This One Has Sweet Links!

For the past week I’ve been conducting a study analyzing the early music of bands and artists I want to emulate. Something you must understand if you are to read “Chronically, Terminally” (this blog) is that on top of having this I.V. perpetually going directly into my bloodstream through my ears feeding me bits other people’s souls via their music, I also aspire to create beautiful music with my soul in it for others to assimilate, to enter into their bloodstream. This is the major motivation for the previously mentioned study; I want to know how they got started.

A few of the bands and artists that I have been studying are Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Muse, Beck, of Montreal, Death Cab For Cutie, Conor Obeberst, and Sufjan Stevens, to name a few =).

All of these bands/artists were all extremely good at what they’re still good at now, even in the earliest stuff I can find from all of them. A major reason I chose these guys to look over is because they all started with a small budget and gigantic imaginations. Once each of these groups got some green they incorporated all sorts of expensive instruments (like a Hurdy Gurdy for Régine Chassagne of The Arcade Fire) distortions and supplementary digital sounds. Though these things sure do help, without them these people are not any less special. Do you get what I'm trying to express? One doesn't have to be rich to encapsulate their soul into something beautiful and something quality, though, who's going to listen to it really without the equipment one needs to flesh it out?

I get the feel that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Bright Eyes but especially Coldplay and Arcade Fire, were always limited in their art until they could afford to do what was always within them.

Here, have an example of this idea. Coldplay's first US release, Parachutes, was recorded with accustic guitar, electric guitar (with occasional minor distortions), a traditional piano sound, and traditional percussion. Listen to Yellow from Parachutes and then one of their newest songs, Viva La Vida.

I want a drum machine and fancy distortions. Oh wait I don't even own my own guitar. Thank you to everyone who has let me borrow equipment over the years. Someday maybe I'll be able to afford my own =)

Chronically, Terminally

Last night I was talking to my brother about love. I thanked him for the love he's shown me. He told me to start a blog about music.

The one way that he has shown his love to me that speaks to me the loudest happened on one occasion when I was spending the week at his apartment, sleeping on his couch. (I swear this all intimately does have to do with music; I swear.) It was upon my return after two family-and-friends-isolated years of self-sacrifice and strenuous labor, which I had devoted to God. The very hardest part of this period of sanctification was pulling the I.V. from my arm which fed my chronic addiction. I’m sure the pains I felt being ripped from my drug are similar to the pains of anyone being stripped of anything that consumes them. Just for the record, the time moved fast, and my cravings seemed to be forgotten in seeing others come to Christ. I’m beyond glad I did it… the one time.

So… Right. Back to the story with my brother...

Sitting at his apartment, talking together, he realized he had something I needed more than he did. He told me to wait in the hall as he went to go get something from his room. He returned with a cute little 4 gig glossy teal ipod nano. He inherited it from our mother who got a new iphone for Christmas, and thus had no need for the child’s plaything. He handed it to me and made excuses how he didn’t really even need it because bla bla bull crap. Honestly it meant more to me than almost any other thing that has happened to me in my life.

Though I have to frequently rotate what music is on there (remember it’s a 4 gig), I have, in a big way because of what my brother did for me, constant access to the drugs I need calm my jitters, soothe my soul, and feed my unquenchable thirst for sounds, rhythms, melodies, poetry, bits of souls, human life, love, events, stories, emotion, problems, triumphs…

One time while I was out doing the previously mentioned serving God as a full-time minister thing, I spoke with a rather eccentric Christian who told me that the entire purpose God created us is for us to sing praises to him eternally. I immediately brushed it off as a shallow perspective of God and our purpose, but how far away from the truth is that idea really?