The Critical Asshole: Listening to...: Archive

Jan 8th

Dec 30th

Dec 21st

Dec 14th

8 notes

3 tags

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

I just finished the Steve Jobs biography and I must say, Isaacson did a great job of chronicling the rise, fall, re-rise, illness, and death of a one of the most important figures in the technology industry. As mentioned in other reviews, the bio weighs heavily on the early days with a lot of information about the formation of Apple and Jobs’s stint with Pixar, but is relatively light when...

Dec 12th

Dec 4th

Nov 29th

696 notes

Nov 19th

6,758 notes

damageisdone: The Features “Tenderly” Live @ The...

Nov 9th

4 notes

-: If you end any thought with "just sayin'..." →

wamiv-: I want to burn you. I want to tie you with razor wire to a chair and burn you. Burn you with lit cigarettes, so the pain is intense and focused. I want to shave your head and body to dehumanize you and put you in front of a mirror so that you can see yourself whilst I torture you. I want to choke… Yes.

Nov 8th

35 notes

You know you are an overweight American when

you don’t know whether the the object at the bar is a stool or a peice of artwork.

Nov 6th

4 tags

The Features - "Wilderness" →

This is from the Nashville Scene and it is a better review of the new album and a better summary of The Features’s music than I am able to come up with. I’ve been struggling with it for a while (I’ve still got a short after-show interview with them from 2007 which I have only shared with a few of the band’s admirers) but thankfully the Nashville Scene did it for me....

Oct 24th

Oct 21st

1,768 notes

Breaking News: Apple Reports Steve Jobs has died →

You can expect that I will be writing about this in some length this week.

Oct 6th

4 tags

The Stuff You Should Know Podcast

5:30AM came way too early. Still dark in the bedroom, I’d hear the whining of my girlfriend’s fluffy, annoying dog beside the bed, crying and clawing at my side of the bed because my asshole girlfriend wouldn’t wake to to take the bitch out to piss. I’d shuffle out of bed with an “I’ll take her out, don’t worry about it.” She was still asleep. I...

Oct 5th

4 tags

RS 500 Greatest Albums of all Time: #38 Muddy...

As many of you know, Rolling Stone used to be a magazine about music. One of the thicker, “on-topic” issues entitled “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” was one of Rolling Stone’s best and gave me some direction during my days of being a budding music connoisseur. Oddly enough, Rolling Stone did a reprint some months or years later (I honestly don’t know, but I...

Oct 4th

11 tags

SNL Review 10/01/2011

Melissa McCarthy, the fat one from the “Chick-Buddy-Flick” movie Bridesmaids hosts, and pseudo-pop-country trio with a band, Lady Antebellum, fills the musical guest role. Cold Open - Lawrence Welk show - Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are a great pair. The obvious comparisons are with David Spade and Chris Farley. The Skinny/Fat dynamic is there as well as a lot of outrageous...

Oct 3rd

1 note

4 tags

You may notice something different...

ADS!!!!! Folks, times are tough. I’m staring down the barrel of approximately $110,000 worth of student loans and I need to start generating revenue where ever I can. I recently became affiliated with several companies to advertise on this site. Here’s what I can promise you going forward: 1. I select these companies myself. I won’t put crap on here that I think is not...

Oct 2nd

10 notes

Sep 16th

825 notes

Aug 29th

4 tags

Aug 26th

1 note

michele bachman needs to hire metallica's old bus...

bringtheruckuss: LOL YES

Aug 14th

12 notes

Aug 1st

226 notes

BREAKING NEWS: A NON-MUSLIM BLEW SOMETHING UP.

Jul 23rd

33 notes

2 tags

Little Girls With Big Voices, an explanation? →

This is something that is actually pretty annoying to me. I don’t want to hear a 7 year-old white girl from Connecticut sound like a 40 year-old black woman from the Bronx. It makes me cringe. I don’t know if I buy the explanation proffered here (not much of an explanation if you ask me). I choose to believe it’s something involving hormones in milk or bacon or something.

