Do you remember those English teachers that made you turn in the gigantic term papers at the end of the school year in a big yellow envelope filled with notecards, outlines and rough drafts?  I’m that English teacher.  The mention of my name this time of year is likely to spark a multitude of emotions, [...]

(Editor’s Note: That’s Frederick R. Kappel, Chairman of AT&T up there.   We went to high school together.  I have no idea what the hell he is holding.  If you know (or have a reasonable and/or obscene guess) let us know in the comments.)
I’m really stretching the limits of Lazy Saturday and phoning this [...]

I’ve always been a big fan of the music video, probably because when I was growing up MTV actually played them on a regular basis and at that time my beloved glam metal dominated the airwaves.  Yes kids, long before there was Carson Daly and TRL, there was Adam Curry and Dial MTV.  Back when [...]

(Editor’s Note:  The Vault is our occasionally updated storehouse of music from our pasts that is particularly awesome.  James has been hitting tracks pretty frequently, but it’s long been our intention to do full length reviews of old albums.  This week, given our various time constraints and/or trips to Guam, is the perfect time to [...]

I’ve got four things to talk about before I launch into a full-on discussion of Gay Beast, so if you’re just here for the critical content, jump down past the numbered items and enjoy.  If, on the other hand, you’re here for the circumlocutions and verbosity, stick around!
1. Our next couple of weeks – You [...]

All of the Memorial Day festivities left us at a loss for words this morning.  All three of us had plenty to do Monday and we weren’t in any position to get any album reviews up today.  It also happens to be a crazy time of year in the public school employee world.  Kids are [...]

The things that most folks are going to hone in on when listening to (or commenting on if you’re in the 40% of the population that has a music blog) Hermit Thrushes’ sophomore release (out June 23 on Joyful Noise) are the weirder bits: the dissonance, sharply angular guitar sounds, odd stops and starts, occasional [...]

The other two Dicks are out carousing and eating meat (except for Brian, who’s probably grilling some protein-infused soy extract product due to his vegetarianism).  I’m stuck here at Citizen Dick central campus after a really strange day. It’s Memorial Day Weekend, so I normally use this three-day vacation to catch up on all sorts [...]

Brooklyn six piece White Rabbits is not exactly a secret to anyone who’ll be reading this post today, so I’ll spare the 500 word biographical sketch of the band, influences, and other hodgepodge for today.  Let’s face it, it’s Memorial Day weekend and we’ve put up our Lazy Saturday post today already.  Sue us.  It’s [...]

We’re in Cleveland.  It is the NBA playoffs.  I’m writing this before game two, which pits our Cavaliers against the reprehensible and asinine Orlando Magic.  (If there was any justice in the world, somebody would punch Dwight Howard in the mouth.  I’m tired of that dude’s “charisma.”)  My Pops and I are scalping tickets to [...]

(Editor’s note:  For you rare vinyl collectors out there, this is the second in a series of occasional posts featuring a Citizen Dick endorsed single.  If you want to press some records or something, go ahead, just send us the royalty checks.)
The Twilight Sad really hit both sides of the proverbial blogosphere coin for us. [...]

Memorial Day weekend is finally here.  Hopefully all of you have plenty of parties and BBQ’s to attend to this weekend, and it’s likely that everyone reading this today has already checked out mentally and is ready for the weekend to arrive.  In observance of that, and due to the fact that I have a [...]

There’s an idea in statistics called the most parsimonious model.  Say you want to generate a model to predict scores on a standardized test; you might throw IQ, socio-economic status, mother’s educational attainment and GPA into your statistical model and, using those factors, hope to predict something like SAT scores with a reasonable amount of [...]

As James mentioned yesterday, our rising age was put to the test this weekend during  a road trip back to our alma mater.  I remember wobbling back and forth trying to text James to get back to the bar and hail a cab because I was clearly done for the night.  This was, embarrassingly, at [...]

As you may recall from Sunday’s Radio Dick post, Kevin and I took a trip back to lovely Athens, OH this past weekend in an attempt to relive some of the glory of our college years.  Anyone who has ever attended or visited Ohio University should be aware that any number of bad things is [...]

We’ve been readers of the music blog scene for years now. We were reading music blogs before everyone had a music blog, and our own music blog wasn’t so much as an iota of thought several years ago. Although our blog is young, we were there to see the rise of Pitchfork and its effect [...]

Athens, Ohio, if you’re unfamiliar, is a glorious small college town nestled along the Hocking River in Southeast Ohio.  James and I spent our more formative years at Ohio University, engaged in rigorous studies of anatomy, physics, and interpersonal communication.  What separates Athens from typical college towns is its proximity to nothing.  It’s literally the [...]

(Editor’s note:  Saturday is supposed to be lazy; it’s been in the title of the Saturday posts for like two months.  Brian is supposed to be able to kick back, shut off the critical and regulatory functions of his brain and lob some cool live tracks into the internet.  No marathon album listening, no hunting [...]

In case you missed it somehow, the new Wilco album, creatively titled Wilco (The Album), leaked earlier this week and is now available for streaming on the band’s website.  As a result, I’m going to take a few minutes to hop up onto my (mildly) anti-Wilco soapbox and preach about my thoughts on the band.  [...]

Andrew Kenny (American Analog Set) and his newest project, The Wooden Birds, just dropped Magnolia into the ether two days ago and even though not much has changed from much of his previous work, what we have is an incredibly controlled set of luminous folk numbers that sooth the soul and bring his vocals front [...]