​Houstonians are more than likely familiar with Mario Rodriguez for his work with Tax the Wolf. The experimental powerhouse has been winning awards and critical acclaim for his experimental and cutting edge music for some time. Now, he's teamed with Elizabeth Salazar and Vik Montemayor on a new endeavor. It's called Bang Bangz, and we'll allow the band a little slack on the cardinal sin of using a "z" where an "s" belongs because they are so very nice to listen to.

Tax the Wolf fans can take comfort in the fact that Rodriguez's rather distinctive guitar sound and style have been maintained with Bang Bangs on their debut self-titled EP. The opening track "Wrong" could almost be mistaken for a cut from Hold the Sun at the beginning. However, differences become apparent immediately. The music is much more ethereal, with soft keyboard lines and drums from Montemayor that are masterworks of ambiguity. If we didn't know better we would swear a drum machine was responsible for much of the album (We mean this as a compliment), so connected to the matrix is Montemayor, but he often lashes out with peaks of rhythmic humanity that keep the tunes cyberorganic and fresh.

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​Being loud is an art. Strike that, being artfully loud is an art, being regular loud only requires some amperage. The key seems to be finding a way to harness the sound of collision, to ride on top of the train as it crashed. Few artists have really been able to do it. Iggy and the Stooges pulled it off with the in-the-red masterpiece Raw Power, and Butthole Surfers had more than their share of aggressive noise fests. Locally, Giant Princess churns out a good mob scene.

However, when it comes to sheer explosiveness done without chaos we're hard-pressed to think of a better act than Female Demand. Their latest release, Outside the Universe is a tight collection of experimental prog metal, if you can all anything done with just drums and a bass rig prog metal, that would be annoying if it didn't rock so damned much.

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Editor's Note: The Ghost of Cliff Burton's Jef With One F is a regular contributor for Rocks Off and the Houston Press.

​When the oddball experimentalists in the Black Math Experiment went on hiatus four years ago, Houston lost a strange and unique musical voice that's been missed by many. Thankfully, that band's dominant creative axis, the duo of vocalist (and Rocks Off contributer) Jef With One F and multi-instrumentalist Bill Curtner, has returned to deliver a second helping of sonic weirdness with a new project, the Ghost of Cliff Burton. The pair's debut album, The Maybe Laser, was released this week.

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​Exactly 58 years ago, Elvis Presley released Heartbreak Hotel on RCA Records, which had just bought his contract from Sun Records for a measly $35,000. Heartbreak sold 300,000 copies in its first week and would eventually become the King's first certified gold record.

Also, it's worth noting that, while moving 300,000 copies in a week is hardly unheard of, this was before iTunes.

The song itself, which Presley himself didn't write, was based on the story of a man jumping to his death from a hotel window. Its writer, a high school teacher named Mae Boren Axton who also wrote songs for the likes of Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire and even Miranda Lambert's husband Blake Shelton, didn't even approach Presley with the song first. Originally, she tried to sell it to the Wilburn brothers who declined, calling it "morbid."

Hindsight is a killer. But hey, a syndicated television program is a lot like a certified gold record, right?

Presley, meanwhile, liked the song so much, he agreed to take only 33 percent of the royalties, leaving the songwriter with what we can only assume is an abundance of cash.

In honor of the King, his music and this day in music history, here are a few interesting, odd and/or lesser-known covers of the iconic "Heartbreak Hotel" we've put together for your listening pleasure.

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Photo courtesy of Nameless Sound

Alvin Fielder

​Alvin Fielder helped found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago, worked for the Nixon Administration and spent much of his life running the family drug store.

However, hearing him talk about all of his accomplishments by phone from his Mississippi home, winning Nameless Sound's "Resounding Vision Award" could very well be his favorite achievement.

In 2009, Fielder was playing a trio gig in New Orleans when he started feeling completely awful. Fielder, a pharmacist for 56 years in Starkville and Jackson, Mississippi, didn't know what was up so he visited the doctor.

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​Anyone who has ever had a demanding job knows that with it comes the sacrifice of time. Lawyers on the partner track a big law firms know they have little time for anything outside of the office. To be successful at anything requires a commitment of time and energy that often means many of life's simple pleasures collect dust while you work your fingers to the bone.

Being a serious musician means long nights writing, practicing, recording and playing. It often means extensive travel, sometimes for months at a time. It's a job that consumes a huge amount of your energy. In fact, if you are really, really serious about music, there are some things you should just not do. It's tough enough to make money playing music without the responsibilities of everyday life. That's why these are six things you should simply avoid if you want make a go at a career in music.

Most of us will never have to do these things (me included) because, let's be honest, most of us will never make it to the point where music will become so taxing that our normal lives will suffer, but the life of a transient musician, should you so choose it, leaves little room for anything else. As AC/DC once lamented, "It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll."

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Photo via cursivearmy.com

​Via Rolling Stone, the Saddle Creek princes Cursive have released, for your free listening pleasure, the first single titled "The Sun and Moon" from their forthcoming seventh album I am Gemini out February 21.

The concept album is described on the band's site as "the surreal and powerful musical tale of Cassius and Pollock, twin brothers separated at birth. One good and one evil, their unexpected reunion in a house that is not a home ignites a classic struggle for the soul, played out with a cast of supporting characters that includes a chorus of angels and devils, and twin sisters conjoined at the head. Moody and playfully sinister I Am Gemini is Cursive's musically heaviest in years."

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​If we learned anything from hip-hop collaborations in 2011, it's that beef ain't what's hot anymore. Gone are the days where an argument manifests itself into a 40-minute mixtape or a DVD. The shelf life for fresh rap beef is approximately 24 hours. Not even two days ago, Twitter was flooded with tweets about Drake and Common's beef. Now, no one cares.

There are so many new artists coming out of the confines of the Internet that established rappers are faced with two choices: run with them or get run over. Take Bun B, for example. He's still current after over twenty years in the game, keeping his name alive with the help of some new names like Fat Tony and A$AP Rocky.

We've put together a list of rappers who we'd like to see collaborate in 2012. Some of them probably won't happen, some will. Who would you like to see work together? Remember, anything is possible if V-Nasty put out a mixtape with Gucci Mane.

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​I have absolutely no clue what is going on out there. I know that Beyoncé had that song with the counting, Adele had a song that was maybe about doing ecstasy in a pool, and some guy with a beard got nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy even though For Emma, Forever Ago came out literally forever ago. Ignorance of popular music is par for the course when you suffer from a chronic case of musica snobbis obscurum. The only relief is uttering the phrase "oh, you've probably never heard of them" to the pedestrian aesthetes you call friends while exposing them to these underrated and underexposed gems from 2011.

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Photo By Marc Brubaker

Sleigh Bells at Warehouse Live in April 2011

​Brooklyn-based Sleigh Bells' Derek Miller, former guitarist for hard-core band Poison the Well, and Alexis Krauss, former singer of a girlie group no one has ever heard of have finally finished the much anticipated follow up to 2010's Treats.

Reign of Terror is slated to be released on Valentine's Day of 2012 so jot that down if your honey is into heavy electro-pop with blown-out drums and fuzzy guitars turned up to 11 instead of flowers and chocolates. Ain't that sweet?

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