Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Reverberations: Bellrays, Power-Pop and Chevelles

Midday MP3s: Twotenanny Edition

Tom Petty Day, Part 2: TP&HB Videos

Aftermath: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Steve Winwood at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

Election Eve With Fred

Can't Get It Out of My Head: "Shadow of a Doubt"

It may come as a great shock to regular readers that Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' Damn the Torpedoes has been in Rocks Off's heavy rotation lately. Or maybe it won't. Either way, the entire album could pretty much apply to Can't Get It Out of My Head. "Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid)" wa ... More >>

R.I.P. John Byrne (Count Five)

Count Five, "Psychotic Reaction" Here comes sad news that will bring down us dancing drunken fools who make our way up to Boondocks every third Saturday for Reverberation. John Byrne, lead singer of Nuggets mainstays the Count Five, has passed away at the age of 61. The San Jose-based band's bigg ... More >>

Aftermath Extra: The Best Concerts of the Year, Part 5

King's X, Meridian, August 19: "[dUg] Pinnick's bass was very much the lead instrument, negotiating the distance between the complicated vocal harmonies and searing chainsaw riffs with a low-to-the-ground, almost nonchalant assurance." Masters of Metal, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, August 23 ... More >>

The Year in Albums

King's X, Meridian, August 19: "[dUg] Pinnick's bass was very much the lead instrument, negotiating the distance between the complicated vocal harmonies and searing chainsaw riffs with a low-to-the-ground, almost nonchalant assurance." Masters of Metal, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, August 23 ... More >>

Making Sense of a Trying Year

King's X, Meridian, August 19: "[dUg] Pinnick's bass was very much the lead instrument, negotiating the distance between the complicated vocal harmonies and searing chainsaw riffs with a low-to-the-ground, almost nonchalant assurance." Masters of Metal, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, August 23 ... More >>

Who Stole the Roll?

King's X, Meridian, August 19: "[dUg] Pinnick's bass was very much the lead instrument, negotiating the distance between the complicated vocal harmonies and searing chainsaw riffs with a low-to-the-ground, almost nonchalant assurance." Masters of Metal, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, August 23 ... More >>

Locals Only

King's X, Meridian, August 19: "[dUg] Pinnick's bass was very much the lead instrument, negotiating the distance between the complicated vocal harmonies and searing chainsaw riffs with a low-to-the-ground, almost nonchalant assurance." Masters of Metal, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, August 23 ... More >>

The Black Crowes

Thursday, April 21, at the Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas, 713-230-1600.

End Game

This is the way the year ends, this is the way the year ends, this is the way the year ends, not with a bang but a ... year-end roundup

Can't Get It Out of My Head: "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"

Jay Lee Rocks Off would wholeheartedly like to wish Ms. Stevie Nicks a very happy birthday today; since she's the epitome of a rock and roll lady, we'll refrain from revealing her actual age. At Fleetwood Mac's Toyota Center concert earlier this month, Nicks seemed to be walking with a limp, and he ... More >>

Slideshow on Demand: You Make the Call

chemistryland.comRocks Off loves to put together musical slideshows, and if the response to a few of our recent ones is any indication (hi, Digg!), you like them too. Album covers are an almost inexhaustible resource that are always fun to look at and can be grouped together any number of ways. So l ... More >>

Soul Power

Houston throwback singer Leela James does it again.

Our Favorite ZZ Top Covers: QOTSA, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Tina Turner and... Rapeman?

[Note: Now with added Ministry.] Counting down to Friday's ZZ Top/Aerosmith show in The Woodlands is starting to feel like the week Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played there last year: a steady build of anticipation and antsiness, until Friday we're flat-out squirming to get out of the office. ... More >>

OK, Maybe the Eagle Does Play Some Black People

As we usually do when we get into work, Rocks Off tuned into Dean & Rog on the Eagle and lo and behold, they were talking about our suggestions to improve the station we posted here Tuesday. D&R especially seemed to enjoy the part where we said it wouldn't kill the Eagle to play some more pe ... More >>

He Said She Said: Breakup Songs to Help You Bawl, Part 2

Ever since men and women set eyes upon each other at the beginning of time, there have been break-ups, and painful dissolutions of romantic escapades have made the best art in the world. Hell, somewhere in the world there is a probably a cave painting of a pretty young Neanderthal girl with devil h ... More >>

Live From ACL: Buckets of Rain, and a Bright Spot or Two

Photos by Chris GrayThis photo was NOT taken Saturday. Trust us.​ The streak is over. In eight years, Austin City Limits has seen plenty of days of unbearable heat, but hardly any rain. The most significant time was during Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' headlining 2006 set, but even that was m ... More >>

