It has been a long freaking time since the last Atmosphere album. I can’t even count how many times I have said I wish a new Atmosphere album would come out. I have listen to their old stuff so much I can’t stand it anymore and I yearn for the joy and goosebumps from hearing words slung together in ways I never knew possible. (more…)

It’s about time people around these parts were motivated to make the world a better place. I mean look at old faithful Fido sleeping on the couch while you watch people fight on YouTube. He yearns for the great open plains where he can run free like the young dog that lives inside him. (more…)

According to Frankline Mclatterson the last game of Scrabble he lost was only due to his unlucky draw of letters, and not because the other person actually had more scrabble skill. Mclatterson’s claims that his letters , 4 e, 2 u, and 1 s left him nothing to play except his three point losing word. (more…)

I call it ear candy, because it is very pleasing. It will give you goosebumps at every apex, and will make your room transform into a den of cool. Who would have known such amazing music would come out of Pennsylvania and from a band called Black Moth Super Rainbow. (more…)

If you remember Matt Damon once blew up at Jimmy Kimmel for blowing him off, show after show. I’m sure it didn’t feel too good when Sarah Silverman pulled this one out on his birthday show: (more…)

So if you score the big time and get Radiohead to play at your festival, who do you get to play the second day so everyone sticks around and empties their pockets? Why, you get Radiohead of course! (more…)

So, in an effort to one up my Wordpress theme design skills I set out to create a mass library of designs free for your use. I may charge for one if I think it is especially badass, but until then, enjoy the freeness. (more…)

They claim be folk music noobs, the band knowing little about the genre, the guitarist not knowing how to play the guitar until recently, and their resume looking more like a punk rocker than anyone with any down home roots. Surprisingly, out of this mesh composed of Pete Quirk singing, Derek Fudesco from the Murder City Devils playing bass, and Marty Lund on drums comes a simple yet catchy folk music that makes you feel at home. (more…)

According to inside sources, local loser Robbie Mctailersono, found Myspace to be just like all the parties he was rejected at, and if he doesn’t get a comment soon he threatens to delete his account. (more…)

To celebrate, even though I don’t have anything to really celebrate, I present to you a collage of You Tube love song videos. Cherish your love with these classic songs or drown your sorrow in a wash of memories. (more…)

Valentines Day has become a powerful force not to be underestimated. It penetrates every aspect of life, lover or not, and there is no escaping the fact that tomorrow people everywhere are going to be making out and eating candy and fighting and getting candy breath and making out some more. (more…)

(satire disclaimer) In a shocking development, it has been reported to the popular and always factual TMZ that the unborn fetus inside the belly of young child star Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. (more…)

Dear Son,

It’s been a long time since we’ve written. We still don’t have a phone, so that’s why we haven’t called. As soon as I convince your father that the telephone has in fact been invented, you will be the first person I call. Please include your telephone address in your response. How are things going? I hope you are doing well. Your sister tells me that you are a writer now. How exciting! She mailed me some magazines with your articles in them. I must admit that your father and I were a bit concerned when we read about your latest invention son. “Old People Huts” designed to “house elderly family members when they become very ill or overly annoying” just seems a bit wrong Mark. After reading that, your father told me to unplug the phone as he was expecting the media to call and ask questions about you. I had to remind him that we don’t have a telephone. (more…)

Creating a stew takes a lot of time and hard work. Every time you make a stew, a celebration is required to give tribute to the love, dedication, and bloody sweat tears that went into making something that tastes oh so good.

How else can CricketSoda give tribute other than a video! Enjoy!

After a hiatus of dancing (I pulled my Glutoid-o-Mastus)I am proud to present Dance Levi Dance 3. I have mastered a few new moves! Please let me know what you think, and as always, please send in any suggestions you have so I can improve my dancing. I have come a long way thanks to all you out there, and can’t wait to better my own dancing. (more…)

On February 20th get out your night grilling tongs and pull up a chair for a rare natural show of epic proportions (literally). The earth will steal all the moons sunlight, and will cast a shadow across the surface of the moon. While this is more common than a solar eclipse, it is still a spectacle to see and celebrate.

The eclipse will begin at around 7:40p.m. with a partial eclipse. Slowly the shadow of the earth will engulf the moon until around 9:25p.m. when the full eclipse will occur, and the moon will start slowly coming out of the shadow.

So get off the tube and enjoy something amazing for a change!

