Mixtapemotions

  • "I Feel You" by Wonder Girls, Thursday, June 10, 2021

    The whirlwind career of Wonder Girls is an interesting read. They were the first South Korean pop group to chart on Billboard‘s Hot 100 and toured with the Jonas Brothers; their career looked like it would be quite promising. But the members wouldn’t stick around. The band originally had 4Minute member Hyuna, but her solo career would pull the singer in another direction. Then there was Sunmi, the singer who turned to K-pop to make support her family after her father died of complications of tuberculosis. But just when the group was blowing up in 2009, she left to focus on her academics. The group went on hiatus after Sunye got married and moved with her husband to Haiti to be missionaries and Sohee left to focus on acting. That was 2013.

    WHEN I’M ALONE, I FEEL YOUR TOUCH. Korean summer is much like summer in North Carolina and Tennessee with a few key differences. The temperature climbs steadily throughout the spring. April can be pleasant, but my first year in Chuncheon, I was ready for the air conditioning in late April, as it was hard to sleep at night. Housing is a big key here, though. My second apartment in Chuncheon didn’t have air conditioning. It was brutally hot for about a month, so I just stayed up late until it got cool enough to sleep. Then I moved to Gyeongsan on campus. 2015 was a brutally hot summer, and Daegu had the nickname, Daefrica (Daegu + Africa). My apartment had air conditioning, but I had a roommate that left windows open, and it stopped working. 2015 was a pretty extreme summer, but it’s also a good example of what happens in the summer. First it’s hot from late May to mid June. This heat is sometimes dry, some days humid. And if you don’t have a car as many Koreans get by on public transportation, this means a lot of walking outside if you want to do anything fun. I had a long summer vacation, so I did a lot that summer. But that’s a story for another day. In mid-June, the rainy season starts for about a month. And you get soaked, as the rain seems to come from every direction. Finally August combines the heat and the humidity with a few intermittent showers. As Korea is quite hot, people tend to dress appropriately. It’s a time when shorts get shorter, shirts look tighter on muscle. Everyone is sweaty and soaked from the rain. 
    WE’RE BACK! In the summer 2015, the Wonder Girls’ record label, JYP, announced that Sunmi would be rejoining the group, and they would be releasing new music in early August. The album was appropriately titled Reboot, and the lead single was a late-’80s concept song of the summer “I Feel You.” And boy was that summer a hot one. In perfect ’80s video fashion, the girls pretend to play instruments while dressed in sexy one piece jumpsuits and high heels. The video is literally dripping with sexiness as the girls melt ice on themselves and get splashed with water. This wet, sexy look would be done again in Sunmi’s solo 2018 Waterbomb Festival Performance after the Wonder Girls split up for good. Sunmi has continued her career using her sex appeal to boost her music, but “I Feel You,” for me, is the song of the summer of 2015, even though it was released late. It was a summer filled with fun and sorrow. It was the summer of youth I never afforded myself growing up. It is a summer I was too old to enjoy then and certainly too old to ever repeat again.

    Lyrics:

  • "Careless Whisper" by Wham! (George Michael), Wednesday, May 9, 2021

    Speaking of ear worms, I’m on the second day of humming perhaps the most well known sax notes in the history of music. In terms of meme music, it’s probably second to Rick Astley‘s “Never Going to Give You Up,” Wham!‘s “Careless Whisper” is so awful, it’s epic. If you just take the song at it’s value as a sexy (or saxy) evening in the city, private planes, yachts, and beautiful women sleeping with a multi-millionaire playboy, the song would have just remained deep in the ’80s vault. But the extra layers the song takes on when you see it on TikTok videos, South Korean entertainment shows, or what sparked this latest outbreak, an inclusion in a school play my my first grade high schoolers, the song takes on new life. None of that can hold a candle, though, to my coworker’s experience with this song.


