I am getting a chance to see two of my favorite bands tonight, Manchester Orchestra and Thrice, at Bogarts in Cincinnati. It's going to be good and I'm very excited. But it got me thinking about all the concerts I've been to. Since I was a kid, my dad, who was a youth minister at the time, would bring me along to summer Christian concert festivals. So when I was little, I was seeing bands live. Then I began to think about all the good shows I've seen. Radiohead is certainly up there. With a 23 song set, I was in alternative rock euphoria. This past summer I had a chance to see Wilco, and it wasn't a bad show, but the venue was not my favorite for a rock concert.
From time to time though I like to look at the glass half empty. There are bands I have yet to see that I would love to drop dollars for a ticket someday. I tried to come up with a presentable list of five. I hope you enjoy.
Ben Folds
The profane piano man of my generation. His live shows are unpredictable and hilarious. He is great with the crowd and has a large and fun catalogue of songs. He has done everything from play with an orchestra to putting his crowd on chat room Russian roulette during a show online. And who else can cover Dr. Dre in a piano ballad?
Say Anything
My latest guilty pleasure. A lot of their material seems very studio reliant, but they manage to recreate themselves in order to pull it off. In addition, Max Bemis seems to write the most memorable lyrics I've ever heard. It would be an hour long punk rock sing-along. I would have liked to see them when they come through Cincinnati this spring, but they open for Angels and Airwaves, who have bloated the price beyond what it would be worth to see the opening band.
The Flaming Lips
I've gotta be honest, I do not know a lot of Flaming Lips songs. Sure, everyone likes "Do You Realize??" and they've been known to cover classic rock songs by Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd, but this is so much more than music. Their live shows are out of this world and more of a crazy rave set to trippy music. And the selling point, they're the only guys that do it like this.
Gorillaz
Gorillaz is the brain child of Damon Albarn, ex-frontman of Blur. The band is known for the presentation of four cartoon characters with an in-depth story line and background. And through this fantasy, Albarn has created trip-hop, alternative rock pop songs that are both catchy and bazaar. This past weekend, Gorillaz actually headlined Sunday night of the Coachella music festival. They are cartoons, yes. So the band played beneath a gigantic screen with the animated band above them. Complete with special appearances and sailors outfits, I have become determined to see this act while I still can.
Brand New
I missed my chance back in the fall for reasons I won't get into right now. How foolish of me. Brand New puts on an intense show with low lighting that makes the crowd feel like they've walked into a loud tent of a circus. The band has nothing short of a cult following, which adds to the atmosphere in a way that Brand New doesn't even have to work at it. I will see this band before I die.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
IRELAND
As some people know, I leave tomorrow for two weeks for Northern Ireland. I'm going with a group from CCU to work with children, teens, and adults through local church plants in the area.
Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
I will be sure to bring back photos and post them. God bless. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Say Anything / Arcade Games
I recently had a friend reprimand me for not keeping current on here as of late. So I have two entries, none of which could stand on their own, combined into one entry.
Say Anything
I didn't like this band. Not the movie. The band.
They are odd. But I finally got a bunch of it (all of it) off of my roommate. And... well... I'm taking my words back. They're good. So here's where I've been corrected:
The first thing that turned me off to this band was their lyrics. Their lyrics are bazaar. Max Bemis, their lead singer, is psychotic, quite literally. On the early albums, a nice mix of excessive pot use and undiagnosed bipolar disorder made his lyrics quite awkward. But the more I hear, the more I indulge in his collage of verbal awkwardness from track to track. It takes a lot of guts to sing about an ex-girlfriend by name, a drug breakdown in a tour bus, and the holocaust all in pop punk format in a single album. Yet this guy pulls it off. And he recently found Jesus I guess, so his latest album brings that edge to the religious talk of how poorly Jesus is treated in both pop culture and Christian sub culture.
Second. They use the studio as an instrument and do a lot of things on the album that could not be mimicked live, such as string sections, sampling, and guest vocalists out the wahzoo. Here's the thing though, they make it work. I know, that's a lame answer, but they really do. In this way, a live show is interesting, because they have 6 members, so there are enough of them to assign tasks to recreating that sound. Ya gotta love that. Once you get passed the bias of live instruments on every track, their albums are quite enjoyable.
