Where I End and You Begin
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Hey everyone. How about all of these blog posts over break. I have time to think and type. It's kind of nice. Tomorrow, it's back into the crash of things. Last night I went to a rock show at The Chiller in York (the York Ice Skating Rink) with Rachel. It was really good.
The first band was Anthrophobia from Reading, PA. I had met the front man from them awhile ago. he's like personally responsible for the indi music scene in Reading. He does a lot of the booking and works at a studio recording bands. he does all of the booking for The Silo I think. Anyway he spoke at a MIESA conference that I went to two years agao where I met him and Mike no Eggs did his internship with him over the summer. So it was nice to finally actually hear his band. It was pretty hard-core. Shouting and what not. They were really tight. Frank said the stage kept falling apart during their show so anytime he'd rock out the monitor guy had to come out and push the stage back together to avoid injury. I talked to him after the show and he gave me a CD. So I'm listening to that at the minute and I don't know how my parents or cat feel about this hardcore stuff. Ha ha. Anyway, they were great.
The second band was Williams Eve from West Chester. They were like screamo/singing, hardcoreish stuff. it was pretty good. Rachel was just amazed at how hot the lead singer was the whole time. So most of our discussion was about that. Also, they were very color coordinated on stage. The guitarist had a red guitar and a red t-shirt with a black button down and a huge belt buckle and the bassist had a black and white bass and wore black and white. That seems stupid but they looked really good as a band. That's important.
The third band was apparently the local high school hero band. They were called Tea. And to me they seemed like the rolling stones in High School. Like rock influenced blues stuff. Some songs had harmonica parts. It sounded like the doors at times and I think the lead singer wanted to be Steven Tyler with his microphone techniuqe. But, they were just way over the top and too full of themselves. They all had big fros of curly hair and thought they were the shit. Or that's how it seemed to Rachel and I. We went to the back and sat down. It wasn't really enjoyable. Just a lot of showboating. However, Frank said, better to be doing something like this then your average high school emo band. They wer unique amongst other bands that night. I'll give them that. And fortunately, all of the 16 year old girls who came to see them left before the Underwater, who I was there to see.
Jordan and I had tried to go see The Underwater in Ellicott city when i was down there the first night of break but I forgot my ID in PA so we couldn't get in the door. So I heard they were playing in York so I went to check them out. Jordan had pointed me to their myspace site and we had listened to their songs and what not. I was really impressed with the vocalist. He was very Jeff Buckley-esque. Not like they sounded like him or anything, just a point of reference. I kind of doubted it'd be like that live. But, believe it or not, it was amazing. He pulled off ever little vocal. It was really good. What was most amazing was this guy's stage presense. He moved very slowly. Not at all like myself on a stage. But he was intense. I tried to explain this earlier to Rachel but I don't know if I pulled it off. Motion is relative. You can either look at a background and see an object move against it, or you can look at an object and see the background move against it. Like when you see shots of peple driving on TV and they just sit there but you can tell that they are really driving fast because the background flies by. Well, in the same way, this guy didn't move at all but there was tons of motion and energy to him. It's hard to explain. And his eyes were intense and deep. As Rachel said, he was seductive. You couldn't take your eyes off of him. It's hard to explain but it was an amazing experience. He wa hot. And his vocals were spot on the whole night. He paused in between 2 songs and he said, "My brother is here tonight. I don't get to see him very much and I love my brother very much so lets give it up for my brother." He just seemed like a cool guy. The rest of the band was good too. I went through a member by member analysis that night with Rachel and it was something like the following:
The left guitarist was an odd one. He looked like he was wearing eye make-up and he had really tight jeans on and a tight jaw and had long rock-and-roll hair so it kind of looked like he was a cross dresser. Like he had just gotten out of his drag and hopped on stage to play guitar. But he was very into it and banged his head around quite emphatically which made for an enjoyable experience.
The drummer looked like a really buff Sting. He was really good though. He looked like he fit in the group the least but was really good and buff and Sting-esque.
The bassist was a model. A model with a lip ring. When we walked in the rink at the begnning of the night we couldn't find the room but we saw this attractive dude come down the stairs with jeans, a shirt and a tie on. We laughed an thought that the room must be up the stairs because someone so rock-and-roll would only come from the gig and wouldn't be there for ice skating. it turns out he was the bassist for The Udnerwater. I want to know where people find such attractive band members. But he was pretty good I guess. Didn't here anything bad from him but didn't hear anything amazing from him. Just tight bottom end.