    I’M NEVER GONNA DANCE AGAIN. “Careless Whisper” was a song that started the breakup of the pop duo, Wham! George Michael was clearly becoming the star of the band. Behind the scenes, Michael was struggling to define his sexuality. Though, Michael claims that the song is not autobiographical as he claimed never to have cheated on a lover, the song seems deal with a struggle between Michael’s attraction to both men and women. George Michael claimed to have slept with many women at the beginning of his career. But because he also slept with men and the AIDS crisis was raging on, Michael felt the need to disclose his sexuality to women before sleeping with them. My coworker said, as he was growing up in England at the time, everyone knew he was gay, and his audience didn’t have a problem with it. However, it was a secret for the American audience. Whatever was thought about George Michael’s sexuality, the video for “Careless Whisper” is clearly trying to compensate for something. The camera cringingly focuses on Micheal in bed with “the other woman.” Yet, he feels deep regret when the girlfriend character sees them together. She runs away and leaves on a sea plane. Knowing Michael’s biography about how he would sleep with women, but never get close, shows the tension of that period when someone is questioning their sexuality. It might be a confusing love triangle, and no one wins.

    I SHOULD HAVE KNOW BETTER THAN TO CHEAT A FRIEND. The other guys called her “Beak,” because she had a large nose. It was late secondary school and the kids were pretty experienced sexually in that part of England. First generation Italian immigrant, her father had gone away to prison in some ponzi scheme. In the bedroom she had a penchant for giving hickeys, and her record collection included Queen‘s Greatest Hits, the British edition. She thought that the lyrics of “Somebody to Love” were: “Can anybody find me / Somebody to love….bite.” She was kind of a pre-goth, and she did her makeup that way, but her music wasn’t gothic. No The Cure or Joy Division in her stereo collection. Wham! was her jam. My coworker said, all of his early sexual experiences were made to “Careless Whisper.” Thankfully, “Careless Whisper” isn’t stuck in my head very often. But when it and I start humming it at work, it’s extra awkward. My coworker has to remind us that that song has extra significance for him. He said that he got pretty skilled at throwing shoes at the stereo to get the record to stop playing. I have a fear I’m going to need a boot to my head in order to get this tune out of my head.
    Official Music Video:

    Train ft. Kenny G version:

    Seether Version:

    And finally…. 

  • "Mr. Mr." by Girls' Generation (소녀시대), Tuesday, June 8, 2021

    There was a sandwich shop across the eight-way intersection in Chuncheon where I would often take lunch break. After class, I’d get a Chicken Carbonara or a Soy-sauce chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee. I might spend a little extra time there reading or looking over lesson plans before going back in to work. The cafe was run by a man around my age and his mother, and it was a nice place to eat something familiar and spend some time. The musical choice was quite eclectic: ’90s pop-rock and current K-pop/Hip-Hop. It was in that cafe that I grew an affection for K-pop. I started to understand what the hype was all about.


    SO YOU HAVE A DREAM THAT IS BIGGER THAN A LITTLE BOY’S. In February of 2014, Girls’ Generation released their electro-pop album and titular hit “Mr. Mr.” The girls had been famous for a conservative, bubble gum pop, but “Mr. Mr.” takes the singers in another direction. The ear worm begins with a dirty bass synth. The music video depicts the nine members of Girls’ Generation in a sexy medical situation with men playing a beta role some kind of Frankenstein surgery. According to the lyrics, the girls are begging men to be strong, taking the lead in their relationships. This message divided some K-pop fans who viewed the song as sexist. However, the video certainly shows female empowerment, and even the song’s subject asking their man to be a better lover seems to put Girls’ Generation in the driver’s seat.   

    YOU MADE MY HEART RACE. “Mr. Mr.” was on the tail-end of big female power anthems ruling the American pop charts. There had been something undeniably catchy about Ke$ha‘s 2009 hit “TiK ToK” that all of my straightest college bros couldn’t deny that it was awesome. Then there was Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and so on–pop music had become a guilty pleasure. Then there was Korea. The year I came to Korea, “Gangnam Style” had just beaten “Call Me Maybe” as the most viewed YouTube video. “Gangnam Style” was kind of a parody of K-pop, and was taken more seriously when it became a hit abroad. In Korea, “Gangnam Style” was playing, but also all the other hits which had a similar EDM, dancey sound. “Mr. Mr.” from a production standard alone, reminded me of the records that challenged my stereo: Linkin Park, Falling Up, and anything by Aaron Sprinkle. This may seem odd, but “Mr. Mr.” inserted gang vocals in a spot impossible to sing live. The song changes key several times, and these key changes seem like they come out of nowhere. Needless to say, after hearing “Mr. Mr.” every day in the cafe across from the academy, I was hooked. And not just on the song, on Kpop.

