Senseless Tragedy

Normally, I try not to comment on tragedies because I don't enjoy giving senseless people like that any kind of attention. They don't deserve the notoriety. Though, being as where this happened and the fact that I will seeing the movie tonight, I thought I would make an exception. For those of you who don't know, a man opened fire at a showing for The Dark Knight Rises. Many were wounded and many were killed. I just can't imagine being so excited to see a movie and never being able to come home. We as humans have the potential for great things. When there are any types of senseless violence, we tend to prove that wrong and show that we can be the worst creatures on the planet. Whether it happens in a school, movie theater, or a concert, each event is just as tragic regardless how many people are effected by it. I'm never going to be able to condone or understand why people do these things. Killing people for no reason will never be okay, those trying to rationalize that it is and acting acting upon it, I will never see them as anything less than a coward especially those to decide to take their lives after committing these acts. They do so they will not have to face the consequences for their actions and there is nothing more cowardly than that in my opinion. Those who do it to be famous or to further their own bullshit agenda would come in a close second to that. There will never be any good reason for this type of pain or suffering. As a race of people, we can and should be much better than this. You're probably asking yourself, where does this tie into music? Since I normally talk nothing but music, I can agree that is a very valid question. With that though comes a very easy answer. Musicians are no strangers to these types of actions. From John Lennon to Darrell Abbot, have all be effected by acts of senseless violence for no good reason along with their loved ones and friends. They were all amazingly talented and shared their talent to anyone who listened. Judging by how successful they were, they were many who listened. I'm not saying it's any bigger of a tragedy for them because the value of human life is the same for all of us. Each one of these tragedies isn't any bigger or smaller than one that has happened before or since then and nine times out of ten, they don't see it coming. Even if they do, there is very little that can be done at that point. Lastly, my thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of those who where effected by the senseless tragedy in Aurora. Now, this is point where a person writing something like this will say something along the lines of "love everyone because you never know when they will be gone" but I believe I'm above that overused line. So, I will use an overused movie quote instead. Trust me, that is better. Anyway, life moves by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Free Randy Blythe

For those of you who don’t know, Randy Blythe, lead vocalist of Lamb of God, is being held in a Czech prison for an incident at a show that happened more than two years ago that resulted in a death of a 19-year-old fan. First off, why this took over two years to happen is beyond me. For those of you, who are completely puzzled as to what exactly happened, let me inform you. On May 24, 2010 during a Lamb of God concert, a 19-year-old fan decided to get up on stage. He didn’t do this once or twice, but three times. Randy got into an altercation with the fan and that died 14 days later because of his injuries. It was rumored that the fan had been struck with a microphone before the security team forced him from the stage. On Thursday of last week, in the Czech Republic, Randy was arrested and charged with manslaughter and could face up to ten years in prison. For those of you who don’t know, fans aren’t allowed to jump onto the stage. This guy jumped on stage on three separate occasions.  On many different occasions, many bands members have been hurt because of someone deciding to do something stupid like this. On October 22 of last year, a fan did that at an Anthrax concert in Los Angeles. The fan jumped on stage and tackled the singer, Joey Belladonna.  We all know what happened to Dimebag. Though it is quite different since that guy knew what he was doing, the same rule was broken. In that moment, because of things like this happening, band members have the right to defend themselves. I believe that Randy was in the right here in doing what he did. What this kid did was stupid, plain and simple. Was he trying to hurt this kid, probably not. Any band will tell you that going through an experience where you have to protect yourself, can be crazy. You never know what intent that person has. You got to protect yourself and that’s exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t trying to kill him. It was simply an accident. Hopefully, the justice system works out the way it should and he’ll be able to return home safely. Obviously, I wasn’t there, so it would be impossible for me to know that for sure, but with seeing people jump on stage numerous times, bands always act the same way with them going straight into defense mode. A lesson to be learned from this is when you go to a concert, don’t jump on the stage. When you make dumb decisions like that or just in general, bad things happen. The bands are there to try to entertain and if they have to worry about someone jumping up on stage, they won’t be able to do so if they are worry about some idiot. There is a reason why there is a barrier between you and the band. Or, if you are in a club like atmosphere, there is a reason why the stage is much higher than you are. There are even times in the past with I've seen bands or the concert hall have some sort of cage around the band while they are preforming to protect them from such stupidity. Concerts are supposed to be a fun experience and the phrase that one person can ruin it for everyone else, is true in this case.

Brand New

For those of you who don't know, I've had a channel on youtube where it started off as just getting footage from concerts and I turned it into a place where I gave my thoughts on all things music. Getting footage from concerts kind of started on accident. I remember I got video from this concert I went to just to see how it would come out. From there, it became a routine of mine to get footage from every concert I went too and I seemed to get a lot of views, comments, and subscribers. It really blew me away. Eventually, it started to be a hassle. Security got annoyed with me and at certain times, it became a chore. Eventually, it lead into me being burnt out on the concert scene. That, and feeling like an unpaid worker for Roadrunner Records. That's a different story for another day. Point is, I had a youtube channel with nothing to do for it. I had ideas in my head of different things that I could try, but never anything concrete. Then, late last year, I decided to make videos on youtube based on different opinions that I had on whatever was going on in music. At first, I didn't really know what I was doing and it showed. Plus, shooting off a crappy laptop webcam, didn't really help. I eventually tried using my camera on my smartphone, since I can get much better video quality through that. Only problem was that I had nothing to lean it against to where it would stand still. Some people got a stand with there phones, I never had that option. Then, I went back to shooting off of my laptop, because that was all I had. Problems came from there as every time I would post a video on my channel. The audio would be out of sync with the video. It always seemed to get worse, so I decided until I can get a good video camera, that I would hold off on it for a while and use this as a way to get my opinions out there.Whether it be reviews on albums, thoughts on current events in music, or whatever else seems to be going on. With my youtube channel, I would put a video out every Tuesday. With this, I don't plan on doing that. I may post a few in one week or one in the span of two weeks. It all depends on what's going on in the world of music.With that being said, I hope to whoever reads this that they enjoy it and give me their opinions on the world of music. It's Hard Rockin Topics.