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RIP Jeff Hanneman: Slayer at Verizon Theater In September 2010

Ed. Note: Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman, a founding member of the band, passed away Thursday in Southern California due to liver failure, according to Rolling Stone. Hanneman, 49, had contracted the flesh-eating disease necrotizing fasciitis, which doctors believed was the result of a spider bite, ... More >>

Houston's Top 10 Record Stores

Record Store Day (recordstoreday.com) is six weeks away, but a good Houstonian should never need an excuse to visit one of our city's many record stores. These fine brick-and-mortar shops have been doling out music for years and even decades in some instances. Run by some of the finest music lovers ... More >>

A Full Dance Card

The 2013 RodeoHouston lineup reflects Houston, not Texas.

Taylor Swift Visiting Houston May 16

Now that Taylor Swift's new album Red is out, you may have noticed the recent media blitz that has brought her to the cover of Rolling Stone and a prime-time TV appearance on ABC's All Access Nashville Friday. So she might as well tour, right? The country-pop star, now one of the nation's biggest r ... More >>

Tickets for Muse's March Prog-stravaganza On Sale Now

Toyota Center already has a trio of big pop shows on the books for 2013 in Lady Gaga, P!nk and Rihanna, but starting right now (at this link) you can buy three English dudes whose production promises to be so immense it will crush those three ladies like a bug. Yes, Muse, the British trio that star ... More >>

5 Cool & Cheap Weekenders: Street Dogs, The O's, Kat Edmonson, Two Gallants, Etc.

Irish-tinged Bah-sten punks Street Dogs, who are tight with Scottish-tinged Ew-sten punks, mosh down to Walters Friday night with Detroit psychobilly freakouts the Koffin Kats. Street Dogs' fellow New Englanders Roll the Tanks, whose song "Toeing the Line" was recently featured on Alternative Press' ... 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 >>

Dave Wrangler: Web Awards DJ Spills a Few Trade Secrets

Recently Toronto producer/DJ Deadmau5 rode the massive surge in electronic dance music's popularity all the way to the cover of the current Rolling Stone. Wearing a giant mouse head all the time doesn't hurt, but in the story he set tongues wagging even further by criticizing many of his fellow EDM ... More >>

50 Rad Things Now on the Sig's Lagoon Walls

Within the past month, the walls of Sig's Lagoon have been transformed into a sprawling pop-culture collage of posters, photos, newspaper clippings, magazine covers, picture discs and cardboard cutouts courtesy of former Sundance Records owner Bobby Barnard. Since the longtime San Marcos music stor ... More >>

RIP Adam Yauch: Beastie Boys' MCA Dead At 47

Well, damn. Adam Yauch, the gravel-voiced third of Noo Yawk '80s and '90s rap-rock superstars the Beastie Boys, has died at age 47, Rolling Stone reports. The exact circumstances of his death were unknown at press time, but Yauch had been battling cancer since being diagnosed with a tumor in his sa ... More >>

Doctors Who Rock: 9 Musicians With Their Ph.Ds

Alice Cooper recently received an Honorary Doctorate from The Musician's Institute in Los Angeles. After receiving the award, he said, "One more of these and I can write prescriptions." Now you know that Alice Cooper could one day write you a prescription... to rock. You're welcome. Out of sheer c ... More >>

Readers Poll: The Best Third Albums Ever

This week in 1980, Van Halen released their third album Women And Children First, which contained the hits "And the Cradle Will Rock...," "Everybody Wants Some!! and fan favorite "Romeo Delight." It's not the best VH album ever, but it was, in fact, their third album. Most VH super-freaks I know an ... More >>

Why Do We Always Expect Our Favorite Bands To Reunite?

John Hammond, the billionaire CEO of InGen and the curator of Jurassic Park found out the hard way that sometimes things from another time and place don't mesh well with different surroundings. A guy even got eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex while he was taking a dump, and one of those spitting dinosaur ... More >>

Express Yourself: The 10 Best Deep Tracks of Madonna's Career

Daniel KramerPhoto by Daniel Kramer.​Madonna is one of those artists that does it all: she sings, dances, acts, and occasionally writes. The main thing that keeps her fans begging for more is that she always seeks to reinvent herself - whether it be her 'Borderline'-era '80s street-style or th ... More >>

Tedeschi Trucks Band

You Bettah Work: 10 Rock/Pop Musicians Who Could Take Up Modeling

Lucky for Lana Del Rey -- whose awkward-at-best Saturday Night Live performance last weekend left indie critics second-guessing her skill -- she has a backup career on which to fall, if needed. Last week, days before becoming a poor bundle of nerves on SNL, the up-and-(maybe)-coming songstress signe ... More >>

RIP Hubert Sumlin, Legendary Blues Musician

​Hubert Sumlin, former guitarist with Howlin' Wolf and member of the Blues Hall of Fame is dead at the age of 80. Sumlin was ranked at number 65 in Rolling Stone's greatest guitar players of all time and has been cited as an influence on a wide range of blues and rock guitarists. He was born ... More >>

25 Unfortunate '90s 1.5-Hit Wonders

The bearded Mark Oliver Everett and his fabulous eels...​Rocks Off loves the '90s more than we probably should, especially all the dumb little things about the pop music that clogged the radio and MTV. We could probably write a book about the songs that helped shape our formative musical knowl ... More >>

Sgt. Pepper & Three Other Bum Albums By Rock Icons

​It was 40 (four) years ago today - in the UK, and tomorrow in the U.S. - that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, history stopped, the Summer of Love began, and critics freaked the fuck out. When the Beatles released their LSD-soaked counterpunch to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in June 1967, K ... More >>

