Boy oh Boy...

There is quite a bit of stuff thats is to be said about this past week of my life. Not just this past week or past couple days or whatever but i am giving it more importance by saying "this past week of my life".

Last Thursday, April 30th, I moved into a new house. Well, its an apartment that is in a house. Well its a mansion actually. This house is so large that it is split up into at least 5 appropriate sized apartments, with the apartment that i just moved in being the largest. It is the entire main floor of the house. There are two bedrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a mud room. With the main entrance of the house and a side entrance. That is just one apartment right there. I am living in this place with two of my friends. Dave K., who is in the band TIGER and Alex G. who i work with at Oryana. They both get the bedrooms and i get one of the living rooms as my bedroom. The dining room is actually just a living room to us and the other living room is now called the "Break Dancing Room" because it has wood floors....and a fire a place. And because Amy and I need a place to practice our break dancing moves when we are not at the studio. Oh, and speaking of break dancing, along with moving into my new place i also had break dancing class, which i was able to convince Amy to come and also Alex. It was so awesome to see them both there having fun, but unfortunatly due to financial problems Alex cant continue with the class, but Amy can, which is totally awesome and im SOOO happy she is taking the class with me. Then after the class Amy, Alex, Katy (Alex's girlfriend) and walked to horizon to get some drinks and there we ran in to Brian and Kelly (Brian's girl friend) and they ended up coming back to our house with us to see it and hang out, which was awesome. It was nice seeing Brian and im glad to hear he is going to be here this summer.

On Friday, May 1st, Dave K. and I drove down to Detroit...well Romeo, Michigan, which is basically Detroit....its like what Grawn is to Traverse City, Romeo is to Detroit. We drove down there for a show, it was a hardcore show, featuring a local band called Louder Than Bombs, a band from Boston called Have Heart, and a band from Worcestier, Mass. called Bane. This was my fourth time seeing Have Heart and it was also the best performance iv seen from them. This venue was small and it was packed full of kids and hardcore is certainly a genre of music where the live shows arent good just because of the bands performance, but also on the crowds performance too. Its the dancing, the singing, and just the energy that is brought by EVERYONE that makes the show good. Iv heard alot about Bane show, about how they never disappoint. This was my first time seeing them, and i was blown away. They were really good, the only thing that they could have down was just change the order of their set list. They opened with their song "Swan Song" which i was kind of hoping would be a closer, because it is the closing song to their album "The Note" and i think it is the perfect song to end anything really, its an amazing song. Before i saw them, i was never really THAT into them while just listening to them, i liked them, i REALLY liked "The Note", but it just took my a little longer for me to warm up to them, unlike with other hardcore bands like Verse or Have Heart or Modern Life Is War, where, at first listen, i was turned on. But seeing Bane live pretty much set it in stone for me, I can listen to any of their albums at any time and it is perfect. After the show Dave and I left Romeo (Detroit) and drove to Grand Rapids to stay the night at his friends house, Britty. She was a really awesome girl and it was totally awesome for her to let Dave and I sleep on her couch for the night. She also had two really awesome cats, Squibs and Charles. Both black cats but one big and one small. This night, starting with the show, was the start of one of the best weekends of my life. The Bane/Have Heart show was a pre-show to the Burning Fight Book Release/Hardcore Festival that was held in Chicago at the Metro.

The next morning: Saturday, May 2nd, Dave and I woke up and left for chicago around 10:00 to get there around 12:30. We had to look a bit for parking and then it was about a two mile walk to the Metro. We got there and walked in probably in the middle of the first bands set. From then on it was two days of Hardcore/Punk rock music, with dancing, stage dives, head walking, sing alongs, speeches, straight edge, and vegan food. The metro was conveniently located near a couple of awesome vegan restaurants. The Chicago Diner and the Pick Me Up cafe. Surprisingly though i never got to eat at the Chicago Diner, tried twice, but never actually making it in cause of the wait.