  • "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" by Pink Floyd, Monday, June 7, 2021

    A fan of the funk/disco band Chic, producer Bob Ezrin convinced Pink Floyd to include a disco beat backing what would become their only number 1 hit in their career. Ezrin also convinced the band to release the song as a radio single, something the band had been against on previous albums as they wanted their songs to be understood in the context of their greater work. The band had been a psychedelic pop act in the ’60s and had done radio, but they felt their artistic concepts were too big for the casual listeners. Classic Rock radio remembers a Floyd that never was, playing tracks from Dark Side of the Moon until The Wall, but perhaps without the commercial success of “Another Brick in the Wall,” radio would have forgotten the band.  

    TEACHERS LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE. Recorded with school children singing “We don’t need no education” and despised by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, “Another Brick” is the ultimate protest song of school children everywhere. If we take this song at face value, schools are concentration camps and teachers are the Nazis in charge. The ultimate revolt would be against education, children returning the human race into a feral state, as human infrastructure would deteriorate because no one would know how to operate anything. I’m sure the kid who pretended to be sick today and wished all schools would burn down hasn’t taken that thought to its logical conclusion. This, of course, isn’t want the song is about. Drawing on lead singer Roger Waters’ experience in a  Dickensian U.K. school, he argues that this hostile environment caused trauma and years of mental health issues, laying bricks in the wall that separated him from other people. Waters explained in Mojo: “You couldn’t find anybody in the world more pro-education than me. But the education I went through in boys’ grammar school in the ’50s was very controlling and demanded rebellion. The teachers were weak and therefore easy targets. The song is meant to be a rebellion against errant government, against people who have power over you, who are wrong. Then it absolutely demanded that you rebel against that.”

    IF YOU DON’T EAT YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY PUDDING. It’s funny, though, contrary to Margret Thatcher, this song didn’t destroy education. Academia is still alive and well, and it’s just as hard as ever to get into a good school. Americans are so racked with university debt as it’s been told to us that you have to go to college to make any money in the modern world. Since Roger Waters’ grammar school days, there have been lots of reforms to education, and school systems has leaped forward with better, research based practices to improve learning and support students. Education will never be perfect. Greedy politicians always think they know better how to educate the nation’s kids. Timmy’s parents will always believe that he’s a perfect angel. People will always think that it’s a babysitter’s job and that anyone can do it. When I hear “Another Brick,” I think about what I’ve learned as a teacher. How I’ve learned to cause less trauma to my students as they grow up. But I also think about how much more we as teachers and as a society need to do for children. We can’t erase what’s happened in Mr. McChoakumchild’s classroom, but we can hear the stories and decide to make the change.
    Scene from The Wall film:

    Official Music Video:

  • “Madness” by Anchor & Braille, Sunday, June 6, 2021

    Sandwiched between two metal bands, Anberlin played the show that kickstarted their career in Atlanta, Georgia. Brandon Ebel, Tooth & Nail Records‘ founder, and owner loved the band’s hits, but Chad Johnson, Tooth & Nail’s A&R wasn’t impressed with the live show. For starters, the band was playing pop-punk in between heavy, pre-They’re Only Chasing Safety Underoath and chaos metal act Norma Jean headlining.  Anberlin sounded a bit more like Jimmy Eat World and Third Eye Blind. Nobody at the show knew Anberlin and were only there to most to the bands that they knew. What was worse was if the band was melodic, they had to have a singer who could hold a tune. Stephen Christian was off-pitch. Eventually, Ebel was able to convince Johnson to sign Anberlin. Their demo of “Ready Fuels” recorded by Matt Goldman, an Atlanta musician-turned producer, helped to solidify the decision. Ebel agreed to sign Anberlin as long as Stephen Christian took vocal lessons.


