I'm writing from my dorm at 4 AM, a bit tipsy from the last weekend before the last finals of the year at ONU. I don't want to leave, and I've been avoiding thinking about the end of the year.
Anyway, I was on Youtube watching a live video of Collective Soul playing "Shine", and, reading the comments, I was informed of the following: Cho Seng-Hui, the psycho who committed the Virginia Tech shooting, listened to "Shine" on repeat incessantly.
Wow. This is really crushing and disturbing. This haunting, beautiful song and I go way back. I moved heaven and earth trying to get an MP3 in 2001, and when I finally got the album that year, the spring before eighth grade graduation, Ross Childress' ripping solo helped drive me to wanting to learn guitar.
How could someone like Cho draw affirmation for their evil self from such a beautiful song and/or be utterly unaffected by the song's overall message and music: "Heaven let your light shine down"? How the FUCK can someone have the idea that it's okay to cut 32 lives short and yet still want to hear "Shine" over and over? These kind of things sure challenge my core belief that music (and all art) can permeate the soul, drive out evil, and bring love.
This article in the Village Voice offers an excellent commentary on the whole situation.
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/music/archives/2007/04/collective_soul.php. Their conclusion is thus: like the innocence of a town or a "pre-tragedy" attitude, a song can be yet one more abstract "innocent casualty" of an overwhelming, horrifying event. This makes sense. Imagine: If I hit someone with my car while Van Halen's "Jump" were playing, that song would be over for me through no fault of Eddie and Diamond Dave.
I don't know how I'll regard "Shine" from now on, but I can say with fair confidence that for me, and that for 99.999% of people (ordinary citizens, spiritual warriors, and rock stars alike), a beautiful song is a little incongruous with murdering 32 innocent people.
I guess some .001% people are so twisted that their evil shell cannot be cracked, not by a song, not by anything in this earthly realm. But that still doesn't explain why Cho would want to hear this song.
P.S.
Speaking of the VT situation, it goes without saying to keep praying. And EVERYONE needs to see this memorial to the late students.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18143312/
Read the names and see the pictures. Make time to do this. Each and every one of these people deserves respect and a proper memory.
God bless,
Nick
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
rock and roll
I can't stand when I still occasionally hear relgious fundies talk about rock as "the devil's music" or "fleshy music" or "the empty music of the world". I see rock as a very spiritual and positive thing. When I listen to "When the Levee Breaks" or "Us and Them" or "Jump", I don't think, "Gee, this song makes me want to disregard the people around me and live arrogantly for myself with selfish actions!" A good song makes me want to strive upwards, appreciate the beauty of life, and get more in touch with the love of God and the universe. And isn't that a good thing?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
MUSIC THAT CHANGED MY LIFE: Van Halen
(I’m going to do one of these every week for a different artist or song.)
It’s difficult to describe my complicated and beautiful history with this rockin’ band that can make you wanna party but can also give you the chills.
Back in middle school, when I thought I knew music but listened to mostly the Rick Dees show and pop radio, I was always able to pigeonhole artists I had barely heard. Pink Floyd’s music was spacey and dragged on with moaning vocals. U2 was just that signature annoying guitar chime. And Van Halen made loud noise for the class-cutting dropouts. I had heard “Jump” on the radio and vaguely knew it was them, but it was just another one of those songs before my time that I heard on the radio and didn’t connect with.
I can’t remember what triggered the transformation, but I know sometime in sophomore year, as I was getting more into guitar, I was struck by the big synth chords, and that badass solo, of “Jump”. Like it was with all new things at first, I hesitantly tiptoed in, worried that people might see me and laugh. I downloaded “Jump” off of filesharing and buried it as the last track on a CD-R mix before I went down to University of North Carolina at Wilmington for a writing camp that summer.
At some point, we were driving through this small town in Virginia, or Ohio, or one of those states. Not the kind of small town where homophobic redneck youth drive fast cars and old white Republicans have picnics. No, no. It was the kind of small town where kids walked to the ice cream stand and the town square fountain hadn’t been closed for liability. It was a bright day and I put “Jump” on in my headphones. Thoughts raced through my head. The small town reminded me of “Back to the Future”; I thought of Marty McFly trying to make it as a rocker in an iconic small town. The small towns where there are so many ways you could have fun, where kids like me make bold plans to change their world and get the girl. After listening, I was ready for anything. When I went to UNCW the next summer, I had a CD-R devoted solely to Van Halen.
I would listen to a Van Halen song extensively around a certain time, and hear it in my head when the music stopped and I got back to reality. Those times will always be associated with certain tracks. Ironically enough, this slacker band was my motivator for “the most academically difficult” junior year. Even though I was the antithesis of a Van Halen fan, being trapped in a ludicrous academic workload with no fast car or hot girl, their music connected with me—those guitar acrobatics, the rumble of the bass, the speeding-ticket-fast drums, the shouted singalongs— and motivated me to get through whatever.