Drive-By Truckers

Photos by Chris GrayThis photo was NOT taken Saturday. Trust us.​ The streak is over. In eight years, Austin City Limits has seen plenty of days of unbearable heat, but hardly any rain. The most significant time was during Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' headlining 2006 set, but even that was m ... More >>

I'm Bound To Pack It Up: A Playlist for Team Coco

​Former management at NBC was smart enough to stick with Conan O'Brien's Late Night franchise despite an unsteady beginning, and were rewarded when Coco went on to build one of the most reliably solid shows in late-night history. He was afforded no such wisdom from Jeff "Soul Suckin' Jerk" Zucker, ... More >>

Distant Early Warning: Ben Folds, Caribou, Lupe Fiasco, Randy Travis, Steve Martin, Etc.

​Authority Zero, Voodoo Glow Skulls: Fri., April 9. Wired Live. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Live": Fri., April 16. House of Blues. "Bamboozle Road Show" With Hanson, Good Charlotte, Forever The Sickest Kids, Cartel, Boys Like Girls, All Time Low: Fri., May 28. Verizon Wireless Theater. Ben Folds: Sat ... More >>

Chatter: Say Hey

Spearhead leader Michael Franti's Middle Eastern trip inspires an unlikely Top 40 hit.

Tom Petty Reschedules Woodlands Date For September 24

​ This JUST off the wire... Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers are taking a little longer than anticipated to finish their new album, Mojo, and have rescheduled several early dates of the accompanying tour, including May 16 at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, which is now scheduled for Septembe ... More >>

Fails Of The Week: Justin Bieber, Tom Petty, Jenna Jameson, The Killers, Voxtrot

If you're reading this, you're either on the Internet, or else you've mastered multi-dimensional thought-projection processes that would make Michio Kaku cry like a little girl. We'll assume the former, and just in case you don't already know, the Internet has decided that the word "failure" is too ... More >>

Van Morrison

If you're reading this, you're either on the Internet, or else you've mastered multi-dimensional thought-projection processes that would make Michio Kaku cry like a little girl. We'll assume the former, and just in case you don't already know, the Internet has decided that the word "failure" is too ... More >>

ZZ Top Opening Tom Petty's Texas Dates

Rocks Off has been sitting on this information pretty much all day, and after teasing you on Twitter all day, it feels so good to finally get it off our chests. That's it right up there in the headline, more or less - Houston's hometown boyz ZZ Top have been tapped "by special arrangement" (your gu ... More >>

Upcoming: Blue October, Fleshtones, Islands, Jackyl, Raekwon, Etc.

​Aerial Second, Floorbound, Lotus Effect, This Year's Tiger: LOUNGE STAGE., Sat., June 5. Fitzgerald's. Amplified Heat, Cornhole Dukes, World's Most Dangerous: Fri., June 11. Rudyard's. Anjelah Nicole Johnson: Fri., Oct. 22. House of Blues. Aziz Ansari: CHANGED Sat., Oct. 16. House of Blues. Blue ... More >>

BP: 11 Songs We Found On The Executive iPod

annamatic3000 via Flickr​British Petroleum (BP) officials announced Thursday that they had successfully capped the largest and most devastating oil spill in U.S. history. You know, a mere 85 days, 11 casualties, 184 million gallons and thousands of dead or oil-covered animals later. A tense 4 ... More >>

Bright Men of Learning

annamatic3000 via Flickr​British Petroleum (BP) officials announced Thursday that they had successfully capped the largest and most devastating oil spill in U.S. history. You know, a mere 85 days, 11 casualties, 184 million gallons and thousands of dead or oil-covered animals later. A tense 4 ... More >>

This Week In Set Lists: Pixies, Kings Of Leon, Tom Petty, Rush, Etc.

GroovehouseKings of Leon, Toyota Center, October 2009​Rocks Off has been both eagerly anticipating and dreading this week for months now. Anticipating because several of our all-time favorite bands are playing within the span of a few days, as are a couple of our favorite newer bands (though n ... More >>

Drive-By Truckers: Hard At Work And Loving Hall & Oates

UPDATE: 6 p.m.: The contest is over. Thanks for playing! Danny Clinch​Grand Funk Railroad may have got there first, but Drive-By Truckers are an American band. If not for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, for whom the Truckers opened the Midwestern leg of their summer tour, the Georgia six-piece ... More >>

