Jared’s Blog

It was inevitable. That lovely little friend known as my iPod kicked the bucket last week. I was trying to sync it up so I could listen to some recent podcasts on the road and it was fighting me the whole way.

First it synced about 4 of the dozen or so that I wanted. After a few more attempts at getting it to sync the rest, I got fed up and decided do a full reset. It meant having to re-sync every song in my library (6500 songs takes about 3 - 4 hours), but in the past, it’s fixed my issues.

Well, I think the reset was about as much as it could take. Shortly after plugging it into AC power, it stopped responding entirely to button pushes. I plugged it into my PC, it recognized it, but still wouldn’t transfer. I’ve had drive problems since a few months after I got it. It would randomly freeze and the only fix was a hard smack against the palm of my hand. I’d also done a self-install of a new battery after the original stopped holding a charge and the warranty was up.

Yesterday, I stopped by the Apple store and picked up a 160GB Classic. I’d been planning on only getting an 80GB, but I remembered Apple’s recycling program. Bring in any iPod, working or not, and they’ll give you 10% off any iPod purchase the same day. Not only did I get rid of the old brick, but I got a nice little discount. When it was all said and done, I got double the space for only $40.

My biggest complaint is that they no longer include an AC adapter in the box. Something that’s not a problem for me because I still have my old one. The other minor annoyance is that the backlight now stays on the entire time the iPod is connected to a PC or in my car whereas the previous version turned off after a few seconds.

Update: Yesterday, I got a Griffin Reflect case for my iPod too. It’s shiny!

Being the good Mac fanboy, I was anxiously awaiting Apple’s announcement today. With a title like “The beat goes on,” you knew it was going to be new iPods. Having just taken it all in, I have some reactions.

Well the word is out and so are the new iPods. New colors for Shuffles. Blah. New “fatty” nano. Don’t care. New iPod “Classic.” Interesting, nice price point. iPod Touch. I was hanging on every word until they got to the size, 8GB and 16GB. Wifi enabled. Sweet! Wifi iTunes Store. Also sweet! Starbucks partnership. *silence*

I was all ready to go to the Apple Store after work to buy me a new iPod Touch until I found out they were only going up to 16GB. I can’t live with 16GB. I’m the kind of person who likes to be able to hear a song on a whim. The only way to do that is to carry my whole collection around with me. I reached the point where I could no longer fit all my music on my 60GB iPod not long ago. I deal with it by only putting the stuff I listen to somewhat often on it. That reduced collection is somewhere between 25-30GB. Why couldn’t you have made a 32GB version, Apple? Charge me $499 for it. Everything else about it is sweet, but if you have a device that’s supposed to hold my music, video, and photos, it’s going to need to be larger than 16GB.

I finally found some time to go at my photos from Warped Tour last week. I only photographed 2 bands as Rick got the only media braclet slapped on his wrist and he didn’t bring a camera. The ones I did take turned out OK.

My last post contained a little foreshadowing about the content of this post. I figured I had a lot to say about Warped Tour and it was too much to cram into one post; especially for the negative content. Sorry to say, but I’m still on the rant. It’s really sad that the overwhelming feeling I got from Warped this year was that I was being sold to. Maybe I’m just getting older and wiser.

Anyway, the next thing I ran into at Warped was the religious zealots. You can count on them showing up every year. For some reason, you only ever see them inside the halls of the Metrodome. I think they’re afraid if they go outside, they’ll have to actually listen to the artists that are there. Their tactics are always the same. They walk up to you and say something like “Do you want to hear something that will change your life?” Smoothly, they slip you a book with catchy titles like “The Truth, You, and Your Future.” To those people, let me clue you in on something: while Warped Tour was on Sunday, no one goes to Warped Tour to find God! If they did, they’d be in church instead. So leave the kids alone and go hole yourself up in some compound in Texas.

