Quote of the Day

...made by my buddy Ryan about 5 minutes ago.

"Sometimes instead of taking notes I take a picture of the board. Everyone looks at me like I am the laziest person they know."

I'll Sing Along Forever Wrap Up

Since i don't know how to attach an audio file to this thing I put some links of some Bouncing Souls videos, so you can at least hear the songs I talked about. They are all from Anchors Aweigh except for True Believers.

Anchors Aweigh

Sing Along Forever

True Believers The urinal part still makes me laugh.

Kids and Heroes But I still believe/there are only a few things/that really belong to me/who I am/who I was/and who I wanna be

I'll Sing Along Forever, Continued

Well, now that we have all that back story I wasn't planning on writing, let's fast forward to 2004 shall we?

I don't know how much time I spent just laying on my bed being homesick for Santiago. I wanted to go back more than anything. I had nothing else to do; it was in the middle of the Spring semester so I couldn't go to school, and I didn't have a job. It was hard, but I think the biggest thing was that life at home had changed a lot. While all the True Believers were back together, and it was great, there wasn't as much time for each other anymore, and there was going to be less and less as time rolled along. Friends were getting married or dating seriously and thinking about it or working at real jobs. Although I had matured a lot while I was gone I was still hoping that when we all got back there would still be a good year or two where we could go to school together or get an apartment or something and all move in and just hang out like the ol days. It was never going to be same, and that was hard on me. It still is.

I don't know what the first CD I bought after i got home was, but my favorite was Anchors Aweigh by the Bouncing Souls. This will always be one of my most beloved records. It came out in 2003 while I was away, and is different than anything they had released previously. While there are fast and slow songs on the record, the overall tone is very somber compared to the five previous releases. There is talk of life, death, change, separation, living and learning, and moving on and being able to be the same person while doing it. I have always had the most in common with the Bouncing Soul's lyrics than any other group and the entire record just seemed to match this time of my life perfect, and the title track encompassed all of it. When I listened to this record was one of the only times I truly felt at home. So, they helped me come home just as they had helped me leave, and for that I will sing along forever. And so:

Anchors Aweigh, my friends
I'll see you another day
I'm going away
experiences have to come
and the past has got to go
back into our dreams

Anchors Aweigh, my friends
Everybody understands that good times
come and they go
and together we will always flow
back into our dreams

And our troubles
we can't leave them behind
but the wind blows
and blows them all away
and the road goes
and takes them all away
back into our dreams

I'll Sing Along Forever

I am posting because B-lyn told me to.

I was listening to the Bouncing Souls and decided to write a little thing about them, because while I was listening to them I was thrown back to three years ago. Also, for me, the Bouncing Souls and March will always be linked together like two fingers wishing for luck.

I left and came home from my mission in March 2002 and 2004. The coming home was far and away the harder of the two. I hated it. I hated it for a lot of reasons. I won't go through them because that is not what I want to talk about; the fact that I was a sad mess should do just fine. First, lets go back in time. Now entering flashback story mode: Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo...

1999-2001 The thought that we needed to maybe start taking life a little more serious started to make it's way from the back of our minds and struggle to be closer to the front. And reject it though we may, it was going to get there too. Some of us started to try and be serious and get a move on in a positive direction, and others (the group I belonged to) didn't. The main catalyst for this "movement" was that we were going to be nineteen soon, and are we going to go on this mission? and if so, we need to change so that we do it right. There was nothing around me that could really reach me and convince me to move on. One thing that really held me back was I knew that because of certain things I have done and was doing that road might take me a long time and I didn't have the heart for it.

Thanks to some great friends I started to make my way slowly and not very surely, but I started to put in some effort. Still nothing had really reached me in a way to help me give it my all. I went and bought a CD one day, and I got a free compilation CD with it. There were seven songs on it. Track six was "True Believers" and track seven was "The Gauntlet" by the Dropkick Murphys. It is weird to me today that they were both on there right next to each other because both of these songs became an anthem for that period of our lives and helped me through it. A few of us were in to the Bouncing Souls during this time, and I don't remember if the new Bouncing Souls record had not come out yet or what, but I hadn't heard "True Believers" yet, and when I saw it on there I was happy because the CD wasn't a total waste.

I don't remember the first time I listened to it, and I don't know when it exactly happened, but it was really the first thing that reached me. "Now you can fight or you can run/hide under a rock till the war is won/play it safe and don't make a sound/but not us/we won't back down." I wanted to be part of the group that wasn't under the rock. I realized I really didn't like being under it. I found that I was so much happier actually putting up a fight. I still listen to this, and when I can't listen I sing it it my head, when I fail or think I can't do this anymore and want to stop trying so hard, and it reminds me that it is better to be a True Believer in all aspects of life and take my licks than hide and not try. So while in the big picture punk-rock wasn't really the most important thing at the time, it was the song that helped me realize that believing in something, even if it is just life, isn't just thinking about it, but doing something about it. And life is better if you give it a purpose.