    I CAN’T MAKE IT RIGHT AS WE SCREAMED AT THE NIGHT. Last year, Stephen Christian released his fourth Anchor & Braille album. Building on the pop sentimentality of his last A&B effort, Songs for the Late Night Drive Home, the album somewhat ironically titled Tension is an album that explores Christian’s range as a vocalist and a musician. “Madness” feels like a throwback track from mid-’90s Top 40 radio. It’s a song about resolving tension between a significant other. It’s a mature take from the same songwriter who is writing about early 20s encounters with “day late friends.” How long Christian’s conflicts as a husband and a father can carry his lyrical content until he sinks into a lack of inspiration like Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place is hopefully not an experiment he is trying to repeat. Still, the songs on Tension seem to be a reconciliation with Christian’s career. Songs for the Late Night Drive Home was not particularly reflective on where the artist was as the former frontman of Anberlin. His critically disappointing Praise & Worship record Wildfires relied on cliches and functioned as a corporative, vertical worship rather than addressing the social or personal issues Christian had become known for. But Christian starts to channel some of the Anberlin songwriting techniques on Tension leaving long-time fans wondering if the Orlando 5-piece has something to say about post-Trump America.

    TRY TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF TO A STONE WALL. Hearing Christian’s story about how the major hurdle to the band’s success was his voice made me think about failure and resilience. I think that being the front man of Anberlin and being told that you have to take vocal lessons because your pitch is off had to be tough to hear. When you wrap your whole self into a project to where it becomes your identity and you find out that you’re still lacking. That’s how my failure during student teaching felt. And yet, vocal training did Stephen well. Sure, he’s still got some hiccups in live performances. Most bands do given the smokey clubs, the lack of sleep, and grueling schedule. But Stephen’s vocal range on songs like “(*Fin),”  “I’d Like to Die,” and “The Haunting” set Anberlin apart. It makes me think of the list of things I want to achieve. No, I may never record the songs in my head and I’m not going to become a rock star. Last night I talked with a friend about my plans for grad school. How am I going to be a good enough writer to talk for 20-40 pages each class about anything? I think of a quote from Stephen Christian when he was giving a pep-talk to Anberlin after the ending of their Christian Punk band, SAGOH  24/7 (Soldiers After God’s Own Heart). “Listen, let’s give this one year. And let’s work our asses off. And in one year, if we haven’t made it, if we aren’t signed, then that’s it. We’re going to quit.” And that one year made worked out for them. It may take more than a year to lay the foundation for my goals. But remembering that achievement doesn’t come easy is the lesson for me. Whether it’s keeping up a relationship or writing a paper for grad school, I expect a bit of a fight.

    Source:

  • "Getaway" by Turn Off the Stars, Saturday, June 5, 2021

    Turn Off the Stars was a short-lived Canadian pop-rock band. The band was often compared to Coldplay or Keane, but their often wall-of-sound guitars liken them more to Oasis or The Verve. In 2006, their self-titled debut album had one RadioU/Christian Rock hit “Please,” the second track from the record. Released in the fall of 2006, this was the soundtrack to freshman year in college, which meant driving on frosty mornings to McDowell Technical Community College to obtain an Associate’s Degree that (maybe) saved me $20,000. It was also the year that my family moved to Nebo, buying their first house. But this album took on a new life as it was one of my few albums I could listen to in the car without my mom complaining. So it was an album we listened to several times when we took the long drive up to New York to visit my dad’s side of the family, seeing family members we hadn’t seen in nearly 10 years.


    I’VE BEEN RUNNING WITH MY SOUL SO TIRED ABOUT YOU. “Getaway” is one of the simplest songs on the record, but it’s a great example of how a song’s atmosphere has taken me on mental journeys.  The song is in the middle of the record and it shows that guitar is everything on this record. Starting out with a lonely sounding plucked acoustic guitar and leading into a moody, noisy guitar solo reminiscent of the first track on the record, “I Wasn’t Ready,” the band somehow captures a “great north” Canadian sound on this album. Of course the wildlife sound on “I Wasn’t Ready” sets the listeners up for this Canadian sound. The album artwork and the band’s name makes us think of this being a night album, and “Getaway” is a kind of “dark night of the soul” song. Clouds turn off the stars, covering them, and intermittent bands of rain fall around the car as it drives, headlights dimly lighting the heavily pine tree-wooded state route. The summer evening ended with a conversation that made the two feel uncertain about their commitments toward each other. Bouts of depression on his behalf has him doubting if she can be his saving grace. 