Okay, so, Saturday night i got picked up after the show by my awesome friend Matt H. who i grew up with, beginning in elementary school. He went to NMC a little bit after high school but then moved to Chicago, and he has been living there for a couple years now. So, since Dave was staying in a hotel with a bunch of his friends, i took it upon myself to not pay for a place to stay in chicago and to visit an old friend...most importantly, to see an old friend. Usually whenever i go down to chicago i only see Matt for a couple hours and thats it, so this time it was awesome cause we were actually able to hang out. So, i was picked up by him and his girl friend Nikki, they then took me to the Pick Me Up cafe, i have never heard of this place before, they were just like "We are going to take you to the vegan restaurant that is in this neighborhood" and i was like "Awesome" and then we get there and i see the menu and i was like "WAY AWESOME" they had vegan mac n' cheese, breakfast foods, and then the typical burgers and stuff. So, i started my meal out with a small serving of vegan mac n' cheese and finished it with a huge serving with Pancakes with a fruit topping, yeah, sounds like a weird meal but i was excited they had vegan mac n' cheese and pancakes, so its like....i couldnt NOT get those. It was perfect. After we ate we drove around for a bit and decided that we were going to go see Fast and the Furious, which is, incase you dont know, the sequal to The Fast and The Furious, Too Fast and Too Furious, and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The movie was exactly what you would expect it to be, fast cars, girls in skimpy clothes, and explosions. Needless to say, the movie met all expectations and i was not disappointed. After the movie we went back to their apartment, matt and I hung out for a bit and then we both went to bed.

We woke up in the morning on Sunday, May 3rd and we went to this vegan cafe called Atomics...or Atomix...and then it said "The Future In Coffee!". Well because of that statement i was immediately disappointed when we walked in and it wasnt an exact replica of the cafe in "Back To the Future". Actually i was just disappointed in the lack of chrome, really, because isn't chrome all over the future? Well, i had a chai and a bagel with vegan cream cheese. Bagel and cream cheese is nothing new to me, considering i eat that almost everyday at oryana. The chai certainly burnt my tongue though, which left a sensation on the tip of my tongue that lasted the rest of the weekend...so, mediocre food aside, i had a good time catching up with Matt that morning. We then walked to catch a bus. We got on the bus, the ride was maybe 15 minutes long and then we parted ways, he left to go to the recording studio that he works at and i went to the train station where i could continue my journey back to the Metro for the second and last day of Burning Fight. I sat in the train station waiting for the red line to come and i couldnt help but to reminisce back to all the times and places where i was waiting for all the different metro lines when i was in Europe, in London, Rome, Barcelona, Lisbon. I remember a time when going to the metro station in chicago i would have gotten lost pretty much just looking at the train. I had no idea how to use those things and i had no idea how to read those maps, it was just all a big mess to me. But when i went to Europe i just kinda of jumped into all kinds of uncomfortable situations like that, forcing myself to learn how to deal with tough situations, like which metro train i need to get onto....now i laugh at that...after being in a city like London or Rome, Chicago is just another city now...its just i can understand people a bit better in Chicago.

So, i get to the show after the train ride and it was perfect. I get there at the beging of the first bands set. This was the day i was most excited for in the festival. I saw Blacklisted, who has been a band iv always wanted to see, they played a good set but i wasnt exactly blown away. The vocalist said some pretty good things though, mostly about marriage, not just the typical same-sex marriage deal but about how we should be able to just marry who ever we want. Even though marriage isn't exactly an institution i strongly believe in, some of us do believe in it and because of these "laws" some people cant marry who they want to marry, and that's more then ridiculous, its straight up disrespectful. Its not so much keeping a man from marrying another man, its keeping a man from marrying who he wants to marry. If some yuppy skum bag dude can marry his "trophy" wife and expect dinner to be on the table for him and his kids cleaned up and taken care of when he comes home from his office job where he is having an affair with his secretary then i think and i believe that a man should be able to marry a man. Not for the sake of same-sex marriage but because that is who he really wants to marry.