Arcade Games
I was talking to some friends at breakfast. And we began talking about arcade games. You know, the ones in the movie theaters and big tents at the fair. That's when it hit me: I have a dream to own an arcade game.
Now if I became rich (not gonna happen), I would fist throw money left and right at charities to begin with. This is most likely so I don't seem like a hypocrite for calling out every celebrity who buys a yacht and wants a key to the city when they give a check to an orphanage and take some photos for People magazine. So once I had charity-ed my butt off, I would splurge on arcade games.
Some would go with the classics. Pac Man. Space Invaders. War Lords.
But I didn't grow up with those. I can think of three that would be great:
1) Time Crisis. This game was great. You get that little foot pedal to pop up from cover and you don't even have to walk around. You just point and fire. But you never had time to play through the whole thing when you were in an arcade, and that's why I would buy it.
2) Tekken 3. I never learned the combos. I would just press the punch over and over and over again. This managed to both make me lose and look like a total jerk. With some time alone with this masterpiece, I could master the arts.
3) Arctic Thunder. Snow mobiles. Missiles. I'm in.
Say Anything
I didn't like this band. Not the movie. The band.
They are odd. But I finally got a bunch of it (all of it) off of my roommate. And... well... I'm taking my words back. They're good. So here's where I've been corrected:
The first thing that turned me off to this band was their lyrics. Their lyrics are bazaar. Max Bemis, their lead singer, is psychotic, quite literally. On the early albums, a nice mix of excessive pot use and undiagnosed bipolar disorder made his lyrics quite awkward. But the more I hear, the more I indulge in his collage of verbal awkwardness from track to track. It takes a lot of guts to sing about an ex-girlfriend by name, a drug breakdown in a tour bus, and the holocaust all in pop punk format in a single album. Yet this guy pulls it off. And he recently found Jesus I guess, so his latest album brings that edge to the religious talk of how poorly Jesus is treated in both pop culture and Christian sub culture.
Second. They use the studio as an instrument and do a lot of things on the album that could not be mimicked live, such as string sections, sampling, and guest vocalists out the wahzoo. Here's the thing though, they make it work. I know, that's a lame answer, but they really do. In this way, a live show is interesting, because they have 6 members, so there are enough of them to assign tasks to recreating that sound. Ya gotta love that. Once you get passed the bias of live instruments on every track, their albums are quite enjoyable.
Arcade Games
I was talking to some friends at breakfast. And we began talking about arcade games. You know, the ones in the movie theaters and big tents at the fair. That's when it hit me: I have a dream to own an arcade game.
Now if I became rich (not gonna happen), I would fist throw money left and right at charities to begin with. This is most likely so I don't seem like a hypocrite for calling out every celebrity who buys a yacht and wants a key to the city when they give a check to an orphanage and take some photos for People magazine. So once I had charity-ed my butt off, I would splurge on arcade games.
Some would go with the classics. Pac Man. Space Invaders. War Lords.
But I didn't grow up with those. I can think of three that would be great:
1) Time Crisis. This game was great. You get that little foot pedal to pop up from cover and you don't even have to walk around. You just point and fire. But you never had time to play through the whole thing when you were in an arcade, and that's why I would buy it.
2) Tekken 3. I never learned the combos. I would just press the punch over and over and over again. This managed to both make me lose and look like a total jerk. With some time alone with this masterpiece, I could master the arts.
3) Arctic Thunder. Snow mobiles. Missiles. I'm in.
