Interests:Almost anything music related... mixing CD's, writing reviews of great (and not-so-great) bands, playing guitar and songwriting... also hiking, reading (mostly Christian non-fiction), writing stuff no one will ever read in my journal, and hanging with friends from church and college.
Expertise:Web design and database development.
Occupation:Computer related (Internet) Industry:Government
I figured our cat deserved a blog entry. She's been back home for almost a week, and I'm amazed at how much I missed the quiet presence of this small, lazy, but lovable animal.
We first adopted our kitty in December of 2006. It's been almost three years now. At the time, there were large numbers of stray cats living underneath our apartment building, mostly kittens who would meow loudly at night, probably because they were hungry or missed their mothers or who knows what. Christine had compassion for these animals, but because I convinced her that taking a stray kitten into our home wasn't the wisest idea, she took a trip to the animal shelter instead and picked out the cat that she found most lovable - a gray and white American short-hair with an unusual warble that sounded like half-purr and half-meow. "PrrrrrrrOW!" It was kind of charming. I went to spend a little time with the cat down at the shelter, thinking at the time that I still had cat allergies and didn't want to get attached to an animal that would make me miserable once it got its fur all over the house. But after twenty minutes of exposure, nothing. This was the one! We adopted her that week and took her home. The deal at the time was, "We can have a cat if you really feel the need for animal companionship, but it'll be your responsibility." I could see myself living with a cat. I wasn't so sure about loving and caring for one. I considered myself more of a dog person, and dogs aren't good apartment animals.
We had the cat for almost a week before we figured out a name for her. I wanted the name to be Christine's decision - were it up to me, I'd probably have named her after a band or a character from a TV show or something. After an initial visit to the vet, we realized it was kind of sad to check her in under "No Name Martin", so while I was away on a hike one Saturday morning, Christine trolled through the music folders on my hard drive and came up with "Anberlin". It was the name of a band I liked, who in turn was named after what the lead singer once thought he might name a daughter someday. So it was fitting as a name for a female cat, in a roundabout way. Plus she was grey and white. The cover of Cities was grey and white. It was meant to be. (Alright, so Cities didn't come out until early 2007. It was prophetic.)
Anberlin was rather feisty at first. Not too bad about scratching furniture and stuff, but she didn't know the sharpness of her own claws when playing with people. I'd poke and prod at her just to be playful whenever I was watching TV and she was on the couch next to me and a commercial break would come on, just like I always used to do with the family dog growing up. And I got lightly scratched a few times for my trouble. The cat even hid under the futon and attacked Mimi's ankles during Bible study once. Eventually we worked out some reasonable boundaries between playfulness and violence. And I started to realize that petting a cat and having it purr softly could be just as satisfying as messing with its head. What can I say, she made me into a softie.
Most folks know that it's hard to train a cat. They don't come when you call them, they act superior and indifferent, they assert their independence most of the time. But it didn't take us too long to figure out that if you caught her at the right time of day, she'd get all wound up and dart across the room, and that energy could easily be channeled into some form of fake hunting. I think dawn and dusk are roughly when cats hunt in the wild? Something like that. We found that she'd quickly run out of the room at one of my violent sneezes, quickly dart into the bedroom to avoid getting shut out when Christine went into the bathroom at night (this being the signal that it was almost bedtime), and that if you really wanted to drive her nuts, just turn on a flashlight. We call it "tick-tick" because of the sound it makes when you turn it on and off. It's the ultimate nemesis - the prey she can never quite seem to catch. She likes to hunt bugs, too. If she spots a bug on the wall or ceiling, she'll sit and stare at it patiently, waiting for it to approach ground level so she can pounce. I guess she thinks she's earning her keep or something.
As much as I like to make fun of the cat and see what a warped view of the real world I can manage to give her, she knows my weakness. She knows I can't resist an exposed belly. So she has this customary greeting, particularly when we've been gone for a while, but sometimes she'll do it when I get up in the morning, if she's been waiting outside the bedroom door for long enough. She'll get more talkative than usual, meow several times, and pace back and forth in a semi-circle, letting you know she expects something. If you hold out long enough, she'll finally flop over. That's the irresistable part. I can be running late for work and still stop to give her a tummy rub. She loves it, and once again, I think she doesn't know her own ability to do damage, because if you do it long enough, she'll gently bite your fingers. You're cute and all, cat, but knock it off.
Did I mention that we almost never call the cat by her true name? We called her "Anberlin", and I like the name as a formal designation, but it doesn't really roll off the tongue, and others always misprounounce/misspell it. Most often, she gets addressed as "Kitty" or "Mow-Mow" (pronounced "Mao-Mao", but not spelled that way because she's not a communist). her pet names have morphed into all manner of nonsense over the years, so if you bugged our apartment, you'd hear such sickening terms of endearment as "Itty Bitty Kitty Witty", or just "Itty", or "Fuzzball", "Fuzzbucket", "Kitty-Ball", "Kitty-Mow", "Kitty-ness", etc. Yes, we are those weird people who talk baby talk to their animals.
