Chapter 5

I would've updated last night but I spent most of the evening writing thank you letters and some "hey how's it going" letters, in fact, I wrote 13. So my hand hurt and I didn't feel like typing up a storm.

So this post I've decided to dedicate to some of my favorite music. My friend Tony Hell and I were talking about this the other night and I thought it would make a great blog post. So I'll be writing about music, music that I consider amazing because it changed me, or my perspective on something. It's gonna be a loooong one, so settle in, and listen to the clips I post. :)

Ok, let's start from the beginning.

When I was a kid, I was a huge huge huge fan of pop music. From Paula Abdul to New Kids on the Block, then as I got older, it was even more into the Boy Bands (NSYNC especially...) Once I hit 14 years old, I moved onto the nu-metal stage of my music tastes. I briefly dated a boy who was into it and he gave me the System of a Down album (it was self-titled) and the song "Sugar" changed me. If you've never heard it, it's a very strange song with really goofy lyrics and pitches. You should listen to it: here

It's the first song I heard where I was like, laughing but still wanted to hit something and dance around. I think when I was 14, my enjoyment of this song started merely out of trying to impress that boy I was dating, but then I realized something, this song also kind of described how I was feeling. I was angry and angsty and wanted an outlet for that.

That morphed into me getting into Slipknot and many many other nu-metal bands, most of which will go unnamed for my embarrassments' sake. haha. Slipknot, however, I do not feel embarrassed about. Slipknot got me through a lot of trying times when I was 15-16ish and most of which I'll never speak about to anyone, because it's unnecessary, so don't ask. I just know that I felt misunderstood and angry and I mean, come on, what 15 year old girl doesn't feel that way? So Slipknot I gave a lot of credit because I had never heard anything so heavy and I had never felt so powerful when I listened to it. One of my favorite songs of theirs: I highly recommend pretending you're an angsty 15 year old girl with something to prove. haha...

I liked Slipknot because they were an entity. They had this crazy personality, they wore masks, they wore jumpsuits, they had 9 members in their bands, 3 of which were the drummers, and they embodied how powerful I wanted to feel.

I also loved music like Incubus at this time. They embodied the more romantic, less angsty me. Plus their music is just straight up amazing. Watch "Warning" (one of my favorites) here This song still gives me chills.

My enjoyment of nu-metal led to my first concert. I was 15, I was dating a new guy, Jason, who ended up having a great influence on the music I grew to love. But let's not talk about that, I was 15, and J and our friend Ryan wanted to go to Ozzfest. I was STOKED. My first show, I would get to see not just one or two, but like 15 of my favorite bands, and my parents said I could go!

Ozzfest was amazing. I had a great time, I got to see live music for the first time in my life, and I got to be one of like 45 women who were there amongst hundreds, maybe a few thousand, men. I felt like a badass because I could hack it with these tough people and wasn't scared.

My nu-metal stage continued until I was 17ish, when I graduated high school. There began my hardcore music stage. I cannot remember my first hardcore show, probably because over the next 3-4 years I would go to easily 200+ hardcore shows. I can say that the band that made the transition to hardcore for me was Glassjaw. Yet another really angry band but had really beautiful musical elements to some of their songs. When I listen to them now, I still enjoy it, but it embarrasses me quite a bit to see that I loved a band so much who so obviously hated women. At least, their music made it seem that way. But at the time, I didn't care.

Glassjaw was awesome because it brought together all of my friends at the time, even the girls. I remember going to a Glassjaw show in Grand Rapids, MI, at the Intersection (which isn't the Intersection that's there now, I'm talking about the old one) and all of my closest friends went. It was a phenomenal show and we were right at the front, screaming all of the lyrics along with them. This is a video of one of there more mellow songs: I will warn ya though, Daryl's voice is really strange and goofy at first. It took me a long time to get used to it.

In combination with my hardcore phase came my indie phase. Cursive was a band that definitely changed my way of looking at music. The singer is an ex-coke addict who is far far far from perfect, but it's like, his perfections showed through his music. Their live show was always amazing, this video isn't the best. But being there, at their shows, would make you feel like you were having an outer-body experience.

Then this singer had another band called The Good Life, which was more chill and less rock-y. I went all the way to Omaha, Nebraska, to see this band live, and it was worth it. This is one of my favorite songs of theirs, ignore the video, but listen to the song.

Also during this time, I thoroughly enjoyed Bright Eyes:



That phase ended relatively quickly. I mean, I still enjoy this music, but I haven't really listened to it in years. Like I said earlier, I was into this indie-phase while also being in the hardcore phase. Well, folks, the hardcore phase never really ended. I was still going to crazy hardcore shows with friends usually 2-3 times a month, maybe more.

I used to see bands called Terror, Walls of Jericho (who I'll get to in a minute), Poison the Well (before they sucked) and so many many more, but most importantly: Every Time I Die.
ETID was something different in a sea of the same hardcore songs.
I've seen them probably nearly 20 times. If you're my friend, I've made you listen to them at some point or another. Here ya go:
Their newest single, "Wanderlust", which I will tell you is much easier to listen to then their older stuff, which I'll post below this:

"Ebolorama"


Ok, so I said I'd talk about Walls of Jericho. They are a Detroit-based band with one of the most tough, most brutal singers in hardcore music, oh, and did I mention this? She's a fucking girl.
This chick, Candace, is phenomenal. She's in a scene that's 99.9999999% male-dominated, and she comes in with this powerful voice and presence and just kills it.


So, at this point in my music timeline, I'm about 20 years old. That is when I started dating Jim, my Hubby. He immediately turned me on to HIM. It was what only could be described as Love Metal (which oddly enough, is one of their album's names). Their music helped chill me out and at the time, I was falling crazy in love with Jim, so their Love Metal helped nurture our budding relationhip (awwwww). You can see one of our favorites here.

OK, so this post is a million years long. I'm gonna break it up into two blog posts I think. Next post will be from 20-25 years old. :-)


Hope you enjoyed it.


p.s: I don't know why the last 1/5 of this post is so frickin' big. It just is. I tried to fix it, it didn't work. sorry.