The Velvet Underground

How Far Can We Get From the Velvet Underground?

Since Rocks Off bought a smartphone this past January, we have downloaded almost 400 songs from iTunes. We know, we need help. But we have become fascinated with the damn thing. One of the features we like the best is "Listeners Also Bought" at the bottom of each album's page, which we assume ranks ... More >>

Bonna-What?: How 7 U.S. Music Festivals Got Their Names

This whole week, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, featuring the Black Keys, Radiohead, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, Pulp, At the Drive-In, the Shins, AVICII, David Guetta and maybe one or two others, will be all anyone who follows music these days will be talking about. Then early next week, it' ... 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 >>

The Best LP Side Ones Ever

Spurred on by the realization that both David Bowie's commercial breakthrough Let's Dance and Queen's News of the World had solid, sturdy side ones on their vinyl releases, I then began the hunt for other great vinyl slabs with amazing side ones. Of course, the idea is that this could only include ... More >>

20 Albums To Leave Your Children Plus Five To Grow On...

It started as a simple question: What albums would you leave your unborn children, if you knew you were on borrowed time and may not be around to show them the way. At first I asked for albums for sons, but then it grew broader, not out of needing to pacify the PC-thug in me, but to make sure everyo ... More >>

Playbill: What's In The DNA Of Titan Blood?

​I get a lot of local music across my desk, mostly defanged and bloodless. Things that I feel an obligation to enjoy, an act which is starting to take it's toll on a soul. I'm too nice to say something sucks because something-something social contract. Cool story, bro. Like James Hetfield sang ... More >>

Black Angels

For Labor Day: 10 Songs About Childbirth

kidzcareonline.com​Cyril Connolly said "There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." The famed English literary critic knew, like several here at Rocks Off, that having kids puts a hell of a dent in a parent's free time, and the constant demands of children can make at ... More >>

Top 10 Songs To Leave Out Of Your Wedding Reception

​'Tis the summer season for tying the knot. But curse the occasion for creating the ultimate breeding ground for bad music - wedding receptions. It's one thing to unplug the jukebox in an act of defiance or flee a venue playing bad songs (I've done all of the above), but one doesn't exactly h ... More >>

The Doobie Brothers

Beautiful Chaos

Psychedelic Fur Richard Butler talks Talk Talk Talk redux.

10 Sexually Suggestive, Food-Related Album Covers

​ If there are three things we report on quite well here at Houston Press Blog Central, it's food, sex and music. So, hell, let's merge 'em! Here is a rundown of ten of the most sexually suggestive, food- related album covers that caught our eye and gave us the craziest cravings. 10. Katy Pe ... More >>

A Fistful of Soul

One righteous vintage vinyl party.

Tax The Wolf Shines As Velvet Underground

Photos by Marco Torres​Who loves the sun? Tax the Wolf does. Dressed for the occasion in ties and turtlenecks, the Houston prog-rockers downshifted into downtown chic to cover most of the Velvet Underground's 1970 album Loaded at the return of Rocks Off's Reduxion Wednesday night at Walter's o ... More >>

Tax The Wolf Agrees: Velvet Underground > The Strokes

Michelle Tovar/ Tax the Wolf on Facebook​For the night before Thanksgiving, there is a lot going on in Houston tomorrow. But with all due respect to Robert Ellis & the Boys at Fitzgerald's and the LAX/Young Girls show at Groundhall - not to mention, on an entirely different scale, both Bruno M ... More >>

Reduxion

Reduxion Returns Next Wednesday With Tax The Wolf

Michelle Tovar/ Tax the Wolf on Facebook​We're baaaaaaack! After a couple of months off - hey, things happen - Reduxion, Rocks Off's monthly series of local bands covering their biggest influences, returns just in time to get you nice and hung over for Thanksgiving dinner. (Kidding... we thin ... More >>

Jackson's Watering Hole's Sazerac

Is Ex-Velvet Moe Tucker A Tea Partier Or Not?