(Satire Disclaimer) According to local eye witness reports a “Slim Jim,” or a really skinny guy dressed up like Uncle Sam, was used to bust well known prostitute “Lady Liberty.” Miss Liberty had been running a prostitute ring for over a year, and have developed a brand known as “The Night of Liberation.” Police report that with this bust, there a no longer an costume wearing prostitutes left in the city. (more…)

Once upon a time we were ecstatic to have our Bonaroo tickets in our hands. So excited that I tacked my ticket up on the wall where I could see it from bed, even though it was a dangerous idea, letting it float out in the world of paper hungry dogs and money hungry fingers. Our favorite band Radiohead would be headlining, along with Beck, My Morning Jacket, and Damian Marley. When it finally happened it was everything we could ever want in a music festival. (more…)

Rating : 5.1 out of 10

Sometimes movies try to take an idea way to far, creating a Hollywood love story out of a cult Internet following, and not giving us enough of what we came for, which was strange deaths. We read The Darwin Awards to laugh at some of the darkest stories we can laugh at, and the movie failed to give us enough. (more…)

This really badass video from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds features a seedy Cave with his hair slicked back, he mustache in full form, his shirt open to expose his chest, continuously walking to the grove as song related images flash behind him. (more…)

How do you earn a buck after releasing your album for free online? Tours, tours, and more tours! Use that mailing list for the CD and bring out the masses! That’s Saul Williams plan at least. He announced several dates this morning for his project Niggy Tardust. Starting at SXSW and hitting up almost every city in America, Williams will be showing the world for the first time his co-produced by Trent Reznor, kind of strange Goth, Political, Philosophy hip hop masterpiece. (more…)

Not the best lineup, but I’m glad Radiohead and Led Zeppelin won’t be headlining together. That would just be weird. I’m sad David Bowie isn’t playing, but fuck nucka, peep this. (more…)

My dad always taught me that when a flock of birds fly over your head, the last thing you want to do is look up. Unfortunately for this guy, his father must not have loved him.

It is dangerous to be a news reporter in these scary and trying times.

Diabetes costs you and me a lot of money. Forget the fact that I will have horrible complications and die early because the cure for my disease didn’t take precedence over the profit potential of keeping me sick and in need of expensive medication. Diabetes takes our standard of living down a notch each and every year, and no one seems to give a shit that they are losing all this money. (more…)

I will be presenting stories from time to time that my nine year old son wrote. No, this is not some gag, they were really written by him. I’m not the kind of parent that puts those retarded “My Son Blah Blah” stickers on their cars, but this kid isn’t half bad. So without further ado, I hereby present to you the first ever published piece from the satire and humor child prodigy, Mark Garrison Jr. (more…)

Subject: The rest of my life
From: Your FORMER corporate slave
Date: First day of the rest of my life!
To: FORMER captor (Tom in logistics)

They say that a man can only be so lucky, but I received the most important emails of my life today. Not only am I being personally requested to handle an $80,000,000 inheritance transaction for a cocoa/gold/oil farm widower from Congo, but I have been randomly selected out of over 500,000,000 emails to receive Norway’s biggest lump sum lottery prize of over $75,000,000,000,000. I’M RICH BIOTCH! (more…)

A new year and a whole new string of festivals to go to!

The Coachella Music Festival in Coachella Valley California has always been the mecca of music in America. Year after year since 1999 (if I remember correctly) Coachella announced an amazing list of bands that would meet one weekend and play in the desert. This year was no different. (more…)

I went and refilled my insulin prescription today and ran into some really stressful news. Since it’s a new year, and prices need to be adjusted for inflation, I would have to pay $81.91 for my one month’s supply of Humalog Insulin Pens, and another $32.50 for my one month supply of Lantus Long Acting insulin. (more…)

Dan Deacon is playing tonight at Hailey’s, and if it anything like what I have seen in the past, it is going to be one of the best shows to hit Denton in a long time. (more…)

Right down the street from our house is a little Shell gas station that I frequent. We live just far enough away from anything else that it is a pain to drive into town and we avoid it if we can. The station is all about convenience and doing as little as possible to get the drink you need so badly. (more…)

In the opinion of this reviewer, pop music is not what it was. Bands today often lack the talent of the popular bands of the seventies and instead go for looks, shock value, and statements. This being the case, many of the more talented musicians get lost in the underground. Congratulations is one of those bands.

To date, Congratulations has played 37 shows in the 15 months they have been together, and I have been privileged to attend 34. Even in the early days when the band was confined to a smaller catalogue, each show felt different and unique due to the ability of the members to jam off into a tangent whenever they felt one coming. One of the beautiful things about those tangents? Even after the jam went far enough that the audience forgot what song they had left, it was always returned to seamlessly.

This is one of the many things that makes it such a pleasure to see Congratulations. Each member of the band has studied his instrument, or music, in an academic setting and could easily be making it as a ringer for another band. In fact, every single member of the band plays with other groups and plays a vital role as a leader in those. Although their training and musical taste is varied, it all comes together to bring the audience a sound that is entirely their own. One can spot the general love that all members of the band share for Frank Zappa’s complicated rhythms and off beat sense of humor, the intricate counter melodies and musicality of prog bands like Yes, a tongue-in-cheek country feel that pop bands like Cake utilize well, the variety of genre only rivaled by something like Ween, and (if you listen carefully) a friendly, lyric driven love song that even Paul McCartney would want to sing along with. So basically, it’s a sound that can’t be put into words, even by a talented lady such as myself.

