Crazy After All These Years

Thursday morning, I left town for a conference and just got back today in the middle afternoon. It was full of therapists (insert therapist joke here) and classes. The presentations went well and were very informative, except for the session in which the presenters read all of their information off of the power-point slides on the screen while we held the handouts in our hands. Paying a few hundred dollars to be treated like a kindergartner is not my idea of sheer joy. The really interesting thing about the conference was that I was once again informed that I looked just like someone else. This may not seem like an odd thing, but this has happened to me several times over the years. My sister was out with some friends and they all thought they saw me at the bar. She walked over and discovered that it wasn't me, but another guy she already knew. Another time a nasty Cruella DeVille woman stopped and asked me how my mom was doing, calling her by name, although it wasn't my mother and I did know the woman. I told her how the woman was doing and later figured out that she thought I was my friend. Then someone else confused me with another friend of mine by a guy trying to hit on my friend's sister. He asked how the parents were and I told him since I did know how his parents were doing. Another friend of mine took me to her friend's place of work, Pier 1, to hang around for a while. When we arrived, they all accused me of being someone else until I got within a few feet of them. These are my best examples of this and there are others I have probably forgotten. During this training it happened two more times. I met a therapist on Thursday and he told me right off that I looked like old what's his name that he went to school with. Then this morning, an attractive PhD. told me that I looked like her brother's boyfriend and that wasn't a bad thing. She also asked me if I was still in grad. school, which I took to be a compliment. I joked with her that I must be the most average looking guy in the world. (That also bring up how a man who has traveled the world over told me that I could pass for at least five different nationalities without a problem. He was a freak, but maybe he's right and I could travel abroad more to find out the truth. ) With this being said, I have a hard time understanding how easily I blend into the background when around other people when I look so much like every other guy out there.

My motel experience at Crestwood Suites was one of the worst ones I have ever had, if not the worst one for me ever, if it somehow tops the Microtel Inn incident. Here are both, you decide:

Crestwood Suites is the white-trash version of Bradford Home Suites. The wall looked really dirty and parts of it were painted while other parts of the wall had a stale, brown color dribbled on them. The room had a smell to it that I can only explain as 'overused'. I killed one roach on the wall, never a good sign of a great hotel room. There were no lights above the front parking lot, so breaking into a car would have been simple and now for the worst! I stayed on the second floor and for some reason had people staying right above me. On my last night there, I arrived at 7pm to hear him, her, or they moving about overhead. 'It' did not stop moving and continued to move even after I awoke at 6:15 am, and beyond that time until I left. It sounded like it weighed around 350 pounds and each step shook my entire room. I wore earplugs as I slept to cover up any outside noise, since I am a super-light sleeper. At some point it actually used a vacuum cleaner on the floor. I was so ticked off. I only got 2 hours of sleep and then had to sit through 5 hours of lecturing awake. I called the front desk 4 different times and the Anna working there never got things to settle.
Microtel Inn off of I-10 near Baton Rouge was the place I stayed the night before I took my licensing exam at L.S.U. I had a room on the second floor and was kept awake by stomping feet and the interstate traffic right outside the window. A South Park marathon was on and I had a hard time not watching it. I got about 45 minutes of sleep and then drove toward L.S.U. I didn't know that it was homecoming weekend, so I had to park a mile from where I was taking the test on campus, and then had to wait an hour to start on it because the people administering the test waited 45 minutes for people late from traffic problems. I fell asleep and woke up as the test was handed out to me. I felt like crap and slept most of a day once I got home.
The bottom line is that it's better to pay through the noise for a good hotel room, rather than get a good deal, never get decent REM sleep, and feel like crap.

Blameshift: Drop Down

Blameshift
Drop Down

Rating: 45 out of 100

The latest release from the band Blameshift, Drop Down, finds the New York-based band riding on the coattails of the post modern rock scene that attempted to fill the void left by the death of grunge and the mass mating of hip-hop with modern culture. Their mix of neo-punk, aggression, musical dynamics, and blend of vocals and rap create an atmosphere in which they question the meaning of life and how screwed up things are in the world. Tackling such large topics without clear messages and the almost laughable snarling of some of the lyrics puts the band taking a plunge into a wading pool of thought.

