True Blood

Come See My Dead Person LP Whistles Past the Boneyard

Come See My Dead Person is one of those bands people have constantly tried to get me into over the years, but the time never seemed right. Well, the release of their new self-titled album should be a good enough place to begin, I thought, and I'm very glad I did. The sound is a mix of pretty much ... More >>

Bon Iver, Hipster Doofus

Happy Birthday Anne Rice! 6 Songs For a Horror Icon

Anne Rice, the author of horror classics like Interview With The Vampire and the Witching Hour, turns 71 today. She's a talented and complicated lady that all goths owe a debt to for recreating the vampire as a lonely, Miltonian figure that was at home in seats of elegance or on a rock and roll stag ... More >>

Top 10 Steampunk Songs

It's a big week for steampunk enthusiasts. First of all, today is the 287th birthday of Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, the man who built the first self-propelled, steam-powered vehicle. He invented his three-wheeled fardier à vapeur in 1769, and went on to build progressively more complex and better model ... More >>

HPMA 2012 Showcase

One night. 11 venues. 55 minutes.

Rest Of The Best: Houston's Top 7 Downtown Bars

Life is about perspective and so is Houston's downtown. Perhaps some look at it as a commercial district and once wannabe party king who lost its luster with the emergence of its cousin Midtown. Or you can see it as a beautiful skyline -- the best in Texas -- that's lightly peppered with a magnifice ... More >>

Greg Laswell Needs a Landline

Rising singer-songwriter not as dark, but still wounded on new album.

Charlaine Harris: Deadlocked

Pop Rocks: Everything's Coming Up Tyrion in the New Game of Thrones Season 2 Teaser

"Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very long shadow." HBO didn't waste any time capitalizing on Peter Dinklage's Emmy win for Best Supporting Actor. The character of Tyrion figures prominently in this latest preview for s ... More >>

Taylor Swift Continues Goth Transformation in Hunger Games Track

It started out as a joke, you know? Chris Gray threw us a curve ball and said, "Taylor Swift is coming to town. Do something with that, you little eyeliner-wearing fangster." Well we did sit down and listen to the young country superstar, and to our surprise we discovered that somewhere in what we'r ... More >>

Pop Rocks: And Now, Your Least Anticipated Movies of 2012

The end of the year is always a nice time for going to the theater. Studios are desperate to cram anything they want for "awards consideration" into the final two weeks of December, leading to a larger than usual number of thoughtful, well-made films available for your holiday viewing pleasure. Yea ... More >>

Pop Rocks: The Least Anticipated Movies of 2012

The end of the year is always a nice time for going to the theater. Studios are desperate to cram anything they want for "awards consideration" into the final two weeks of December, leading to a larger than usual number of thoughtful, well-made films available for your holiday viewing pleasure. Yea ... More >>

Rocks Off Smokes On Fourth Of July

After you fire up the grill Monday, fire up the computer and head our way for some leisurely Fourth of July reading. We'll have our weekly True Blood recap, a review of Saturday night's Mana show at Toyota Center, a look at one of our favorite musical years ever (we won't tell you which one), and ... More >>

Last Night: Peter Case At McGonigel's Mucky Duck

Photos by David Ensminger​Peter Case McGonigel's Mucky Duck June 28, 2011 Surviving 40 years of rock and roll is not nearly the same as embodying it, preserving artful, poetic, and transcendent song forms that persevere as the world unveils socio-political and cultural shifts, religious uphea ... More >>

Comicpalooza 2011

Exactly How Safe Is Juarez?

Kim Lenz & Her Jaguars

Becoming Elektra: Stooges, The Doors And Much More

​Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman's Visionary Record Label By Mick Houghton Jawbone Press, 304 pp., $29.95 While most of today's major record companies are run by men in suits answering to a corporation rather than men of vision answering to their whims, there was a time in the ... More >>

Let's Get Spooky

Here's our guide to what's happening this Halloween.

Let's Get Spooky

Our guide to Houston's best Halloween haunts.

Radio Is Dead, MySpace Too. How Do We Find New Music?

​As both a music journalist and an actual musician, one of the things Rocks Off is always interested in is finding out how you people are finding out about the music worth finding out about. When you work for a major music blog, new music is hurled at your head at an astounding rate by both t ... More >>

Katy Perry's "California Gurls," As Done By Really Old Men

​Rocks Off hates Katy Perry with the white-hot burning intensity of a thousand suns. Her songs sound like Pink with a lobotomy, and she looks like Zooey Deschanel playing a really low-cost prostitute. When the video for "California Gurls" came out, we saw something that we never thought we'd s ... More >>

The Week In TV: What Do You Watch During The Summer?

With Treme off the air, what are you going to watch the rest of the summer?​Blah blah basketball blah blah soccer blah blah I miss real shows. This was the week in TV Land: • Treme wrapped its first season last night with an episode that was probably among its best so far, though it also hi ... More >>

The Week In TV: Back For Another Round

Lost may be gone, but these other shows are returning for another season.​Summer is upon us, television is a rocky wasteland, and you're probably out grilling right now. This was the week in TV Land: • Summer's a weird time for TV viewers and often a terrible one for TV fans: There are lo ... More >>

Christopher Farnsworth: Blood Oath

So the president of the United States has a vampire for a bodyguard - damn, D.C. must be rougher than we thought