Okay, so that was a tangent. So after Blacklisted played Have Heard played, and this was my second time seeing them in one weekend and also the 5th time seeing them all together. It was another awesome set, it seemed a little short though. It seemed like Blacklisted played a longer set and because of that Have Heart played a short set...to be honest i would have preferred it the other way around. After Have Heart was Threadbare and Split Lip. Threadbare was awesome, they were a bit different, but i really liked them. They kind of reminded me of a heavier version of Far. Then was Split Lip, who again was a bit different but good. Then came Reach The Sky, really blew me away, iv never really listened to them much but i really liked them. After Reach The Sky came the three bands i was MOST excited to see out of the entire festival. Bane came first and again, they were nothing short of amazing. Every song they played was perfect, everything the vocalist said was awesome, and the energy was amazing. Id say out of every band at the fest Bane was the band that really connected with me, from the passion, the words, the energy, everything. They even closed with the Swan Song, right when i thought they were done playing their last song, which i am pretty sure the vocalist said "This is out last one! Have fun and a good night!" they ended that song and went right into the Swan Song, which is exactly how i would of wanted them to do it. Just another reason why they blew me away. After Bane came Converge, which if you were told Bane was a hardcore band and listened to them, and then you were told that Converge was a hardcore band and you listened to them, you would still have no idea what a hardcore band sounds like. Converge, to me, coming from a i guess a more analytical point of view, would be a metal/grind band. (HERE COMES ANOTHER TANGENT) But, coming from....i dont know what kind of point of view, i understand how they are a hardcore band. Its not so much the sound of hardcore, hardcore cant be defined by the sound. Its the belief in hardcore and the aspects of hardcore. Hardcore means more than heavier punk band, its the words, and its the members of those bands. Kids dont come together and say "Hey, lets start a hardcore band" after listening to one Have Heart song. Hardcore brings the kids together and they say "Hey, lets start a band, where we can express our emotions about these topics that we feel so strongly about we will travel from coast to coast on a single dime so we can play and talk to and meet as many people as we can who share the same emotions as we do"....well its probably not like that, but lets just keep it at hardcore brings the kids together and the kids bring hardcore together. So what Converge is, is they are a hardcore band expanding the boundries of hardcore, keeping the emotion and keeping the passion but expressing them with a different sound. And Converge has been a 90's hardcore band who came with a different sound, stuck to their guns and they are still recording new albums. In fact their last album they released, "No Heroes" has been one of my favorite albums in the past 5 years and it still continues to excite me. They are currently recording a new album now. With all that said, this was my first time seeing them live and i think out of everyband i listen to iv probably seen more live videos of Converge then anyone else so i had some expectations from them and they were all met, and they were exceeded. With their closing song, i never once thought id ever hear them or see them play this song live, out of every video iv seen from them not one of them has them playing this song. The energy was different during the Converge set, it was a more darker and a more negative feel, which is what you would expect after hearing them. They have a darker sound. No one really danced during their set and there wasnt much singing along, i think the mood in general was just kind of an In Awe kind of mood, like we were all looking at a bad car accident and we couldnt look away from it. Kind of a weird comparison, but thats kind of how it was. They were amazing, their sound, everything, but that was just kind of the mood. Even with what their vocalist had to say about hardcore, it certainly wasn't as positive as what all the other bands had to say about it, but it he was just pointing out the reality side of things. People can talk and talk about how positive this was and everything but there is always another reality. And I feel what he said about hardcore was good and that it kind of had to be said.

"I dont have much to say about 90's hardcore...i certainly grew up in it, but, the fact of the matter is, i felt kind of alienated by hardcore. There were a bunch of cliques that i just didnt feel like i fit into."

What he said has kind of stuck with me. Id say, after this hole experience i can safely say im still a new comer in hardcore. Well, iv been listening to it for years and i have beliefs or ideas that certainly fit in with being hardcore for years now but i think the reason why what he said has stuck with me more than what anyone else said at the show is because i think that is the reason why i still think of myself as a new comer to hardcore, iv felt alienated by it, that just some how, i have the same ideas as these other kids, yet for some reason i just havent felt that accepted...

Now, this can be an excuse, but thats all this is. Just an excuse. I can get stuck to what he said but i can also start to think beyond it and i think thats what he was trying to inlfuence the audience to do. How he finished his speech was kind of saying like, its the people who lived past those cliques and trends who were real, who, despite everyone else, stuck to their ideas and beliefs, no matter what anyone else said. Like, being straight edge, it isnt a trend to me, its not being straight edge to me. Its choosing not to do drugs or alcohol. Being vegan isnt a trend to me, its a choice, that i made on my own, not under the influence of anyone else, but by myself. When and if these are ever trends and they pass, im going to stay vegan or i am going to stay straight edge. It was my choice to live this lifestyle and it will be my choice to end it. Regardless of any hardcore band or what anyone ever says, these are always my choices. So with that said and with me learning and looking back now on how i was feeling alienated, i call that only an excuse now because it was my fault i was feeling alienated. Because, to me, feeling alienated essentially means that you feel you are not good enough to cooperate with this other group of people. And because of that feeling you choose not to go over there and talk to them. Its not what they are doing, its what you think they are doing, and untill you go over and find out for yourself what they are doing you will continue to think like that, and you will continue to alienate yourself out of ignorance. And this pans out, more than just you against the popular crowd, or whatever. Its you against your partner, its you against, the college you want to get into, or it you against getting your dream job. Its lifes everyday struggles that you have to fight to overcome, not so much fight, but learn. Otherwise you will continue to feel alienated by these struggles. And, yeah, it may seem like i just realized that i have to work to overcome my struggles, something i should have learned a long time ago, but its more like, because of this experience, because of what everyone had to say, and because of everyone i met, i have just gained more passion in my fight and in my struggles.