Friday Night: ZZ Top At The Woodlands

Photos by Jim Bricker​ZZ Top Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion September 24, 2010 People talk all the time about the depleting ozone layer, melting polar ice caps, melting polar bears, ravaged rain forests, shortages of crude oil, but that can all go to Hell. When ZZ Top is gone from this Eart ... More >>

Friday Night: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers At The Woodlands

Photos by Jim Bricker​Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion September 24, 2010 In a catalog studded with them, one of the saddest songs Tom Petty ever wrote is also one of the most revealing. As far as we know, it's never seen the light of stage since the tour for its ... More >>

Five Songs Classic Rock Radio Should Kill NOW

​Rocks Off is a prisoner of the airwaves. At home we can listen to just about anything we want thanks to the comforts of 24-7 satellite radio. Actually, we rarely tune in anything besides Outlaw Country, but that's another story. We can't bring the satellite receiver to work, where we spend th ... More >>

How Much Does Houston Like Rush? A Lot.

Photos by Groovehouse/ Click link for a slideshowRush's Geddy Lee: "Hmmm... looks like a sellout to me."​Rush's "Time Machine" tour was well-named in more ways than one. Not only did the Canadian trio perform 1981's Moving Pictures in its entirety, but the tour transported the concert industry ... More >>

Rocks Off's Favorite Albums Of 2010

​Editor's Picks: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Mojo: Big surprise, I know. But not only did "I Should Have Known It" vault into my Top 5 Heartbreakers songs the first time I heard it - and make me a bigger Led Zeppelin fan in the process - but others like "Candy" and "Good Enough" also held ... 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 >>

Top 10 Super Bowl Halftime Shows

idontlikeyouinthatway.com​This Sunday, Rocks Off will be live-blogging and tweeting this year's Super Bowl halftime show, which will feature noted scholars The Black Eyed Peas. We are diligently studying the entire BEP canon and that of all of their solo members, like the dedicated pop histori ... More >>

The Woodlands, Arcade Fire Win Album Of The Year Grammy

city-data.com​ Congratulations to The Woodlands, that emotionally icy burb up I-45, for helping Arcade Fire when this year's Album Of The Year Grammy at Sunday night's awards show for their sprawling The Suburbs LP. The band, led by former Woodlands residents Win and William Butler, won over a hi ... More >>

Saturday: Questlove, Bun B & Jimmy Fallon At Red Bull Music Academy

Photos by Marco TorresQuestlove (left) and the king of the trill talk shop.​Red Bull Music Academy feat. Questlove, Bun B & Jimmy Fallon House of Deréon Media Center, Music World Entertainment March 5, 2011 See more photos of the "On the Floor!" event in our slideshow. Saturday night, Red B ... More >>

On The Road Again: Bikinis And Bands At The Hangout Festival

Photos by Craig Hlavaty Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, duh.​See the bands and bikinis of the Hangout Festival in our slideshows. Imagine the Austin City Limits Music Festival or even the rapidly approaching Free Press Summer Fest on pure, white sand just feet away from a (variably) blue ocea ... 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 >>

The 25 Most Influential Music Videos Of All Time

​It's hard to fathom a time before music videos, and it's even sadder to remember when channels like MTV and VH1 were wall-to-wall music videos. In between there was a golden age, when with every clip that you watched could spark a revolution in you, or at least change your fashion sense. It's ... More >>

Dead Rock Stars & Dia De Los Muertos Album Covers

Photo by Marco Torres​According to a recent Associated Press article picked up by everyone from The Huffington Post to Fox News, Day of the Dead celebrations are on the upswing, a trend attributed in part to the growing Latino population and Hispanic influence on the culture, as well as changi ... More >>

Before We Cared: 10 Bit Players Who Became Superstars

"Whole Lotta Love" it wasn't.​On this day in 1965, British songstress Petula Clark reached number one on the charts with "Downtown," a pop classic with an unforgettable hook that has become a mainstay of oldies radio, film soundtracks and TV advertisements in the years since. The song even se ... More >>

Five Great Middle Finger Moments In Music History

Photo via Idolator​Monday morning, the Internet was awash in consternation and jpegs after M.I.A. flashed her middle finger during Madonna's Super Bowl halftime performance Sunday, meaning Janet Jackson is finally off the hook after all these years. To be honest, Rocks Off watched the entire h ... More >>

Top 10 Carole King Songs Written for Other Artists

​Carole King is a woman who has played a major part in creating numerous classic hit songs. She has helped to shape popular music since she and then-husband Gerry Goffin (they divorced in 1968) wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" in 1961. Her songs have been covered by such diverse artists as Sm ... More >>