    I’VE BEEN LYING IN MY HEAD SO TIRED ABOUT YOU. The band is named after a 1976 Bill Evan’s song. I’m reminded of late summer in central New York at my grandfather’s church camp. The second weekend of August is the family reunion, and in 2008 just before starting my junior year and ten years after we moved my family went back up to visit New York. The reunion was a potluck lunch and barbecue on Saturday afternoon and it would last until the night. Some distant relatives making appearances and leaving after an hour or two, but the core, my dad’s brothers and sisters and their children might stay around, sitting around the bonfire late into the night. On a few occasions, someone would bring illegal fireworks from South Carolina or Tennessee, but usually we’d just go look at the constellations over the meadow in front of the “camp,” a large dilapidated building central to the property. And on the drive home from that day Turn off the Stars plays on the CD player, reminding me of the cool evening, the warm fire, and family.




  • "Bad Dreams" by Deas Vail, Friday, June 4, 2021

    Ten years ago, Deas Vail released their self-titled album, and with the exception of a Christmas EP, For Shepherds & Kings, and a B-sides album, this has been their last full-length project. Composed of husband and wife Wesley and Laura Blaylock and three other musicians, Deas Vail is Latin and Old French, meaning “humble servant of God.” As a lighter indie rock band they gained momentum in the Christian Rock and Warped Tour scenes before stopping touring and ultimately disappearing from the scene. Their final, self-titled album is a beautiful collection of songs, produced by Relient K guitarist and self-proclaimed minimalist, Matt Hoopes. Minimalism seems to be a consideration as there is nothing particularly florid in the album or packaging, from the lyrics that don’t stick out at first, to the cover art, to the subdued tones throughout the album. Listening to Deas Vail reminds me that it’s not the grand days that make a lifetime great, but the cumulated moments of sunny afternoon walks.


    I’M CROSSING FINGERS AND HOPING LIFE WORKS OUT. This album was particularly impactful to me in the springs of 2013 and 2014. I was living in Chuncheon at the time and walked everywhere. I learned the city that way. It took me 45 minutes to walk (in the opposite direction) to HomePlus or Emart, Korean department stores similar to Walmart or Target. It would be something I’d do on a Sunday or after work when I needed something. As I walked, I listened to music on my Galaxy S3. Winter, spring, summer, and fall I walked. In the winter I just bundled up and trudged over the snow-covered sidewalks. In the spring I dressed in layers, taking them off as I got hotter, my sweaty hoodie taking up space in my backpack. I’d even walk home with my groceries, my hands so full, I must have looked crazy. The weather only became miserable in late July into August. So a few drippy trips later, I realized that I needed to keep my dignity and started taking the bus. Other times, I figured if I really needed to, at any point, I could catch a bus or a taxi, but I rarely did. I wanted to save money if I could and live as frugally as possible. 

    Lotus Lantern Parade in Seoul. Source: 
    YeonDeungHoe on Flickr.

    I’M CROSSING RIVERS, AND HOPING I DON’T DROWN. This album also reminds me of Saturday afternoon trips to Seoul. After church, I’d often go home and rest, but if I wanted something good to eat or to hang out with someone, I’d take 3 or 4 pm train to Seoul. Chuncheon had a regular subway line which took about an hour and a half to the outskirts or a fast train that took a little over an hour to go to the city center. If you didn’t purchase the tickets in advance, you might be standing, though. This album was a soundtrack to the weekend I attended the Lotus Lantern Parade, a Buddhist festival held on one of the main streets of Seoul a week before Buddha’s birthday as celebrated in South Korea. The two years that I attended this parade, I felt so overwhelmed with a spirit of tranquility. Late April, when the parade is held, has some of the most perfect weather in Korea. Nights are warm and usually it’s not raining at that point. The streets are calm; Seoul is usually sprawling on a Saturday night with people out enjoying their nightlife. As the sun is setting, the parade begins, simple at first with men, woman, and children–many of them with connection to a Buddhist temple–marching and holding up messages and symbols of their religion. The parade has a constant wooden drum and chant that lulls the audience into a peaceful trancelike state. As the parade continues, people start carrying lanterns symbolizing Buddhist traditions and teachings. More and more elaborate lanterns appear as the parade continues. The floats at the end are quite spectacular. After the parade, I caught the train back to Chuncheon, listening again to Deas Vail. The beauty that I saw that day, from the warm afternoon sunlight to the beautiful lanterns shine in my memory and make me contemplate how can I, “alone in a stranger’s bad dream,” become a person who reflects peace on this earth.