If you were to tell me at the outset that a cat-related emergency would one day cost us several thousand dollars, I'd probably say, "What do we need a cat for, then?" Only after owning a cat for several years do I understand the kind of unspoken bond that can form between humans and cats. It happens quietly - they're not the obvious "man's best friend" that dogs are. Perhaps it's just their ability to be so pathetic and adorable - when they want to - that eventually clinches it. It just hurts to watch an animal like that suffer, especially when you know she's got so much potential life left. And that's why we held out through that agonizing ordeal for as long as we did. We joke that the cat "does nothing", but there's something amazingly comforting about coming home after a long day at work and seeing kitty curled up on the sofa, guarding Christine, keeping her company while she does homework. Or even stumbling into bed in the dark at 2 A.M. and finding a kitty on your pillow. (Despite the adorableness, I still make her move, though.) Christine says it most succinctly: "Kitty gives me love".
So here's to the little grey and white nuisance who has proven herself to be worth all the trouble. We hope to get many more years of amusement and random craziness and quiet, cuddly evenings out of our "Mow-Mow".
Have you ever been depressed? I don't mean just a little bit down, having a bad day, or even a bad week. I mean slogging through a dull fog of emotions ranging from apathy to total frustration and anger, with even the things you normally enjoy the most offering little solace, for months on end. A true "dark night of the soul". If you haven't, it makes it really hard to understand when someone is going through it. If you have, then knowing other folks go through it too hopefully helps you to feel a little less like a malfunctioning reject.
I'm not depressed at this stage in my life. But I remember three distinct points earlier in my life where I can definitely say, looking back, that I was depressed. Sometimes I wonder if there's something I can glean from those times that might enable me to be more compassionate toward folks who seem to be going through it now.
I went through my first depression during late 1996 and a good chunk of 1997. Basically, the holiday season and the entire second semester of my sophomore year of college. The superficial reason for it was that I was bummed out over unrequited love - had a crush on a very good friend of mine that just wouldn't go away despite her indicating very clearly on more than one occasion that she wanted nothing more than friendship. So what, guys and girls both get depressed about this sort of stuff all the time. But it ran a lot deeper than that. It was a self-worth issue, being frustrated with my singleness, berating myself constantly for not being attractive or socially savvy or just plain "cool" enough for any woman to ever possibly be interested in me, much less the one I was darn sure I wanted to be with. It wasn't even like this person had rejected me and given me the cold shoulder - she was still a trusted friend who put up with a lot more of my insecure whining that honestly anyone should ever have to be put through. But my fixation cost me my self-esteem, and that started to gnaw away at my faith, making me think I wasn't good enough to deserve being over it and living life with an optimistic outlook again. For the first time, I truly questioned whether God would find me worth saving if something serious happened to me - like when I came down with an awful flu a week or so before the end of winter break and my temperature went through the roof. Over the semester that followed, a lot of the things I believed were deconstructed and put back together, and I slowly came to accept that salvation wasn't about me being a good person who proved himself worthy of it, and God's love wasn't always about giving me the thing that I assumed would make me happy. God loved me by answering a lot of those prayers with a resounding "No", and by taking away some of the things I had previously put my security in. I didn't get the girl. (Thank God; we both ended up marrying much better mates in the end!) I couldn't weasel my way out of the bad feelings by being the social center of attention and planning an awesome spring break trip. (I co-ordinated a camping trip at Joshua Tree, and my buddy's car broke down on the way, so we never made it.) I was totally unqualified for the summer job I wanted to get so that I could stay on campus and be around the girl I wasn't supposed to be with. I was stubborn. God was stubborner. But through that process of realizing what God's love looked like and what it didn't, I learned not to be so hard on myself, and to accept what seemed like a setback as a potential opportunity. I healed a lot during that difficult summer, and began my junior year of college honestly feeling like a new man. Boy. Whatever.
The second depression came in 1999 and lingered with me throughout the early part of 2000. Religious paranoia over the whole stupid Y2K thing was a factor, I'm ashamed to admit. I actually entertained the notion that it might all end and I'd be left behind to deal with the chaos, again doubting my own worthiness and missing the point of my supposed faith completely. Nearly going broke due to not having the first clue how to look for a job after finishing college was a more practical part of it, though - by the time I finally got hired and was bringing home a paycheck, I was surprised to find that the constant nervousness didn't magically disappear. Now I had to adjust to this new life - minimally furnished apartment, cooking my own food (mostly ramen and hot dogs in those days), no convenience of all my friends being right down the hall. And a very busy girlfriend who was growing weary of my constant stress when she did manage to free up the time to spend with me. Ironically, I had two of the things that I wanted most and feared I didn't deserve to have - I was in a relationship with someone who actually found me attractive, and a company had actually hired me! But the shock of adjustment was too much, leading to panic attacks (then again, that might have just been too much caffeine) and a constant feeling of things being way beyond my control. I saw a doctor about it in early 2000, believing that I was about to have a heart attack or something, only to be told I was young and healthy and just needed some medication to temporarily balance the chemicals that were going wacko in my brain. By the end of that year, what had once been terrifying - the prospect of being out in the world with my own job and my own income and basically calling my own shots - turned into something exciting. I learned to enjoy my freedom and not cling so much to other people to define my worth. And I dumped a good amount of my silly superstitions in the process. That changed my faith pretty radically - it made me see God's plan as a thing of infinite possibilities instead of one strict road that you get zapped for not following to the letter. It primed me for the church that I would end up checking out on the final day of that year, and that as of today, I've never left.