​The Velvet Underground has certainly had an interesting second act. After Andy Warhol's favorite NYC "party" band soundtracked countless narcotic jags and laid the foundation for everything from punk rock to shoegaze, its members went on to very different lives: Lou Reed to street-life classi ... More >>

Inquiring Minds: A Lengthy Chat With Yo La Tengo Bassist James McNew

[Ed. Note: Nicholas L. Hall asked Rocks Off if we wouldn't mind publishing the entire transcript of his recent interview with Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew, the raw material of this week's print music feature. We're only too happy to oblige.] Jesper Eklow​Rocks Off: When last I spoke with your p ... More >>

Fast As You: Rocks Off's Playlist for Sunday's Houston Marathon

anythingaboutcars.comThe 1968 Plymouth Roadrunner. Please keep your drooling to a minimum.​ The drinking stops tonight. Rocks Off is joining 30,000 other crazy, hardy souls to run the Chevron Houston Marathon and Aramco Half Marathon this Sunday. (We're running the half - it's only our second race ... More >>

UK Web Site Shines "Unsigned Spotlight" on Houston's Watermarks

myspace.com/thewatermarksThe Watermarks at Warehouse Live, September 2009​ ​When Rocks Off wrote about Houston electro-rockers the Watermarks' Thoughts Like Bombs back in May, we said a song or two off the quintet's five-song EP - still available as a free download on the band's Web site - remin ... More >>

Pink Floyd, Dr. Dre, Velvet Underground and Other Artists We're Glad Discovered Drugs

It was 45 years ago this past Friday... that Bob Dylan met the Beatles for the first time and, more importantly for Rocks Off's purposes, introduced them to marijuana. While this meeting of musical titans would never lead to any actual musical collaboration or "Monsters of Hippie Rock" series of co ... More >>

SXSW: Echo & the Bunnymen at Stubb's

Photos by Chris GrayBy Friday afternoon, SXSW fatigue has taken hold. You're walking a little slower, less inclined to whip out the notebook to jot down every little observation - Rocks Off has seen many journos just typing notes into their BlackBerries, a trend that both intrigues and dismays him - ... More >>

Tonight: Crystal Stilts at Rudyard's

Crystal Stilts hails from Brooklyn, N.Y., and specializes in the sort of shoegaze-indebted garage rock that's so dangerously laid back it's just short of comatose. I've never caught 'em live, but my guess is that their shows are rapturous, daze-inducing events - religious drone-pop experiences, ... More >>

Tonight: Women at Rudyard's

Women Women www.flemisheye.com Allegedly recorded on boomboxes, gathering in garage pop, tape loops, lo-fi folk and chiming math-rock, the eponymous debut from Calgary quartet Women is an unpredictable and untotalizable mess. Casual listeners drawn in by minor blog hit "Black Rice" will find ... More >>

Warlocks: Heavy Deavy Skull Lover

Various Artists: Juno: Music from the Motion Picture

Drenched in Blog: Juno Hits No. 1

Local Motion

Vinyl Heads

They're turning to needles, looking for purity

Local Motion

Local Motion

For What It's Worth

Anniversaries

Dodos

concert preview

Local Motion

Local Motion

"Black Light/White Noise: Sound and Light in Contemporary Art."

Black or not, the artists showing at the CAMH are a talented group

Number of the Beeyotch

The Iron Maidens encourage you to bring your daughter to the slaughter

A Witch of a Show

The Gourds, with the Sidehill Gougers

Thursday, August 4, at Heritage Place Amphitheatre, 500 Collins Street in Conroe, 936-525-4782. Free.

Oasis

Don't Believe the Truth

The Concretes

The Concretes (Astralwerks)

The Meat Purveyors

Pain By Numbers (Bloodshot)

Wisdom of Solomon

A street preacher helps crack the meaning of the Sleepy Jackson's Lovers

Brian Jonestown Massacre

Friday, February 8

The Strokes

Is This It? (RCA)

Clubland

Static

Rotation