Blameshift’s sound may have listeners wondering if the band sat around listening to Linkin Park, Evanescence, Creed, 12 Stones, and Slipknot the entire time they were recording the album. Jenny Mann and Tim Barbour split the vocal duties, which makes things a little more interesting. Neither seems to have had vocal lessons, since their deliveries are a bit jumbled, stalemating the flow of the songs. Mann sounds like a mix of Tanya Donelly (Belly), Amy Lee (Evanescence), and a younger Sam Phillips; not a bad voice, but not the right voice for this type of music. She is not aggressive and sounds more fit to lead some contemporary pop rock-edged outfit. Barbour’s voice fits the band like a glove, even though he sometimes pretends to be a rapper left off a Linkin Park tour bus.

The title track does a good job of setting the mood for the album, with its crunchy, hard-rock sound before descending into some borrowed 80’s dance tune with a poorly mixed Linkin Park rap and vocal duet. Retro-punk shows its dyed hair and ragged clothes on “From Here On In”, although Mann could use voice lessons from Joan Jett regarding how to do punk properly. Repetitious guitars also plague the song and prevent it from ever truly taking off. Blameshift can’t help but draw some comparisons to Evanescence, being a hard-rock band fronted by a female voice, and a song like “Love/Misery” doesn’t help kill those comparisons. “Haunted Dreams”, a power punk Blink 182 clunker, has more stops in it than a city bus, which really kills the flow of the power chords on the chorus. “The Maguire Incident” starts off different from everything else on the album with chorus delay before turning things up a notch with all the distortion they could muster up to turn this song in another Evanscence epic.

Blameshift definitely has the desire to succeed, but still needs to grow as a band to get there. Their half-hearted effort to sound passionate on Drop Down is disappointing and the vocal yells and snarls sound like a temper tantrum. The band doesn’t sound cohesive on the album and made the mistake of producing the album themselves without noticing that they don’t have a sound to call their own. Only time will tell if Blameshift can turn the tide.

Ryan T. White (read more about music at www.thelaterrye.blogspot.com)

For more info about this release: http://www.blameshiftmusic.com/

Alex Arestegui: Proem

Here is the first of one of the many reviews I did for another website. More shall appear...


Alex Arestegui
Proem
Novel Records

Rating: 68 out of 100

It’s not surprising that studio musicians are struggling for work with musicians like Alex Arestegui in the music community. If an artist is looking to make an album and likes the idea of an electronic sound, hiring an entire band and paying out a bunch of money doesn’t make sense when someone like Arestegui can do it all. He has been working with the program 'Fruit Loops' for the past five years and now at age seventeen has released Proem.

The release is a collection of eight electronic pieces all performed, produced, and engineered by Arestegui, basically an electronic version of Lenny Kravitz. Most of the tracks are so beat-driven that listeners will want to get out of their chairs and dance, dance, dance, since this is an electronic dance album. “Of Love”, an atmospheric accension of a dance song, starts off the album pounding the listener into submission. Then the track temporarily gives a false sense of peace with lush synthesizers before pounding away again with the beat mixed from an intricate arrangement of sounds. “Endless Bay” is not too dissimilar to the first track, except sounds of some animal creep into the mix. “Dusk” starts off as the backdrop for a R. Kelly song which never happened, but turns into a steady percussive loop of beats and melodic arpeggios. “Tsunami” has the most interesting texture with its beat being composed from what sounds like the breaking of sticks. Varying ascending and descending keyboard lines make things even more interesting. The album ends with a track which sounds like the prologue to a Journey song before it turns into an ambient Asian piece, dwelling on the roots and fifths of chords.

The downfall of Proem is that most of the songs follow the same pattern. They start off with a short intro before kicking off with the beat which will define the song. After the song settles into its groove for a few minutes, the slow paced middle section takes over to cool things off a bit. Next, a short intro begins as the beat which defined the song takes over again at full throttle. Mixing the song writing formula would have helped things, along with not pounding the beat so hard that it actually threatens to tear the eardrum.