The third, and most recent, depression happened at a time in my life that's going to make most of you single people want to throw blunt objects at me. It happened right after I got married. Truthfully, it started earlier in 2005, as the stress of planning a wedding caught up to me and I had a lot of miscommunications with friends who couldn't make it and just got frustrated with a lot of people. It wasn't just having stuff to do - it was that feeling of losing control and not having that day I'd dreamed of for so long be the perfect thing that it was supposed to be. I'm sure a lot of people go through that sort of stress and have to learn to let go of the particulars when planning a wedding, but I don't know that it leads most people to long bouts with depression after the fact. Nearly running out of money had a lot to do with it - my hypochondriac nature got the best of me, and I was down at the doctor's office or the allergist's office way too many times that year, convinced I was on the verge of suffocating or going into anaphylactic shock after eating the wrong thing. My old car pretty much blew up the week after we got back from the honeymoon, and I still owed Christine's parents money for the wedding. (Her dad graciously forgave that debt.) It wasn't so much a depression full of the panic attacks and constant fear that I recognized from earlier bouts - this one was more about raw anger. Just when I thought I could do some good for another person and feel better about myself in the process, it would backfire and leave me angrier than before. And poor Christine - I was in such a funk that she had to take the reigns, plan fun outings, even insist we go away to San Diego one weekend just to get me away from it all. She was a trooper, never once letting me have the full brunt of the frustration she probably felt over me ruining what were supposed to be some of the most carefree days of our lives together. Ironically, that depression seemed to dissipate all at once on the day of my grandmother's funeral. Strange thing to say, because I was dreading going to the funeral of a relative I was close to and facing other relatives on my father's side of the family who I felt bad for not keeping in touch with. Christine helped make that day easier by suggesting a peaceful walk through a Japanese Garden earlier that day, and then at the funeral, I felt embraced by family members who I had unfairly expected to react to me with indifference. Wounds from the past closed up just like that. The future suddenly had surprising possibilities. And as 2005 closed out and 2006 began - the first year in a while where I didn't have to make big plans and prove what I could handle and be in control of everything - I vowed to enjoy that time that we had, simply to be together with no looming worries on the horizon. And 2006 was one of the best years of my life, largely because of the way that 2005's trials whipped me into shape.
So I wonder about loved ones who seem depressed right now. I wonder if we get this way because there's some lesson we failed to learn, or if it's much more of a pragmatic thing, like our sleep patterns are funny or we ate too much or not enough of some vitamin or chemical and that makes our brains go haywire. I wonder if the sustained periods of emotional funk people go through are some sort of a message, perhaps even God's love in disguise. A sort of renovation, if you will. I suspect that we shouldn't trust our emotions, that "Follow your heart" can sometimes lead you to the absolute worst place you can go, that we have to be honest about how we're feeling but not let those feelings dictate our decisions. I can't say if that's true for anyone other than me, because I don't walk in anyone else's shoes and because I'm not God. But I know that depressions's more normal than a lot of us - especially Christians - care to admit. And if we could just be honest about that, maybe somebody going through that struggle now would feel just a little less alienated and a little more like there's a promise of meaning and purpose and the ability to crack a smile again at the end of that tunnel.
I was well aware, when I bought tickets to see U2 way back in April, that I was getting myself into a potential logistical nightmare due to the size and scope of any U2 tour. But having never seen the band live before, and having a reasonable minimum of commitments in my life now that I'm likely to never have again for as long as this band continues to exist with its full membership intact, now was the time to finally make the pilgrimage. But thanks to Ike and Joyce, the friends who ended up sitting with me, we didn't have to worry about parking at all, AND we were able to work a little exercise into the experience, by way of parking at Ike's office and walking the mile and a half to the Rose Bowl. It was a perfect evening for it, being neither too warm at sunset right before the show, nor too cold at around midnight as we were heading back. Aside from the idiot loudmouthed evangelicals on the street yelling at the droves of people to repent as they flocked to the stadium (seriously people, have you listened to U2's music? Those guys'll do far more good for God's reputation in the world than your picket signs and megaphones ever will), and the veritable amoeba that we had to squeeze our way into just to get through the gates into each successive level of Dante's Inferno, it was an enjoyable trip.
The Black Eyed Peas were the opening act, and even though all we could hear from the outside of the stadium as we awaited to be let into the tunnels was bass and some fuzzy semblance of singing, it was pretty obvious that they had declared "Let's Get it Started in here", which drove the BEP fans in the group into an obnoxious frenzy as we were pushed and shoved and compressed into a funnel. When we finally emerged on the other side, it was the only moment in my life when I can honestly say I was happy to hear Fergie's voice. To be fair, while it's not my type of music at all, the BEP are at least good entertainers who write catchy songs. If you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics, I can see the appeal of a song like Boom Boom Pow or I Gotta Feeling. And I'll admit to even kind of liking Where Is the Love? At the same time, the utterly stoopid lyrics of most of their songs are tough to ignore, and they seem to engage in more gimmickry than actual skilled performance. The most blatant ploy to win over an audience who likely wasn't overrun by rap fans was when they invited Slash on stage (I didn't realize who he was at first, and thought, "Who invited Howard Stern?") to play his signature guitar licks during a cover of Guns & Roses' Sweet Child o' Mine, which found Fergie trying her best to impersonate Axl Rose, while the rest of the BEP stood around and essentially did nothing. Entertaining, but it clearly shows who sucks up all the attention in this group. At least we didn't have to put up with Fergilicious.
