Mixtapemotions

 Lost It All 

Lovedrug’s fourth album released in 2012 transitioned the band from a heavier Keene-sounding piano rock band to a full-fledged guitar driven rock band. This album came out in my last few months in America and proved to be an album that helped me transition to one of the biggest changes in my life, living abroad. The title Wild Blood, while I don’t think intentionally done by the band, drew a connection to Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, which is a crazy story about a backwoods preacher who starts his own stranger religious organization. Whether or not the connection is intentional, the music of Wild Blood makes me think about the novel and vice versa. There certainly are some great tracks on this album, but it’s not one that I come back to too often. Today on my walk, however, I took a close listen to this song and remembered the sticky summer of 2012 and the great divide that’s come up ever since.

YOUR SILHOUETTE STANDING THERE IN THE DISTANCE. So let’s name the great divide. Right now it’s politics. I understand that it’s pretty easy for me to sit in another country and write about what’s happening in America and to condemn the last four years of Trump. I think maybe because I’m outside of the South, I’m less tuned into the voice of Republican ideals. I’ve seen what Trump’s presidency has done to the relationships with other countries. However, if I had taken a job back home, would I have seen it? I often wonder how long I would have remained a Republican? The problem is there is a point to Trump-ism. In 2019 the economy in America was doing pretty good–that’s not to say that there wouldn’t have been a natural fallout from the Trade War with China–but with what looked like a healthy economy, people attributed the success with a “hands off business” leader. Trump also spent lots of time campaigning and basking in the glory of working class people. He gave them a voice. He united them. The unity was based on fear of other races, genders, sexualities, economics, levels of education–in short fear of the other. Trump listened to a large portion of voters who had been marginalized in elections past and gave them a voice. 

FEELS LIKE WE’RE LOSING, BE WE HAVEN’T MISSED IT. But it was the wrong voice. A real leader who is going to “survive across this great divide” is one who will listen to the working class. One who will listen and educate. Ultimately, Trump did very little to improve the lives and working conditions of the working class. Instead, the controlling party legislated in the favor of big business and against immigrants. Now, the cult of personality with Trump is so strong that his supporters will not listen to facts. So, is the great divide too deep? Will Thanksgiving dinners ever be enjoyable again?

I’m 33 years old as of January 2021, and I’m listening to a song called “Letter to Myself” from the year 2002. Now I’m imagining that I’m back in my dusty room in a house my parents moved away from in 2006. Of course we packed, but let’s imagine that we didn’t. I see the loft that my dad built, some plastic shelves, my now rusting dumbbells. I see the two dressers. I open up the drawers and see the old t-shirts, my socks, boxer shorts–and I notice some papers written. Old songs? Poems? I cringe. Imagine that when listening to this old song. Where were you back in 2002–if in fact you were alive? What would your 14 or 15 year old self tell the 33 year old? What were the hopes and fears of year? How have they changed? What’s still the same?

DEAR ME. Pop singer Anne-Marie released a song called “2002” a few years back in which she uses a bunch of familiar choruses from Britney Spears, *NSYNC, Nelly, and others. At that time, I had an interesting relationship with pop music. I thought it was a worldly influence. I listened to Active and Alternative and Classic Rock because I thought that it could inspire my own music, but I felt the safest place was Christian Rock. I had started making the switch from CCM to Christian Rock maybe the year before (2001-ish). My memory of pre-2001 Christian Rock scene was hardcore and metal, and it seems around 2001-2002 there was more middle ground between Steven Curtis Chapman and Zao and there were cooler groups than Audio Adrenaline and the Newsboys. For instance, there was Switchfoot, who, my dad said were just a knock-off of the Foo Fighters. Switchfoot, of course today, can’t be compared to the Foo Fighters. There was Earthsuit, the Benjamin Gate, and Starflyer 59. But I digress. 

TRUTH IS FICTION. 2002 was also the beginning of the war in Iraq and the insane gas hike. At church they were telling us we certainly were entering the last days. No one could have imagined what had happened on 9/11. In the Fall I started going to a new Christian school, which was more Baptist and more Republican than anything I had ever experienced. We learned that there was never a justified abortion and about the ideals for gender roles. “Truth is fiction, a lot of confusion, maybe some additions.” (the internet was so slow back then) I think my parents did their best to provide an education for me and my sisters. They talked about their views, especially when they were different from what we learned at school. But still, who was right? I wanted to be right and liked by everyone. Wow, what an unsatisfying goal in life.