I also take exception to the whole ticket system for food. First of all, you can’t bring any food in save for a single open bottle of water. When the majority of people are jumping around all day expending energy, it’s a safe  bet they’re going to need to eat. Apparently punks only like to eat fried junk food because that’s the only thing you can buy. Hamburgers, corn dogs, brats, fried cheese curds, nachos, french fries, gyros, and ice cream are the only things on the menu. When you do decide to give in, you can only buy blocks of 10 tickets for $5 each. It usually works out though because everything is so over-priced, you’d have a hard time spending less than that. For instance, a 20 oz bottle of Gatorade is 8 tickets: the equivalent of $4! Bottled water, 6 tickets ($3). A gyro sandwich, 14 tickets ($7). To top it off, you almost never use up all your tickets so end up wasting that money.  Fortunately, the Metrodome is open, so you can use the bathrooms and water fountains for free water.

This past weekend, I attended the Warped Tour as it rolled through Minneapolis. This won’t be a show review, rather a rant on the rampant commercialism I was witness to.

Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t really care if I made the Warped Tour which has practically become a summer tradition for me. I took a second look at the band list, and Burns decided he wouldn’t mind going. I figured it would be worth my money to go. $37, I had a ticket. Of course this is after Ticketmaster tacks on $7 in fees per ticket. It kills me to pay those fees every time. I understand Ticketmaster is a business just like any other and requires money to opperate, but somehow a 25% fee seems excessive.

Now as Burns, Rodney (Andy’s step-brother), and I show up to wait in line for Will Call (it would’ve cost me another $11 to ship the tickets to my house as I ordered them a week before the show) I heard some music. At first I thought it was a soundcheck, but as we came around the bend and down the slope, there was a small tent set up with a band playing to the line-waiters. This was new. There wasn’t much else to do besides watch the “tent bands” in our hour wait for the gates to open.

As I mentioned previously, the first band was already playing when we got there and they didn’t sound like anything special. There’s a reason they were playing in a tent to the line instead of on one of the stages inside and the reason isn’t because they’re undiscovered. Of course they had one of their buddies walking around and selling their CD for $5. Far more annoying, however, were what I call the “groupie bitches.” The whole time the band, their name was Allura by the way, were playing, they were bouncing up and down, cheering, and snapping pictures. The groupie bitches also walked over and told us we should buy that band’s CD which kicked off the following exchange:

Jared: Which one of the band members is your boyfriend?

Groupie Bitch 1: He’s not my boyfriend! We flew here all the way from Southern California. (As if it was the most wonderful far away paradise in the world)

Groupie Bitch 2: Do you want to see our tickets?

J: I don’t doubt you flew here. I’m not going to buy your boyfriend’s CD so you can go hawk your shit somewhere else.

GB 1 & 2 (with a look of disbelief while walking away and giving me the finger): Hrmpf!

Rodney and Andy thought it was hilarious as did I. I guess I’ve seen one too many ads with pretty girls in them trying to sell stuff they’d never be into themselves. I’ve got a few more rants to go on about crazy religious people and big ass sunglasses, but I’ll save those for another post (possibly later today). I also took a few pics that I’ll post when I get around to processing them.

On Friday, I was surfing around some band’s Myspace pages and I noticed a show happening in Buffalo, MN. In case you are unfamiliar with Minnesota, let me tell you Buffalo isn’t a hotbed of musical activity. Rarely do artists ever visit any place other than the Twin Cities. I was floored to find a show happening in Buffalo.

There was a simple explanation for this freak occurrence, however. Sonshine, a 3 day Christian music festival, was taking place not too far down the road and almost all the bands had played on Friday or Saturday night there. It was probably a no-brainer for them to only drive an hour or two to get to their next gig. Besides that, this was the first ever show at The Vault. I’m sure they wanted to kick things off with a big show and this was their golden opportunity.

Anyway, there were a few bands I’ve wanted to see for awhile (Means, Nodes of Ranvier, and War of Ages namely) and it was only $15 to get in. I couldn’t pass it up.

I showed up about an hour late and to my surprise no one had even played yet. In fact, it was another 45 minutes before Of Sound and Fury took the stage. After I was there for a short while, I found out about the grand opening part. Let’s just say I could’ve shown up a little later. Of Sound and Fury wasn’t that great and it was a full hour before Death Sentence played their first note. Most of the wait was due to the one and only sound man becoming the one and only lights man. And my lights man, I mean unboxing some utility lamps and running some extension cords from the back of the place. The track lights they had at the front of the homemade stage weren’t too impressive either.

