The White Stripes

Five Great Outsider Artists and Musicians

The following creators are not necessarily mainstream in neither their music nor their art. But all are insanely prolific (sometimes literally) and driven by darkness. All of them push their creative abilities to the extreme to exercise their own personal demons, be they mental illness, emotional a ... More >>

ACL Last Night: Jack White at Zilker Park

Jack White AMD Stage Austin City Limits Festival, Zilker Park October 13, 2012 Rewind: SLIDESHOW: Neil Young, Jack White, The Roots: ACL 2012 Saturday Bands SLIDESHOW: Rainy Saturday at ACL 2012: Crowd Shots ACL 2012: Saturday's 9 Best & Funniest Moments at Zilker ACL Last Night: Neil Young & C ... More >>

Last Night: The Black Keys & Arctic Monkeys at the Woodlands

The Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion April 24, 2012 It's hard to find an honest-to-Jesus, meat-and-potatoes (and possibly bourbon-soaked) rock show in 2012. Enter the Black Keys and the Arctic Monkeys last night at that lil' ol' shed in The Woodlands, who delivered nearly ... More >>

Readers Poll: The Best Third Albums Ever

This week in 1980, Van Halen released their third album Women And Children First, which contained the hits "And the Cradle Will Rock...," "Everybody Wants Some!! and fan favorite "Romeo Delight." It's not the best VH album ever, but it was, in fact, their third album. Most VH super-freaks I know an ... More >>

Band of Skulls

Verizon Wireless Theater Now Known As Bayou Music Center

Verizon Wireless Theater will no longer be known under that name, because owner Live Nation's sponsorship deal with the communication provider has expired. The venue, which holds about 3,000 people within downtown entertainment complex Bayou Place, will now be known as Bayou Music Center. Rocks Off ... More >>

The Best (Fake) SXSW 2012 Rumors So Far

It happens every year: an errant rumor turns Austin and SXSW upside down for a few hours or even days, leading to mass hysteria, mild apathy, and sometimes sadness. At my first SXSW in 2001, I got a "hot tip" that the Beastie Boys were going to join Mix Master Mike at La Zona Rosa for a secret show, ... More >>

The Kills

Arcade Fire, Civil Wars, Taylor Swift to Pen Hunger Games Songs

You may or may not remember a week ago when we told you about how the head of the largest musicians' union in North America ripped into Lionsgate for farming out the score for the upcoming film Hunger Games to Europe despite the film's Appalachian setting and decidedly American style of music. Well ... More >>

The Best Fourth Songs On History's Greatest Albums

Sorry, Manowar, maybe next year...​As we come up on the July 4th weekend, Rocks Off considered a myriad of blog ideas to commemorate the holiday. Most patriotic songs, album covers, artists? Sorry, Lee Greenwood, Richard Pryor, and Ted Nugent, but it's all been covered. On this weekend of inde ... More >>

Zoo Station: A Noah's Ark Of 75 Animal Songs

And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee ... More >>

Rolling Stone's 25 Worst Cover Misfires

​Happy Birthday, Rolling Stone, the first magazine that made us want to pick up a pen and notebook paper and go on an ether binge. The current-events and music magazine turns 43 years old today, and we wish them 43 more. The magazine's first cover boy was John Lennon on the set of the film H ... More >>

Why Is The Buzz Still So Popular?

​The only other concert in recent months to sell out at a Gaga-like pace has been the perennial Buzzfest, the semi-annual schlock-rock festival organized since 1995 by Houston's "new rock alternative," 94.5 The Buzz. The concert sells out almost every time - like it is Saturday, but you can probab ... More >>

SXSW Adds Wild Moccasins, Roky Moon & BOLT, White Stripes' Northern Lights Doc

This week Rocks Off is pleased to announce that Houston pop kids Wild Moccasins will be playing the Houston Press' SXSW showcase. So you guys can now mark the Moccs down as another local band set to bear down on Austin in March. We will have the names of the other performers coming by next week or ... More >>

King Cry Baby: A Team Leno Playlist

​If you've been keeping up with the business going on between Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno, odds are you've already picked a side. Every team needs its fight songs, and although Team Leno looks a lot smaller than Team Conan - in fact, Rocks Off isn't sure if we've even met anyone on Team Leno - they ... More >>

New iPhone? Rocks Off Has an App for That.

