Siouxsie & The Banshees

The Five Most Disappointing Goth Albums: Bauhaus, Go Away White

All this week we're going to look back over albums from undeniable goth icons and talk about their failures. Thus far I've been focusing on endings, what with Siouxsie and the Banshees' last album and another that made Robert Smith seriously consider ending The Cure. Now I'd like to bring up somet ... More >>

The Five Most Disappointing Goth Albums: Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Rapture

All this week we're going to look back over albums from undeniable goth icons and talk about their failures. By the time Siouxsie and the Banshees released The Rapture in 1995, they had been together for almost two decades. They'd blazed a path with a dark and daring sound that still had just enoug ... More >>

The 5 Most Important Years In Goth Music: 2002

Over the course of the week Rocks Off will be looking at the biggest years for goth music and exactly what they meant for the genre. Arguably the last big goth album by a new band to make a crossover splash was Evanescence's Fallen, released in early 2003. That one band led millions of mall-goths i ... More >>

The 5 Most Important Years In Goth Music: 1986

Over the course of the week Rocks Off will be looking at the biggest years for goth music and exactly what they meant for the genre. Goth history does not have a lot of supergroups, unfortunately. Robert Smith briefly played guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Peter Murphy occasionally works ... More >>

The 5 Most Important Years In Goth Music: 1983

All this week, Rocks Off will be looking at the biggest years for goth music and exactly what they meant for the genre. Just as Bauhaus was breaking up, a place in England opened up whose gothic importance cannot be overstated. Beginning in 1982, the Batcave intended to bring about a revival of the ... More >>

The 5 Most Important Years In Goth Music: 1979

All this week, Rocks Off will be looking at the biggest years for goth music, and exactly what they meant for the genre. Like any good structure, goth is built on the foundations of other previous cultures. You can walk back through David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and all the way ... More >>

Your Halloween Playlist: Don't Play That, Play This

Recently Rocks Off told you how to put together a solid party playlist. We're coming up on the time of year when people start throwing Halloween parties, so now it's time to get a little more specific. Don't be content to throw on the old 30 Spookiest Halloween Hits album and walk away, because gue ... More >>

Study: Free Press Summer Fest Brought Houston $14 Million

The Top 20 Greatest Goth Albums of All Time, Nos. 10-1

BY CHRIS GRAY AND JEF WITH ONE F Rewind: The Top 20 Greatest Goth Albums of All Time, Nos. 20-11 10. Rosetta Stone The Tyranny of Inaction (Cleopatra, 1995) In 1995, Porl Young used a nice-sized record advance to purchase a multitrack digital recorder that changed Rosetta Stone's sound considera ... More >>

Happy Birthday Anne Rice! 6 Songs For a Horror Icon

Anne Rice, the author of horror classics like Interview With The Vampire and the Witching Hour, turns 71 today. She's a talented and complicated lady that all goths owe a debt to for recreating the vampire as a lonely, Miltonian figure that was at home in seats of elegance or on a rock and roll stag ... More >>

Reader's Poll: The Compact Disc Turns 30

This week the compact disc turned 30 years old, and will no doubt spend it drinking with friends and wondering where the time went and lamenting the fact that they haven't gotten married yet. Few people know that the first commercial CD produced was Billy Joel's 1978 release 52nd Street, an album ... More >>

Gothic Council Picks Your Halloween Playlist

Believe it or now, some fall air snuck down here and actually managed to weaken Pappy Sun's murderous death grip on Houston. It was nice to walk the dog without feeling as if I lived in the crotch of a Bulgarian shot putter warming up for the hurl. Plus, in every store the Halloween decorations are ... More >>

Dum Dum Girls "Coming Down," Out of Their Clothes

I have a deep place in my heart for Dum Dum Girls. Their music is a kind of aching, empty light that is like being shot with some sort of experimental anesthesia before a doctor restructures a deformation. Think of it as Adele, but produced in an alley where crime and art are not mutually exclusive ... More >>

Your Ultimate Batman Batsoundtrack Batplaylist

No doubt some of you are sitting bleary and bloodshot from seeing an overnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, and I am jealous of you. I didn't think to buy tickets early so now I will have to wait until like, next week to see it. First World Problems, dude. The ending of the Christopher Nolan ... More >>

Gothic Council Sings Your Kids to Sleep

We hate you, Peter Murphy. Well, OK. Not really. Murphy is a good guy who is a joy to interview and who still puts out amazing music. That being said, we are getting thoroughly sick of his trademark voice. Our two-year-old daughter requests his song "The Line Between the Devil's Teeth (And That Wh ... More >>

Gothic Council: I See A Symphony And I Want To Paint it Black

VNV Nation is coming, and even though we'll have to endure endless bitching about how VNV Nation isn't goth every single goth we know will be there. Ronan Harris and Mark Jackson put on fantastic shows, release brilliant albums, and just all-around enlighten and amaze audiences wherever they go. K ... More >>

The Top 10 Laziest Music Videos Ever

We're obsessed with music videos lately, and have spent almost the whole of the weekend seeking new and brilliant ones in order to feature in our weekly column. We're just so impressed with the capabilities open to modern artists at all strata of stardom, and how brilliant a piece of work can come o ... More >>