And i dont think Converge could have portrayed this any better in their set, with every song and every word, untill they closed with "Jane Doe" which is an 11 minute epic that i think, in its sound, is the epitome of overcoming struggle.

So the Bane Set was perfect, followed by a perfect set by Converge, next was Unbroken. Unbroken reunited for Burning Fight. And after the Burning Fight show in California they are done. So this was kind of a big deal. Now for me though, i got into Unbroken not because of hardcore, but because of the line of bands i started to follow. I got into a band called the Locust a while ago, when i was in high school. The Locust is kind of a super group of members with long histories through punk bands steming out of California. One of which was Unbroken. None of the members of the Locust were in Unbroken, but memebers of Unbroken went on or came from bands that had members that went on to form the Locust. So with that, i got into Unbroken because i started listening to the Locust, there. And from the Locust i got into a TON of new music that wouldnt have gotten into without the Locust. So, it was cool seeing the band in this LONG line of other bands that i thought i would never ever ever ever get to see, ever. Unfortunately though, I really do feel i was able to appreciate them enough i was certainly feeling exhausted just from everything leading up them, and i think for everyone, to an extent, Unbroken kind of represented the end of a long amazing weekend.

So, after Unbroken, the show was done. Dave and I talked to Mckaig a bit (Who was on the stage taking pictures the WHOLE time!) about going to get something to eat after the show. So, after Unbroken finished, we went outside to wait for him. Eventually he found us and we were able to venture down the streets of chicago, with my second attempt to going to eat at the Chicago Diner, the wait was too long and they stopped taking names cause they were going to close. So we walked back and I ate at the Pick Me Up Cafe, again. There we joined a group of kids that we knew that were from michigan that also went to the Burning Fight festival. They joined us at our table and it was awesome meeting these kids and talking to them. Unfortunately i dont remember any of their names. Except one of them was named David, and he was actually the one i talked to the most. But they were all cool people. From the Pick Me Up cafe Dave and I were meeting up with this other kid named Kyle who was going to join us on our drive back up to Grand Rapids cause i guess he is dating Britty, the girl we were staying with in Grand Rapids. He also went to Burning Fight, but more importantly he is also the vocalist of this really awesome band called Black Teeth.

So, it was around midnight when were done at the Pick Me Up cafe and we were finally on our way back up to Grand Rapids, its just we couldn't figure how to get out of Chicago! So, we were lost in Chicago for at least an hour, which sucked. But the deal was that when we finally got out of chicago Kyle was going to drive us to Grand Rapids and Dave was going to go to sleep, and I was going to help navigate for Kyle and also keep kyle awake. Talking to Kyle was totally awesome, talking to him kind of set the weekend in stone that it was one of the best weekends of my life, with all the awesome vegan food i ate, seeing old friends, listening to all the bands, hearing everything that everyone had to say, and with all the people I met. Kyle and I talked about so much that we actually kind of got lost and we ended up taking the long way back up to Grand Rapids. We got to Britty's house at sun rise and totally crashed.

We woke up Monday morning around 11:30 and we went out to eat at this place called Brickroad Pizza, which is a vegan resteraunt that Brian has been talking about alot lately and so i was so excited to eat here. We ended up meeting some dudes there that were in a band called Dead Friends who played in Grand Rapids the night before. I looked at the menu and it all seemed kind of mediocre at first, untill i learned about their buffet, a VEGAN buffet, with macaroni salads, pastas, pizzas, salads, and cookies....all you can eat for under $7....amazing. So we were at Brickroad for at least an hour, eating and talking. It was awesome. Dead Friends was actually playing a show in Indianapolis that night with Bane, Have Heart, 108, I Rise, and Soul Control. It was kind of a post-Burning Fight show. Dave, Britty, and Kyle actually ended up driving down there that night for that show. I couldnt go cause i had to work at Oryana the next morning, there was no way i was going to make a drive down to Indianapolis and then back up to Grand Rapids in one night and then leave Grand Rapids early enough to get me to work at 11. So they dropped me off at Vertigo Records where i met up with Brian and we were going to hang out untill Mckaig came through Grand Rapids on his way back up to TC from chicago, all three of us hung out for a little bit and then Mckaig and I drove the rest of the way back up to TC. It was an exhausted drive for us, thats for sure.

And that was the weekend. the was THE weekend. Then came the week, more moving into my new house, picking up more hours at oryana, and more break dancing. I love taking the break dancing class....

okay, bye....