Friday, February 19, 2010
"Time To Leave" by John Reuben
Taught young, the world’s wisdom
I told life’s a game, the earth will be your stadium
Be alert, pay attention
(One day) Even your friends will become the competition
Trust no one but do remember this, never burn any potential bridges
Know who’s who, and what they can do for you
And don’t feel bad cause’ in the end they’re gonna do it to you too
Remember life’s not fair
In order to maintain, your gonna have to let you sensitivity be trained
A machine more than a human being
What you say doesn’t always have to be what you mean
Tell them what they want to hear if it’s to your benefit
And words beyond closed doors are insignificant
Push yourself, never be satisfied
Even if you don’t get it, at least you died knowing you tried
Born, live, strive, succeed
Gain it all, bye, now it’s time to leave…
Now, all we see is now
Taught young, the world’s wisdom
Begin to pay attention and make my own observations
All of the kids working hard for admiration
Trying their best not to meet their social expiration
Kind of hard in a world this finicky
Easily praised and yet destroyed just as quickly
I guess me and this world must not be compatible, cause I don’t want its approval to feel valuable
So who’s next to climb the wall of success, just to see how good the top truly gets
Chasing lies disguised as going somewhere only to arrive and realize it’s really no where’
That’s even if you get there in the first place
What an incredible let down we’re bound to face when we substitute purpose for cheap counterfeit
Too busy trying to succeed in life that we forget to live it
You can live in the infinite or give in to the immediate
Gain it all but someday you’ll have to leave it
This world is temporary and it’s heart is selfish
Think to yourself, is this what wealth is
But now, all we see is now and now is not a bad thing but now does bring tomorrow then
Now becomes then
Moments escape, new ones replace them
Don’t want to face the end still searching
Asking what in this world did I ever find worth in
What could be worse than life of wasted years
Nothing lasting, nothing true, nothing dear
I fear losing beauty in pursuit of bigger things
I fear a broken home courtesy of the American dream
Maybe that’s just me with my emotions on my sleeve, but one way or another we all wear what we believe
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Simple Faith
_____________:
yeah....do you think it would be easier to love Jesus if you werent here? like here, its kinda everywhere...but at a different school...you would have to search for truth. 11:27 PM
Lukas Borton:
it makes sense 11:28
but no 11:28
I am not sure if I believe in divine providence. I'm not sure i buy such an idea. If i was certain of such a thing though, I would cite the college I chose as a place I was "meant to be."
I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I gone to a state school. A lot of things happened in the first month of school that, had I been at state school, I'm sure I would have attempted to remedy with substances. But I wasn't there. I was at a Christian University and was forced to seek community before a bottle.
So let's say I believe in divine placement. Where else is there? Is there somewhere I'm destined to arrive in a year? 10 years? When I'm 50? It's all overwhelming.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Let's Beef Up the Winter Olympics
Did you see the NFC championship game? It was great! Back and forth leads, full on contact, overtime! It was such an entertaining matchup! Doesn’t it get you all excited for the Winter Olympics?!
Yeah, me neither.
The Winter Olympics are an excuse for people who play obscure sports to compete on TV. We know that the Greeks didn’t figure skate. And they didn’t have rifles to cross country ski from target to target. It really doesn’t make much sense, and it doesn’t have quite the entertainment value of the real Olympics. Let’s face it, Apolo Anton Ohno isn’t going to get a picture taken of him hitting a bong and then proceed to have all of his posters taken down in the YMCA’s where kid’s who are idolizing him practice.
So how do we fix the Winter Olympics? Make it like football: full contact. Every sport. Speed skating could be like roller derby with blades. You can attempt to block long jump skiers before they hit the ramp. Don’t curl with stones on ice, let’s make it a bomb! Let’s put two bobsleds on the same track and let them fight each other as they descend like a scene out of Mad Max.
Would I tune in then? Yes. I would watch it if it had such a gladiator aspect. And honestly, I think this is what it takes to make people tune in this winter: life and death scenarios. Otherwise, it just looks like the UN got a snow day and sent some really athletic people to go sledding. Luge, bobsled, skeleton, ski, snowboard, etc… we get the idea, you’re going down a snow-covered hill really fast. I’d rather watch the chubby fifth grader go down the hill and right into a hay bail or tree on his snow day than watch a world class athlete go down as quick as possible for a medal.
Yeah, me neither.
The Winter Olympics are an excuse for people who play obscure sports to compete on TV. We know that the Greeks didn’t figure skate. And they didn’t have rifles to cross country ski from target to target. It really doesn’t make much sense, and it doesn’t have quite the entertainment value of the real Olympics. Let’s face it, Apolo Anton Ohno isn’t going to get a picture taken of him hitting a bong and then proceed to have all of his posters taken down in the YMCA’s where kid’s who are idolizing him practice.