The right guitarist had long rock and roll hair down over his face for most of the night so I didn't see much of him but when someone would flash a picture of him he'd smile and give a wink. kind of funny.
Then there was Dan, the front man. He was just amazing. You've heard enough about them. As a band they were really tight. Worked well together and played a really good show. it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Then Rachel and I went to the diner and talked for hours. It was great. I miss her a lot. So it was a fun night.
The first band was Anthrophobia from Reading, PA. I had met the front man from them awhile ago. he's like personally responsible for the indi music scene in Reading. He does a lot of the booking and works at a studio recording bands. he does all of the booking for The Silo I think. Anyway he spoke at a MIESA conference that I went to two years agao where I met him and Mike no Eggs did his internship with him over the summer. So it was nice to finally actually hear his band. It was pretty hard-core. Shouting and what not. They were really tight. Frank said the stage kept falling apart during their show so anytime he'd rock out the monitor guy had to come out and push the stage back together to avoid injury. I talked to him after the show and he gave me a CD. So I'm listening to that at the minute and I don't know how my parents or cat feel about this hardcore stuff. Ha ha. Anyway, they were great.
The second band was Williams Eve from West Chester. They were like screamo/singing, hardcoreish stuff. it was pretty good. Rachel was just amazed at how hot the lead singer was the whole time. So most of our discussion was about that. Also, they were very color coordinated on stage. The guitarist had a red guitar and a red t-shirt with a black button down and a huge belt buckle and the bassist had a black and white bass and wore black and white. That seems stupid but they looked really good as a band. That's important.
The third band was apparently the local high school hero band. They were called Tea. And to me they seemed like the rolling stones in High School. Like rock influenced blues stuff. Some songs had harmonica parts. It sounded like the doors at times and I think the lead singer wanted to be Steven Tyler with his microphone techniuqe. But, they were just way over the top and too full of themselves. They all had big fros of curly hair and thought they were the shit. Or that's how it seemed to Rachel and I. We went to the back and sat down. It wasn't really enjoyable. Just a lot of showboating. However, Frank said, better to be doing something like this then your average high school emo band. They wer unique amongst other bands that night. I'll give them that. And fortunately, all of the 16 year old girls who came to see them left before the Underwater, who I was there to see.
Jordan and I had tried to go see The Underwater in Ellicott city when i was down there the first night of break but I forgot my ID in PA so we couldn't get in the door. So I heard they were playing in York so I went to check them out. Jordan had pointed me to their myspace site and we had listened to their songs and what not. I was really impressed with the vocalist. He was very Jeff Buckley-esque. Not like they sounded like him or anything, just a point of reference. I kind of doubted it'd be like that live. But, believe it or not, it was amazing. He pulled off ever little vocal. It was really good. What was most amazing was this guy's stage presense. He moved very slowly. Not at all like myself on a stage. But he was intense. I tried to explain this earlier to Rachel but I don't know if I pulled it off. Motion is relative. You can either look at a background and see an object move against it, or you can look at an object and see the background move against it. Like when you see shots of peple driving on TV and they just sit there but you can tell that they are really driving fast because the background flies by. Well, in the same way, this guy didn't move at all but there was tons of motion and energy to him. It's hard to explain. And his eyes were intense and deep. As Rachel said, he was seductive. You couldn't take your eyes off of him. It's hard to explain but it was an amazing experience. He wa hot. And his vocals were spot on the whole night. He paused in between 2 songs and he said, "My brother is here tonight. I don't get to see him very much and I love my brother very much so lets give it up for my brother." He just seemed like a cool guy. The rest of the band was good too. I went through a member by member analysis that night with Rachel and it was something like the following:
The left guitarist was an odd one. He looked like he was wearing eye make-up and he had really tight jeans on and a tight jaw and had long rock-and-roll hair so it kind of looked like he was a cross dresser. Like he had just gotten out of his drag and hopped on stage to play guitar. But he was very into it and banged his head around quite emphatically which made for an enjoyable experience.
The drummer looked like a really buff Sting. He was really good though. He looked like he fit in the group the least but was really good and buff and Sting-esque.
The bassist was a model. A model with a lip ring. When we walked in the rink at the begnning of the night we couldn't find the room but we saw this attractive dude come down the stairs with jeans, a shirt and a tie on. We laughed an thought that the room must be up the stairs because someone so rock-and-roll would only come from the gig and wouldn't be there for ice skating. it turns out he was the bassist for The Udnerwater. I want to know where people find such attractive band members. But he was pretty good I guess. Didn't here anything bad from him but didn't hear anything amazing from him. Just tight bottom end.