     

  • "Dizzy" by Jimmy Eat World, Thursday, June 3, 2021

    If you namedrop Jimmy Eat World in a casual conversation, people might look at you funny. The name sounds like its origins: two little kids teasing each other. Though fronted by Jim Atkins, he is not the “Jimmy” who “eat[s the] world,” but rather it was an insulting picture guitarist Tom Linton‘s little brother, Ed, who drew a picture of his slightly older brother  Jimmy looking so fat that he was “eat[ing]the world.” Jimmy Eat World is a band’s band. They are responsible for influencing everyone in punk, pop punk and even hardcore punk in the last 20 years. Best known for their song “The Middle,” a top 40 pop hit, the band spun several singles throughout the years, even today. Their most commercially successful albums have been Bleed American (2001), Futures (2004), and Chase This Light (2007).


    ARE YOU DIZZY YET? Yesterday, I talked about the burnout I’ve been experiencing lately. Burnout is very common with teachers, and I’m sure that most of us are experiencing it in a time with so much uncertainty. But there’s a dizzy feeling that comes at the end of the school week, especially at the end of the semester. It’s the papers piled on my desk. It’s the documents I forgot to print before class. It’s fifty questions before the lesson starts. It’s the chaos the students can spin the class into as the technology doesn’t work. It’s the “teacher, can I go get my phone to do the Google Classroom assignment,” five minutes before the end of class. It’s the schedule changes because the special programs that just came up. It’s the repeated cancelation, which trains the students “this class doesn’t really matter.” It’s the clicking and grading of classes that all look the same. It’s the Monday to Friday boxed into the routine that if you break it, you fall behind. It’s the deciding if it’s cutting my cleaning time, my study time, my exercise time, or my blog time so that I can get to sleep on time to manage the next day. It’s the feeling that I used to have everything so together, but now I feel like it’s unravelling. It’s dizzying.

    JESUS, IS THERE SOMEONE YET WHO GOT THEIR WISH; DID YOU GET YOURS, BABE? In 2014, I was experiencing a similar burnout. At that time, I also started to feel very exploited by the private academy I worked for. Some days it was hard to think of my next step. It seems really hard to get the energy to pick yourself out of a slump. Rather than coming home and revising my resume, my inner critic tells me how pathetic it looks. I’d tell myself, “If you don’t rest up and prepare for tomorrow, you won’t make it through that day. And if you can’t have the energy to improve your condition, you’ll be stuck here forever.” It was a vicious cycle. But there came a point when bitterness gave me the energy to take the steps to move on in 2014, and the next year I began working at my current school. And while I’ve enjoyed teaching my students and working with my coworkers, bitterness with admin, boredom with the same-old-same-old routine, and burnout from the pandemic have given me a spark to look forward to the future. But unlike, “Dizzy,” I don’t wish to go back and undo my “relationship” I have with my career or my job. I do think that a break up is imminent.

  • "Rocketeer" by Far East Movement ft. Ryan Tedder, Wednesday, June 2, 2021
























    In 2010, Far East Movement was the first Asian-American group to top Billboard’s  Hot 100 with the dance/hip-hop hit “Like a G6,” a fun track about getting so drunk in the club that you feel like a private plane. The group’s follow up hit, “Rocketeer” stuck with the flying theme. “Rocketeer” peaked at number  7 both on the Top 40 radio charts and the Hot 100, and the group hasn’t released music topping their success. However, the 2010 success of FEM brought light to a hip-hop scene many Americans didn’t even know existed. Far East Movement’s rise to the top of the Hot 100 was a culmination of the career they built in LA’s Koreatown and the Asian-American music scene, collaborations in various areas of the music industry, and the luck of being in the middle of dance/EDM Hip-hop when the wave swept.

    WITH YOU RIGHT HERE, I’M A ROCKETEER. LET’S FLY. This song picks me up out of a slump. It’s be nine years since I came to Korea, and in December, it will be 10 years since I graduated college. Before I graduated from university, the world seemed full of opportunities. There was a world out there to see. Having grown up playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego as one of the only computer games I was allowed to play, I dreamed of the world that I could fly away to and experience. I envied people in movies for whom travel was a normal thing. For my family, vacation was a trip to visit my grandparents in Florida or a trip to the beach. When I had the opportunity to go to Yap it reignited the Carmen Sandiego travel bug, and going to Korea was a continuation of that bug. But I quickly learned that trans-Pacific flights were not going to be a frequent thing. I never saw myself staying in Korea as long as I have, but until 2019, I really found fulfillment in my work and the years just passed.

