This year, I’ll try not to think too much
This year, I’ll try to stand up for myself
This year, I’ll live like I’ve never lived before
This is my year, for sure.
Continue reading “100 Resolutions”100 Resolutions
Category: Music
Basket Case
It’s been said that life is just a series of moments. Most of these moments are just average ordinary moments. Some of these moments we know will have a lasting effect. What I’m here to talk about are the moments that seem ordinary but when we look back we truly see how significant such a moment was. How an entire life trajectory can be set in motion by one seemingly innocent little event, a single moment in time, or in this case, 3 minutes.
Continue reading “Basket Case”The Essentials: Streetcore
In “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” with impending doom, Keira Knightly’s character grabs several records before fleeing her home with the hopes of listening to them one last time. The Essentials is an ongoing series about the ten, in no particular order, albums I would grab in such a similar situation.
The first night I heard “Streetcore” from Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros is one of my favorite nights. I was crawling through a festival way out west. No, wait, that wasn’t it. It was college. I was with some of my most favorite people. We were drinking mainly whiskey. We had just poorly sung along with Reel Big Fish’s cover of “Take On Me,” a rendition that set the neighborhood dogs into a barking frenzy. Falsetto is hard. It was time to let the night wind down and give the dogs a break. We traded the wacky ska antics of the RBF and put on the calming mellow sounds of Joe Strummer and Mecaleros. The warm night, the chilled whiskey, the good friends, and awesome tunes can always make for a wonderful night.
Teenage Dirtbag
There’s a new, I guess we’ll call it a game, going around on Facebook where you list 10 albums from your teenage years. Because I can’t just make a list about music that is important to me without yammering on, I have brought it here to add more information about my experience with each album. For most of the years before becoming a teenager, my music was influenced by what my older cousin told me I should listen to. Which was a bunch of gansta rap then heavy metal. But during the teen years I saw him less and discovered punk rock. So this list is comprised almost entirely of punk rock, but there is one ska album and of albums, just to cover all the bases. I’ve also decided to put these in kind of a chronological order.
The Essentials: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
In “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” with impending doom, Keira Knightly’s character grabs several records before fleeing her home with the hopes of listening to them one last time. The Essentials is an ongoing series about the ten, in no particular order, albums I would grab in such a similar situation.
I heard someone say nothing gold can stay. When I first considered “The Essentials,” the Bouncing Souls The Gold Record was one of the first ones I put on my list. It is a great record, and was super important at a crucial time in my life. But you expected as much since that theme has been running through The Essentials. The thing about the Bouncing Souls is they create a vast amount of songs that go directly to my heart. And they spread those songs nicely across all their albums. While I still love The Gold Record, I mean I did name this site for a song from that album, lately I can’t get enough of Anchors Aweigh. However, you’ll notice the title up there reads, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” Because ultimately that is the album from The Bouncing Souls I would want to hear last.
Continue reading “The Essentials: How I Spent My Summer Vacation”
Folklore and Whiskey
There is a nice quote from Kevin Smith about the importance of encouraging a person’s creative endeavor. It’s a bit wordy, after all it is Kevin Smith, so I’m not going to repost it, and in the spirit of the thing I think it is more apropos to link to this comic version of it from Zen Pencils.
For this reason when I was contacted by my cousin, Josh, asking if I would review his latest album, Folklore and Whiskey, I knew I had to say yes. Then I had a moment where I thought, “what if it’s just terrible, do I compromise my integrity and spare his feelings?” Then I remembered this is a cousin on my dad’s side, which is musically proficient (for the most part, I mean it did skip me). Continue reading “Folklore and Whiskey”
Look What Happened
This past Friday Keith and I received a text from Jon asking us to list, in order, our top 3 Less Than Jake albums. Because my mind just constantly makes lists like this I wasted no time answering with Anthem, Borders and Boundaries, and GNV FLA. Keith’s answers were Hello Rockview, Anthem, and GNV FLA. Jon was struggling with his answer, which I think is why he asked, but eventually came up with Hello Rockview, Borders and Boundaries, and Anthem.
Jon was surprised by the lack of Hello Rockview on my list, and that both Keith and I have GNV FLA, an album “that does nothing for him.” So of course I dwelled on this all weekend long and came to some realizations.
For All The Unheard 