random music thoughts

1. i dont like linkin park. i never have. i cant think of one song that i like. most of them i find to be annoying. im sure they 'speak to' many troubled teens and other angry people, but i have yet to hear a song that i enjoy or can even really tolerate. for whatever reason, i dont enjoy any of their music. there arent that many successful bands out there where i dont at least like one of their songs. if it wasnt for the 'zephyr' song, i would probably feel the same about red hot chili peppers. they might be a little different in that its not that i dont like any of their songs, but i only mildly like their one song (pick one - not the zephyr song though) and since that song sounds like every other song on every album, i dont really like their stuff.

2. achtung baby is the best u2 album. this may not even be debated as that statement may already be the consensus and it might be something that everyone agrees upon and i just dont know it. but i was in the gym the other day and there were 3 songs on nellie's ipod from this album and it reminded me how great the album is. joshua tree might have the best 1-2-3 punch of any album. the first three tracks of joshua tree are: 1. where the streets have no name; 2. still havnt found what im looking for; and 3. with or without you. a pretty solid and impressive beginning. hard to beat. but top to bottom, i dont know that you can beat achtung baby. here is the list of songs:

#	Title	Length
1.	"Zoo Station"	4:36
2.	"Even Better Than the Real Thing"	3:41
3.	"One"	4:36
4.	"Until the End of the World"	4:39
5.	"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"	5:16
6.	"So Cruel"	5:49
7.	"The Fly"	4:29
8.	"Mysterious Ways"	4:04
9.	"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"	3:53
10.	"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)"	5:31
11.	"Acrobat"	4:30
12.	"Love Is Blindness"	4:23
55:23

you may not even recognize all those songs (acrobat?), but im telling you, if you havnt ever listened to that album from start to finish, you are missing out on some fantastic music. other u2 albums are great. im not even a huge u2 fan. i was turned off by them when living in utah where they are as close as mormons will get to worshiping a graven image or idol. mormons adopted u2 as their own like bono adopted africa.

but i just did a quick look at their discography and songs on their albums and its amazing all of the many great songs they have done. you could discuss their albums for hours and im sure somewhere people probably are right now, especially since they have a new album coming out next month. as far as im concerned though, there is nothing to debate as achtung baby takes the prize. hands down.

3. its amazing how sometimes music or a song can immediately take you back to a time and/or place in your life. while driving to work the other morning i heard coldplay's 'viva la vida' on the radio and i immediately felt like i was back in june of last year. i was honestly swept away to the point that you could have told me while i was listening to the music and driving that it was june 2008 and i would have believed you because everything just came rushing back. which is only concerning because i wasnt in june of 08, but actually driving 65 along the 405 freeway and probably endangering people because i was in a daze.

but in june i was in the middle of bar prep. i was pretty much living alone in a shell of our house in long beach. i didnt have hot water, or a fridge or electricity throughout the house, just one outlet in the front room. i essentially lived alone. zach sort of lived there for about a month but as mentioned, the house didnt have much to offer so he avoided it when possible. plus, he and every other american hates cold showers so it was all the more reason to leave.

anyways, every morning i had a muffin, banana and a vitamin water. no fridge, no cereal. for lunch i would eat a peanut butter and honey (not jam because you have to refrigerate it) sandwich along with some nutty bars, spicy cheeze-its (both of which i cant eat anymore), some cookies and some carmel flavored rice cakes. for dinner i would get something on the way home from studying or just eat a can of the campbell's thick and chunky soup. i did have a microwave so i could heat that up and dip bread in it and eat it as i watched an 'around the horn' episode online before going to bed. wake up. repeat.

i had recently received my new laptop. my other one crashed and so i lost all my music. i had my ipod but it had already 'maxed out' on the computers that you could hook it up to, so i wasnt able to put any of those songs on my computer. which was probably better since it would have just been distracting during bar study. but i remember hearing viva la vida for the first time and i really loved it and so i went and downloaded it on to my itunes. not the whole album, just that one song. the entire time i was bar studying, my computer only had that one song on it. i didnt play it too often or overkill it. but sometimes while in the library i would just take a break from studying and listen to that song while checking email or surfing the net. i was usually all alone in a study room all day just eating my lunch and reciting outlines to myself, so it was nice to have music every once in awhile.

which is what is so funny about the song. at the time i used it as my escape from studying. it helped me relax for a few minutes and forget about the bar. now, whenever i hear it, it takes me right back to the study room in the library or the dark home in long beach, the exact places it helped me escape only a few months ago. which is actually fine because life wasnt as bad as i may have painted it. life was great. spain won the euro cup that summer, which was fantastic. i guess i was also engaged that summer too. i never saw my fiancee but she planned a great wedding and showed up on the wedding day, so that all turned out great. and i ended up passing the bar. no bitter memories at all.

anyways, im not sure why i share all of that. i guess because that experience made me think of other songs that instantly take me to some point in life or remind me of something. i realized there are tons of songs, from chris brown to yanni, that i will always associate with something or some place in my life. which is kind of cool. its neat to think of the profound impact music can and does have and the places it can take your brain. provided of course that the place you go is somewhere you want to be, and not the chapman school of law library.