The Stooges (Band)

Please, Rick Rubin: Leave Metal Bands Alone

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard that Black Sabbath recently released their long awaited comeback album, 13. It's their first with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals since 1978's Never Say Die, and riding high at No. 1 on the UK Charts, their first No. 1 hit since 1970's Paranoid. So: comeba ... More >>

Free Press Summer Fest: The Best Acts of Sunday, 6/2/2013

Cat Power/Social Distortion Cat Power has such a spotty live reputation that she's hard to pass up, epecially at a music festival. We all want to see the implosion when it happens. However, she once pleased me greatly (and made me somewhat of a fan) at one ACL Fest around the time her R&B-heavy The ... More >>

Free Press Summer Fest: Saturday's Best Acts, 6/1/2013

Alabama Shakes I went into this expecting to enjoy the set by Alabama Shakes, but I didn't realize how it was going to set the tone for the rest of my day. I arrived under the overbearing sun, and struggled to catch glimpses of Japandroids. Festival frustrations threatened to make a bad scene. But ... More >>

RIP Ray Manzarek: Bespectacled Keyboardist of The Doors Was 74

Ray Manzarek, the Doors keyboardist who brought both a light jazz touch and some seriously heavy piano-pounding to one of the most influential American bands of the late '60s and early '70s, passed away earlier Monday, according to CBS News. He was 74. By most accounts, including the one in Oliver ... More >>

Transcribing Is a Bitch: The Collected Craig Hlavaty Interviews

My last official day at the Houston Press is tomorrow, so these past two weeks I have been sifting through my body of work here at Rocks Off, almost seven years of words. I've been gleefully overdosing on nostalgia here at my desk, and I have (almost) no regrets. I'll have some more words on my depa ... More >>

The Best Shows at SXSW This Year

This year Rocks Off and DC-9 at Night, the music blog at our sister paper Dallas Observer, teamed up to bring you only the choicest moments from last week's SXSW madness. John Fogerty: Creedence Clearwater Revival survivor John Fogerty gets overlooked as a riff-happy rocker, with most people concen ... More >>

Top 20 Things We Need to See at SXSW Next Week

Next week the Rocks Off Action Team goes to Austin for Ess Ex Ess Dubya for another four days of fun, sun, eavesdropping, and live music. And swag, of the free kind, not the kind that Justin Bieber is still trying to make happen. This year at SXSW we're looking forward to many, many things, includ ... More >>

The 5 Worst Cover Albums of All Time

I think when they're just starting out, every musician dreams of making a cover album at some point down the road. We all have our favorite songs that we wish we had written and we all fantasize about singing and playing them ourselves. It's why karaoke bars exist. Of course, everyone thinks they w ... More >>

5 Bands to Avoid & 5 Bands to See at This Year's ACL

If you are lucky enough to be going to ACL this weekend, you have no doubt been sitting in front of your concert schedule plotting your movements for this coming weekend. Alternately if you are missing out on ACL, a lot of the bands playing have been through Houston lately, or will be in town this ... 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 >>

They're Ba-a-ack!: The Six Best Coachella Reunion Performances

Over the weekend, we experienced one of the most exciting musical events of the year: The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. One of the main features of the festival is the reunion aspect. For most of Coachella's lifespan, it has featured at least one classic band back together for the first ti ... More >>

10 Albums Guaranteed To Blow Your Car Speakers

G N' R: Keeping Best Buy In Business Since 1987​It started innocently enough, leaving a friend's house in the Heights, when during one of our epic air-drum solos to the Foo Fighters' "Bridge Burning," we heard the speakers on the left side of our car, a hearse-like HHR, just pop and die, reduc ... More >>

Rocks Off's Punk Professor Pens Vitriol-Filled Book

​To a casual viewer, punk rock flyers and gig posters can be as violent, messy and discordant as as the music they advertise. But to David Ensminger, who's been these paper artifiacts since at least the 1990s, the flyers are a part of the history and folklore of the punk culture. His new book, ... More >>

