Hey, we want an anthem!

This post is going to be all about music. I got some rants and I got some raves. Here goes.

RANTS:

Last night, this guy named Elijah Wyman came to play at my school. Another guy named Tom opened for him. I liked Tom a lot; he reminded me of a Christian version of Conor Oberst, so I'm not really sure what compelled me to like him. Maybe it's just been a while since I sat around and watched someone play music. I've always said... hand a guy an acoustic guitar... and I'm happy just to sit and listen. I didn't like Elijah as much, which is not to say I didn't admire him: he's totally just doing his own thing with music. His guitar was from like 1940 and he had this other weird stringed instrument that he played one song on. But if I don't like someone's voice then I don't like their music, and his voice just didn't agree with me, so since I had stuff to do and sleep to make up, I cut out early.

Now a word on contemporary worship music. I'll keep it brief since I've ranted about how bad contemporary worship sucks on many an occasion. On Wednesdays in chapel, there's always a praise band, and, you know, I'm all for it, since it's closer to my genre of preference than hymns. But I hate the way it's done. The band picks songs nobody knows, or they do re-makes of classic, well-loved worship songs so we can't actually follow the tune even though everybody knows the words. It's such a show. It's so fucking fake. I always just want to sit down and curl up and hide from how awful it is, but I don't want to be rude so I don't.

Magazine subscriptions are AWESOME when you're in college because they guarantee that something will show up in your mailbox at least once a month. And getting mail is REALLY exciting (except when it's stupid promotional things for like, chapel and bread groups). It's even better when it's a magazine you actually want. I have a friend who gets American Girl catalogs once a month, and I know she enjoys getting them - their entire apartment based their Halloween costumes off it and dressed up as the anti-American girls. But I really do enjoy AP magazine and I actually look forward to reading it.

Which is why it's so disappointing when it comes and I see stupid, cliche, emo/screamo/mallcore bands gracing the cover in all their cliche-swoopy-haired neon anti-glory. I've got no problem with the weird regression to the 80s thing that's going on, and we all know I love neon, but please, boys, restrict it to its proper place at Cobra shows. If you're going to scream about your angst like a million other terrible bands, fine, whatever. But please wear the appropriate attire.

Then I open the magazine only to find more neon-emo advertisements for bands with increasingly retarded names like "Fear Before the March of Flames," "Bring me the Horizon," and "Watch out! Theres ghosts" (which particularly pisses me off because it just screams "bad grammar"). God, try a little harder, you don't fit the cliche yet. Your band name should not be a sentence long. I'm already sick of you by the time I'm done saying it.

RAVES:

I hadn't listened to Mute Math in a really long time, and then I saw this:


That's right: effing brilliant.

Boyfriend and I were talking about the road trip we want to take this summer and how we haven't really coordinated with the other people we want to come along. I've been thinking how kids like us always make grand plans for road trips like this and their plans go down the tubes, so I said, "I can see this ending up as just you and me driving around the country in a car." Of course I don't think my parents would be too keen on that.

Without the ostensible purpose of finding Ravin's family, we would need another reason to drive thousands of miles all over the continent. So I said we ought to start a band, and we agreed that the genre should be Schizophrenic Dance Metal, and that way we'll both be happy. Sooo I'll take bass, I guess, and he'll probs take drums. If anyone wants to jump in, we still need a keytarist and a shredder, among other things.

To conclude, I've compiled this list of ten albums that rocked my world and continue to rock my world on account of their innovation, timelessness, or life-change-ability. Go on, let em rock your world, too.

Dream Theater – Octavarium
House of Heroes – The End Is Not The End
Mute Math – Mute Math
Brave Saint Saturn – The Light Of Things Hoped For
Goo Goo Dolls – Let Love In
Matchbox Twenty – More Than You Think You Are
My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade
Relient K – Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right… but Three Do
Switchfoot – Nothing Is Sound
Anberlin – Never Take Friendship Personal