10 Great Bob Dylan Songs Rolling Stone Left Off Its List

Craig Hlavaty​Yesterday was Bob Dylan's 70th birthday, and to honor the milestone, Rolling Stone releaseda list of the best 70 songs from his now 50-year-old catalog. With contributors like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, David Crosby, and Tom Morello, they came up with a stellar list, a primer f ... More >>

Settle Down, Chris Brown: Songs To Temper A Hot Temper

Marco TorresChris Brown at House of Blues, November 2009​Have you ever heard that phrase "When I do good, no one remembers; when I do bad, no one forgets"? This is the story of candy-rapper Chris Brown's life the past few years since he beat the ever-loving shit out of ex-girlfriend Rihanna fo ... More >>

SXSW Last Night: Queens Of The Stone Age At La Zona Rosa

Craig Hlavaty​Rolling Stone magazine surely knows how to throw a showcase, bringing forth Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis, Mini Mansions, and Black Angels to open for a reinvigorated Queens Of The Stone Age on Wednesday night. Every band on the bill coalesced with each other beautifully and succinctl ... More >>

Killa Kyleon's Epic T-Shirt, Mixtape & Video Party: A Report

Photos by Larami Culbertson​Saturday afternoon, Authentik Music Group's most OMG figure hosted a release party for his new "Don't Mess With Killa" T-shirt that turned into a mixtape listening party that turned into a video shoot at Check Other Outfitters. Rocks Off went, hung out for some ti ... More >>

Arcade Fire Tickets On Sale Next Friday

​We'll lead off this week's Magnolia City Mixtape with, well, the headline. It's 10 a.m. next Friday (March 4) at livenation.com or by phone at 1-800-745-3000. In other late-breaking concert news, Bob Seger hits Toyota Center April 30. Tickets for that one go on sale next Saturday. Our soundt ... More >>

Don't Stop Beliebering

​The subtitle to the interview (coming in the March 3 issue of Rolling Stone) reads, "How Justin Bieber became the biggest teen idol in the world," so I have to assume at some point RS reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis gets to the subject of his rise to fame (and if he's familiar with the name "Rya ... More >>

More Like "Hall Of Lame," Am I Right?

​Ladies and gentlemen, your 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is ready to admit a new class: Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, Darlene Love and Dr. John have all been inducted for 2011, the foundation announced Wednesday. With the exception of Wai ... More >>

Rolling Stone's 25 Worst Cover Misfires

​Happy Birthday, Rolling Stone, the first magazine that made us want to pick up a pen and notebook paper and go on an ether binge. The current-events and music magazine turns 43 years old today, and we wish them 43 more. The magazine's first cover boy was John Lennon on the set of the film H ... More >>

Tea Party: At The Race Track With George Washington

Photos by Craig HlavatyNo treading allowed​On Saturday afternoon I visited the North Houston Tea Party's "I Will Vote" rally, held at the Sam Houston Race Park. This was my second Tea Party rally in six months, following on the heels of the one in April at Discovery Green where my photographer was ... More >>

Rhett Miller Talks Old 97's, Bob Dylan, Trains And More

Piper Ferguson​The band probably doesn't remember this, but one of the first interviews Rocks Off ever conducted as a quote-unquote professional journalist was talking to the Old 97's in their tour van behind Austin's Liberty Lunch as opener Don Walser(!) yodeled in the background. That was ar ... More >>

Drive-By Truckers

Dave Matthews Band

Sheryl Crow

Is The Westheimer Block Party Done For?

Bun B For Lafayette - ATLiens Freestyle from Decatur Dan on Vimeo. • Dave Bry at the witty pop-culture blog The Awl writes about rap music's eternal embrace of consumerism, using Bun B's most recent release, a rap written in honor of Japanese clothing company Lafayette, as an example. It's a great ... More >>

Meals on Reels: Food, Inc.

Chef Monica Pope serves up a heaping helping of truth

Tonight: Florida Indie Beach Boys Surfer Blood Sail Into Mango's

​Florida-based indie kids Surfer Blood pull into Mango's tonight, touring ahead of their upcoming Astro Coast LP. The band was recently anointed by Rolling Stone's online feature "Hype Monitor" as "bright and booming and hooky as FM radio in the late '70s." Rocks Off can hear traces of early "Blue ... More >>

What Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know About Door-to-Door Magazine Sales

That kid at your door with a magazine order form will tell you a story -- part sad, part hopeful. The truth will be infinitely worse than you can imagine.

Asylum Street Spankers

Austin’s vaudevillian country and blues rockers

Alice Cooper

Leaving His Mark

The Best Cex Ever

Take combustible hip-hop, add a dash of indie pop, and watch the jaws drop

King of the Roads

A Houston author tells how our traffic got jammed

Punk of the Month Club

Good Charlotte knows it's more than a passing fancy. But does America?

Mag Hags

What's wrong with the state of music journalism -- and how to fix it

Division of Laura Lee

Monday, October 28

A Fan's Notes

After Jerry Maguire, Cameron Crowe comes of age...finally

News of the Weird

Flop Like an Eagle

Brad Tyer checks out of the Hotel California after five songs

A Month of Mutt

"That small band" Dyn@mutt pursues the weird science of Houston rock

Celebrity Photographer, Photographer Celebrity

Talking with Annie Leibovitz about the manufacture of cultural identity and the American dream