Last Night: Hunx & His Punx At Fitzgerald's

Photos by Jim Bricker​Hunx & His Punx Fitzgerald's April 13, 2011 "How many of you have big dicks?" yelled Seth "Hunx" Bogart while hanging from a beam that sits atop the downstairs stage at Fitzgerald's. Everyone screamed back and/or lies "I do!" and the crowd laughs. Bogart's band, Hunx & ... More >>

Mike Watt & the Missingmen

White Stripes Break Up After Exactly Two Houston Shows

Ed. Note: Rumors are floating around about a third Stripes show here, before the Rudz date. If anyone can confirm this, please let us know. White Stripes at Rudyard's, Sept. 14, 2001​About an hour ago, Rocks Off got the news over Twitter that the White Stripes, easily the biggest indie-duo of ... 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 >>

Saturday Night: The Adolescents At Walter's On Washington

Photos by David Ensminger​The Adolescents Walter's on Washington January 1, 2010 In a revealing scene during the seminal punk documentary Another State of Mind, Minor Threat plays a show to a swelling and heaving early 1980s crowd in Baltimore. The P.A. system was yanked away by worried sound ... More >>

Rocks Off's 10 Favorite Family Bands

​Tonight Kings of Leon plays their fourth Houston date in three years at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. The band of three Followill brothers and one cousin can't stay away from us, or touring, or recording. This date precedes the upcoming release of the band's new album, Come Around Sund ... More >>

The Dead Weather Leaves Us Dumbfounded And Dirty

Photos by Groovehouse​ For more photos from the concert, see our slideshow here. Sometimes bands come along that burn so hot and bright that words fail you. And sometimes all you can do at their shows is stand there with your hands at your side in utter shock at what you are seeing. If you were at ... More >>

Inquiring Minds: Henry Rollins Has A Lot To Say. Surprised?

​Since his debut in 1981 as Black Flag's fourth, last and best lead singer, Henry Rollins has been the emissary of intelligent hardcore punk rock and its accompanying ideals. Through his five-year history with the band, from the LPs Damaged to In My Head, he brought an animalistic, poetic spirit t ... More >>

Night Worship

A band apart, Houston's Balaclavas explores some dark places indeed on new LP Roman Holiday.

Looking for Trouble

Jemina Pearl breaks free of Be Your Own Pet on Break It Up.

The Great Green Room In the Sky: The Grim Reaper's 2009 Musical Roll Call

​Thankfully, 2009 was a sorry year for the Greil Marcus Rock Death Meter. Aside from the not terribly unexpected (but still weird) demise of the King of Pop, few bona fide legends went on to the Great Green Room Beyond the Sky. The Rock Death Meter rates rock deaths on a ten-point scale in three c ... More >>

He Said She Said: Our Christmas Musical Wishlists, Part 2 - LPs Nobody Can Buy

​When He Said was four years old, all he wanted for Christmas was big brown tape recorder that Play Skool put out so he could record his own imaginary radio shows and crazed ramblings about He-Man. Santa Claus brought it that year, and He Said wore that thing out over the next few months. For Chri ... More >>

Overkill? No Such Thing

Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister has never been one to mince riffs — or words.

My Ding-a-Ling: Iggy Pop, Tommy Lee and Rock's Other Dirk Digglers

This album isn't called Fore! because Huey Lewis likes to play golf...​So the other day, Rocks Off wrote briefly about Huey Lewis in regards to the Back To The Future soundtrack, not even thinking to chime in just a little bit about his reportedly huge male member. You know that certain part of th ... More >>

Aftermath: Davila 666, Puerto Rican Garage Punk Badasses

Craig Hlavaty ​ It's been a good while since Aftermath could be seen dancing in front of a band, let alone anywhere in public. Sure, there have been the stray moments at Boondocks where he shook his ass for the last thirty seconds of a Stones song, but that was pretty much it. Last night at Mango ... More >>

Camaro

Our Favorite Albums of 2007

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

Radio Daze

One man, one jambox and four walls. For 24 hours.

Glam-rock Goldmine

Stylish Velvet unfolds to reveal real substance

Rotation

Houston Press 1997 Music Awards Preview

A guide to who's who in the Press Music Awards ballot. Plus, the where and when of the Press Music Awards Showcase!

Songs and Sickness

That's what it's about with D Generation, man

Rotation

Static

Rotation

Soundcheck

The Pop of Punk