Ryan T. White http://www.thelaterrye.blogspot.com/

For more information: http://www.novelrecords.com/

Sponsored by the Letter B

Barenaked Ladies surprised me with the album Barenaked Ladies Are Me. On their other albums I can only find one or two songs worth listening to, but this album is full of good tracks. "Home", "Bull in a China Shop", "Peterborough and the Kawarthas", "Maybe You're Right" and "Take It Back" are great. Barenaked Ladies Are Men is the same album with just a couple of extra tracks.
The Be Good Tanyas have the same name as our ex-maid, for some reason that intrigued me. They mix bluegrass, country, and folk influences in a way that doesn't overwhelm the vocals, but definitely carries the songs. Unfortunately, the album is full of mediocre songs that have signs of life, but then the ladies pull the sheets over their heads. "Opal", "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today", and especially their cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry" standout on the album.
Pet Sounds is The Beach Boys landmark album, but it annoys me. I sat down and listened to the whole thing and I was really disappointed. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows" beat out the rest, but this album can't touch the album it partially inspired and is compared against, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band which leads us directly into The Beatles.
The Beatles are one of my favorite bands and are responsible for where modern music is today. The Anthology albums had some different versions of classic songs which are worth hearing and a couple of new songs including "Free as a Bird", but were a little too much for a casual fan. I kept some of the music from part I and III, but never got around to II. Help! was the beginning for me with the band. "You've Got to Hide Your Love away", "Yesterday", "Help", and "Ticket to Ride" are great pop songs worth listening to again and again. Past Masters Part I is a disappointment. It's mainly a collection of early songs, which is not my favorite Beatles period. "She Loves You", "I Feel Fine", and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" are my favorites on the album. I have most of their albums, but not that many in my iTunes library for some reason.
Belle & Sebastian's The Life Pursuit is great background music with "Another Sunny Day" being my favorite track.
Deluxe is one of the best alt.rock debut albums. Better Than Ezra runs through "In the Blood", "Good", "Southern Girl", "Rosealia", "Porcelain", and "Heaven" while just stumbling on a couple of tracks. Too bad the band got away from this sound. How Does Your Garden Grow? features "One More Murder" and one of my all time favorite songs, "At the Stars".
Blue Merle reminds me of what would happen if Coldplay lost the piano and hooked up with a bluegrass band. "Burning in the Sun" and "Lucky to Know You" are awesome songs and overall the album is a Sunday afternoon drive masterpiece.
Bob Dylan is one of the most important people ever in music. His voice may sometimes be annoying and difficult to understand, but he defined what folk music should be and then turned around to revive what rock and roll is supposed to be while men were starting to poof up their hair and match their makeup to their guitars. The last 3 albums he has put out Love & Theft, Modern Times, and Time out of Mind are new classics. I don't see how he can keep coming up with relevant music after being around as long as he has. The Rolling Stones and The Who try, but fall way short in my opinion.
"Don't Worry Be Happy" is one of my favorite songs; pathetic, but true. Bobby McFerrin did each track with his mouth and that was almost 20 years ago, that just wows me.
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" is one of the those songs that gets stuck in my head for abnormally long periods of time. It's not that Bonnie Tyler has some great voice, it's that the song is just way too catchy and one of the best for karaoke ever.
Boston was one of the best classic rock bands around in the 70's and early 80's. "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", and "Rock & Roll Band" are the best on Greatest Hits, but the album is a scary one. It is dedicated to Alcoholics Anonymous and even features the song "Higher Power". I know AA works for some, but they don't release statistics so studies can prove it.
Brandi Carlile's "Thrown It All Away" is one of my favorite songs. Her voice and the rock/country sound draw me in and I just love it.
Bread's Anthology is camping out on my laptop because my friend told me that all the guys she knows like it a lot. I haven't made it all the way through, but chances are I won't agree with them. I'll find out for sure when I make it through, 20 tracks is enough to know for sure.
Brendan Benson's The Alternative to Love was a disappointment. "Cold Hands (Warm Heart) is one of the best pop songs I have ever heard, but Benson doesn't maintain enough momentum to make it through the entire album. "Spit It Out" and "Gold into Straw" standout amongst the others.
Brian McKnight's self-titled debut has been his best album. I spent many hours attempting to sing his songs correctly, but struggled because I am just too white and have no soul. His Take 6 roots predicted how some of the songs would flow, but overall "One Last Cry", "After the Love", his remake of Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go for That", "Never Felt This Way" and "Is the Feeling Gone" are great and some of the only r & b I can listen to and enjoy.
Bruce Cockburn's "Open" is one of those songs with a catchy bass line worth hearing. "Different When It Comes To You" is another well written song, something I have noticed a lot from him.
Born in the USA is one of those albums that has so many good songs on it that it's hard to remember what's on there. "Born in the USA", "I'm on Fire", and "Dancing in the Dark" are three of my favorite songs from the Boss. I didn't really listen to another Springsteen album until after 9/11 when Lonesome Day came out. I ended up liking this album more than the prior one. It's hard to find a bad song on this album because it is overrun with songs like "Empty Sky", "Waitin' on a Sunny Day", "Lonesome Day", "You're Missing", and "The Rising". It's amazing how such a horrible event and The Boss dealing with it through haunting visuals can actually turn out a positive vibe.
Bryan Adams' So Far So Good was one of the first albums I ever bought on compact disc. There are only a few disappointments and if you actually listened to music in the late 80s to early 90s, there's no reason to not have this album in your collection. The updated version has some songs not included on this album, but it gets so diluted that it's hard to have the will to make it through the album. So Far So Good is missing "All for Love" featuring Sting and Rod (Gag!) Stewart and "Have You Really Ever Loved A Woman", but has the best including "Everything I Do, I Do It For You", "Heaven", "Can't Stop This Thing We Started", "Please Forgive Me", "It's Only Love", and my favorite, "Do I Have To Say The Words".
Bush closes the B's out with "Glycerine", their song with the most 'buzz'. Time to bring on C.

