Slash (Musician)

Drenched in Blog: Stone Temple Reunion

Web Extra: Seven Magnificent Moments in Guitar Hero / Rock Band

Get Lit: W.A.R.: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose, by Mick Wall

Free DP and Tacos for All!

Buckcherry's Sweet Success

Drinking and drugging with crazy bitches sounds like more fun than the law will allow, but playing in a red-hot rock band is not always an all-you-can eat orgy. "I think people realize there's a lot more to this band than just fucking and partying," says Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson. That r ... More >>

Celting Point

Plus: Less Donna McK., archiving Texas folk music, and Iggy's eats Jelly

The Violent Femmes Perk Up

Milwaukee's finest recapture your youth

Monster Men

Milwaukee's finest recapture your youth

Keen Life

Milwaukee's finest recapture your youth

Stone Temple Pilots, with Black Francis

Milwaukee's finest recapture your youth

Gamers Become Stars with Rock Band or Guitar Hero

Meet the newest kind of bar band

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

You wanted the best — you got the best: Guitar Hero III

Lost Albums

CDs that deserve another listen

Use Your Illusion

Velvet Revolver is the best hope in a dismal lot of Guns N' Roses substitutes

November Pain

Call 'em Guns N' Poseurs if you like, but Axl Rose can still incite riots with the best of them

Royal Slash

Slash charms over a new den of snakes

New Blues

Alternative rock robs pop's cradle

Idol Beat: The Top Four Results

Photos by Ray Mickshaw/ FoxNo More Pencils: Slash (right) took American Idol's Final 4 to school Wednesday night. "Who will graduate from the school of rock? And who will just get schooled?" Ryan Seacrest asked, rhetorically, at the beginning of Wednesday night's episode of American Idol. We wondere ... More >>

Idol Beat: The Top Four

Photos by Ray Mickshaw/ FoxMan alive! Jamie Foxx mentored last week, and now guitarist-celeb Slash is in the proverbial American Idol house for "Rock and Roll Week"! Okay, sure, these people have projects and albums to promote, but these still feel like coups. Lot to address, so today I'm skipping t ... More >>

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Tragic, hilarious and maybe the sweetest rock doc ever made.

Pay for Play

Superstar session drummer and Dadaist marketing genius Josh Freese (Devo, A Perfect Circle, the Vandals) sells himself, his famous friends and all-you-can-eat shrimp at Sizzler to promote his new album.

Aftermath: ZZ Top and Aerosmith at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

Photos by Mark C. Austin Make all the Guitar Hero jokes you want. Whatever it is that's kept ZZ Top and Aerosmith in the public eye for almost four decades - video games or beards-n-babes videos, Back to the Future cameos or Michael Bay ballads, bee-stung lips or cheap sunglasses - they've never for ... More >>

Stranger Musical Pairings Than Dancing With the Stars' Tom DeLay and Cheryl Burke

​Dancing With the Stars announced the pairings for its upcoming season Monday - like you care - and while some out there are no doubt crunching the odds of Debi Mazar and that Russian guy squaring off with Chuck Liddell and...that Russian chick in the finals, local interest is still focused on fo ... More >>

Aftermath: Billy Bob Thornton's Boxmasters, and Special Guest Billy Gibbons, at Fitzgerald's

Photos by Craig Hlavaty​A sad part of being a major celebrity and starting a rock band on the side is that inherently people will show up out of nowhere to see your band and ignore your music because they just want to see "you." Sometimes the music somehow ends up overshadowing the celebrity ... More >>

Aftermath: Steel Panther On The Hair-Metal Prowl At House Of Blues

Photos by Craig Hlavaty​ As this morning has progressed, Aftermath is starting to slowly piece together exactly what Steel Panther did to us last night at the House Of Blues. Thank God we brought a camera. For one, we can't hear really well, which is a sign that the music was nice and loud. When w ... More >>

For Sale: One Guitar, Slightly Peed On

​Here's a lovely way to start off the week. Naturally, it comes to us from Craigslist. Just in time for summer vacation, in case any of you recent grads are thinking about starting a band, or a summer tour if you're already in one, a local musician posting under the name "Dean Vendetta" - which we ... More >>

The Top 10 Music-Video Riots

From Agnostic Front's "Riot, Riot Upstart"​Just like the Stones said, "Summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy." Only the best social insurrections and riots happen in the heat of the summer. It makes us wonder why Houston hasn't had more angry, heat-stoked street ... More >>

Top 10 Hottest Jewish Musicians

​The Festival of Lights is upon us, as the eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah officially kicks off at sundown tonight. Some of music's leading bigwigs will likely be sparking up the menorah, among them Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Leonard Cohen, Diamond David Lee Roth, Perry Farrell an ... More >>

Five More Heavy Metal Christmas Carols

​Last year's unholy Christmas metal list was so popular, we decided to reach back into our quasi-Santanic bag and find five more songs for you to blare while trimming the tree and wrapping presents. We made our list too late to catch Rob Halford's Christmas album, Winter Songs. Otherwise it ... More >>

Guns N' Roses, Rolling Stones, Prince Coming In 2011?

