The Jesus Lizard

Five Rock Supergroups That Actually Worked

NOt long ago, we finally saw the release of the long-awaited album from Radiohead/Red Hot Chili Peppers supergroup Atoms for Peace and it got me thinking: supergroups are a tough trick to pull off. We all fantasize about our favorite musicians playing together, but when it actually comes to fruition ... More >>

Pearl Bar Reportedly Shut Down By Comptroller

According to sources in the Washington Avenue bar scene, Pearl Bar (4216 Washington) was raided and shut down this past Saturday night. The doors have been padlocked, and the bar's safe was reportedly seized. Dustin Evans, owner of Pearl Bar's neighbor Underdogs, said a Pearl doorman told him that ... More >>

The 5 Best Shows In Houston This Week: October 29-November 1

Mike Watt & the Missingmen, Rivers Fitzgerald's, October 29 Mike Watt is like a human perpetual-motion machine, constantly in motion and usually on the road somewhere. He recently played ACL fest in Austin's Zilker Park with his "day job" of a few years now, bassist in Iggy & the Stooges, and is alr ... More >>

Tori, Tool, TLC And The Other Musical Debuts Of 1992

1992 was a pretty heady year for music in general, with the masses gobbling up all the gangsta rap, grunge, and pop-country they could. That year would see the release of not only R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People, Peter Gabriel's Us, Pantera's Vulgar Display Of Power, but also what is arguably The ... More >>

Friday Night: Scratch Acid At Fitzgerald's

Photos By Craig Hlavaty​"Thanks for coming to the reenactment," joked David Yow, frontman of returning noise-punk heroes Scratch Acid on Friday night towards the end of the band's hour-long set at Fitzgerald's. The band played most every song they knew together, with Yow in pitch-perfect craze ... More >>

Scratch Acid

Our Top Ten Picks For Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011

Photo By Marc BrubakerBest Coast at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010​This weekend the Rocks Off team will cover their third Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, at the festival's new home Auditorium Shores. Each year this fest seems to get bigger and better, without losing it's grimy luster. Is it the Austin City ... More >>

Huh-Huh-Huh: 20 Bands Beavis and Butt-Head Turned Us Onto

​Next Monday, Beavis and Butt-Head returns to MTV with original episodes for the first time in 14 years. The final episode of the show's original run aired on November 28, 1997, and marked the closing of a chapter of our lives. Not only were they instrumental in forming our vocabulary - fartkn ... More >>

Last Night: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion At Warehouse Live

Photos by Groovehouse​Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Warehouse Live Studio May 5, 2011 A few months back, when the White Stripes finally officially broke up, Aftermath made the inference that had it not been for the duo that most of the new rock music hitting the charts, namely the rootsy and bl ... More >>

1991: Best Music Year Ever?

Rocks Off Sr.'s choice for 1991's best album.​1991 was one of the biggest years in modern music. It was when metal went pop, radio country ruled, grunge went mainstream, and rap began its climb to chart dominance, even if it was spearheaded by a white candy rapper from Dallas. There were man ... More >>

Pik-N-Pak: It's Back!

Send us your stories from the legendary punk ice house - if you remember... Pik N Pak on Facebook​Next weekend, Pik N Pak rides again. For those of you, like us, who are too young to have actually gone there, Pic-N-Pak was a Montrose ice house that used to be across Waugh from Rudyard's. From ... More >>

Fun Fun Fun Fest: A Pocket Guide To Rocks Off's Picks

All photos courtesy funfunfunfest.comCall us crazy, but we think we may not be seeing Craig after this weekend.​Tonight Rocks Off heads to Austin to cover our third festival this year in the capitol city, Fun Fun Fun Fest. This is also our second trip to the festival in Waterloo Park. Think AC ... More >>