Oh Crap! It's the Grammies!

I was excited all week about seeing the Grammy Awards tonight. I know last year, I was avoiding them. Stupid thing to do since I missed U2 kicking butt all over the stage and also getting awards. Tonight, I was working on a paper for a class and sat talking to my wife while she watched "Grease" on NBC. Blah Blah, grrrr...I hate it. Out of nowhere it struck me, "Oh crap, the Grammy Awards are on CBS and The Police are opening things!" I ran to the tv, changed the channel, discovered we don't actually pick up a CBS station clearly, and then ran into the other bedroom. (We don't have cable tv. This freaks out a lot of people. They ask what my wife and I do all the time and they are actually curious because they figure we would have about a dozen children by now because we don't have cable. We tell them, "We read a lot, talk - mainly me- and watch movies that come in the mail". They just don't understand how we can survive. My parents even have cable, although they still don't know what stations go with which numbers and only watch maybe two to three hours of tv a day. Go figure.) I finally get it to show up more clearly on the tv in the bedroom and my wife comes in with the vacuum cleaner asking me which tv I want to watch the show on as she moves the plug even closer to the wall. I explain about reception and she leaves. It was 7:3o and yes you guessed it, The Police were done at 7:05. Argh!! I watched the rest of the show and they never peeped out from anywhere. I can't put my disappointment into words. The Grammies hath avenged me.

Farewell to the World

Last night was the big night; we opened for the Crabb Family on my school's stage. We did well with our five songs. The acapella song we opened with went okay, then the next 3 were all new ones and sounded better. I enjoyed playing them for the first time live and for probably the third time ever. The last one was a song we do every concert. I have a hard time naming songs because I don't actually sing any lyrics, I just play the bass and hope to hear the guitar and keyboard piping out of the monitor mix. We only took up maybe thirty minutes of the concert, which was probably a good thing because the rest of the concert took up three hours of my life.

