memphis has been laid to waste (part 3a)

so much in the past ten years. so many changes. the body changes every seven. completely new cells. i heard that once, im not sure, but it makes sense looking at how much someone changes in ten years. for me, it went from from being in high school to 8 years graduated, and i still dont have a career, nor have i held a single job for more than a year's time. through college (failing out 4 times) and living in my car/brother's couch/future brother-in-law's couch. ive hitched from coast to coast and back, and flew to the other side of the world twice. tho i'm not quite done with them, i believe the first ten years out of high school are one's most formative. they also give one the chance to branch out and see what he or she is made of, as well as seeing what the world around one is made of. saying that, i hope to be proven wrong, and i hope to continue to have many of the same types of experiences through the next ten years. but today my friends, we speak of music. more specifically, the music i started this decade with, a little of what happened in the middle, and the music i am ending this decade with. so, my dearest readers, with a fresh cup of coffee and a new song starting as we speak, let us begin.

to the best of my knowledge, at the turn of the century 'living sacrifice' and 'zao' were my favorite bands, with 'horde', 'extol', 'overcome', and 'few left standing' making for a fairly brutal second wave. i had just discovered hardcore music in the months since the last summer, making the switchover from contemporary christian to spirit filled hardcore with grace and style fit for any small town preacher's kid. i probably even spent the dreaded y2k changeover in my room with my headphones on listening to bruce fitzhugh scream about how christians shouldnt smoke*. ah, christian metal. scare your parents for jesus. i was just trying to express myself, i said. i was just being what god made me. ha. to be one hundred percent on this, it was about half and half. i can think back to junior high, being attracted to the heavier, faster parts of the christian rock that dominated my burgeoning taste buds for years. i really wanted heavier, faster music, and i'd finally found it. but like i said, being at one hundred percent, it was kinda fun to piss off my parents. that got old after a little while. thats probably about the time the bitterness started to set in and solidified my need for speed, as it were.

my roots in this style of music have shaped the last decade, and even ruled the first half of it as a foundation for whatever else was going on in my head. by the end of high school, i listened mostly to black metal and goth, but still had one hand in hardcore. by 2003, it was all punk all the time, except for when my friends and i would get together and try to find the most brutal, bone crushing, blastbeat ridden, skull pounding, yet still danceable breakdowns. speaking of which, ive always hated hardcore dancing. dumb. i digress. where was i? punk rock. perhaps as one looking in, punk could adequately describe the last ten years. but i wouldn't've gotten there without metal coming first, and then later, dragging me back into 80's hardcore in late 2004 or so. punk was all i wanted to be for all time, forever and into eternity. never quite made it, did i? little things kept pulling me away. the fact that i was an idiot being the chief concern. growing up in a little town and then moving to a slightly bigger town didnt really give me the chance to flex my punkrockedness much. as soon as i got out of huntsville and saw the rest of the world, i realized that i was full of it. like most people who are, i realized that i had a really good imagination about the world around me. le sigh. back to the music talk? no, i will break now and make this a two parter. next time discussing the undercurrents (purposefully?) not seen by the average 'vern friend'. or maybe nobody really cared that much and im a vain, s...[end transmission]

*the song 'burn the end' was actually on the cd 'the hammering process' which wasn't released till later in 2000, which means i was probably actually listening to zao. forgive me, dear readers.