The right guitarist had long rock and roll hair down over his face for most of the night so I didn't see much of him but when someone would flash a picture of him he'd smile and give a wink. kind of funny.
Then there was Dan, the front man. He was just amazing. You've heard enough about them. As a band they were really tight. Worked well together and played a really good show. it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Then Rachel and I went to the diner and talked for hours. It was great. I miss her a lot. So it was a fun night.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Well, I just spent the last two days helping Craig support the man. Or so it feels. I love Craig and Ben and it was a lot of fun to be up there hanging out with them. But at the end of the day I just realize that I'm supporting something that I totally despise, the church. No holds barred, just honestly here: I despise the church. I don't think it looks anything like it's supposed to. None of this is pointed at Ben or Craig. Craig's just staying inside the lines to feed his family and Ben's just serving Craig. But it's frustrating. If something doesn't work for 20 years in a row give up on it. And that's what I'm doing with church. Someday I may find one that's not a complete waste of time, but until then, I see nothing but bad things coming out of them.
Just to get the record straight; 9/11 and Iraq have nothing to do with each other. Correct me if I'm wrong but Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are two different people with two different lives going on here and there's little to no connection there except we (US) hate them. Cause there was a powerpoint tonight at church that gave some statistics about 9/11 and one of them was the number of US soldiers that have been sent to Iraq or the number who've died there or something. I wa just amazed. They have nothing to do with each other. Any connection between the two is a lie that George W. Bush made up so we'd fight the war he wanted. I don't think the church should be the ones continuing that lie. It just pissed me off that we still haven't cleared that up and to see the grip that the lies of our president has on us. And, what followed were some clips from The Passion of the Christ and something about Jesus sacrificing to save us. Whoever made the whole presentation up obviously didn't care about facts they just wanted to drive that point home. Frustrating
And that's not even counting all of the stupid things about The Passion of the Christ. I hate that movie! I hate it! It's the most distracting piece of propoganda I've ever seen. It's majors on all of the minors and minors on all of the majors. First off, "It is accomplished" I really do prefer, "It is finished." The difference between the two? If you say, it is accomplished when you die, it means that the whole point of your life was to die. Like you've been waiting around to die and then finally you get to and you've reached that goal, so you say, it is accomplished. But if you say it is finished, it's as if some worthwhile thing was occuring and now it's over. It's finished. I believe that Jesus' death was no more important than his life. When he said, it is finished it means that all of his life work was over. he was done with all of the loving and healing on this earth in that form and his natural life was ending. It was finished. When you say, it is accomplished, it implies that most of Jesus' life was less important than his death and I don't believe that was the case. This just perfectly aligns with the sweet-bye-and-bye theology that pervades the church. It says, we're all just waiting around to die and go to heaven, and while we're here, we might as well save a few other people so they can wait around with us to die and go to heaven. It is accomplished pushes Jesus into that kind of theology as well. I don't believe that at all. Jesus' life was valuable from the day he was born. His feeding of the 5000 is just as important as his death. When he uttered the golden rule, I believe that that was just as important, if not more, than dying or saying, father forgive them for they know not what they do. But his death is so feel-good so the church likes to focus on that. They like to watch movies about a man get the shit kicked of him for their sins. It means they're going to heaven, and the special effects are so realistic, and you can buy the soundtrack so you can relive the grueling torture as you drive to work everyday. And you can just focus on Jesus' death constantly and forget all about the love he walked and demanded in the rest of his life. But that part is challenging. He told us to love one another. That's hard. We just want to sit around and wait to die, maybe bomb a few countries while we get bored and justify it through faith somehow. We don't like the life of Christ because it demands a response from us but the death of Christ is entertaining because it means I get to go to heaven. It slipped out of Craig's mouth tonight accidently when he said, at Easter we celebrate the death of Jesus. I think we are starting to belive that. Easter celebrates the ressurection of Jesus. His life. Not his death. But a movie about Jesus' life wouldn't make Mel Gibson lots of money at the box office.
Also, I hate the difference that's shown between Jesus and the other thieves. We witness hours of torture and pain while Jesus is beaten to a pulp but the two thieves show up on their crosses (which are different than Jesus') with but a scratch on them. That's so freaking Catholic. The whole point is that Jesus died like a common criminal. That's the irony and the beauty of the whole story, something that Mr. Gibson misses throughout. Jesus was crucified like a common criminal. He didn't have his own special kind of cross. The son of God, the prince of peace, crucified like a common criminal. That's the point. And I won't even go off on all of the stupid non-scriptural things that are inserted like the satan character. It's just an awful movie that really reflects what's wrong with the church today.
