These days fathers have to be ready for anything when it comes to their kids, be it a random food-fight in the kitchen or discovering they have a strange fascination with digging holes in the backyard. But what’s the plan for when they dig through your old music collection and find CDs with the infamous [...]

Your local radio station plays the same 10 songs over and over again. MTV is too busy airing “Real World/Road Rules Challenge” marathons to actually bother showing videos anymore. Print music magazines are rapidly dying off. So where can a music fan such as yourself find out about the newest, edgiest tunes? Here are a [...]

Despite what artists like U2 would have you believe, the answer is yes–sorry to quell the suspense so soon.  And while I’m spoiling the conclusion, I might as well throw out a disclaimer: this piece is not intended to criticize any artists with solemn convictions, however joyless, pompous, and boring they may be; instead, this [...]

The journey from child, to teen, to young adult to parent seems to have similar stops along the way for most everyone. When I was in college, during the “age of stupidity” (as a man I greatly respect refers to the ‘60s and early ‘70s), as a love-child and soon-to-be yuppie, I was thoroughly convinced [...]

Charles Darwin recently turned 200 years old, and I could think of no album more fitting to discuss than Andrew Bird’s latest on Fat Possum Records, entitled Noble Beast. The classically trained violin virtuoso’s latest gives Darwin’s famous theory the high concept treatment, and, per usual of Bird’s previous efforts, the album proves a demonstrative [...]

“What does that mean, ‘the loudest album of all time?’ ” the young teen asked the college student behind the counter. The kid had just finished reading a blurb about a new rock group featured next to the cash register. The college student—glasses, beard, and flannel—paused and deliberated. A blank wave washed all expression from [...]

I’m sitting alone with my back against the wall in a large and dusty room, empty save some mic stands and a box full of baseball caps. It’s 1 am at the end of the worst day ever—no sleep, double flight, pick up a Penske truck, pack and clean two houses, fist fight with best [...]