On Friday night, Morrissey fans learned that the former Smiths front man and bard of the morose had yet again postponed his gig at Beaumont's Jefferson Theatre.

This show had been highly anticipated, for the relatively out of the way venue and the fact that the man hasn't played in this region since April 2009.

Rewind: Road Trip? Morrissey Coming To Beaumont, Not Houston, In December

The venue received this message from his management on Friday:

More »

Totally not nominated for any Grammys.

You may have heard that the Grammy nominations were released this past week. It has some great choices from the committee, surprisingly enough. You've got nominations for extremely deserving artists such as Fiona Apple, Frank Ocean, Bjork, and Tom Waits. Even the Album of the Year award is a competition between hipster-approved bands such as The Black Keys, Fun., Jack White, and the aforementioned Ocean.

So who could possibly be upset this year? The Grammys got it right for once, mostly leaving out bullshit nominations for the latest fad of the day, right? Well, not if you're Justin Bieber's manager Scooter Braun and Grizzly Bear front man Ed Droste.

More »

For the past two months, New York City-based composer/songwriter David Nyman has been turning back the clock and making MIDI versions of popular and current indie-rock and hip-hop jams.

His Tumblr page, where he unloads his Soundcloud clips of these tiny wonders, is getting very popular, and was showcased by Internet timesuck saviors Gorilla Mask this past week.

One of his most recent opuses is a MIDI version of Chamillionaire's "Ridin' Dirty", which reminded me of what it felt and sounded like to have one of those great, indestructible Nokia phones. Remember the snake game??

More »

Why say in ten words what you can say in two hashtags?

Houston has a professional football team. They are called the Houston Texans. A lot of people like them. Some of those people are rappers.

The Internet has several forms of social media. One of them is called Twitter. A lot of people use it. Some of those people are rappers.

We perused Twitter during Sunday's game against the dreaded, awful, despicable Tennessee Titans (formerly the beloved Houston Oilers) and grabbed the ten best tweets from the aforementioned rappers on the aforementioned social media platform.

There's cursing, history, religion and more. Malibooyah.

More »

Screengrab via http://www.wikipedia.com

Are you on the list? If not, it's up to you get your name out there.

Doing research on famous bands is easy. If you're famous enough to have your own Wikipedia entry, then you're big enough to have dozens of pages on the Internet about you filled with the most interesting and boring bits of minutia. Anything a blogger needs to know to interview, write about, or make fun of you is just a Google search away.

It's when we start writing about smaller bands that things get tricky. Together, the internet and social networking have become the great equalizer in the realm of public relations, giving smaller acts the tools to get their name out to fans and bloggers alike. It's great for the fans, for us writers, and for the bands themselves provided they're willing to put in the work.

And that's the problem. Creating a Web presence is easy but maintaining it is hard. It may not be fun and it may feel like work but it's an important part of keeping your name out there. Want to make sure you're doing it right? Keep these tips in mind next time you sit down at your computer.

More »

Gaze upon three of my 287 followers.

Up until recently I've remained fairly indifferent to the number of followers I have on Twitter. After all, if my ego was dependent on the number of people following me I would just drop the $5 necessary to buy a few thousand and call it a night.

Ever since I started writing here at Rocks Off I've noticed random musical groups from across the country following me. These are people I've never talked to or talked about, from places I've never been. They never reply, retweet or favorite anything I say. It feels oddly impersonal.

Since they aren't interested in communicating with me, I've never felt the need to follow them back, which I can only assume makes me a bad Twitter friend.

So today I've decided to do them one better. Someone somewhere had to take the time out of their day to hit the follow button on my Twitter account. If they were nice enough to do that I figure the least I can do is give them 30 seconds of my time to give them a brutally honest review of their music.

More »

We have all been there. You may have had a few drinks, you are at your favorite band's show, and you come to find yourself in the vicinity of one of your heroes. Word vomit. Torrential word vomit. But you mean well.

"I really think youse guys is great and your albums really means a lots to me all the time," you stammer before giving an awkward hug and spending too much on merch and cursing yourself on the way home.

We have met plenty of our heroes and strike out swinging. There was the time our digital camera crapped out when we met Iggy Pop in Austin and we made one of the legends of awesomeness wait for it to fix itself. How can we forget the time that country star Sara Evans asked to specifically to not sit next to us on a flight. Was it the Misfits shirt and the Hell's Angels bio?

More »

Most of us would be happy to have 1,000 Twitter followers. A million is pretty much unattainable, even for some big enchiladas.

Yet we see celebs erasing their Twitter pages as if it isn't the best thing since some 5'3" guy in Iowa took a knife to a loaf of bread. What's driving the Twitter exodus? Here's Rocks Off's Top 5 celebrity Twitter quitters, their motivation for ditching the popular social-networking site, and their final tweets (for now).

More »

For the past few days on Twitter, Rocks Off has been imploring our followers, our precious 3,250 friends (and counting), to tell us their shameful musical secrets by using the hashtag #shamefulafternoonsecrets or #shamefulmorningsecrets, the latter which could sound like a sordid booty call highlight reel.

We added our own secrets to the mix to get the ball rolling, like dropping that we make a personal funeral playlist once a year, and that we like Metallica's "Whiskey In The Jar" from Garage Inc. just slightly more than Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak original. Or another nugget about how we are fans of the production on the Bee Gees' disco work.

It's a fun way to pass the time, and plus adding a goofy Twitter hashtag means you won't be held accountable for what you owned up to, at least not in real life. While we were putting this together we were jamming the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge, too. It's no Emotional Rescue, but it will have to suffice.

More »

Last night, this member of Rocks Off was sitting at a pizza parlor off Ella when he found out that our military killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. It was a monumental moment in time, as we sat back and looked at the past decade and half of our lives, since we learned his name in 1998 with the bombing of the USS Cole, and then of course, his hand in 9/11.

So many of our friends and loved ones in the military, including even ourselves briefly, fought and trained against this man and all that he represented. As much as we made jokes ("Ozombie Bin Laden") there was an intense feeling of relief and pain in our hearts, like an era was ending that we have known longer than most anything else in our lives.

More »