Photo illustrations by John Seaborn Gray​ We know a ton of you got iPhones over the holiday break. Well, good news: Rocks Off has spent the last few months developing our own iPhone applications (or "apps," as the urban kids are saying) and we're thrilled to debut them here. All inquiries, critici ... More >>

Our Decade In iTunes, Ol' Dirty Bastard Through the Fleshtones and Good Ol' Morrissey

​Maybe the biggest evolution in music this decade has been the availability of online downloads, starting with Napster and ending with half a dozen legitimately - licensed venues for purchasing music over the tubes. Rocks Off will admit it. Back in the day, we were illegal downloaders. Waiting 20 ... More >>

Five Musicians Who'd Make Better Vampires than Those Sparkly Twilight Douchebags

​New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight series, hits theaters this week, and even though the trailers alone have us ready to put it on our "Worst of 2009" lists ("Jake! NOOOO!"), there's no denying the movie is going to make more money than an underaged prostitute at a Promise Keepers conventi ... More >>

Million-Dollar Mud

The 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival became a quagmire everywhere but onstage.

Rudyard's 31st Anniversary

He Said She Said: A Stripper Soundtrack

Rocks Off has a naked lady fetish. It's shameful to admit. We really like seeing naked chicks. It's been something we have dealt with since we were four years old and started sneaking into the women's dressing room when our Mom would go clothes shopping. It's not so cute today, what with the beard ... More >>

John Mayer Is Full of Crap

​Something about John Mayer just gets under Rocks Off's skin. We'll admit there was a time he made us believe our body was a wonderland, and yes, we've even wanted to "run through the halls of our high school and scream at the top of our lungs." But no more. The quiet little guitar player we once ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: The Gourds, Part 2

Andy Goodwin [Note: Part 1 of this interview is here.] Lonesome Onry and Mean: You guys have been on several labels, have probably heard all the too-good-to-be-true come-ons, been to the meetings with label radio gurus and all. How do you look at the label system and the way things are done in th ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: The Gourds, Part 1

LOM recently conducted a wide-ranging interview with Kevin Russell of the Gourds. The Austin roots-rockers - for lack of a better term - released their 9th studio album, Haymaker! (Yep Roc), today, and play a Cactus Music in-store January 9 and later that night at the ... More >>

Music to Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil

XM Nation: Catching Up and Moving On

Dax Riggs

The Fiery Furnaces

Our Favorite Albums of 2007

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

Enon

Give Us a Hand

Local Motion

Local Motion

A Guide to Being Cool

Cred Sheet

Joe McPhee with the Thing

Joe McPhee with the Thing perform Saturday, April 28, at MECA, 1900 Kane, 713-928-5653.

Hand It to Him

Playbill

Let's Go Down-town!

Now, live music is waiting for you

The Hives

Tyrannosaurus Hives (Interscope)

The Gossip

Saturday, February 7

On the News

Henry Rollins brings Kabul home

Holly Golightly

Friday, October 10

Mark Ronson

Here Comes the Fuzz (Elektra)

The Black Keys

thickfreakness (Fat Possum)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Fever to Tell (Interscope Records)

Rock Around the Cock

The Datsuns zoom out of New Zealand with Zeppelinesque flair

Here's Mud in Your Ear

Repeat after us: The Dirtbombs are not a garage rock band

Demolition Doll Rods, with Young Heart Attack

Thursday, February 20

Masta Ace

Saturday, July 13

Playbill

Chomsky