Jul 8th

4 tags

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

Much ado has been made about Justin Vernon’s sophomore release from his flagship project “Bon Iver.” We were awed and struck by the heartbreaking sincerity and rustic, dark charm of For Emma, Forever Ago. He then whet an already voracious thirst for more by releasing Blood Bank—allegedly from the same cold, snowbound cabin in Wisconsin, a very sad and ill Justin Vernon...

Jul 3rd

Cults - Cults

I present to you a lovely little debut summery album. With classic female singing, none of this “white girl trying to act black” business, Cults bring to mind (heavily bring to mind) a Phil Spector-produced girl group. Instrumentation is extraordinarily solid. There is a heavy use of dramatic and percussive rhythm which seems to anchor this older sound in the present (e.g....

Jun 25th

Fatwa of the Week: Keene Sentinel Whitewashes Tom... →

It kills me that the reporting of Thomas Ball’s self-immolation is being portrayed as the act of a nut-job. This man was pushed to the extreme by a corrupt family court system.

Jun 20th

2 tags

May 8th

6 notes

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great...”

– Mark Twain (via dontdrinkfromthecarton)

May 2nd

5 notes

Hollis Plays an Untitled Song on the Balcony of... →

Apr 12th

Apr 11th

Mar 17th

Watch

Merry Christmas to all! Here’s an awesome video of my Pops playing with his grandson’s puppy.

Dec 26th

Dec 22nd

73 notes

Dec 10th

Dec 4th

Things I don’t know.

Dec 2nd

Watch

New song, will be on “Invites.” Hollis with Eat, Pray, Satan Live at the Thirsty Turtle in Lubbock, TX (10/22/2010).

Oct 25th

Vampire Weekend: Contra lawsuit is 'frustrating' →

I saw this yesterday and I’ve been trying to get a copy or the text of the complaint. There are different versions of how Vampire Weekend and the photographer Tod Brody obtained the photograph. As usual, Ezra Koenig gave a milquetoast response to the legal complaint seeking a reported $2M in damages.

Jul 21st

2 tags

Drummer - Feel Good Together

Have I told you how much I love Super Bands? You know, like when members of different bands get together (perhaps on their mastered instruments, sometimes trading out) and rock out Hall of Fame style? You know, “Super Bands.”Well, I do. I love them. I love Super Bands. They’re like my favorite comic book super heroes getting together to kick some ass or expand on their different...

Jul 4th

What's the Matter With Sweden? →

I thought this would get a bigger reaction when I posted it to my Facebook page. I mean COME ON! Government-subsidized music?!?!?!? OMG!

Jun 22nd

Pay to play: Strict enforcement of copyrights... →

Times must be even tougher than we thought if ASCAP and BMI are sending out agents to tiny-ass coffee shops with their Shazam-loaded iPhones trying to bust up Mom and Pop for their performers playing unlicensed music. Part of me thinks this is just a market effect driving the last nail into the coffin for small venues having live music. The other part of me thinks its a little totalitarian for...

Jun 15th

3 tags

Mark Talks Bonaroo

Ladies and Gentlemen, We have an exciting development here at CriticalAsshole.com: We have a new member of the team who will be traveling to Bonaroo in a couple of days and he has done us all the service of breaking down the good, the bad, and the ugly of that sweaty-ass musical festival in Manchester, TN. But first, I shall let his own words serve as an introduction: Dear Assholes, As a...

Jun 9th

The Top 10 Worst Lyrics On... →

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Jun 8th

3 tags

The National - High Violet

It’s hard to be a baritone singer in a world that is gender/frequency biased. You want to know something? I get it. I get it all. It’s detached, but sensitive. I understand that. Isn’t that what we loved about Jim Morrison and John Lennon? Sure, I may have thought the voice was weird and droning. I didn’t understand the constant morose until I actually became constantly morose....

Jun 2nd

I’d like to be the first to say it: “MGMT’s new album sucks.” That is all. Let the hate mail flow.

May 12th

3 tags

David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging... →

A friend forwarded this to me—a really great, informed article by one of the best in music now, then, and always. Warning: There’s a REALLY discouraging graph on the first page. Also…send me music. There are a lot of ways to do it. Look on the left and send me music…goddammit. I’ll write about it and we’ll all be happy.

May 8th

4 notes