Geoff's Miscellany

Ultramindset hack: listen to this while you do anything to make that thing feel more significant.

I went to my first concert in a long time tonight.

It was for an 80s coverband named the Spazmatics. They were pretty good.

Observations:

1. The BMI of the concert demographic has changed tremendously.
2. The energy levels of audience members has had an inverse relationship with the BMI.
3. When I was younger, I loved concerts, but I hated loud sounds. It was a love/hate relationship because I have abnormally good hearing. Now that I'm older, I kid you not, concerts are even louder. I used to go to metal shows. This was much louder.
4. The song "Safety Dance" is still awesome.
5. I also enjoyed "Walk Like an Egyptian."

Here is a metal-esque song that really only exists to listen to prior to or during intense exercise:

I highly recommend this song for getting pumped up for a heavy set of squats or dead lift, but it’s also a good “getting to the gym by car” song.

Any other gym music recommendations?

When I was younger I really like the song Paint it Black. I now almost never listen to the radio, but right after telling my wife that I liked it as a kid, it came on when I turned the radio on on a lark the next day. Then later that day it came on the radio at the gym. I listened to it when I did my heaviest set on dead lift.

One of my favorite poems is Paradise Lost. Naturally, this means that I enjoy The Desert is on Fire by Murder by Death.

The song takes place in a concept album wherein the devil was visiting a bar in Mexico and tried to make a few extra bucks on a drug deal. The other dealer double crosses him and shoots him in the back. When the devil gets out of prison he goes on a rampage against the entire village and when he confronts the villagers, he reminds them, “I fought off angels with my hands back, I set the heavens on fire.” It’s an exciting song with a fairly epic tone. If you want to know how the story ends you’ll need to listen to the whole album.

A year or so ago, a friend gave me “The Color Spectrum” by The Dear Hunter. The album is very unusual, but it was a delightful surprise. I especially like the song below. I think I mostly like its sound though. While the chorus is great (what better thing to bring us back to reality or our calling than love?), I think the idea is that somebody keeps coming back to a distant and non-reciprocating object of affection because of love. While that story is used in movies all the time (see Ex Machina), it is not actually noble to put others on a pedestal. It could be possible that the person is brought back to a struggling friend or lover because of love, in this case the song is much more positive.

Back in the days of “the myspace” I had a roommate who was in a hard core band and a significant number of friends on myspace I met at his concerts or through another friend who went to a lot of evangelism conferences and such. I still remember when one of them messaged me and said, “You’ll really like this album by Thrice.” She was right. I’ve loved this album for a decade. My favorite song on it probably changes from year to year, but Of Dust and Nations is fantastic. The main theme is the sands of time continue to trickle through the hourglass of history and that anything that isn’t eternal that we put our trust in will be destroyed by time.

mewithoutYou is a band that I’ve liked since my senior year of high school when I came across one of their songs on a compilation CD that was given to me at a concert. Their sound has evolved tremendously since then. Their first album is one I very rarely listen to anymore. But their newest album Pale Horses, is very good. One song that really grabs me is Birnam Wood.

I’ve mentioned before the weird period of time when I listened to The Mars Volta late into the night while fishing. Here is another of their songs.

It’s pretty weird, but I like it. Their music has appealed to me for nearly a decade.