U2 themselves didn't take the stage until 9:00, despite YouTube advertising a worldwide webcast starting at 8:30. This probably means that they ran over the time limit before the noise curfew was set to take place - this being a stadium in a valley surrounded by residential neighborhoods and all - but regardless, they played more than a full set and put 110% in to their performance. The stage, which had already been impressive to see before we even entered the stadium, due to how the spire at the top of it stuck out above the rim of the Rose Bowl, finally had the full scope of its functionality unveiled, as the massive circle of hexagonal LED screens above the stage rotated and expanded and contracted and proivided interesting angles on the various band members, who frequently left the cetner platform in which they were performing to walk around the outer ring and across moving bridges that joined the two rings, with fans who probably paid a hell of a lot of money in between the rings and sometimes directly underneath Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton. The pure visual spectacle was one aspect, but it was also very efficiently designed to ensure nobody had a bad seat with an obstructed view. This explains why the capacity of each show has helped the band to set personal records (and often records for each venue visited) over the course of the tour. I'm normally not impressed by "big and flashy", but I had to admire the thought and creativity that went into this.
Here's how the setlist broke down: Main Set:
Breathe - Larry Mullen was the first one to take the stage, hammering out the raucous rhythm to this off-kilter opener, which is one of my favorites from No Line on the Horizon, but admittedly a difficult song as far as audience participation goes. It's high energy, and hearing it done live definitely overcomes the problem of weak production that holds it back a bit on the CD. It's more urgent than most of U2's latter-day offerings.
Get on Your Boots - This really should've gotten more of a response; it's such a high energy, goofy, fun song, and a great showcase for Adam's booming bass, which almost takes the lead over Edge's guitar. I think it hasn't done well as a single, probably because it's too similar to "Vertigo", which is honestly a better song, but this was still a blast.
Magnificent - My absolute favorite from the new album - they essentially hit the best three of their new songs right off the bat. I love how this song works on so many levels - it's danceable, it has those cimey guitar riffs that ring out across the stadium like U2's best oldies, it's a very spiritual song and yet it's very romantic, about two people uniting in praise of their Creator because they were simply born to do so.
Mysterious Ways - The first of many beloved classics played that night. Edge's funky guitar lick immediately got the crowd pumped, and while the tempo seemed a little more relaxed than on Achtung Baby, it was an excellent performance and the first of many joyous sing-alongs. No Line appears to be an attempt to recapture some of the sound and spirit of Achtung, so it makes sense that they'd go back to that well several times during the setlist.
Beautiful Day - Quintessential modern-day U2; it's hard to believe this song is almost a decade old already, since All that You Can't Leave Behind was the band's newest album when I finally declared myself a fan, and this song has only recently started to lose its "newness" for me. Old or new, I still get emotional when the chorus goes into overdrive. Bono surprised attentive listeners in the room with a small snippet of In God's Country over the closing notes of the song.
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - This was the first of many memoments where it occurred to me that I was experiencing something live, here and now in 2009, that had been around since I was a kid. I hear these old songs on U2's albums from the 80's, songs that the world has seemingly memorized and that are "before my time", and somehow it doesn't seem believable to me that I could be actually hearing them live in concert, played by the original artist, and not have it be some silly radio station festival where a has-been band who hasn't done squat in 20 years grudgingly agreed to reunite for the cash while people stood around eating barbecue pork and funnel cake, waiting for that one hit song they loved way back when to be played. These words still ring true - I've met God. I believe. I'm saved. But I still hunger for so much more. I'm not sure how it was related, but they pulled out a bit Stand By Me (which is older than U2's own oldies) at the end of this one.
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of - A completely different arrangement, with The Edge on acoustic guitar and Bono on vocals, and Adam and Larry taking five. I still recognized it right away, despite the glossy keyboard stuff being stripped away. I didn't realize until this point that it was Edge who sang the main vocal line during the song's climax. I'm not used to hearing his voice out there on its own - to some extent, he can still hit those high notes better than Bono can.
No Line on the Horizon - Title track from the new CD. It had more of a charging guitar riff and it was more energetic in this context than its somewhat lackluster presentation on the CD, but it still wasn't a huge attention-getter. The material from the new album in general didn't seem to get much of a response. It's not a perfect album, but I think it's added some great stuff to their live sets.
In a Little While - This has never been one of my favorites, but Bono sounded better singing this one live than his ragged take on the album version. I know it's supposed to be "soulful" and whatnot, but he just sounds like he's gritting his teeth all the way through it on the album. They did some sort of an uplink to a "space tourist" on the International Space Station, who recited a few lines from the song's bridge at the end of it. Appropriate, for a stage show that looked like an alien spaceship about to take off.
Elevation - HOOOOO-oooh! HOOOOOO-ooh-ooh! Not that Bono needed any help with the high notes on this one, but we all threw the full force of our lungpower into it anyway. I would've lost my voice at this point if Ike hadn't thought ahead and brought us some bottled water after being brave enough to venture back through the tunnel between sets.
Unknown Caller - By far the weirdest track from the new album, and to be honest, my least favorite. And even this was a solid performance, with the odd, barked-out commands being displayed on screen and lit up like some sort of brainwashing sing-along. Bono was fixated on the words "You know your name, so punch it in", and I'm honestly not sure what's up with all the computer talk in this song, but I appreciate it a little more after seeing them do it live.
