[ Preface ]
We're well into February and I'm not done. I've been meaning to get to finishing this for weeks now, but I never get around to it, so I'm just going to post what I have written, and hope that before too long I'll follow through and finish the rest of it (I feel like this is an appropriate time to tag
Can't Finish What You Started). Without further ado, my music of 2008 in review:
___
It's been almost two weeks and 2008 already feels so long ago. I've been trying to write this journal entry for a while now, but I guess the issue was that I couldn't figure out how I wanted to organize the entry. Last year divided up so well musically in accord with the semesters and breaks between them. I guess this year just felt like it was structured in my head in some other way for a change.
[ January / Early '08 ]
The early part of the year was characterized by nothing in particular. Honestly this feels so long ago, I don't even remember what was going on in my life back then. I had to go back and look at my charts to discern anything specific that I was listening to. Looks like there was the tail end of the huge
Bayside trip I was on, plus some
Barenaked Ladies,
The Matches,
The Format, and
Motion City Soundtrack, so basically just an assortment of the bands I listen to all of the time.
[ The Valentine's Day Bayside/Straylight Run Concert ] [ IMG ]
A week or two before this concert, my listening took its first distinct movement in any particular direction. Naturally, as I was stoked to be seeing
Bayside for the 4th(?) time, and
Straylight Run for the first time (and as it turns out, likely last as a complete ensemble), I did a lot of listening to the two bands as the concert date approached. The concert itself was awesome. It was down in San Jose on a Thursday night, so the weekend before I went back to Sacramento, did the usual hang out thing, then drove back to Berkeley borrowing on of my family's vehicles. I don't remember the day very well, but I'm pretty sure I left work or one of my classes early to make sure I'd get there on time. The drive down was fun. Since the van has a tape deck I was able to bring one of those cassette/headphone jack converters and jam out to
Bayside the entire way there.
At the concert itself I first waited through
The Status's performance, which was largely forgettable as a very generic
pop punk group. Next up was
Four Year Strong of whom I wasn't familiar with beyond the fact that I'd heard the band name before. I wasn't expecting much, but they put on a fuckwin show, despite me not knowing a single lyric. Not only did they know how to tear up the stage, but they also actually
sounded really, really good live, which a lot of bands seem to have trouble doing, especially the ones who border on the
hardcore side of things like
Four Year Strong does. I was blown out of the water, to say the least. The song that struck me the most during the concert was
Catastrophe. Next up was
Straylight Run. They were good live, but I think something about them being between
Four Year Strong and
Bayside dampened the intensity of it. Nevertheless,
Existentialism on Prom Night was a big hit and it was pretty cool to hear the entire place singing along to it.
Hands in the Sky (Big Shot) was chilling live, and I really don't know what else to say about that.
Bayside, as the headliner, came on last, and to be perfectly honest, I don't remember a ton about their performance, seeing as I've seen them three times since then. Despite being alone on Valentine's Day at a concert, I was disappointed they didn't play
Landing Feet First. I also remember the barrier they had in front of the stage was really shitty (tables upside down or something like that). It was cool though. I can say I've seen a concert in a skating rink now.
After the bands were done playing, I went over to
Four Year Strong's merch table and bought
Rise Or Die Trying on the spot, which was the first time a band had convinced me so thoroughly in one concert that they were worth it. The best thing about all of that was the timing though, because that album and that band was just what I was needing. At that point in time you could say I was going through a big falling out with a friend. That next weekend I needed to drive the van back home to Sacramento, and I was blaring
Four Year Strong the whole way. It's a beautiful feeling when you find music that fits what you're looking for so well. There was horrible traffic for half of the drive, but I truly didn't care in the least.
[ Discovering More New Music and Spring '08 ]
When the
Four Year Strong listening began to subside I saw the 2008 Warped Tour Schedule, and like last year, they organized it so the tour would be coming around California both at the start of summer, and at the end of it, making it incredibly easy to catch two dates without completely frying my body. The lineups, however were striking me as particularly lackluster compared to years past, so I set out to find the good bands within the lineup that I wouldn't want to miss. The first band this process led me to discover was
Pierce the Veil. Some people probably find the high pitched voice and the screaming a bit off-putting, but I like them, and at the very least, you have to admit they do a damn good cover of
Beat It. I listened to them a good amount, then
The Matches' new album
A Band In Hope came out.
I wasn't really sure what to expect with
A Band In Hope.
The Matches are one of those bands that seem to grow a lot between albums, though I think that's a feature that is more often than not a good thing. Prior to the release, I had heard
Yankee In A Chip Shop and
Their City so I was feeling good about it. I bought the album and sure enough, it blew me away.
To Build A Mountain was incredible for its writing,
Point Me Towards The Morning was incredible for its sound and style oh so reminiscent of
Decomposer,
Wake The Sun was incredible for being SO. FUCKING. CATCHY., and
From 24C was incredible for being so goddamn powerful.
Damn, all of that writing and I'm only through March. April 3rd was one of the best lineups I've ever seen for a concert. Opening was
Steel Train whom I saw once before opening for
The Format and was very impressed with them. Jack Antonoff and co. proved to be every bit as impressive as they were in 2007, and then some. When they played
I Feel Weird, I pretty much decided on the spot that I was going to buy their album before leaving that night. I'm not going to go through the effort of ranking them at this point, but Jack is definitely top 3 in terms of putting on a live performance. After them was
Four Year Strong, my second time seeing them this year, only this time I actually knew all of their songs. The crowd can get a little shitty at times when they play (hardcore dancing is the stupidest shit, I swear), but the band itself certainly knows how to work a stage and a crowd. Needless to say I had a great time seeing them play again. Then the third band I came to see went on,
Bayside. Not sure what else to say about them; this was my 5th time seeing them between
The Walking Wounded and
Shudder so I feel like I've said most all that I can say about them at this point in time. At the end of it I caught Anthony's guitar pick though, which was fucking awesome. Also, I didn't really care about
The Starting Line, so when they came on I went back to the merch booths and Nick signed some stuff for me. I also bought
Trampoline by
Steel Train and got a free shirt they threw in (or maybe it was the other way around). Eventually I left halfway through
The Starting Line's performance. Sometimes there's something nice about going to a concert to see a few opening bands, instead of the headliner.
Following that concert I listened to a whole bunch of
Steel Train for a while, along with more of
A Band In Hope. I forgot to mention earlier, but at the same time that I bought
A Band In Hope, I also bought
Brother, Sister,
mewithoutYou's newest album. On account of all of this other listening I'd been doing, however, the album basically fell between the cracks until late April when I finally got around to listening to it, at which point their listens exploded. They were the majority of what I listened to for a solid month.
[ Summer '08 ]
As the San Francisco Warped Tour date approached, I began to get back into the discovering-bands-on-Warped-Tour mode, and ended up rediscovering
Say Anything. The first time I tried listening to them I just couldn't get into them. I tried
...is a Real Boy, but it just struck me as crass and shallow, save for a few songs. Upon relistening to it a few months down the road, however, it struck me in a much more favorable manner. I really can't say what the difference was or why I felt that way, maybe it was just characteristic of a more carefree summer attitude. A very large ...
Steel Train
![[ IMG ]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v725/flaminduck03/3841644.jpg){kind=link}