Anyway, then I went into the studio and we did a radio spot for this conference they're trying to push. It was good to be in a studio. It's been a few days. They have a very very nice protools based studio at CLA. It was fun. But even in that, I was just helping them plug a concert of "worship" that I don't even support at it's core level. A night of compromising yourself is not a fun evening. I'm just glad a I had good friends around me. They made it worth it.
Just to get the record straight; 9/11 and Iraq have nothing to do with each other. Correct me if I'm wrong but Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are two different people with two different lives going on here and there's little to no connection there except we (US) hate them. Cause there was a powerpoint tonight at church that gave some statistics about 9/11 and one of them was the number of US soldiers that have been sent to Iraq or the number who've died there or something. I wa just amazed. They have nothing to do with each other. Any connection between the two is a lie that George W. Bush made up so we'd fight the war he wanted. I don't think the church should be the ones continuing that lie. It just pissed me off that we still haven't cleared that up and to see the grip that the lies of our president has on us. And, what followed were some clips from The Passion of the Christ and something about Jesus sacrificing to save us. Whoever made the whole presentation up obviously didn't care about facts they just wanted to drive that point home. Frustrating
And that's not even counting all of the stupid things about The Passion of the Christ. I hate that movie! I hate it! It's the most distracting piece of propoganda I've ever seen. It's majors on all of the minors and minors on all of the majors. First off, "It is accomplished" I really do prefer, "It is finished." The difference between the two? If you say, it is accomplished when you die, it means that the whole point of your life was to die. Like you've been waiting around to die and then finally you get to and you've reached that goal, so you say, it is accomplished. But if you say it is finished, it's as if some worthwhile thing was occuring and now it's over. It's finished. I believe that Jesus' death was no more important than his life. When he said, it is finished it means that all of his life work was over. he was done with all of the loving and healing on this earth in that form and his natural life was ending. It was finished. When you say, it is accomplished, it implies that most of Jesus' life was less important than his death and I don't believe that was the case. This just perfectly aligns with the sweet-bye-and-bye theology that pervades the church. It says, we're all just waiting around to die and go to heaven, and while we're here, we might as well save a few other people so they can wait around with us to die and go to heaven. It is accomplished pushes Jesus into that kind of theology as well. I don't believe that at all. Jesus' life was valuable from the day he was born. His feeding of the 5000 is just as important as his death. When he uttered the golden rule, I believe that that was just as important, if not more, than dying or saying, father forgive them for they know not what they do. But his death is so feel-good so the church likes to focus on that. They like to watch movies about a man get the shit kicked of him for their sins. It means they're going to heaven, and the special effects are so realistic, and you can buy the soundtrack so you can relive the grueling torture as you drive to work everyday. And you can just focus on Jesus' death constantly and forget all about the love he walked and demanded in the rest of his life. But that part is challenging. He told us to love one another. That's hard. We just want to sit around and wait to die, maybe bomb a few countries while we get bored and justify it through faith somehow. We don't like the life of Christ because it demands a response from us but the death of Christ is entertaining because it means I get to go to heaven. It slipped out of Craig's mouth tonight accidently when he said, at Easter we celebrate the death of Jesus. I think we are starting to belive that. Easter celebrates the ressurection of Jesus. His life. Not his death. But a movie about Jesus' life wouldn't make Mel Gibson lots of money at the box office.
Also, I hate the difference that's shown between Jesus and the other thieves. We witness hours of torture and pain while Jesus is beaten to a pulp but the two thieves show up on their crosses (which are different than Jesus') with but a scratch on them. That's so freaking Catholic. The whole point is that Jesus died like a common criminal. That's the irony and the beauty of the whole story, something that Mr. Gibson misses throughout. Jesus was crucified like a common criminal. He didn't have his own special kind of cross. The son of God, the prince of peace, crucified like a common criminal. That's the point. And I won't even go off on all of the stupid non-scriptural things that are inserted like the satan character. It's just an awful movie that really reflects what's wrong with the church today.
Anyway, then I went into the studio and we did a radio spot for this conference they're trying to push. It was good to be in a studio. It's been a few days. They have a very very nice protools based studio at CLA. It was fun. But even in that, I was just helping them plug a concert of "worship" that I don't even support at it's core level. A night of compromising yourself is not a fun evening. I'm just glad a I had good friends around me. They made it worth it.