The Michael Boelyn Group was up next. They were a vocal trio with a pianist, keyboardist, tracksmith, and whatever else. It was confusing because he played a Yamaha and we heard drums, bass, guitars, and everything else. I hate soundtracks like I hate war; they put good musicians out of a job. After they finished The Crabb Family took the stage and took off on a three hour tour. Adam Crabb looked like Ryan Seacrest and Jason looked like the X-Men's Wolverine freshly escaped from the military hospital in his faded jeans, leather jacket, patchy beard, and 1980's Jeff Porcaro haircut. They began by playing "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" from John Mayer's Continuum and somehow morphed into a slow-paced, blues version of "Shout to the Lord". My wife and I were really surprised, but we like John Mayer too. They continued with the worship songs for a while, throwing them through the remix shredder. The arrangements sounded like they had been rehearsed thoroughly, showing the band's attention to detail. Then they went through the classic songs for all the fans out there. I recognized some of them, but I have never really listened to a Crabb Family cd. Maybe forty-five minutes later, the church service broke out with all of the 1-4-5 throw in a random 6 chord progressions. All of the music sounded good throughout, but the concert was basically the Jason Crabb concert featuring the family. Jason played like a guitar god, sang like he had been buried with the blues since birth, and worked the stage like he was James Brown's gospel counterpart. Right before the last song, they announced that they support Holt International, a great cause, but the presentation went on for probably about twenty minutes. The organization sounds great and successful, but the presentation was at a bad time, since we were all wanting to get out by that point. Two and a half to three hours was a little much of the Crabb Family for anyone and a three and a half hour concert was way too much for just about anyone (I think, at least).

My parents were too exhausted to go eat with us after the concert. I asked my mom what she thought about the music and she said that she had a hard time picturing me playing that kind of music. She enjoyed the Crabb Family a lot. My dad didn't seem to be having the best time, but he is like me and has a short attention span (probably about an hour for that concert).

I felt jealous while watching the family jam out for that long. It would be awesome to travel around playing music all the time, but I am sure it would be really difficult to have anything close to a normal life while running around all the time.

Back to the iPod:
"Horse with No Name" is one of America's best songs and one of the best radio songs ever. It is quite infectious and one of the best for karaoke. "Lonely People" always keeps me wondering about the silver cup and how it's related to marriage.
Amos Lee's "Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight" has a really soulful groove planted on some great acoustic guitar.
The Appleseed Cast is another Radiohead influenced noise band. "Here We Are" and "Peregrine" are two of my favorites from Peregrine.
Aqualung's piano-based pop has more flavor than Keane, but not the melodic sense. "Left Behind", "Brighter Than Sunshine", and "Strange and Beautiful" are all great songs.
Aqueduct is next with "Five Star Day", a great track which leads right into
The Arcade Fire because it sounds like it would have been a b-side to Funeral. Neighborhoods 1 and 2 ("Tunnels" and "Laika") sound like a more accessible version of Talking Heads. The singer's voice borders on psychotic at times and the music has a great beat to it.
Ari Hest opened for the Finn Brothers at the House of Blues in New Orleans. "They're on to Me" is a great pop track driven by the acoustic guitar. I should probably check out the rest of the cd sometime.
Army of Anyone got me pretty excited when I saw them on The Tonight Show. I downloaded the album the day it came out to only discover that I had actually discovered Talk Show with a different singer. The album starts out great, a little rock with Beatles influences, and then just doesn't go the distance. It got rather boring and I haven't picked it up since.
The Association is one of my parents favorite bands. They liked them so much that they actually hiss when I mention the Beatles. My parents first date was at an Association concert, too bad they switched to country music shortly after that and stayed with it until I was in high school. There are too many good songs on Greatest Hits; don't even bother with a regular album from them, all the good songs are here. We actually drove around and sang the entire album. There were five of us and we knew all the words and split up all of the vocal parts and did a decent job.

That's it for the A's. (I am currently listening to the E's, but I wanted to start at the beginning, so there is a lot of backtracking on my part.) The B's will start shortly and I can see the major one up above this paragraph.

Who's been checking out your Hanes?