Sind Axl und Slash wieder Freunde geworden?​Rocks Off is in the concert business for all intents and purposes. We scour Pollstar and other Web sites and almost hourly looking for new shows and tours to tell you about around the clock. In the span of writing this introduction we just listed Luc ... More >>

Axl And Slash, Still Causing Trouble

Rocks Off is following our sister Houston Press blogs into the choppy waters of "Comment of the Day," choosing a comment or a handful of comments from the previous day we find especially enlightening, infuriating or just plain hilarious. We're glad our readers have opinions, whatever they are, about ... More >>

Top 10 Worst Top 10 Lists Of 2010

​Now that's a headline, ladies and germs. It has the added benefit of being succinct as well. That's exactly what we're summing up here, the worst Top 10 lists our peers have written this year. Let's get started, as we've got a lot of ground to cover. 10. This One Not really, this is just t ... More >>

Rocks Off's Favorite Non-2010 Music Of 2010

Editor's Pick: It was probably Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne, same as last year. So how about Nirvana's In Utero, which I dragged out of mothballs when we did our article about Nevermind's anniversary in September. In Utero fried my hair all over again, and then got me thinking about the band's cover of ... More >>

Last Night: Ozzy Osbourne At Toyota Center

Photos by Groovehouse​Ozzy Osbourne Toyota Center January 18, 2011 See pics from last night's show, featuring Ozzy and opener Slash, in our slideshow. For metal fans like Aftermath, Ozzy Osbourne's now 42-year-long career represents a platinum standard of evil cool. You start with Black Sabb ... More >>

Last Night: Ozzy Osbourne At Toyota Center, Part 2

Photos by Groovehouse​Ozzy Osbourne Toyota Center January 18, 2011 See more photos of the Ozzman, opener Slash and their fans in our slideshow. How does he do it? Say there's this musician who a) overindulged to such an extent for 30 years he made Caligula look like a Southern Baptist; b) l ... More >>

Yngwie and Ozzy: Nothing Beats Your First Concert

Yeah, I said it.​"How long will it be before I get my hearing back?" My girlfriend Cathy's 12-year-old niece, Jade, asked me that question Monday night after the final strains of "Paranoid" had finished reflecting off the walls of the Toyota Center. "It will probably be a couple days," I said ... More >>

Black Eyed Pleeease!: Fergie & The Gang At The Super Bowl Halftime Show

Earlier this week we chronicled for you our favorite Super Bowl halftime shows, from Petty and the Who, to the Boss and the Stones. Tonight we will be live-blogging all the musical attractions from Super Bowl XLV from Dallas, er, Arlington. ​ Lined up in the next few minutes we will see Christina ... More >>

Four Reasons Black Eyed Peas' Halftime Show Sucked

usatoday.com​The best part about Sunday night's Super Bowl halftime show was that people actually were surprised that it was bad, as if the Black Eyed Peas would pull it off without a hitch and we would all rush to our computers and download their entire catalog in converted reverence. Right w ... 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 Aftershow Promises An Aphrodisiac For The Ears

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to sheaserrano@gmail.com. ​This is entirely new and ... More >>

Father Figures: 100 Famous Musicians' Paternal Professions

Mr. Peppermint: Sire of a Surfer.​If you're a Texan of a certain age, this week you've probably spent some time mourning the death of Jerry Haynes, the children's TV host better known as Mr. Peppermint. Haynes' show on WFAA-TV in Dallas, Peppermint Place, ran from the '60s to the '90s and was ... More >>

Twin Miami Sound Machines Drive HBO's Latino List

Photos courtesy of Brown Beauty Productions/HBOPitbull (right) and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders talk angles during their Latino List photo shoot.​Rocks Off is on the phone with perhaps of one of the great photographers of this era, critically acclaimed and award-winning photojournal ... More >>

10 Things You May Not Know About G N' R's Use Your Illusion Albums

​For the past few weeks, the music world has been firmly entrenched in Nirvana nostalgia. Hell, even Rocks Off took a crack at it, looking up all the expensive memorabilia on eBay related to the band. But in September 1991, another album hit the store shelves that had a lot of impact too, for ... More >>

Duff McKagan Remembers Guns N' Roses' First Tour

Former Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan is now, among other things, a columnist for Rocks Off's sister music blog in Seattle, Reverb. This month Touchstone Books will publish Duff's memoir, It's So Easy: And Other Lies, and he agreed to publish an excerpt on Reverb. In turn, Reverb agreed to share ... More >>

Turbo Lovers

British metal icons Judas Priest are still living after midnight — but aren't retiring.

Friday Night: Guns N' Roses At Toyota Center

Photos by Marco Torres​Let's get it all out in the open. Axl Rose, we've been told, is a head case who ran off Slash and Izzy and the rest of his former bandmates with his increasingly erratic and dictatorial behavior. The delays behind "Guns N' Roses" latest album, Chinese Democracy, became ... More >>

Rocks Off Lists Our Favorite Downloads of 2011

​It's getting to be that time of year, when the temperature drops and the lists start rolling in. Read any blog, magazine or newspaper and you're bound to run across at least a handfull of year-end lists, particularly when it comes to music. We all like to talk about the stuff we like. It's ju ... More >>

No Surprises: Rock Hall Set To Induct Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys

Photo By Marco TorresGuns N' Roses are Rock Hall bound, but which version of GNR will show up? ​This morning (well, it leaked last night) the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland announced their 2012 class of inductees. Included on the list are Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Bo ... More >>

Five on Five: Fender vs. Gibson, Who Had the Better Players?

​For guitar players, it's an age old question: are you a Fender guy or a Gibson guy? Over the years since both companies became popular in rock music, many other guitar manufacturers have made inroads, but none have been able to surpass the power and tradition of these two giants in the guitar ... More >>