I’d never heard of Death Sentence, however, most of the crowd had and the hardcore dancing was in full force. They played 5-6 songs and were out. After Death Sentence, the set changes got a little quicker, but in between bands I still had time to get my bearings in the surrounding area. As I stepped outside, I noticed 2 cops talking to someone who seemed to be in charge. I figured they had a noise complaint already, but it wasn’t the case. Actually, there was some sort of no loitering law in Buffalo which was being violated by concert-goers standing outside. Lame, I know, but the simple solution was to have us just walk around if we were outside.

No Wings to Speak Of were up next. Before they even started playing, I noticed a familiar face. The vocalist was once a member of Foreknown, a band out of Duluth that I’d seen probably 4-5 times up on the Iron Range. I really like Foreknown, so I was hoping this new band would have a similar sound. Not quite. Still, they were tolerable and were into it enough to make for a good set.

I have to admit, at this point my memory of who played next gets a little fuzzy. There were 14 bands in total at this show and I may have mixed up the order a little after this. I’ll say that Children 18:3, a recent singing of Tooth and Nail Records, was next. If I was to judge them on looks alone, I would’ve walked out without hearing them play a single thing. The lead singer/guitarist had black eye makeup on. I’m talking way more than just guyliner. He was trying to imitate a raccoon or something. The bassist chick looked like something straight out of an 80’s hair metal band. I can’t say anything about the drummer other than he was with these 2 clowns (literally) on stage. While their music wasn’t to my liking, a more punk oriented White Stripes you might say, their musicianship was impeccable. The drummer was what first caught my eye. He was twirling his sticks between eat hit and not missing a beat. Their guitar player could just shred and the bassist girl wasn’t half bad either. Even though I didn’t like their music, I could’ve watched the drummer play all day long.

At that point I had to pee and I was getting really hungry, but there was no way I was going to risk missing any of Means. I’ve taken quite a liking to their debut and they were probably the band I wanted to see the most out of the whole lineup. My only gripe about their set was its length. It could’ve been twice as long. They were every bit as good in person as I’d hoped. After their set, I made my way to the merch area (which you had to go around to the side of the building and up a narrow ass flight of stairs to get to). As it turned out, they were at the end of their tour and out of all shirts in my size. I was told they’d be back in the fall with It Prevails and Across Five Aprils; a must see show.

A local band, Venia, was up next. I’d heard good things, so I checked em out. They were pretty standard hardcore/metalcore, and I probably could’ve skipped them without disappointment. In fact I took off as they were finishing their last song to find a bathroom and some food. I found a Subway which also had a bathroom (obviously). I returned to The Vault to find xLookingForwardx on stage. Another straight edge, hardcore band that I could’ve skipped.

After another extended set change, For Today began their set. They played through their set and also played the only encore of the day. I’m kicking myself for not buying their 3-song demo because they were really good. Both of their guitar players were absolutely crushing. Ironically, it was one of those guys who gave the longest “I love Jesus” speech of the day. I politely kept my mouth shut when he exclaimed how he, only a year earlier, “hated God,” but then “felt the warmth of Christianity in his heart.” The sub I ate earlier was clawing it’s way out in protest, but I kept it quiet.

At this point in the day, I was pretty exhausted having head-banged my way through 8 bands already. I took a seat at the side of the stage and watched Call to Preserve and Seventh Star do their thing. They had these not-so-comfortable bench seats on one side of the wall, but it was better than sitting on the floor.

Feeling somewhat rejuvenated, I was ready to go all in for War of Ages. They did not disappoint. They opened with my favorite song on their newest album, “Strength Within.” They continued ripping through another 3 songs before their vocalist had his little “Jesus talk.” I had all but closed my ears when he started to talk about how his father was the leader of a white supremacy gang and a drug dealer. I thought to myself, “OK, this guy has my respect now.” I more than showed it through the rest of their set giving them as much energy as I could muster.

Burden of a Day and Nodes of Ranvier were still set to play and by that time it was not quite 10PM. I sat there debating on whether or not I should stick around and ultimately, I decided if I was going to make it in to work the next day that I should leave. It killed me to miss Nodes of Ranvier but, but I valued my rest more. Besides, I had seen enough bands for my $15 and Nodes would surely be back another time.

I, of course, brought my camera with me and managed to get some sweet shots of Means and War of Ages in addition to a few of No Wings to Speak Of and Death Sentence.