Photo by Autumn de Wilde

Tonight House of Blues welcomes Garbage back to Houston after a seven-year hiatus.

(Sadly, the group had to cancel this Houston date due to a health issue in Garbage man Duke Erikson's family. The date has not been rescheduled as of yet.)

The group, led by fearsome Scottish redhead Shirley Manson, has been sorely missed from the music scene. They are currently touring behind their upcoming album Not Your Kind of People, which hits stores May 14. Rocks Off's own Neph Basedow talked to Garbage's guitarist/keyboardist Steve Marker this past week about outer space, touring in Texas and recording the new album.

Manson was a part of an elite group of rocking women in the '90s who made the decade all the more interesting; as the men found their grunge sea legs, the girls upped the volume and were creating a whole different kind of noise. In an era where equality was still a hot-button issue, you could always expect groups like Sleater-Kinney and L7 to obliterate male-centered bands. I would still take Bricks Are Heavy over a lot of stuff called "tough" in the '90s.

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There are no words that I can put into this space to describe the majesty of Colombian pop star Shakira. The only thing that would probably come close to succinctly putting into prose how amazing her body is digging up poet Robert Frost and using voodoo to have him pen a few lines. Can we do that?

Today is Shakira's 35th birthday. The last time the little lady -- seriously she is maybe five feet tall in heels -- was in Houston, it was at the Toyota Center in October 2010. Our very own Rizoh was on hand for the festivities, and there was a great slideshow that went with it. Though you could always just Google her name and not click those links, like you just might.

To celebrate this great milestone in the pint-size miss' life, we now present to you, a collection of GIFs of Shakira shaking her ass and body in ways that make us wonder why she is not detained at customs for agitation. It doesn't hurt that all of her hit singles are catchy as chicken pox at a daycare center. Her hips, they cannot tell a lie.

These are all quasi-SFW. Warning: there is flagrant ass-shaking and the humping of stage equipment involved.

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That old special feeling...

This weekend, the grand dame of American pop music, Madonna, will grace the halftime stage at Super Bowl XLVI. This is a major improvement from last year's more-inhuman-than-human Black Eyed Peas performance, which tested the resolve our country, and even the world. But we all survived. Who won the game anyway?

Madonna comes into this performance with a new single, the Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. assisted "Gimme All Your Luvin," a song they collaborated for Madge's upcoming MDNA album, set for release on March 26. Nothing could go wrong with those two, right? A foul-mouthed Barbie and a politically-charged female rapper on live worldwide television? Everything should be cool.

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According to Chinese reckoning, today marks the lunar new year. It's the Year of the Dragon. Specifically, the Year of the Water Dragon, which I'm told will bestow a peaceful energy on the coming year, favoring the ideals of negotiation and forward thinking.

I know, right? BOOORING. We Americans know that "lunar" is an adjective related to the moon. And "moon" is synonymous with "butt." And what better way to commemorate the passing of another moon cycle than with some clips of the best buns in musical history?

The accompanying use of fireworks is at your discretion, of course.

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Es muy macho

You've probably seen some of these albums in dusty bins at the thrift store, forgotten and unloved, for less than a dollar. You could probably walk out the front door with them and no one would care.

They don't make saxophone-album covers like they used to. Apparently back in the day there were three main ways to sell the public on your latest collection of sax tunes: 1) Symbolically but absolutely unsubtly portray a blow job; 2) Symbolically but absolutely unsubtly portray a vagina; 3) Throw in the towel and just put a nude woman on there.

It gave sax aficionados something to think about while listening, we guess. Plus -- and we never realized this -- "sex" and "sax": They sound alike!

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Photo illustration by John Seaborn Gray

I want to believe.

Just the other day, Rocks Off sat at the computer, blank-faced and still, the cursor blinking uninterrupted. See, normally at this time of year, we come up with a list of depressing Christmas songs. This year, though, there was a problem. Last year's songs were so intensely, crazily sad, we couldn't find any to top them. Plus, it's been kind of a rough year, and Rocks Off's heart just wasn't in the search. What to do? It made us sad to buck what was becoming a Christmas tradition; so sad, in fact, that all we could do was turn on some wonderfully bizarre Christmas music in order to cheer ourselves up.

And now you get this list. It's a Christmas miracle! (Buckle up, this shit is gonna get pretty weird.)

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For over 20 years, R. Kelly has been making sexual history as the official "pied piper of R&B," lovingly encouraging men and women to embrace their inner freaks. He's probably even been present for most of you young bloods' conceptions.

Behind the scenes, though, he's made personal legal history as the unofficial "pied piper of underage girls." Remember the golden shower incident?

It might be hard to start dating again after such a public scandal, even for a "vindicated" man like Kelly. With fourteen albums of poetry dedicated to seducing the ladies, we thought we would do Kellz a solid and start some dating profiles. Went to different dating sites to discuss his hopes, goals, and future in love using only his lyrics.

Harsh R&B realization of the day: Picking apart the lyrics from 1993's 12 Play to 2008's 12 Play 4th Quarter made us realize that R. Kelly has aged into a really dirty old man.

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Rihanna recently released yet another controversial video for "We Found Love," the first single from her forthcoming Def Jam album Talk That Talk. The Grammy-winning singer seems to love pissing off parents and anti-violence organizations with her musical visuals. But she's surely not the first pop diva to exude sex or send the "wrong message" in her videos.

We all remember Katy Perry's "Calfornia Gurls" video, when Katy is nude on top of a pink cloud, clad in a bra with whipped cream-squirting cans attached. And did censors overlook Kelly Rowland's latest video with Big Sean, "Lay It On Me," where a scantily clad Rowland is surrounded by multiple shirtless men?

Why should Rihanna's music videos get everyone riled up when others' equally sexual and controversial videos are in rotation? According to Forbes, Rihanna is worth $143 million. Whether the videos are ethical or not, they help make her a nice amount of money.

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Photo By Bryan Forrester

Local death-punks Hell City Kings are releasing their new LP, H.C.K., this Friday night at Fitzgerald's with Ghost Town Electric, Texxxas, and The Freakouts as support. Last week we got the new album from guitarist and co-mastermind Bill Fool, plus a few curious promo pics.

This weekend the band will also be debuting new drummer Carl Chambless, who also does time in American Heist. No word on how long Chambless will be in the fold as of yet. As with most Cutthroat label releases, paid entry to the show ($10) also nets you an H.C.K. LP or CD.

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ibtimes.com

To say that Dr. Conrad Murray had a bad day in court yesterday is probably something of an understatement. In addition to veiwing graphic pictures of Michael Jackson's autopsy, jurors in the involuntary manslaughter trial of the King of Pop's former physician heard damaging testimony from L.A. County Medical Examiner Christopher Rogers, who told the court he found Jackson to be healthier than most 50-year-old men, and not directly responsible for the overdose that killed him.

The pathologist went on to call the basis of the doctor's defense -- that the patient had self-administered the fatal dose of Propofol while Murray was in the bathroom -- highly implausible due to the fact that Jackson was already too heavily sedated to perform the act unassisted, and even had he been able to self-administer, the drug would have taken longer to circulate through his system than the two minute period the physician admits to being out of the room.

Rocks Off learned enough from the Casey Anthony trial to know that juries can be unpredictable, but between the EMT testimony, the audio tapes, the character-assaulting parade of mistresses, and the Murray's questionable behavior immediately following Jackson's death, well, suffice to say things do not look promising for the Houston-based cardiologist.

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