metal ... More >>

New Wave Crazy: Blondie & Devo Hit Arena Theatre September 19 (UPDATED)

UPDATE: According to Press Here Publicity, the venue is Arena Theatre, not Bayou Music Center. Everything else is the same. This makes me happier than anything on a Monday morning should. I listen to music in cycles, and for the past several months have been stuck in the '80s, more specifically any ... More >>

Y'all, We Have All Been Doing "Punk" Wrong

When you think of punk rock, images of a bloodied Sid Vicious in a leather jacket may come to mind. Skinheads flipping off a camera. Henry Rollins and Black Flag destroying a crowd in a basement. Jello Biafra jumping into a surging pit of people after screaming about holidays in Cambodia. The Clash ... More >>

Coachella: The Buzzcocks' Steve Diggle Beats The Heat

You're hot, uncomfortable, overwhelmed by the 106-degree temperature and don't know what to do. The good news? Buzzcocks guitarist Steve Diggle empathizes with you. As a veteran of the punk-rock circuit and festival scene, Diggle knows a thing or two about surviving in the elements. Here are the fi ... More >>

Happy Birthday Billie Joe: An American Idiot Turns 40

"I'm not growing up, I'm just burning out"? Well, not quite...​Today, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day turns 40. Eighteen years ago, in the time known as 1994, he turned 22. Two weeks earlier than that, his band's major-label debut, Dookie, had hit store shelves. That album would go on to sel ... More >>

The Adicts

I'm Going To Hell For This One: NOFX's Most Sacrilegious Songs

Photo By GroovehouseFat Mike of NOFX at the House Of Blues in January 2011​Aside from the blood, bruises, beer, and the bands, the one thing you could always count on punk-rock for was to provoke unpopular thought. To make you go against what polite society and your parents had taught you. NOF ... More >>

Noise For The Ages: Top Post-Hardcore Guitarists Through the Years

While it may not often be recognized by "mainstream listening audiences," post-hardcore is not a dead genre. Though its popularity has often waxed and waned throughout the years since its inception in the mid '80s, there are always great upstart bands keeping it alive. As of late, the genre has seen ... More >>

Still Thirsty And Still Miserable: Black Flag's Damaged Turns 30 Years Old

Photo By Edward CulverCheck out this great Q&A with Damaged photographer Edward Culver​Every modern punker has a story relating to Black Flag's Damaged, which turns 30 years old today. Some hate it, some love it, some blame it for the everything good or bad that happened in their lives since t ... More >>

Supersuckers

Nothing's Shocking: Thank You, Iggy Pop

singinglamb.caA young Iggy Pop has his way with a microphone stand c. 1968​Cyberspace was all abuzz on Monday, thanks to Lady Gaga's "shocking" VMA performance of "You and I" dressed as a young Ralph Macchio, or at least that's what it looked like from here. It was creative and bold, and defin ... More >>

The Beat Goes On

Kathy Valentine unseals her lips about New Wave beauties the Go-Go's 30th anniversary tour.

The Carpettes: Unsung UK Punks Back For The First Time

​Punk bands like The Clash have been lauded by critics and fans spanning across the globe, while other superb acts like The Carpettes have remained stuck between the cracks of history. This is almost tragic, since their blend of fine-etched, unblemished pop-tinged punk was just as riveting as ... More >>

25 Essential Eponymous Albums

​Eponymous: (of a literary work, film, etc) named after its central character or creator: The Stooges' eponymous debut album. On this day in 1983, a young woman from Michigan who had recently given up on a career as a hard-rock singer released her first album of electronic dance-pop, an album ... More >>

R.I.P Joey Ramone: Top 10 Ramones Songs...