    GOT A JETPACK WITH YOUR NAME ON IT. Teaching in the pandemic has me really fatigued. It doesn’t help that vacation was screwed up last year to interfere with my recovery. Working more hours with fewer teachers has me switching from my normal problem-solving self to a much more cynical shadow of my former self. I used to look at teaching at my school as puzzle to solve. It was fun trying to figure out which strategies would be most helpful to the student. It was stressful to figure out how to work around the obstacles and obstructions from supervisors. But I was always able to do it. But in the COVID world, I’m not feeling like doing my best. I’ve become so burnt out, but a few weeks ago I was inspired to take some time off for my master’s degree. It’s what I had wanted to do for some time when I had paid off my student loans. Thanks to a federal pause on interest, a steady job, and a pretty boring lifestyle, I’m almost paid up. It may be soon time to pursue a future. This is both exciting and terrifying. The sky’s the limit, but where should I take the jetpack? And more importantly, is it safe to fly?

  • "Savior's Robes" by Yellowcard, Tuesday, June 1, 2021

    Yellowcard belongs on a soundtrack for my teenage summer, but today’s track is not a typical sounding Yellowcard song. In 2004 one of my summer songs was “Ocean Avenue” from the band’s major label debut of the same name. They became known as the pop-punk band with the crazy electric violin, especially in their first three records. The band was a massively successful Florida punk band that impacted pop and rock radio, following in the footsteps of bands like Good Charolette, Simple Plan, and New Found Glory. The band’s success with mainstream radio and MTV faded and they started to lack originality by their third record. However, the band’s second act saw more complex lyricism and instrumentality. The band remained in the scene until breaking up in in 2018, releasing their self-titled record in 2016. “Savior’s Robes” is track 9 of 10 on the album whose artwork seems to be anti-sun/summer and good times music found in the early days of Yellowcard.


    I WONDER IF YOU CAN RECALL MY NAME. Opening with a heavy distorted guitar and drums and an uncharacteristically angry sounding lead singer Ryan Key, “Savior’s Robes,” sounds like it’s a dis-track to some bad blood in the band’s history. Yellowcard had a series of member shake-ups, some of which were bitter. The reference to “a devil in a savior’s robes” sounds eerily religious. Key had been a member of the Tooth & Nail band Craig’s Brother, and as a Florida band in punk/pop-punk had been around a lot of the early 2000s Tooth & Nail bands, according to Key’s interview on Lead Singer Syndrome. Interestingly, Yellowcard’s plan to call it quits seemed to echo fellow Florida rock band Anberlin, who also released a farewell album and performed a farewell tour in 2014. Anberlin’s drummer, Nate Young, performed on the final two Yellowcard albums. This collaboration turned me be back on to Yellowcard after deleting their third album from my Apple library years ago. Today’s song is fun, aggressive, and not all what to expect as a first song in a playlist. It’s long. It seems to end before picking up speed. It sits well as a middle album track. But just as it’s not a typical opener, it’s not a typical summer. It’s cloudy and COVID is making us forget what normal is.

    YOU TOOK MY EDGE, SHARPENED IT IN CASE. This song reminds me of the grungier days of RadioU. Christian music seemed to skip grunge’s first wave with the exception of Skillet’s first album and maybe some old Third Day, but there were a few examples for grunge’s second wave: Since October, Lucerin Blue, East West. This song sounds more like it’s channelling that sound than the upbeat teens on Ocean Avenue. One line I found interesting: “You’re a devil in a savior’s robe / Made it easier to let you go / I never should have let you get so close.”  It’s easy to let a devil go once you realize they are one, but the savior’s robe allows that person to get close. Is this a metaphor for a friend who betrays or literally about an experience with someone who uses piety as a way to draw others in. Is it the music industry? Is it the “cool Christian” youth groups? Is it the festivals that the band played alongside Christian bands? It’s a very icky feeling when you’re swindled by the oily Bible salesman. It’s quite a common story, and I have quite a few from working for a church school. Still, it’s an even ickier feeling when they try to swindle people who don’t believe it. It’s actually quite embarrassing, or at least it was. No wonder why people are so programed against religion.