The backgrounds of the band members are as different as the influences. Both Gaah(n) (keys and vocals) and Mike Beall (bass and backing vocals) grew up in Little Rock, where they played together as young as 14. Through the years they started a few projects, but for the 6 years previous to Congratulations played separately and took time to “grow up musically.” Through those years Gaah(n) developed his solo music and played with the Denton jam supergroup, BAGG, while Mike worked with Thinking Room, an indie band in Dallas and also had several blues and funk projects going. Brian Felker (guitar and vocals) played with Gaah(n) in Sol Kitchen, which is a Denton gang of top musicians (mostly jazz musicians, all funky) who vow to never record, never play outside of Denton, and never rehearse, while working on his degree at UNT in Music. Brian and Gaah(n) both handle most of the songwriting for Congratulations. Eric Rogers (percussion) is also a member of Sol Kitchen who used to play with thrash-funk band, Parallel Realty. Eric never plays drumset, and instead prefers to play auxiliary percussion, filling in with everything from marching quads to a sample pad. He’s currently studying music at UNT. Congratulations also recently acquired drummer Alan Eckert from jam band $9 Word. Alan is a everything from a jazz drummer to a jingle writer. A side note, I recently saw Alan at his second rehearsal with Congratulations… this kid is good.

Of all the Congratulations shows I’ve been to, I’ve never seen it empty. Even when the band played recently at Mardi Gras in Dallas they managed to pull a good crowd up from Denton, no easy feat. Within seconds the crowd is split into two groups, those that have to dance, and those that want to stay seated and try to figure out the polyrhythms and enjoy the talent. The band will often open with something fun, like “Delicious Part One,” only to transition into the funkier “Jiffy Pope,” and then pull back into “Delicious Part Two,” which has a driving jam leading to a few slow, high notes trailing off. By the end of what the band calls “Delipopecious,” the crowd is ready for anything next. Sometimes it may be “Woke Up Dead,” which starts like death-rock, and has an adorable, Beatlesque chorus, or “Failed Bit,” which can only be described as tongue-in-cheek bluegrass. Some songs showcase the extreme talent of certain members of the band. In the case of “Mr. Funkknuckle,” Mike Beall gets to come out of the background and show off just how good he is with his 6-string bass. Occassionally if Denton’s most talented mc, Soul Relentless is at the show, they’ll have a bass/rap duel that gets so intricate it’s hard to pull your jaw off the floor. Gaah(n) and Brian often choose to showcase each other and while Gaah(n)’s “Riga” lets Brian shred some faces off, Brian’s “Going to the Moll” leaves space for Gaah(n) to rock socks off. The band almost always makes sure there’s a drum jam between Eric and Alan in “Crack of Now,” among others, and the two play together so well, it sounds more like there’s one drummer with four hands.

It’s a shame that often these talented bands go so overlooked by everyone except the indie rockers and the festival crowds. These five men have worked hard to master their instruments and to play well together and it would be nice for more people to have the opportunity to hear them. Of course, last time I spoke to the lads they were trying to put a tour together. You won’t find them on the radio, they are too good to be noticed by pop pundits, but maybe one of these summers they’ll be playing a festival that you’ll be attending. Check them out, won’t you?

http://www.myspace.com/congratsmusic

Band Members:
Mike Beall (Bass, Vocals)
Alan Eckert (Drums)
Brian Felker (Guitar, Vocals)
Gaah(n) (Keys, Vocals)
Eric Rogers (Percussion)

Local man Rodney Mcparkerson resolved to enjoy life more this year. The past few years have been hard on Mcparkerson, and he has become more depressed, leaving the house less and sleeping the days away. He wanted a new fresh start, so he could actually do something with his life instead of sulk in his bedroom. Sadly, after only three days of the new year, Mcparkerson has broken his New Years Resolution, and has locked himself in his room watching reruns of Mash. (more…)

For the longest time every night while driving out to the bar or to meet up with friends we would blare “Sound of Silver,” LCD’s latest album, as loud as Kate would let us turn up the radio in her car. We welcomed the new fresh sound from a band we haven’t explored as much as the others. Their lyrics moved us, and set the perfect mood for the night. (more…)

Due to the fact that people really don’t care what they are watching on the news as long as it is mindless are causing Journalists everywhere to just give up trying to find the hard biting stories and just report about cute things. Today’s top stories, Cousin’s Save Dog from Ocean, Pet Tigers, and Grandma Saved from Reindeer. (more…)

