The Offspring: Prologue

Posted by prla1983 on August 06, 2008 • 1 commentsEmail This Post

I've got about 2500 music albums. As of today, my main iTunes Library claims to house 1774 albums from 876 different artists. That adds up to 20666 songs, which would take me no less than 66 consecutive days, no stops, to listen in their entirety. Every day I learn about different bands, every day I download new stuff I never even remotely heard of and often I go out on a rampage and buy a lot of CDs at different stores. I got a couple of iPods (one of them is dead) and recently I've acquired an iPhone which also acts as an iPod in its own right. I listen to music while I'm at home, I listen to music at work on my laptop and I listen to music every minute I'm inside my car, wherever I may roam. I've attended dozens of great live shows, most of which I have fond memories of, others which sucked on end. It's been like this for about 15 years and I'm proud to be a true music lover (because I am), regardless of my shortcomings. I have a few favorite bands and don't even get me started on the amazing people I've gotten to know and cherish a friendship with, thanks to the music.

And that all got started back in day with three bands, all of which I still love with a huge passion after all these years. I often joke that music lovers should be like sponges in that they absorb whatever they get to know without the need to purge what came before. "I don't listen to insert genre or band here anymore, that's for kids" is something only a dumbfuck would utter. So, whatever people might say forgetting that music is all subjective, I kinda wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Nirvana, Green Day and The Offspring. I would simply be a different person that the one who's writing this post right now. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

The Offspring - and music in general - came into my life through a close friend back when "Smash" came out, so that would be about 1994. I listened to that record like there would be no tomorrow and then I found out about "Ignition" and the self-titled debut album. Soon they came up with a new album, "Ixnay on the Hombre" which had a few songs that really kicked me into high gear though I began to understand they were going in a different, poppier direction. I kept avidly listening to every The Offspring album that would come out, "Americana", "Conspiracy Of One" and I culminated almost a decade of fandom seeing them live in Lisbon back in 2001. One mofo of a show, if you ask me, with all the classics being played.

Anyway, I've recently been going through a massive Offspring overdose, with almost 400 plays in a single week so I thought the time is as good as any to write about one of my favorite bands. Listening to the entire discography, I've understood that I love every album in a certain way and each of them evoke a different period of my life. With that in mind, in the coming weeks I'll be posting a small article on each of their albums, as a kind of homage.

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Quote of the Day

Posted by prla1983 on May 20, 2007 • 0 commentsEmail This Post

"Vertigo, they say, is not really a fear of falling; it's a fear of jumping. The gap between the subject and the ground creates such strong psychological conflict in the afflicted that the temptation to eliminate it by leaping into the void is overpowering, and dizziness sets in."
(from Jim Emerson's review of "Red Road")

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13 Years

Posted by prla1983 on May 01, 2007 • 0 commentsEmail This Post

It was 13 years ago today that the sports world became poorer after Ayrton Senna died during the Imola Formula 1 Grand Prix, in 1994. I have fragmented memories of that day, I was at our beach place with some people from our family when it all happened. I was only 10 at the time, so I probably didn't understand the full extent and magnitude of what was happening, but Senna was my favorite driver and it was brutal. I couldn't believe it for some three or four days afterwards, like it couldn't be true. And I remember everyone was feeling very uneasy during those hours where no one would say if he made it or not after being taken to the hospital.

And let's not forget Roland Ratzenberger also died earlier on that fatal weekend...

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American Church Signs

Posted by prla1983 on April 30, 2007 • 0 commentsEmail This Post

"If you give the devil a ride, pretty soon he'll want to drive".

Priceless and oh so true.

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The Big Scary Unknown

Posted by prla1983 on February 06, 2007 • 0 commentsEmail This Post

"People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown."

Chuck Palahniuk

(Photo: The Void, The Jewish Museum, by running for asthma)

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