Besides "I Wanna Be Sedated" And "Blitzkrieg Bop" Dawkeye via Wikipedia​It was ten years ago today that the world lost their first Ramone, when Joey Ramone succumbed to lymphoma in New York City at the age of 49, one month shy of turning 50. The iconic punk frontman would lead the Ramones in ... More >>

Professor Punk: Hates Singer To Be Guest Lecturer At U Of H

Brittanie SheyThe Hates at Cactus Music, December 2009​Quick. What do Ice-T and Houston's own punk-rock elder statesman Christian Arnheiter of The Hates have in common? Well, both are respected lectures at institutes of higher learning. Arnheiter will be guest lecturing from 11:30 a.m. to 12: ... More >>

Friday Night: Something Fierce Record Release Party at Mango's

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Something Fierce Mango's April 1, 2011 There are terms in music that cause audible groans and visual displeasure at their mere mention, and while these vary from person to person, some are fairly universal. Emo, yacht rock, muzak, and pop punk all fall into these categ ... More >>

Saturday Night: NOFX At House Of Blues

Photos by Groovehouse​NOFX House of Blues January 22, 2011 See lots of pics of NOFX and friends in our slideshow. NOFX has been the Fisher-Price My First Real Punk Band of the past 25 years, with Green Day sadly coming in a close second with Bad Religion and, yes, Blink-182 bringing up the r ... More >>

The 31 Best Music Documentaries Of All Time

​Hands down, above all of these following music documentaries, Craig's Hlist's two favorite of all-time are The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, and The Beatles Anthology. We can watch both on repeat for days and not complain. That will probably all change once we see ... More >>

Last Night: Agent Orange At Fitzgerald's

Photos by David Ensminger​Agent Orange Fitzgerald's January 9, 2010 In the 1987 21 Jump Street episode "Mean Streets and Pastel Houses," fresh-faced Johnny Depp goes undercover as a punk to root out vicious gangland teenage thugs lurking in the inner city. He ends up at a rowdy punk concert r ... More >>

Agent Orange Continues Carpet-Bombing Surf-Punk

David EnsmingerAgent Orange's Mike Palm at Rocbar earlier this year.​Rocks Off recently had the opportunity to speak with Agent Orange's Mike Palm, who founded the Southern California surf-punks in the late '70s and has remained in the trenches ever since. Agent Orange plays Fitzgerald's Sunda ... More >>

Everything in Between

No Age makes punk palatable.

The Adolescents: Still Punk Rock Kids From The Black Hole

"We were little pricks, but bored out of our minds..." The Adolescents on the 2007 Warped Tour​For 30 years, seminal Orange County punk band the Adolescents has unleashed anthemic teen angst, since mutated into wise adult aggravation, in intermittent bursts. Sure, members come and go at revol ... More >>

Friday Night: Batusis At Mango's

Photos by David EnsmingerCheetah Chrome​Batusis feat. Sylvain Sylvain and Cheetah Chrome Mango's December 10, 2010 "Everything was as it always had been ... the years were a mirage and there had been no years," E.B. White once wrote, describing the collapse of time. This is what Batusis effor ... More >>

Friday Night: Bad Religion At Warehouse Live

Photos by Marco Torres​Bad Religion, Aggrolites, Off With Their Heads Warehouse Live November 5, 2010 Fun Fun Fun Fest may have beckoned tantalizingly from Austin, but we resisted its pull to see what is, for us, the greatest punk rock band still putting out new material. It was Bad Religions ... More >>

Bankrobbers: The Clash Family Tree

​Rocks Off cried the night he heard Joe Strummer died. It was December 2002, and we sat on our family couch and let it all out. That fabled Clash reunion that seemed just months away would never happen. Strummer died of a heart attack at 50, just three days before Christmas, leaving behind a w ... More >>

Inanimate Objects

Screeching Weasel

Talking Black Flag With The Burden's Ryan Taylor For Redux-ion

Rayhaan TraboulayBlack Flag makes a perfect soundtrack for stealing cigarettes and spray paint, says The Burden's Ryan Taylor (far right).​Next Thursday is Rocks Off's maiden voyage of Redux-ion, a night we created for local bands to pay homage to some of their biggest influences. Along with Y ... More >>

The Decline of Western Civilization

This early L.A. Punk documentary