LOS ANGELES — The impact of a strike by porn writers was still not very evident, even as the strike entered its tenth year. While production on approximately twelve adult films was stopped due to the strike, both the porn industry and the porn watching community are barely able to tell that anything has changed. (more…)

I have yet to see the movie, but if they put as much effort into the actual movie as they did in advertising it, then it should be fantastic. This “lost commercial” featuring Dewey Cox is a short goody. Who can’t love a Cox sausage, especially when it comes from the Cox Smoker. (more…)

Santa Claus, working under the corporate name Santa Inc., announced a complete outsourcing of his main Christmas functions to India-based Duhandi Retail Services. Calls to Santa’s North Pole headquarters on Monday were met with a voice mail message. (Actual voice mail recording) (more…)

Even after the recent problems with lead in toys from China and higher gas prices, Santa Clause is once again promising all the young girls and boys of the world everything on their list, as long as they have been nice this year. This comes as a surprise to many experts on the subject, especially after rumors that Santa stormed out of the workshop in a cherry red rage and kicked a bucket of reindeer feed. (more…)

It’s that time of year again, were we all sit back and reflect on the past year, picking our personal favorites in music, movies, video games, and really all pop culture for that matter. What do we want to live on past this year, and what do we want to die with our old fireman calendar? (more…)

Sometimes life can just be to much. Not to worry, CricketSoda cares and wants to help. That is why we have created the Vent Your Misery To College Students hotline! In our spare time when we are not working on CricketSoda, we will talk to you about whatever is bugging you. We have a unique perspective of the world, and perhaps can shed light on something you troubling you.

Members of the CricketSoda staff, college students waiting to wash you in newfound knowledge, are standing by ready for your call. Click the button above to get more information. We look forward to speaking with you.

Denton – Michelle Mashburn, 23, a pirate wrench whore, passed away from studentdom, at the University of North Texas on December 15, 2007. Family surrounded her as she peacefully went with her Lord to a new exciting world of master degrees and careers. (more…)

Since the invention of the car people have developed a complex system to make sure everyone can drive a car where they need to go safely any time they choose. While this system lacks in many areas, and while we still have to spend long periods in traffic, it works for the most part. I can expect not to crash into someone today, and it is probably safe to say it won’t happen tomorrow either. But, even after all this time we have had to get used to the driving lifestyle, some people just can’t seem to grasp the rules of driving. Today, we take a look at some severally road challenged individuals that somehow slipped through the system and were allowed behind the wheel. (more…)

No matter how hard you try, it is almost impossible to keep your computer clean of laggy crap software if you are using the Internet. Even visiting only trusted websites can land you with problems. Scammers and desperate marketers will stop at nothing to get something installed on your computer for the $0.50 commission. So, instead of throwing your box out the window and hoping for a new one this holiday season, I have a few suggestions that will help your computer run faster and more efficiently. (more…)

I just discovered an amazing band after watching a unique and fascinating video. Shot using a single camera shot, and not using computer effects, they create a stunning visual experience. Directed by Roel Wouters and shot in Amsterdam in October, “Robot High School” from the band My Robot Friend is an amazing display of video genius. (more…)

Rockinton, GA - (satire disclaimer) Working late to finish up a project, employees of Smith, Smith, and John Interactive faced a disaster that promised to ruin the hard work of many. Fried egg sandwiches, with bacon and cheese, (on sourdough) delivered to the late night warriors caused extreme cramping. Soon, the only toilet in the building was clogged beyond repair, and the closed church across the street was the only option. (more…)

I remember, not to long ago, that a revolution was in the making. It seemed like that is all anyone could talk about. The time had come to make drastic changes to the way we live life, and the future would be bright because of it. Our apathy had worn off, and we had taken charge of our destiny. We were tired of being told that we were free, while we were so thirsty for a sip of pure freedom. (more…)

It was the show of a lifetime, and we all knew it. It isn’t very often that you will see us braving the cold in line outside a club in Dallas, but inside that club one of our newest favorites and two classic acts would be rocking the house. (more…)

I have always been a huge fan of Poker, but the problem is I am either too broke to play, or I have other things I rather spend my money on (food, diabetes supplies, gas, girlfriend). So, to allow me and my friends to play without falling into a endless debt hole, I have created CricketSoda’s Poker Club. (more…)

Fatty Poindexter will be playing up at Riprocks in Denton, Texas tonight. Be there at 10pm and get a drink, enjoy the show, and dance your ass off. (more…)

When you are the greatest band of all time, with millions of fans in every nation in the world, and your contract with your major controlling recording label comes to an end, it is time to unleash the ideas, the innovation steaming in the back of your head. Freedom has come to you to do what you want with your music Mr. Yorke, and you have not let us down. (more…)