Season to Risk

Devo, MGMT, Mastodon, Devin, Black Congress Head Fun Fun Fun Lineup

GroovehouseMGMT at House of Blues in June​The official lineup for this year's Fun Fun Fun Fest, set for November 5-7 at Waterloo Park in the heart of downtown Austin, was released moments ago. In terms of firepower, this year's Fun Fun Fun roster arguably brings the festival within striking di ... More >>

Countdown To Summerfest Starts Now

• At the Pachinko Room, behind the Continental Club, a few guys are trying to start up a Thursday night patio movie series. It starts this week with Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. • Pitchfork gives Houston all kinds of kudos in this article. • 29-95 interviews Anna Garza about her ... More >>

Five Memorable Artist-Audience Altercations

Chris GrayWilco's Jeff Tweedy in a much better mood, March 2008There may be a very good reason Van Morrison said practically nothing from the stage Saturday night at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Judging from the plentiful comments here, here and over at the Chronicle's review, it would have ... More >>

Cross-Dressing In The Women's Room? You'll Need These Songs

​ God-fearing men of Houston: Mayor Annise Parker wants to banish your micturitions back to the Stone Age: "Houston's first openly gay mayor is now being accused of opening up the women's restroom to cross-dressing men. On Tuesday morning, the Houston Area Pastors Council issued a blistering ... More >>

Curse Your Branches: The Top College-Rockish Records of 2009, Part 2

​5. Booker T., Potato Hole (Anti-) Booker T. Jones, as usual, is having exactly as much fun as he appears to be - in a word, lots. Here he's backed by the Drive-By Truckers, an inspired pairing of sweet and surly garage R&B atop which that exuberant organ emotes more exquisitely than do most v ... More >>

Video from Fun Fun Fun Fest In Austin: Metallagher, Death, Jesus Lizard and More

Marc Brubaker​ This weekend Rocks Off also brought along our littlest member, our Flip camera, to Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin. It proved to be indispensable in tight places where a regular still camera may not be as useful. Here's a smattering of what we captured through it's tiny lense. We are sur ... More >>

Aftermath: Fun Fun Fun Fest In Austin Day 1 - Death, Young Widows, Melt Banana, The Sword, Jesus Lizard

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for a slideshowDeath, reborn​This year's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin was the exact thing Aftermath needed in the midst of his fall concert schedule, even though the last day was marred by mud and constant rain. But after last month's dillo-dirtied Austin City Lim ... More >>

Aftermath: Our Ten Favorite Performances at Fun Fun Fun Fest

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for slideshows from Day 1 and Day 2Times New Viking​ If there's anything that Aftermath truly loves about music (outside of watching talented people create outstanding art), it's the innate propensity the medium possesses to bring people together. There is somet ... More >>

Rocks Off's Picks for This Weekend's Fun Fun Fun Festival

You can think of this weekend's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin as the indie, metal, and hip-hop little brother of the more staid Austin City Limits Music Festival. The fourth edition of the two-day event held in Waterloo Park in Austin starts tomorrow afternoon. Per our stated life path, Rocks Off will ... More >>

Also on Your Mayoral Ballot Today: Former Pik N' Pak Owner Ralph Ullrich

Last Friday, Rocks Off was hanging out with some friends at the West Alabama Ice House and ran into Ralph Ullrich, otherwise known as Ralph the Plumber, also otherwise known as one of Tuesday's mayoral candidates a little further down the ballot than the three (and a half) examined at length in the ... More >>

Ghosts of Washington Avenue

Noise goes whistling through the scenester artery's music venue graveyard.

Start the Guessing Now: Which Fun Fun Fun Fest Artists Will Also Play the Next Block Party?

