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.