Jimmy Eat Show

Hey guys,
This is a concert review that I wrote for my music blog (mog) and just copy and pasted it over. If if seems a little less WilmingSloanian, thats why.

.....

So here's the update. For said update, let us flash back to an age when Nathan was quite a different chap. In 2001 I had no idea what good music was. I was a freshman in high school and the only CDs I had purchased at the time were the Star Wars soundtrack and Smash Mouth's 'Astro Lounge.' I'm almost ashamed to put that in print. Well, along came my sister, 6 years older than me, who had been introduced to a band from Arizona that had just released a new album, then called Bleed American (Shortly after it's release, 9.11 happened and they changed it to 'self titled,' it has since been changed back to 'Bleed American). The band was Jimmy Eat World, and though she rocked out to their newest work in her car constantly, for Christmas that year she gave me the album that she considered their best stuff, 1999's 'Clarity.' I was hooked.

From that moment forward I consider Jimmy Eat World to be the band that introduced me to the type of music I love today. Everything I listened to for a while was cast through a Jimmy Eat World (and specifically 'Clarity') colored lens. I have nearly worn my copy of that album out now and I bought all subsequent EPs and Albums by them, except for Bleed American. For all the love I had of Jimmy, I still had a huge hole in my musical life for them that lasted through last night. That hole was having never seen them live.

It wasn't for lack of trying. I'd check their website often, but the west coast band rarely made it to the east and if they did it was almost never in little North Carolina. The tv show "One Tree Hill" is filmed in Wilmington, where I go to school, and I found out a week after the fact that Jimmy came down to shoot an episode and college students were paid $100 to sit and watch as extras. Some of my friends made it in but, of course, I didn't get the memo in time. A year later I'd find out too late that they were on tour with the much less impressive Green Day and on their way to Raleigh. I recently found out the Jimmy Eat World's opening set consisted of three songs. If I had gone for them and gotten that, I'd have been more than slightly upset. Then, magically, this week my roommate is telling me that their latest album "Chase This Light" had just come out on the 16th. He checked their site and sure enough, Jimmy was making two nearby stops, this time as the headliner. One in Myrtle Beach at the House of Blues and one in Raleigh at Disco Rodeo. My heart rose, and then fell. I spent all of my money last weekend at Busch Gardens; there was no way I could afford to see them.

Or was there?

I remembered my giant tin-o-change that I had been saving for who knows how long. I took it to the bank and magically, $40 popped out. I was in the game and ready to go! I bought my tickets for House of Blues and waited for Saturday night to arrive.

First thing is first, they put on an awesome show but I have learned my lesson about going to a show without ear protection for the last time. PLEASE, remember to bring earplugs when you go to loud rock shows. It saves your ears and, honestly, you can hear the music a lot better.

Other than the occasional ear bleed, I couldn't be happier with the show. Viva Noche opened up and they were decent, but I could have dealt with about 2 or three fewer songs from them (they played about 8). We were situated on the floor by the front steps on the left side of the stage and had a great view. No lumbering 8 foot tall scene kid intermittently obscuring my vision and making out with his girlfriend this time. I went with a few friends and we had a blast. They played a good mix of old and new and finished it out with a bang - saving Sweetness, The Middle, and Hear You Me among others for their encore set. Incredibly high-energy, it's rare for me to want to jump around like the teenyboppers at a show but when everyone was screaming "Oh oh oh ohhhh oh!" during Sweetness, you couldn't help but want to. The band was not too talkative, but they were friendly enough. I noticed that they used my same orange Dunlop picks, which is just one of those details that makes a live performance so worth it. Fun little details and chatter aside, though, these guys really know how to rock and it's hard to see how the band known by many to be the kings of "emo" have anything to do with the sappy genre that they helped create. Best straightforward rock concert I've been to in a long time - maybe ever. If you get the chance, take it.

Picking Things Up and Moving to New Zeland

To be a "writer" I sure don't act like I enjoy writing very much. Oh well.

It's October and around this time of the year spooky things start popping up. This summer some of the Caswell folks and I did some ghost hunting. This is little more than walking around a "haunted" site with a recorder in hand asking dumb questions to the wall. We'd say things like "What's your name?" and "If you can here us, punch Zack." Of course, we were shamlessly ripping off the TV show "Ghost Hunters," as countless high school sophomores have done before us. Funny thing is, though - when you're asking those questions you don't really think about the alternative to dead silence that you almost always get. Either 1) you hear something fall or rattle or someone else in your group makes noise and is scares the monkey out of you or 2) a being from another plane responds. In the case of #2 I think I would find myself quickly regretting the venture to hunt the ghost and flee the building, most likely with arms flailing wildly in the air.

The moral of the story...don't hunt ghosts unless you want to find them.

Now, a deeper topic (but related). Are ghosts real? I really don't know. I don't believe that ghost, as we like to classically think of them, are real. There is something really romantic about the notion of ghosts, though. Poor lost souls, left to wander the Earth - maybe their heart was broken beyond repair, maybe they were killed and left unavenged, or maybe they just don't know thier dead. The whole idea of ghosts is just really cool to me but I can't bring myself to believe that God would let that happen.
So if they're not ghosts, what are they? The Bible warns against calling on the spirits of the dead, commands against it actually. It also speaks of "unclean spirits." Could it be that these spirits are demons? If so, why would they want to talk to or otherwise mess with us humans? I think that 90% of all ghostly happenings are either made up or misinterrpretations of naturally occuring phenomana. But even with all of that, there is still a good amount of legit, werid crap going on. There are just too many well documented cases to ignore that we're alone on the Earth. Something else is out there.
As a Christian, I currently believe that the voices we hear on tape recordings, the spectres that float through walls and the entities that push around Ouija planchetts are all demons or "unclean" spirits who are out to pull in victims. Such supernatural interests as "ghost hunting" only serve to distract people from the truth of God and people who are unprepaired in their spiritual life can find themselves quickly enticed by the powers of these spirits. The things they can do and the predictions they can make lead people to a series of false conceptions which can easily lead to a fallen life or set of beliefs. Satan's goal is to take down as many of us with him as possible, so that just seems logical to me.

As for everyone out there who thinks I'm really certafiably crazy at this point - more power to you! I'm not saying that I believe any of this happens, necessarily, and certainly not from first-hand experience. Part of me wishes that I could say that I've seen evidence of the paranormal, but the other (much larger) part is quite content to sit on my bed and play Halo 3 while eating Cheetos, instead.

I wonder if teargas has a smell or if it just burns really bad. Wouldn't it be ironic if it smelled really good?