Until the End of the World - Continuing with the bizarre and unexpected, this story of Jesus betraying Judas from Achtung Baby concluded with Bono and Edge, on their respective moving bridges, reaching out to touch each other across the chasm, but then being pulled apart at the last second. Which one was Jesus and which was Judas? (I'm hoping Bono was Judas. Just because I don't want his ego to be that big.)
The Unforgettable Fire - Now this was a relic, and it was surprising that they pulled it out in place of a more expected tune from the same album, namely Pride (In the Name of Love). I almost didn't recognize it without the synth washes and "ambient panting" from the album version, but it's about the most "80's-sounding" of any U2 song, so it probably needed the update. During this one, the LED screens began to spread out and form a pattern of hexagons with gaps in between, maintaining the proportion of the images of the different band members portrayed on them - that's some ingenious set design right there.
City of Blinding Lights - The spire and floodlights at the top of the set went all aglow for this one. This was quite late in the game to finally pull out something from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but I suppose they wanted to go easy on that album after spending most of their last tour on it.
Vertigo - "Unos, dos, tres, catorce!" My other favorite from Atomic Bomb. Even if Bono can't count.
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight - On the album, this one has a solid melody but they goofed on the energy by letting Larry take the backseat to the programmed drums. In concert, the drum programming worked to their advantage, as this seemed to be a complete remix of the song. Larry got up from his drum kit and looked thrilled to be joining the promenade around the outer ring of the stage as he banged away on his djembe. This version lacked a bit melodically, but it shook things up, as a song about going crazy really ought to do.
Sunday Bloody Sunday - The oldest song played, from 1983's War. Dude, I was five years old when this song came out. They played it traditionally, letting Larry's militant drum march carry the song. For me it's never gonna kick as much butt without the violin, but it's still awesome in just about any incarnation. Krista told me some couple in front of her and Tim was making out during these song. Sigh. Sometimes I have to wonder whether some of U2's fans even get the magnitude of some of their songs, or care it all.
MLK/Walk On - The main set closed with Bono's tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected prime minister of Burma, who has the unfortunate distinction of being 19 years late to her first day on the job due to political setbacks that I don't fully understand. Apparently U2's approach is to make noise about it by inviting fans from their ONE campaign onstage, to circle the band wearing masks of Suu Kyi, which is a bit corny, but it gets the message across. This is also not one of my favorite U2 songs, but the solemn eulogy that was originally placed at the end of The Unforgettable Fire as a tribute to Martin Luther King was interestingly repurposed as an intro to a rousing set closer.
1st Encore:
One - Another one of those songs that U2 will probably never get away with not playing. I'm still blown away by the layers of double meanings in this song's lyrics. It was made even more intriguing by a simple chorus of the hymn Amazing Grace tacked onto the end. Never thought I'd be standing in a sports stadium singing that song along with nearly 100,000 people, many of whom were likely drunk or high.
Where the Streets Have No Name - My favorite U2 song from the 80's. It bled in beautifully after the quiet ending of Amazing Grace. Whenever I hear this song, I think of setting out on a long road trip to somewhere new and exciting.
2nd Encore:
Ultra Violet (Light My Way) - Honestly, a strange choice for an encore. It's my least favorite song from Achtung Baby, an otherwise solid album. The chorus of "Baby, baby, baby, light my way" is just too straightforward for its surroundings, and doesn't Crazy Tonight kind of supersede this one by doing essentially the same thing? In any event, the visuals during this one were fascinating, with the band wearing jackets which glowed in the blacklights positioned around the stage, and Bono singing into and swinging on a strange, sterring wheel shaped microphone suspended from the spire above him.
With or Without You - The last of the obvious hits - except for Pride and perhaps I Will Follow, the band covered the bases and then some regarding their oldies. This one's a time bomb of passion waiting to happen - I know what's coming, but it still knocks me on my ass every time.
Moment of Surrender - The odd setlist choices culminated in the mellow groove of this finale, which began with an awe-inspiring effect as the house lights were shut off and only the glow of fans holding up their cell phones was visible, turning the stadium into a vertiable galaxy. I'm not sure this song quite invokes the feeling of euphoria that a band like U2 would want to close a set with, but I love the bass groove and Edge's understated solo. It's slowly becoming a favorite from the new album.
And that was the end, after nearly two and a half hours of uniformly great performances. As we made our way through the crowds and cars and trash and trekked back to the car, a line from "City of Blinding Lights" popped back into my head: "Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel, luckily." Bono audibly made a comment about "grace" after singing that line, and I don't remember what it was, but it was interesting when juxtaposed with his later performance of "Amazing Grace". I wish the obnoxious evangelists standing on the street with bullhorns could have actually experienced the show themselves and heard this. It would have probably fallen on deaf ears if they did, since your hardcore fundamentals are never going to be pleased with a "worldly" band like U2. But that's the essence of what U2 seems to be all about - blessings not just for the ones who kneel. There's something in their music which ignites, or at least highlights, a longing within people who may not come from anything near the Christian background that many of Bono's lyrics come from. There's something universal in many of his lyrics - not in the sense that he's saying "all paths are the same", but in the sense that he can take what he believes to be true and express it in ways that turn the Christian jargon on its head, that those with ears to hear can mull over and be intrigued by. It's not evangelism. There's no agenda. But it's a reminder to those of us with our didactic and pushy ways of trying to get the Gospel out there that sometimes all you need is just to write ans play and sing from the heart, and people will respect that even if they don't agree with it. Maybe they'll even come to believe a little more of it than they used to. But either way, they'll leave at the end of the night blessed by something that maybe they weren't expecting when they came in.
