Despite the fact that I have exams and papers coming out my ears, I decided to put together a description of my first year of college, and the music that I was listening to along the way.

August-September: New beginnings and bitter goodbyes

So school is just about to begin and I remember playing a song on my iPod just as I left my bedroom for the car that was taking me to school.
Street Struck

Obscure choice, but it was the beat,the spooky vibe that it gives off, that just stuck with me.

Another song I remember listening to around this time was Xerces by the Deftones.
Xerces
It was just like, the perfect description of how I felt at the time, like I was saying goodbye to a dream, an ambition of some sorts. The dream being, of course, my pipe dream of hip-hop ambitions, and "something else"
that I'll elaborate on later on.

October-November: Struggling to Stay Afloat

At this point in time, classes had begun and I was deep in schoolwork, trying to keep up, and gradually making friends. However, there was one problem, I was feeling as if I had lost my ambition, my motivation for living, when I went to college. I kinda fell into a depression of sorts, and it was just rough at that time.

And this song became a staple in my iPod for days.
Every Day Is Exactly the Same
It was like my life was perfectly described by one lyric, one line.

December-January: End of Semester/Trip to Africa/England/Failure

So as the year winds down, I manage to actually do well in my classes, passing all of them and getting on the dean's list. I've made quite a few friends and for once, I'm actually quite happy. But, as always, the moment of calm gives way to a lot of chaos along the way.

First, my roommate decides to move in with his other friend. No biggie, I understood completely.

Second, my first iPod (5th generation,30 GB) breaks,after approx. 1 year and 10 months of service. The devastation is immediate and traumatic. It's even worse due to the fact that it was just before a huge international trip.



So thanks to my dad, I get a new one just in time (6th generation,80 GB) ,and I spend the last 2 days before the trip buying/downloading various albums and songs, such as...

Golden
Magnified
Team Sleep
Master of Puppets
Lupe Fiasco's The Cool
8 Diagrams
Brown
Under the Bridge
The Militia
Warehouse
#34
Satellite


Of course, for the songs I actually listened to, well, let's just say Jedi Mind Tricks totally dominated, especially their album Visions of Ghandi and so did Linkin Park with Reanimation.

So, after all is said and done, it's back to normalcy for me. Just hanging out at home, playing Xbox 360 and listening to music, with one new acquisition from iTunes: Heavy Mental. Felling really disappointed that I wasn't able to see a friend of mine who had come back for a week or so, nor could I reform my band from high school, I just went into a holding pattern, stuck in a routine and relating to a few choice songs, especially The Nurse Who Loved Me.

OK, that's enough of that....let's move on.

February-March: 20 years and a near fall into darkness

So once I got settled back at college, everything seemed to be fine, things were normal...

Up till early-February, when it happened.

One Friday night, I was on my laptop, browsing Facebook, and then I saw someone try and impersonate me. Believe me, that was the start of my problems...

Earlier that week, my ex-roommate, who I had borrowed headphones from, came back and said that he wanted it back. So I did, I gave it back to him, and 5 minutes later, he said they were broken. I had no idea they broke, and before you knew it, s--- was ON. He started screaming about how "I had to replace 10 buck headphones", it being "the right thing", when I didn't have a job at that point in time. Words get heated and it gets truly crazy.

Some names were called, and we were at odds for a good month.

So when I saw the fake profile, suspicions began and a bad situation turned even worse...

And I was losing my mind, things were getting way too hectic.

So I attempted escape through the music:
Before the Great Collapse
Helpless
A Call for Blood

Eventually, everything returned to normal...somehow.

April-May: Conclusion and expansion

So on a friend's recommendation, I tried out some material from Mike Patton, the lead singer of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, etc.

I fell in love with it on first contact...especially Angel Dust, Mr. Bungle, The Real Thing, Album of the Year, Disco Volante, and California.

Of course, I gotta acknowledge some of the sweet hip-hop I came across too, like Percee P, and The Infamous.

Finally, near the end of the year I managed to find some old nu-metal chestnuts while working at the school radio station, from bands that vanished off the face of the earth:
These Days
Boiler Room
Loose

Kinda sad, how a lot of those bands came and went.

But hey, that's the biz.

Now, if you excuse me, it's time to listen to Ghosts I-IV

See you in 2009,with the sequel.