A RELATIONSHIP MAY SAVE YOU, OR ENSLAVE YOU. COUNT ON BOTH TO HAPPEN. I’ve been thinking a lot about spiritual abuse lately. How much Christians idolize their pastors and trust them to interpret the scriptures for them. How few lay Christians can actually read the original scriptures, and how that’s not encouraged at all. It seems that when you control the reading of the scriptures, you can control the people. I’m sure I’ll get into this better later throughout the year, but I’d imagine that the letter to myself would have scripture and lines from pastors or Bible teachers’ manipulations. 

BEFORE YOU SAY GOODBYE. I’d wonder what I would have told myself to keep my future self grounded. I would have thought that I would still be playing music. But if I could write a letter of encouragement to my younger self, I would say not to worry about what some small-minded people in the foothills of North Carolina thought about me. I would tell myself that the world is a much bigger place and there are different kinds of people to call your friends. I would say don’t waste your time or money pursuing orthodoxy. If God is real, he finds you where you are. And finally, check your levels of obsession. Be passionate, but watch out for when they take out the Kool-Aid. Don’t drink it. Just don’t.

WAKE UP YOUR EYES. It’s difficult to pick a track from this record. Although it was released in the fall of 2008, my first year off at college, it was really the dead of winter of 2009 that has burned this record into my memory. The winter of 2009 was particularly cold, even for East Tennessee. There were lots of grey days which had nothing particularly special but Easy Mac and fresh laundry. Saturday nights or Sundays some friends would drive into Chattanooga for dinner and then we’d just go back to the dorm to do our homework. Rather mundane stuff. This album was a soundtrack to those grey days. Songs like “Should You Return” was a song of hope that the spring would finally come. “The Grey Man” was a song about wallowing in the the uncertainty of things ever looking up. “Chin Up” was a melancholic song about the futility of trying too hard–though the song never actually makes you want to give up. 

I’M AFRAID YOU STOPPED TO LICK YOUR WOUNDS. Then the flu struck in the middle of sixteen credit hours. A high fever. I couldn’t get out of bed a couple of days. A couple of missed classes and a bunch of homework to catch up on, a nagging cough that lasted for at least a month. Songs like “The Day I Lost My Voice” and some other songs from the second half of the album really resinate with that time. And yet, I don’t hold any grudges to this album. I can still listen to it and fondly think of the time that I could be sick in bed, comforted by Aaron Marsh’s voice and the guidance of Aaron Sprinkle.

THE KINDEST LOVE IS STILL BLEEDING FROM THE LAST SHOT. So, today’s song is “Good Morning Fire Eater.” It’s a grey day in Korea in January and pretty uninteresting. The world is hopefully healing from a pandemic, although we still have a lingering cough. Not every day has to be interesting. We need the chilly days that we return to the covers. We need the days that we take extra comfort in our coffee or echinacea tea. It’s nice to take a walk on a damp day so long as the rain doesn’t catch you without an umbrella. 

THE DAY IS DONE AND EVERYONE’S GONE NOW. Finally, I will finish up the post with the music video. The video is so captivating. The first time I watched it, my roommate and suite-mate stopped their conversation and were entranced by it. Again, the theme of transcending the banal as the office workers put aside their work to go “fight the dragon.” However, much like this song and this album, you have to be in the right mood for it. The third or fourth week of January will do. Also if you are college students with very little money for entertainment and your mind is numb from homework that will do. Enjoy!

https://genius.com/Copeland-good-morning-fire-eater-lyrics

“Lyrics“

Tooth & Nail Records is been know throughout the years for its eclectic catalogue of mostly Christian artists. This came to ahead in 2008 when they signed Country artist Corey Crowder. This one-off album the Tooth & Nail cannon could be easily lost. I first heard this song on a compilation along with pop-punk and hardcore bands and was struck by how different it sounded–in a good way. But more on that later. For context, this was an era of music that Brandon Ebel, CEO of Tooth & Nail, was desperately trying to find the next hit to save the company in the downward spiral of the music industry. Ultimately, the record label survived a divorce with its major label backer, EMI, but a lot of artists were sacrificed in the the restructuring. So, this hiccup–Tooth & Nail’s strange venture into Country music–is all but forgotten.