I just hit the milestone of 100 Facebook friends. That's probably pretty laughable to some folks out there who know like 500 people on FB, but since I'm not actively trying to amass friends just for the sake of the numbers, and am trying to keep it to people I've developed some sort of a rapport with over the years (despite how delinquent I might have been about keeping in touch with some of them through venues outside of Facebook such as Email, or that ancient thing called the phone), 100 actually seems like a lot. Some are folks I met recently, who are just starting to impact my life in some way. Some have known me for close to half of my life now. (A few have known me for my entire life, or at least their entire life, but only because they have the distinct misfortune of being related to me).
So, because I'm rather OCD about list-making, I thought it'd be fun to list in order, as best I remember it, when I met the folks I now call "Friends" on Facebook, and try to recall the context, or the mutual acquaintance, through whom I met each of these people. I'm fuzzy on some of it. Some of you folks, I saw around for a while before we were ever formally introduced, so if you remember meeting me before I remember meeting you, then um, oops. It's not that you're not memorable; it's that my memory tends to blur months or even years of being in the same place together. Outside of college (when each year and place I lived was quite distinct), it's all a bit nebulous, but then, how many of you can recall how long you've known some of the people who are most important to you now? Hmmm? Got ya there.
So here's the last, roughly in order from most long-standing relationships to most recent acquaintances.
1978
Gloria Martin (aunt, probably not long after I was born)
1982
Eric Martin (younger brother, when he was born)
1990
Andrea Randall-Luyties (Prevailing Word Ministry, Youth/Jr. High Group)
1995
Lina Tam Yep (Occidental College, O-Team)
Sandra Gallardo (Oxy, through Lina)
Angela Mansfield (Oxy, InterVarsity)
Rachel Hamilton (Oxy, IV)
Jonathan Gunderson (Oxy, IV)
Catherine Quindipan (Oxy, through Lina)
Jen Silverman (Oxy, through mutual friend Mark)
Carolyn Suh (Oxy, through Lina)
1996
Kendra Powell Humphreys (Oxy, through Jen)
Nick Overfield (Campus By the Sea)
Nathan Young (Oxy, IV)
Calvin Liang (Oxy, same dorm)
Jennie Hardwick (Oxy, same dorm/IV)
Krista Blakesley Lucas (Oxy, same dorm/IV)
Tim Lucas (Oxy, IV)
James Berk (Pomona First Baptist, through Tim)
1997
Dawn Sikorski (Oxy, IV)
Jeffrey Chan (Oxy, IV)
1999
Fade Manley (Oxy, IV)
2001
Timothy Hui (Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, XRoads College/Young Adult Fellowship)
Cheryl Park (EBCLA, XRoads)
Danny Park (EBCLA, XRoads)
Kelsey Tanaka (EBCLA, XRoads)
Natalie Ho Lin (EBCLA, XRoads)
Joseph Espinosa (EBCLA, XRoads)
Kent Sellers (EBCLA, Hiking)
Winnie Wang (EBCLA, Hiking)
Terri Chan (EBCLA, Pasadena Sedaqah Group [Bible Study])
Mark Shimaura (EBCLA, Single Adult Fellowship/Hiking)
Ken Fong (EBCLA, pastor)
Jonathan Wu (EBCLA, pastor)
Francis Su (EBCLA, Pasadena SDQ)
Ada Chan (EBCLA, through Terri)
Lulu Wang (EBCLA, through Winnie)
2002
Christine Martin (Hawaii, online via some cheesy Christian singles website)
Kaomi Ruth Hickman (Hawaii, Christine's mom)
Toby Chi (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)
Daniel Yee (EBCLA, XRoads)
Emanuel Ramos (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)
Clara Tam Chan (through mutual friends from Pasadena SDQ)
Connie Huang (EBCLA, randomly at some lunch)
Sta-c Nt (Hawaii, through Christine)
Michele Itsuno (Hawaii, through Christine)
Lori Unemori (Hawaii, through Christine)
San Young (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)
Tony Chu (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)
Kalia Young (EBCLA, Hiking)
Keiko Ross (Long Beach, Christine's "aunt in the Hawaii sense")
Angela Hickman (Hawaii, Christine's sister)
2003
Joy Lewis (EBCLA, pastor)
Kai Shen (EBCLA, Chinatown SDQ)
Lori Higa (EBCLA, Chinatown SDQ)
Nancy Iwasaki (EBCLA, Chinatown SDQ)
Maryia Davis (Raytheon, co-worker)
2004
Mailin Young (through Nate)
Kenji Paul Shimabukuro (EBCLA, Church Camp)
2005
Amy Forrest (EBCLA, Passage College Fellowship)
Gabe Yee (EBCLA, Passage)
Raymond Pon (EBCLA, Passage)
Joyce Yu (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Caroline Chiang (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
2006
Ak Chico (EBCLA, through Danny & Cheryl)
Christy Lin (EBCLA, through Danny & Cheryl)
Mimi Chen (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Ken Lee (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
H. Michelle Kao (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Irwin Law (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Lonnie Yu (EBCLA, Passage)
Courtney Widger (EBCLA, Passage)
Alda Au-Yeung (EBCLA, Passage)
Martolemuel Au-Yeung (EBCLA, Passage)
John H. Lin (EBCLA, Passage)
Vincent Gu (EBCLA, Passage)
Michelle Simpson (Alaska, online via Jarchives)
2007
Carrie Law (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Rick Bautista (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Vincent Hua (EBCLA, Passage Retreat)
Dorothy Ngo (EBCLA, Passage Retreat)
William Jones (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Jessica Wong (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Deborah Southern (EBCLA, Passage)