Alexi Murdoch's Time Without Consequence is a great album in the style of Nick Drake. "Orange Sky" has been championed as the best track on the album by different tv and movie soundtracks. It's a really mellow album, nice for just driving around for some peace of mind or for reading on a Sunday afternoon.
Jump from mellow to metal with Alice in Chains. "Man in the Box" and "Heaven Beside You" are two of their best 'heavier songs'. I prefer the Jar of Flies E.p. over all the rest. It's hard to beat songs like "No Excuses" and "I Stay Away".
Alison Krauss' "Restless" is a great song, so much better than the bluegrass tracks I have featuring her. The song has a lot more of a pop feel to it, with roots music to drive it along.
It's sad when a band's first album is their best, even after 3 more attempts to top it. All Star United's self-titled debut is one of the best Christian pop albums ever, full of British pop fluff done in a tasteful way. "Torn" is one of my favorite songs ever, then add in "La La Land", "Bright Red Carpet", "Angels", and "Drive". I saw them on their first tour days after they had signed their first record contract. They were with Third Day and Seven Day Jesus. Ian, the lead singer, actually signed one of my acquaintance's underwear. That was kind of scary.
"I Just Want to Be Loved" from A.M. Radio is next up, one of the great songs off of the Smallville Talon Mix. I hate that all of these shows are putting out albums of indie music, only because it's the popular thing to do, not because they really want to promote new music from people needing some exposure.
Even though I find it somewhat annoying, I have Amanda Marshall's Tuesday's Child on here. "Love Lift Me" and "Shades of Gray" are good songs, but the rest of it is either really generic or too soulful for me. I honestly have this because the producer ex-boyfriend of a girl I liked swore by this artist.
Ambrosia was a band I had heard of, but I only laughed at their fruity name. I heard an inside music podcast featuring David Pack and was surprised to learn that he was a founding member of the band and also wrote "Biggest Part of Me", one of my favorite songs. The rest of Anthology was decent, some better than other including "How Much I Feel" and "You're the Only Woman". Hard to believe that this prog rock came from the same West Side Story producing genius.

Like Dandruff from a Shoulder

We practiced tonight for Friday's concert. It went okay, but they pulled two new songs I have never heard before out for me. They know it frustrates me, but this is my main musical outlet for now. I guess that's a positive in a way though because it pushes me even more so to finish my music and find songs to play with my wife. I felt kind of rusty, buy how great can you feel when you are playing songs you've never heard. Before that, I was tangoing with paperwork regarding counseling in my school and it would be so much easier if I didn't have my counseling licenses. I called a guy I work to go meet up somewhere and just hangout while drinking coffee and tea. I think he just brushed me off even though we had talked about doing something earlier this week. Then later, I called another old friend of mine to see how he is doing since his grandmother just passed away rather than go by and see him at the time, because I didn't know the condition of all the family. He didn't answer and I left the always awkward voice mail. I have hated leaving voice mails since high school. I would have what I wanted to say to a girl planned out and then I would get an answering machine. That totally changed the dynamic because you were no longer talking to just her, it became addressing at least one parent or possibly the entire family which then meant if they weren't expecting your call, the girl would more than likely get railed about the whole thing and then she would be too embarrassed to even return the call, if she could even call back (which as weird as it sounds, some parents would not let the daughter call any guy back), or the girl would act like the whole thing never happened. Those were some torturous years for me for many reasons. It was like Mike Tyson was beating the crap out of my self-esteem. While pursuing my undergraduate degree, I worked at a pharmacy where I was responsible for calling people about prescriptions and I had to leave a lot of messages. This was even worse because of confidentiality I could not leave important details on the message because some people didn't want others to know personal info. How do you say something by saying nothing? Yeah, confusing as always.
I guess the whole point being, I don't really reach out to do much with others and the day I do I go 0 for 2. So much for being social. I just need to start talking to really old people at Book-A-Million again...that would be guaranteed reinforcement for my continued attempts to socialize.

More under A for the iPod:
A.J. Roach almost sounds like Travis Tritt on "Grandaddy"(I always want to add another d).
Abra Moore's voice soars on "I Do". It's not the greatest song, but I find it quite sexy.
Adam Richman's "Mary-Anne" is a great rock song. Who could resist the lyrics 'Mary-Anne, you're such a whore!' It's a great up-tempo number.
The Afters confuse me. I Wish We All Could Win starts off as I good rock album, one of those from a band of Christians trying to be taken seriously, or so I thought. As I made it through the album I came across a number of songs which sound like altar calls, not a bad thing, but obviously they have fallen into the trap set by the music market: if you put too may altar calls on an album, you get labeled and removed from reaching as many people as you could have with maybe one e.g., Lifehouse's "Everything". The album is definitely worth hearing and they have come along way from chilling with guitars in the corner of the Starbucks where they worked.
Aimee Mann has a lot of melancholy music and that's why I have never bought an entire album of it except for the Magnolia soundtrack, but it's not on my iPod. "Humpty Dumpty" is one of my favorites from her, but "Dear John", as good as it is, doesn't come close.
Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" has one of the best grooves ever.
Alannah Myle's "Black Velvet is one of my favorite songs ever. Her voice is great, but that bass-line vexes me each time I hear it. Too bad her career never went anywhere, she was hot.

more to come...actually thousands...