So how do we fix the Winter Olympics? Make it like football: full contact. Every sport. Speed skating could be like roller derby with blades. You can attempt to block long jump skiers before they hit the ramp. Don’t curl with stones on ice, let’s make it a bomb! Let’s put two bobsleds on the same track and let them fight each other as they descend like a scene out of Mad Max.
Would I tune in then? Yes. I would watch it if it had such a gladiator aspect. And honestly, I think this is what it takes to make people tune in this winter: life and death scenarios. Otherwise, it just looks like the UN got a snow day and sent some really athletic people to go sledding. Luge, bobsled, skeleton, ski, snowboard, etc… we get the idea, you’re going down a snow-covered hill really fast. I’d rather watch the chubby fifth grader go down the hill and right into a hay bail or tree on his snow day than watch a world class athlete go down as quick as possible for a medal.
Friday, January 8, 2010
What a novel idea!: Part I
"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean."
-Robert Lewis Stevenson (that guy who wrote Treasure Island, I guess.)
So I got a bright idea about two months ago. As I examined my first semester of school, I started realizing it was a great story. I caught this hint because I found myself telling people the story over and over. Now, not the entire story, of course. I'd tell bits here and there. But I realized two months ago that each event tied to another event, and they all tied into a larger story.
That's when I got it: write a story about your first semester of school.
Well, I'll assure you, this idea was not strongly executed right off the bat. However, in the month of November, I somehow managed to scrap up about three chapters. They were total crap. I put it down because I got busy. Also, I was still attached to the story, if that makes sense at all. The tale had not resolved itself properly yet.
I sat at home over Christmas break, and out of sheer boredom, decided to give this another shot. So far, I added a prologue and revised my first chapter. And it's much more entertaining now.
So here's the trick; I have to figure out what I'm going to put in and what I'm going to edit out. Names for sure fall in this category. If you know me, and when you read the little portion about me writing a story the thought of "oh crap," popped in your head, I've changed your name. In addition, I've gotta figure out how honest I'm actually going to be. The full potential of the story can get messy because 1) misery is very entertaining and 2) I don't tend to share every thought in my head, even if it is profound.
So we'll see how this turns out. I'm not sure that I'm about to become the next Fitzgerald or Kerouac. But I'm curious.
Why do people climb tight wires across buildings? I have no idea. But it sure is amazing. Maybe they do it just to prove they can. That's how I feel. I want to write my story because I think it's worth telling and to prove I can do it.
-Robert Lewis Stevenson (that guy who wrote Treasure Island, I guess.)
So I got a bright idea about two months ago. As I examined my first semester of school, I started realizing it was a great story. I caught this hint because I found myself telling people the story over and over. Now, not the entire story, of course. I'd tell bits here and there. But I realized two months ago that each event tied to another event, and they all tied into a larger story.
That's when I got it: write a story about your first semester of school.
Well, I'll assure you, this idea was not strongly executed right off the bat. However, in the month of November, I somehow managed to scrap up about three chapters. They were total crap. I put it down because I got busy. Also, I was still attached to the story, if that makes sense at all. The tale had not resolved itself properly yet.
I sat at home over Christmas break, and out of sheer boredom, decided to give this another shot. So far, I added a prologue and revised my first chapter. And it's much more entertaining now.
So here's the trick; I have to figure out what I'm going to put in and what I'm going to edit out. Names for sure fall in this category. If you know me, and when you read the little portion about me writing a story the thought of "oh crap," popped in your head, I've changed your name. In addition, I've gotta figure out how honest I'm actually going to be. The full potential of the story can get messy because 1) misery is very entertaining and 2) I don't tend to share every thought in my head, even if it is profound.
So we'll see how this turns out. I'm not sure that I'm about to become the next Fitzgerald or Kerouac. But I'm curious.
Why do people climb tight wires across buildings? I have no idea. But it sure is amazing. Maybe they do it just to prove they can. That's how I feel. I want to write my story because I think it's worth telling and to prove I can do it.
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