John Liu (EBCLA, Passage)
2008
Isaac Gremmer (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Helen Lee (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)
Amy Yang (EBCLA, Branches Young Adult Retreat)
Lucy Yang (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)
Ian Tam (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)
Kelsie McPherson (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)
Carol Ly (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)
Lorena Cheng (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)
Win Dat Lam (EBCLA, Branches)
Reuben Kim (EBCLA)
2009
April Moreno (EBCLA, Branches)
Sheng Hua (EBCLA, Monterey Park SDQ)
Danny Lau (EBCLA, Men's Retreat)
Hsin Foo (EBCLA, Young Adult Ministry)
Joon S Han (EBCLA, Young Adult Retreat)
Esther Chan (EBCLA, Young Adult Retreat)
Joseph Chan (EBCLA, Young Adult Retreat)
Joanne Shoho (EBCLA, through Pastor Ken's Facebook)
OK, so about that Mute Math concert... it's two days later and I'm still reeling. As I mentioned the night of, it was so energetic that it was exhausting to watch. Even though I've seen the band live twice before, there's something truly fascinating about watching a band dance on top of their own instruments, build other instruments out of salvaged electronic equipment, and seemingly rewrite the parameters of live music performance over the course of two hours. The fact that they put this same amount of energy and ingenuity into every show is mind-boggling. And the fact that when it's all said and done, they're making insanely catchy, beat-driven electronic pop music instead of some off-the-deep-end form of hardcore rock or rave music that is devoid of actual song structure or whatever, is the icing on the cake. It might not be exemplified on their albums as well as it could be, but this band has earned any buzz they receive through their live shows.
First you've got Paul Meany, a vocalist who can do smooth and relaxed as well as he does loud and hyperactive, who has an affection for the keytar but is also proficient on the two more commonplace instruments that it's derived from, and who loves to stand on and/or do backflips over his keyboard set. He's been an interesting character to watch ever since he used to do the rap vocals for Earthsuit. A band like Mute Math needs a frontman with pizzazz, but also one who doesn't let the showmanship get in the way of making good music. (Not usually, anyway.)
Then you've got Greg Hill, the guitar man who knows how to match Meany's energy with a highly tweaked guitar solo or a funky chord progression, or even use his instrument as percussion when the band goes into one of their more rhythm-obsessed passages. He also proves quite capable on the xylophone or piano whenever Meany's too busy running around like a maniac to sit still at a keyboard.
Most bands don't have particularly memorable bass players; it's a thankless job. But Roy Mitchell-Cardenas gets to be front and center during a few of his band's extended jams, especially the trippy "Stare at the Sun" and its outro "Obsolete", which find him moonlighting as a percussionist when he's not coaxing some phat sounds out of an upright bass that's at least as big as he is.
And then there's the secret weapon, drummer Darren King, who I've heard only has two arms like the rest of us, but he's never slowed them down on stage enough for me to distinctly count them. He very nearly steals the show out from under Meany on several occasions. It's by design. What other band would let their drummer dismantle his own kit during the encore, hand parts of it to fellow band members, and then go crowd surfing on top of his own bass drum? (This resulted in a wicked attempt at a stage dive that almost resulted in disaster - see for yourself in one of the YouTube clips below.)
Armed with all that musical wizardry, there's almost never a dull moment during a Mute Math show. To be fair, I still have to say that their older material is probably the best vehicle for them to showcase their talents, since a lot of the newer stuff from this year's Armistice came a bit closer to playing it by the rules, with less room for jamming. Those are still good songs and highly entertaining to watch when the band recreates them on stage, but as cool as the riff or bass line of songs like "The Nerve" and "Backfire", etc., may sound, they're compact enough to not leave a lot of room for the open-ended stuff. The single "Spotlight" (which I guess is what got the Twilight fans on board - crappy movie, savvy soundtrack) with its sweet vocal runs and handclapping, proved to be a little more open-ended, as did the funky "Armistice", which led into a bit of a non-seuitur jam at the end. And the album closer, "Burden", which finished out the main set, was definitely designed for that sort of thing... and yet that was the one song that didn't quite deliver. Meany just kept vamping on the line "I just can't hold it together" as the group kept chewing on the same drum beat and melody line, never finishing it off with the slow, contemplative section that provides the album's most profound lyric: "The devil is not the nature that is around us, but the nature that is within us all". It would have been so much more satisfying to have that lead into the final drum solo, but if only five minutes of a nearly two-hour show were a bit tedious, I honestly can't complain.