Rodeos are for the literate too!

My wife and I went to our first rodeo last night. We got to check out the whole thing from the sky-box with one of my friends from the band and had a really good time. It's hard to believe that I am from and still live in the South and have never been to one. I had watched them on TNN when it was still a network, but never in person. It took a little time to figure out what was going on and then add in that the box was full of people I did not know. Time to turn on the social skills or put on the 'life of the party' hat. Yeah, I don't have one, so I talked to people about random things to fill time, not realizing that the practice would help me out later. Guys were roping, riding bucking broncos and bull, wrestling cows to the ground, and roping each other. There were some women too, but they only knocked over barrels and jumped on moving horses. Rodeos haven't moved much past the days of male dominated society, but outside of that, don't think of Rodeo and Rednecks having lots in common. It was a fairly modern event featuring pyrotechnical effects, a JBL sound system, and very little country music. It was like a wrestling event with all the random rock music including Billy Idol, Joan Jett, AC/DC, and Neil Diamond. I enjoyed that more than other parts actually. My friend told me that hardly any of the 'cowboys' competing tonight actually listen to country music. Most enjoy hip-hop or jam to rock music. I felt sorry for the animals, but my friend insisted that the animals were well taken care of by the contestants and caregivers and that most of what they do while competing on and with animals doesn't do any damage. He rodeos (Is that actually a verb?) himself, so either he believes that or just says it to believe that it's okay, I am not sure which.

As we left we ran into an old friend of mine whom I have not seen in quite a while. We got into conversation and talked nearly an hour. It went well since there was a lot to catch up on, but talking for that long can be difficult even for me. I almost ran out of things to talk about; okay, I mean safe things to talk about (safe meaning that we wouldn't get into an argument or irritate the crap out of each other), which has only happened a few times to me while actually talking. My wife enjoys these times and refers to them as rare. We covered everything from jobs, to wives, to old friends, and old grandmothers. There wasn't much else left to cover, except for the invite to do something sometime. He still hasn't done it from the last time and even mentioned to me that he had just done that to another one of our 'old' friends even though he had meant to call. Sometimes I miss this friend, but other times I think about how much different things are now. Maybe I would feel better if I got a few things of my chest and then I might care more about getting together with him to hangout, but as of now, it's not something I think about on a regular basis. Rarely ever do I sit around and wonder what people are doing and it's only for a moment if that even happens. I think it's funny how every time I run into one of my old friends that they tell me "Man, I've really been thinking about you lately!" I think in my mind, "That's interesting, because I really don't think about you." I am sure if we get together, we will go into more detail about what was discussed before and other more uncomfortable topics will pore forth, but I will wait to see if that happens. Maybe things will go a lot better than they did the last time we went out and met to eat. If everything else fails, there's always the old stories about us and the friends we never see anymore.

Friday night will be our next concert. Our website is www.thearenos.com and we will be opening for the Crabb Family. This is their farewell tour, since they are breaking up later this year due to reasons beyond their control, from what I understand. We are playing a six song set and hope to record with Gerald Crabb later on this year. (Who knows, I might be able to land a song or two on the project. I would really feel successful then, if finishing two songs is a big deal to me now. Writing daily will really help me if I know I will have to sit down and wait until the time is up, I will hate feeling like I am just wasting time.) It will be fun. My wife will be coming (she never goes to our concerts because she doesn't really like the style of music, but she loves the Crabb Family and hates that they are breaking up), so will my parents and maybe a couple of other friends. It will be interesting and I might have students actually show up and recognize me as a minor celebrity (haha).