​ Fun Fun Fun Fest, the scuzzier, noisier cousin to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, announced its lineup this afternoon. Held November 7 and 8 in Austin's Waterloo Park, FFFF is up to 91 artists this year, everyone from rappers the GZA, the Pharcyde and the Cool Kids to electronic/dance act ... More >>

Aftermath: More Free Press Summer Fest at Eleanor Tinsley Park

Photos (except where indicated) by Craig HlavatyB L A C K I E and friends​ "How is this Houston?" "How the hell is this Houston?" Aftermath couldn't stop saying that phrase over and over again to whoever we found ourselves walking with the past two days all over Eleanor Tinsley Park at the inaugur ... More >>

Aftermath: Th' Legendary Shack Shakers at Rudyard's

Photos by Chris Gray​ Th' Legendary Shack Shakers are a sort of Blue Ridge Parkway answer to Los Skarnales, mining Anglo-American roots music and all things Memphis - Sun Records, Beale Street and the Oblivians - to create a turbo-charged, gypsy-flavored, punk-speed rockabilly dynamo with a metric ... More >>

Friday Night Noise: Satin Hooks and Newagehillbilly

​Satin Hooks "Trinity School Road": Houston's Satin Hooks are a noise-punk band in the same sense that Liar-era Jesus Lizard and Incesticide/Bleach-era Nirvana once were: torture-slurred, aggrevied vocals, gunk-gummed stop-and-start guitars that wanna beat you bloody while sneaking an earworm melo ... More >>

Muhammadali Checks In from Tour

Photos courtesy MuhammadaliSee what happened to those towels a little later on here (NSFW). Since January, Rocks Off has been a fan of Muhammadali. From the first house shows and split tape with Black Congress, we have been hooked to their Melvins and Jesus Lizard stomp. A few weeks ago at ali's fin ... More >>

Tonight: Muhammad Ali at White Swan

With a helluva live show and already garnering a devoted following, Muhammad Ali is knocking 'em dead left and right. (OK, we had to get the boxing reference out of the way, because as much as we tried to sidestep it, we couldn't resist.) Since releasing a split cassette with party boys Black Co ... More >>

Tonight: Th' Legendary Shack Shakers at Walter's on Washington

Joshua Black WilkinsTh' Legendary Shack Shakers are not typical Southern-fried fare, no insipid Nashville muzak served up safe and soft. Think demented Dixieland instead. Imagine vaudevillians, carnies, punks and Tom Waits producing whisky-drizzled psychobilly. The sizzling Shakers are s ... More >>

Local Rotation: Muhammad Ali & Black Congress' Split Cassette (That's Right, Cassette)

Yesterday afternoon, Rocks Off bought his first new cassette tape since 1996. The last tape we bought was the Schoolhouse Rocks soundtrack that came out the year before. It was a collection of 90's indie rockers like Pavement and Daniel Johnston doing covers of tunes from the classic Saturday mo ... More >>

SXSW Update: Watch Out for Devo; Peter, Bjorn & John; Justin Townes Earle; Hungry Villagers and More

Devo on the BBC's Top of the Pops 2 With the big bad final band announcement coming next week, all is quiet on the SXSW front. For now. This past week was slow, with the biggest names confirmed being Devo, Cursive, Peter, Bjorn & John, and Justin Townes Earle. Devo will be clos ... More >>

SXSW 09 Imminent Already? Aaaarrrgh!

St. Vincent, "Jesus Saves, I Spend" The 2009 South By Southwest Music Festival is still nearly four months away (March 18-22), but the first performers are already being announced. When Rocks Off saw this list on Friday, after we had been gorged senseless the day before, we shuddered. "T ... More >>

Totimoshi: Milagrosa

The Wayback Machine: 15, 10, and five years ago in Houston music

SXSW: Fourteen Bands in Eight Hours

Qui

Retro Active: 1987, Here We Come

RIP, Syd. And RIP, 'Cid.

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

The Mars Volta

De-Loused in the Comatorium (Gold Standard Labs/Strummer Recordings/ Universal )

Rotation

Press Picks

Rotation

Dilution of Evil

Has Ministry, at one time the reigning king of bad, lost its edge?

The Lame and the Great

Lists you've been waiting all year for, in no particular order

Tight, Shiny and Abrasive