The songs that really got the audience going were the oldies, of course - the jerky, manic energy of "Plan B", the relentless syncopated rhythm of "Chaos", the bouncy giddiness of "Noticed", and of course the hyper-driven guitar riffs of "Typical". The band knew exactly when to drop these into the setlist for good measure, mixing the old with the new, and the only complaint I can make about the old songs is that several of them seemed abbreviated in comparison to how the band used to play them. We all know that "Stare at the Sun" is really just there as an excuse to have fun with the plentiful solos in "Obsolete", and we all know that "Break the Same" is designed to be a show-stopper to the point where the song itself gets lost amidst the band practically taking the entire stage apart in the process. That's fine. But these songs do have full sets of lyrics; it was mildly disappointing to have sections of them skipped altogether. Again, given how excitingly arranged and sequenced everything was, I really couldn't nitpick that point for too long.
While the band did leave out "Control" and the newer song "Goodbye", two of my favorites, they managed to surprise me with the songs that got included, most notably "You Are Mine". It's a dreamy little slow groove, probably the closest thing that the band has to a pure "love song", and that provided a good break in the exhausting display of energy where Christine and I could just put our arms around each other and drink in the mood. Since most of the new album is about the hard parts of relationships, the points where you choose to call off wars and admit defeat and go your separate ways, it was good to have the more optimistic stuff from the band's earlier days mixed in like this.
The band had a video screen set up behind them, reflecting the motif of the Armistice album cover, that was used to project random clips of old films and such when it wasn't projecting the actual band members in grainy black-and-white. At one point they even used the screen interactively, projecting four circles onto it while Greg Hill stood in front of it with drumsticks, banging out an electronic rhythm on pads that were hidden behind it as the circles lighted up when hit. That was an inventive approach that made "No Response" - not one of my favorites from the new album - come into its own as a much more intriguing song. Also savvy were the jazzy drums and slick upright bass of "Pins & Needles", which the band must like a lot since they saved it for the encore, and Greg Hill's slide guitar solo that filled in nicely where a string section would have shown up in the album version of "Clipping". These guys are quite skilled at making sure every song they play live deviates from the album version in (usually) interesting ways. It should be noted that the marathon encore, which ended with the one-two punch of the instrumental "Reset" and the aforementioned "Break the Same", will probably never sound exactly the same in any two performances. The audience itself almost becomes a part of the act at that point.
Here's the full setlist:
The Nerve
Backfire
Chaos
Clipping
No Response
Plan B
Stare at the Sun/Obsolete
Electrify
Armistice/untitled jam
You Are Mine
Odds
Noticed
Typical
Burden
Encore:
Pins & Needles
Spotlight
Reset
Break the Same
The opening act was a band called As Tall as Lions. I had never heard of 'em, and when they took forever to get going due to a detuned guitar that prompted an "extended ambient intro", I was prepared to expect them to be a waste of my time. But they very quickly changed my mind with some highly danceable rhythms, a real gift for syncopation and odd time signatures, a little bit of Mute Math-style communal percussion, and an "anything goes" approach with dual vocalists, keyboards, xylophones, a trumpet, basically anything to veer left from the typical radio rock sound. (I was bummed that they didn't bring the trumpet player out to help with Mute Math's set - he would have been right at home during the New Orelans-styled "Armistice".) I will definitely be checking them out in the future.
The venue, Club Nokia, kind of got on my nerves. The people there were cool - your mix of big fans who just wanted to drink in the visual and aural spectacle, and the clubbing types who just wanted to let loose and dance. Just watching those folks freak out right in front of us added a lot to the energy of the show, I think. Unfortunately, the atmosphere of the venue and especially the people who worked there just screamed "Too sophisticated for our own good". The security guards, while they have an important role to fulfill to make sure crowds don't get out of hand in a venue like this, were being real jerks, making people turn off their camera phones, interrupting folks in the process of having a good time to insist that they remove the slive of their shoe that was standing on the white line demarcating the walkway that led to the pit, and even telling me and Christine we weren't allowed to sit down and rest our cramped, weary legs in between sets. I could understand that if it were a sold-out show, but come on dude, we were sitting back against the wall and were staying totally out of people's way.
But the most irritating thing had to be the restroom attendants. I'm sorry, but this is a mid-sized club where relatively young folks come to hear rock music, not some snooty top-of-the-line private lounge on the East Coast or whatever. I do not need some dude to help me put soap on my hands and hand me a paper towel on my way out with the hope that I'll feel obligated to tip him! All this does is encourage folks to duck out without washing their hands at all, and contribute to the spread of swine flu. (Yes, I still washed them. And I did it all by myself, thank you very much.) Honestly, whenever a place has a "bathroom guy", it just makes it seem all hoity-toity and I never want to go back there again.
Oh, and I ran into Toby and Monica, a couple from our church, at the show. They used to lead one of the worship teams at our church and I had no clue they were even into this sort of music (I think Monica was still new to it, but Toby insisted he had been on board before Twilight, not that I had surmised anything otherwise). I figure if they can get a sitter and enjoy a night out like this despite being parents, then I shall be inspired to do the same, at least from time to time, when Christine and I are parents.
That's it for the concert commentary. Now, some YouTubes:
"The Nerve"
"Backfire"
"Clipping"
"Stare at the Sun/Obsolete"
"No Response" (from a different show since nobody posted the full song from this one)
And finally, Darren's crazy-ass attempt at crowd surfing:
True