I am currently reviewing all of the music on my iPod and it's taking an awful long time to get through it. I will have to backtrack to cover it all, but I will finish eventually. This is another way to get myself to write daily.

#'s

Actually the iPod starts with numbers rather than A. 3 Doors Down is the first entry and the song "Let Me Go" is a great one. That's the difficult thing about having one of their cds: the two radio songs on the album are great, but the rest is a generic mix of modern and southern rock. This song was supposed to be featuring on one of the Spiderman soundtracks, but they decided to keep it and use it as one of the two song album quota for radio songs.

311 is next with "Amber". This is one of my favorite songs of all time and it rings through my head ever so often, leaving me humming it because the chorus is all I can remember word-wise. Too bad they did so much rap rock and attempted to be The Cure, their pop music is good.

A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder is a really enjoyable album for cleaning up around the house. It stays upbeat most of the time and it's full or great, crafted pop songs. "Miracle Drug", "Drink to Me, Babe, Then", "On the Table", and "Most of Us Prizefighters" are a great 1234 song combination, "On the Table" being my personal favorite. I would listen to Newman's solo work over The New Pornographers anytime.

We are not even ankle deep into the stuff in A yet, but it's time for sleep.

Shopping for Guilt

This morning I went to one of the places I hate the most in the entire world: Walmart. I first started hating Walmart because a friend of mine was obsessed with the store and being there. I hung out with him a lot and we went around to different places just to pass the time away, waiting for something to happen in our boring lives. This was more the case for him than me evidenced by the time that he decided to see how many Walmarts we could make it to in just one afternoon. This happened one morning after we had decided to drive out of town and I happened to be riding in his truck. We made it to four stores in the afternoon and I hated it and told him how stupid it was, but what do you do when you are two hours from home and not in your own vehicle. (Okay there are a lot of things I probably could have done, but I was so embarrassed by the task of the day, I didn't want to tell anyone about it at the time). That happened years ago and the valuable lesson I learned was to never ride in vehicles with stupid people.
We only go to Walmart ever so often, hardly ever on a regular basis. My wife says that Walmart makes her feel tired as soon as she walks through the automatic doors. The longer she shops, the more she feels like a zombie, and when she gets home she has to get in the bed or pass out on the couch. I just feel dirty when I go, guilty because my saving money is stealing money from others. So I still hate Walmart, but for different reasons, and it's not just the store I hate, I hate what's behind the store even more: greed and selfishness. I won't on all the evils of the place including: the tax breaks cities give the store in the first place; how local businesses are put out of business because they cannot compete; undercutting those producing goods for them; ignoring environmental guidelines; claiming products are organic when they aren't; referring workers to the welfare system rather than providing them affordable insurance and or benefits; operating sweatshops in other countries so they can avoid paying taxes; threatening workers with their jobs if they won't work overtime, then not paying them for the time anyway, and etc...

With all that said, I was still there this morning buying things because I can't find them hardly anywhere else. I am such a hypocrite (a word Jesus made famous, of course not in English) and there's the guilt. I really do try to shop somewhere besides Walmart, but I end up back there anyway. Shopping at the other stores probably isn't much better since they are all chains of some major group and run business with greed, but not to the extend or magnitude of Walmart. If you don't like it, I guess you can always grow your own stuff in your own backyard. I am way too lazy for that, but it would be the safe way to live (funny since Safeway is actually a grocery store chain).

I have been watching movie since I got home, basically wasting time. "Everything Is Illuminated" was actually good. It's sometimes hard to tell with the independent movies. "Little Miss Sunshine" is really funny, although not in the laugh out loud sense. Tonight, I will go to my first rodeo, who knows how that will go. That's the nice thing about getting to hangout in a corporate box, if you are bored, you can eat and laugh a lot. The box at the Nashville Predators game we went to had a really great view and was a lot of fun.

I decided to go back on a schedule again. I have some time, but don't produce much with it. I don't want to look back ten years from now on the last ten years and think "What did I do with all that time and what do I have to show for it?" I really am trying to kick perfectionism out of the window so I can be realistic and enjoy life, because life isn't perfect.

Test yourself: How many times did I type Walmart in this post?