The most memorable anecdote probably comes from November of that famous junior year. Band O Rama, the annual event where high school marching bands play with the WMU Bronco Band, was a Saturday morning, but I missed it because I had to take the SAT. At an elementary-school-reunion bonfire that night, I heard what I had missed: a Van Halen themed show, complete with a performance of Eruption on guitar by WMU’s tuba professor. Missing a show of my favorite music for academic hoop-jumping—what a metaphor.
Yet there was hope. I had my guitar there at the bonfire, and me and my friend Haskell were jamming. He felt the urge to hear Eruption. We walked to his car; he opened the door and found the disc and put it in the stereo. He invited me to sit in the passenger seat; I declined. My obsessive compulsiveness knew that when he drove the car back towards the front of the house, my over prying mom would have arrived to pick me up, and since that was the time when she didn’t like me cruising around with people, there was a high potential for a shit storm I didn’t really want. Rather than decide to just take a stand and explain myself, I avoided the potential all together. So there I was, leaning on the door of the car, on a brisk but windless night with it almost ready to rain, separated in my own world, yet united with Haskell in the pursuit of guitar rapture as “Eruption” played.
What a representation of my naïve, teetotaling, freaked-out high school self. Isolated, scared, and tentative, for no one’s fault but my own, but still able to connect with my friends and feed my soul thanks to God’s gift of rock. I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen. Might as well jump.
Peace and God bless,
Nick Fed
It’s difficult to describe my complicated and beautiful history with this rockin’ band that can make you wanna party but can also give you the chills.
Back in middle school, when I thought I knew music but listened to mostly the Rick Dees show and pop radio, I was always able to pigeonhole artists I had barely heard. Pink Floyd’s music was spacey and dragged on with moaning vocals. U2 was just that signature annoying guitar chime. And Van Halen made loud noise for the class-cutting dropouts. I had heard “Jump” on the radio and vaguely knew it was them, but it was just another one of those songs before my time that I heard on the radio and didn’t connect with.
I can’t remember what triggered the transformation, but I know sometime in sophomore year, as I was getting more into guitar, I was struck by the big synth chords, and that badass solo, of “Jump”. Like it was with all new things at first, I hesitantly tiptoed in, worried that people might see me and laugh. I downloaded “Jump” off of filesharing and buried it as the last track on a CD-R mix before I went down to University of North Carolina at Wilmington for a writing camp that summer.
At some point, we were driving through this small town in Virginia, or Ohio, or one of those states. Not the kind of small town where homophobic redneck youth drive fast cars and old white Republicans have picnics. No, no. It was the kind of small town where kids walked to the ice cream stand and the town square fountain hadn’t been closed for liability. It was a bright day and I put “Jump” on in my headphones. Thoughts raced through my head. The small town reminded me of “Back to the Future”; I thought of Marty McFly trying to make it as a rocker in an iconic small town. The small towns where there are so many ways you could have fun, where kids like me make bold plans to change their world and get the girl. After listening, I was ready for anything. When I went to UNCW the next summer, I had a CD-R devoted solely to Van Halen.
I would listen to a Van Halen song extensively around a certain time, and hear it in my head when the music stopped and I got back to reality. Those times will always be associated with certain tracks. Ironically enough, this slacker band was my motivator for “the most academically difficult” junior year. Even though I was the antithesis of a Van Halen fan, being trapped in a ludicrous academic workload with no fast car or hot girl, their music connected with me—those guitar acrobatics, the rumble of the bass, the speeding-ticket-fast drums, the shouted singalongs— and motivated me to get through whatever.
The most memorable anecdote probably comes from November of that famous junior year. Band O Rama, the annual event where high school marching bands play with the WMU Bronco Band, was a Saturday morning, but I missed it because I had to take the SAT. At an elementary-school-reunion bonfire that night, I heard what I had missed: a Van Halen themed show, complete with a performance of Eruption on guitar by WMU’s tuba professor. Missing a show of my favorite music for academic hoop-jumping—what a metaphor.
Yet there was hope. I had my guitar there at the bonfire, and me and my friend Haskell were jamming. He felt the urge to hear Eruption. We walked to his car; he opened the door and found the disc and put it in the stereo. He invited me to sit in the passenger seat; I declined. My obsessive compulsiveness knew that when he drove the car back towards the front of the house, my over prying mom would have arrived to pick me up, and since that was the time when she didn’t like me cruising around with people, there was a high potential for a shit storm I didn’t really want. Rather than decide to just take a stand and explain myself, I avoided the potential all together. So there I was, leaning on the door of the car, on a brisk but windless night with it almost ready to rain, separated in my own world, yet united with Haskell in the pursuit of guitar rapture as “Eruption” played.
What a representation of my naïve, teetotaling, freaked-out high school self. Isolated, scared, and tentative, for no one’s fault but my own, but still able to connect with my friends and feed my soul thanks to God’s gift of rock. I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen. Might as well jump.
Peace and God bless,
Nick Fed
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