Gothic Council Praises Lyrics, Bowie's Penis

Really there are two kinds of music fans. Those who are there for the music as a whole and those who are there to hear the words. Make no mistake, we're not saying that one side is better than the other, but we are definitely in the latter category. Being a melodramatic lot, most goths are. So we t ... More >>

Nurses: "Fever Dream" is a Minor Madness

​Here we go with the latest bit of musical and cinematic awesomeness from our buddy Mick Cullen over at Subterranean Radio. When he says, "You've got to see this video" then we know that we'll be discovering something amazing. This is Nurses and the official video for their song "Fever Dream. ... More >>

True Blood : Finally, Some Freakin' Siouxsie

Alan Ball was known for his masterful use of music in Six Feet Under. He's lost none of his touch when it comes to his current HBO series, True Blood - which happens to be set in the Louisiana swamps, not terribly far from Houston. ​Look, we know that True Blood is a goth show only in the se ... More >>

2 Become 1: Musical Match-Ups We'd Like To See

​Kanye "Hitler" West and Jay-Z released their (overused music writer word alert) epic Watch the Throne album this week, to mostly great reviews. This fall the first fruits from the recently announced Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration should be on the store shelves, which still sorta weirds us o ... More >>

Punk Rock's 10 Most Potent Women

David EnsmingerExene Cervenka at Cactus Music​Women are the resilient backbone of punk, providing creative DNA for the movement since the "zero hour," including Houston's own MyDolls and members of AK-47 and Bevatron, among others. Up 'n' comers like Vivian Pikkles keep the faith as Zipperneck ... More >>

1986: Best Musical Year Ever?

​For almost two weeks now, Rocks Off has been obsessed with the year exactly 25 flips of the calendar backward from this one. It started when Steve Earle did one of his "Time Machine" shows, where the singer-songwriter who plays House of Blues Wednesday spotlights a dozen or so of his favorite ... More >>

TSOL

TSOL

Promoter Mike Kelley: "Numbers Is Houston's CBGB"

Marco TorresWu-Tang Clan's GZA and Ghostface Killah at Numbers, December 2010​Numbers' credentials as a concert venue are undeniable - everyone from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Green Day to Type O Negative has played there. It's hard to argue, though, that the past decade hasn't been a rough ... 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 >>

If Your Life Were A Movie, Which Song Would Be The Trailer?

​It started as a whim on Twitter, asking friends what songs would soundtrack the trailer of the movie of their life. Would their life's tale be a rollicking drug-fueled, love-filled adventure backed by the Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash", or would it be a morose and somber drifting story ... More >>

Black Crowes Pull the Plug

Band celebrates album's 20th anniversary by going on hiatus.

Five Recent Movies That Needed A John Hughes Soundtrack

​Even though John Hughes had not made a decent movie since 1991's Dutch (missile twisters FTW) when he died one year ago today, the world still mourned the loss of one of the best filmmakers to ever take on the human experience. Hughes may have only dealt with dysfunctional Midwesterners, but ... More >>

Sell Your Drum Kit. You Will Never Be This Cool.

​Sure, there are great theatrical drummers in the world. The late, great Keith Moon for one. Budgie from Siouxsie and the Banshees or Adrian Young from No Doubt are certainly up there in terms of stage presence and watchability. But THE man, the king of all that is awesome in percussion, is a ... More >>

Summer Tours We'd Like To See: Bring Back Texxas Jam!

Reminder: Tickets for Lady Gaga's Toyota Center show next year go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m.​ Summer concert season doesn't last as long as hurricane season, and leaves somewhat less damage in its aftermath, but at least it gives us something to look forward to during those long, hot months. This ... More >>

Patti Smith On KPFT At Noon; At UH Tonight

​The iconic photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of her first album, Horses (1976), was taken by her longtime friend and sometime lover Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer who died in 1989 from AIDS-related complications. Five years later, Smith's husband, MC5 co-founder Fred "So ... More >>

Aftermath: Peaches, Stripping the Onion (and Herself) at House of Blues

Photos by Jody Perry/ Click here for a slideshow​ It's been a long time since Aftermath has been to the kind of high-energy, high-theatrics rock and roll show that makes us totally forget ourselves, even if just for an hour. Monday night at House of Blues, Peaches gave us exactly that kind of show ... More >>

Season of the Witch

U2's awe-inspiring Reliant Stadium show prompts a search for the unknown — and unknowable — in music.

No Exit

Blondie casts a wide net indeed on the band's Last.fm station.

Peeking Inside the Shadowy Crypt of Houston's Goth Community

Ten Things I Love About the Houston Music Scene

A compendium of Cure-related information

The Only One

RIP, Syd. And RIP, 'Cid.

A psychedelic pioneer and the drug that helped do him in are both sorely missed

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Show Your Bones

Swindled Art

Sisters Are Punking It for Themselves

Mel Hell and Alice Sin lead the charge of the misfit boy-toys

Deck Heads

The card game Yu-Gi-Oh! becomes a wild and crazy movie

Dreamfest

Saturday, April 24

So Retro

DJ Mike Snow finds that '80s nights are the Cure for Loverboys and Talking Heads looking for a not so Quiet Riot

Herald and Mod

My First Mister's odd couple transcends the silly stuff.

Rock This Town

Alternative dance mecca Numbers gets into the swing of things

Shake Your Goth Thang