In recent years, it seems like music festivals have begun to pop up left and right. While it was once something you had to travel for, it's now hard to live in a major city without encountering at least one local music festival each year

And now, music festivals have become so cool that even MTV is looking to cash in.

Last week, Reuters reported that MTV would be hosting an
online music festival next Wednesday (June 19) with the help of VH1 and CMT.

But it doesn't end there. The "festival," which will be hosted out of the networks' offices in New York City, Nashville and Los Angeles, will be streamed continuously over a
24-hour period.

While that might sound like a great idea to some, there are a lot of reasons why it's actually awful.

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Recently Rocks Off ran an article about the five most insane bands to see live right now. Obviously, when you're working with five spots, you're going to leave someone off, which readers never fail to remind us. A lot of names were thrown around in regards to that one, especially the Chariot. But what caught my attention the most was a band e-mailed to me that I'd never even heard of before.

That band is Philadelphia "ultra-violence" pioneers Eat the Turnbuckle, and after watching their videos, I agreed that they entirely deserved their own spotlight. Those of you who grew up in the '80s probably remember the Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection during World Wrestling Entertainment (back then called the World Wrestling Federation) and Hulk Hogan's heyday. Eat the Turnbuckle brings that to a whole new level.

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So apparently there's been a legit hip-hop record deal offered to Amanda Bynes. By all accounts it isn't a joke, which is utterly mind-blowing. The guy responsible for this offer, Daniel Herman of Chinga Chang Records, has spoken out, claiming to have cleared the way with both Sony Entertainment and The Orchard to feed into this fuckery.

I am probably alone in my admiration of Ms. Bynes, but I totally thought she was cute on All That back in the day. However, I'm confused as to why any legitimate outlet would offer her a rap contract. She's had a rough time the past few months, with scandal after media scandal hanging above her head, and even if she's punking the shit out of us, it's gotten to the point of well past weird. I can't wrap my mind about any record offer being anything other than a publicity stunt.

However, given that this guy swears on his cat, dog and mother that he's serious business, I have to take him at his word and try to find a light at the end of this strange Amanda Bynes rapping tunnel.

If this record ever sees the light of day, I'd put my money on it being a sign of the musical apocalypse, so you might want to start insuring your MP3s now. Y'know, for when that album drops and the charts explode into a million pieces because they've given up on life.

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Photo courtesy of Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

Blake Shelton at the RodeoHouston show we didn't like

Country star and no fan of Rocks Off Blake Shelton has now made it two for two in voicing his displeasure with members of the Houston music media. Late Tuesday night the "Honeybee" singer went after Chronicle critic Joey Guerra on Twitter, reacting in a most unsportsmanlike manner to Guerra's effectively wishing "good riddance" to Holly Tucker, a favorite of Shelton's on NBC's popular singing competition The Voice.

"Holly Tucker is gone. It took much too long," wrote Guerra, who recaps The Voice for the Chronicle's television blog Tubular. "But finally. Back to Baylor University in Waco for you, madam."

Guerra's comments prompted the following tweets from Shelton:

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Photos by Autumn de Wilde

If you would have heard the names Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone or Akiva Schaffer six years ago, you probably wouldn't have known who they were. Now the trio has become famous through a combination of their work on Saturday Night Live, their 2007 full-length film Hot Rod, and their mock-rap group The Lonely Island.

It's that same rap group that's finally gone a step too far with their new single, "I Fucked My Aunt," featuring T-Pain.

The song, off the Island's upcoming third album, The Wack Album, starts off with Taccone musing, "Damn, I fucked my aunt.../ I can't believe I fucked my aunt.../ I fucked my aunt, y'all," before jumping straight into the first verse. There, he talks about growing up in the country, summers with fireworks and baseball before saying, "five years later, I fucked my aunt."

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This past week Downtown Abbey fans got a hell of a shock when Diddy announced via Twitter that he was going to be starring on the show, his purported favorite. Producers were quick to deny it, but no doubt fans of the PBS period drama were a little hesitant to even imagine Diddy, a rapper with exactly one acting credit on his resume, appearing on their favorite show.

Admittedly, Diddy was hilarious in the movie Get Him to the Greek, but his mixing in with Downtown Abbey would probably go over as well as his mixing with Led Zeppelin did in 1998.

Luckily for everyone involved, it turned out that the whole thing was a publicity stunt for a Funny or Die parody of Downtown Abbey starring Diddy. Nevertheless, it caught Rocks Off's attention and got me wishing that more musicians would get into period dramas and historical fiction.

Why on earth would it make me want that? Because I love things that are ridiculous. So to any TV producers reading right now, here are five ridiculous (and awesome ideas) to exploit this burgeoning genre of television which Diddy has now pioneered.

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Kreepin Deth via Wikimedia Commons

Spitting. It's a symbolic form of communication that means nothing good in any language or culture -- a sign of disrespect that garners admiration or adoration from no one. Well, except for fans. Stars and celebrities themselves get mighty pissed off if you spit on them, but if they spit on you, you better just grin and take it. It's all just a part of their attitude and such.

That's why we decided to look at the Top 10 spitters in music history -- there's almost no other context where spitting is so ubiquitous and so widely accepted and well-received. Somehow fans see it as a form of communication between themselves and a star, or a bond between them. It seems pretty gross to me, but who am I to question such a beloved practice?

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Photo by Marco Torres

Tyler, the Creator

Tyler, the Creator has never been known for being a sensitive man. Quite the opposite, he's known for unambiguous lyrics about controversial and disturbing subjects such as rape, murder, homophobia, and infanticide. One of his most infamous lyrics is from the song "Tron Cat," where he promises to "rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome."

Yeah, that's the kind of rapper we're dealing with here. Nevertheless, he's amassed a fanbase that seems completely willing to take lyrics like that in stride, and has become one of the most popular artists among the younger crowd in recent memory. He even beat Wiz Khalifa, Foster the People, Kreayshawn, and Big Sean for a VMA for Best New Artist.

But some are saying that Tyler has finally gone too far with his recent Mountain Dew ad, which has been accused of being racist, among other things. Well, has he?

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Since the first thing that comes to mind about New York during the roaring 1920's is dubstep, Autotune, and, of course, Andre 3000 and Beyonce, the producers of the new The Great Gatsby movie have forced this little ditty upon us from the upcoming soundtrack.

Bey and Andre's collaboration on Amy Winehouse's throwback tune may very well have produced the worst song that's ever been released, cover or otherwise. I have nothing nice to say about it. Oh, yes, I mean that. I mean that very much. It's just a mess. A huge, sandpaper-to-the-Eustachian-tubes mess.

If you'd like to hear two extremely famous and otherwise generally talented artists rip "Back to Black" to shreds, please see below.

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Earlier this week, as I was working/editing/writing/procrastinating after a long weekend on the road, I came across the new video for "Play Hard" by David Guetta. Now, I'm not much of a Guetta fan, but I don't dislike him either.

He makes radio-friendly pop songs disguised as house music (or is it house music disguised as pop songs?), and his formula -- dance beat + guest vocalists/rappers = profit!! -- is both adored and despised by music fans and critics across the globe. I'd lump him into the same category as The Black Eyed Peas and Pitbull: talented musicians who have "sold out," making crap music in order to make non-crappy millions of dollars.

In any case, after watching "Play Hard" for the first time, I was baffled and confused. Was this "one of the best videos of all time!" (sorry Beyonce & Taylor), or, as a Mexican-American, should I be offended by what I just saw? There are so many "What the Fuck" moments in this video, I had to play it five times in order to count them all.

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