What is On Jeffs' Mind

Last night I watched a documentary I had recorded on my DVR a few weeks ago. It was about the musical group Rush and was called Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. I might not be a big fan of theirs, but I have always liked their music, as they have ton’s of classic songs. Actually I sort of wished I had followed them a bit more closer, as the music they play, is what I like, highly conceptual type music, with large and deep themes to it. My brother and I went and saw them play a few years ago, and it was a very cool concert, and I probably know more songs then I don’t.  Also the song Subdivisions I classify as one of my favorite songs of all time, it feels a bit like an anthem for my teenage years in the 80′s. Others touched upon the song in the documentary as having similar feelings towards the song. So I guess I am a fan, but maybe not in the traditional sense.

I am not a musician by any stretch of the imagination, and probably the exact opposite, but I found the documentary very inspiring. Like most, Rush had their own set of challenges to get to where they are today, and I found the history of the band to be very interesting. Also me being Canadian, I found I could relate to them, maybe it is a Canadian thing, where people from the same country, you feel a familiarity towards. The members also seemed very down to earth, which is refreshing, since so often, people in the entertainment industry have this sort of public persona to them, that comes off a bit larger then life.

What inspired me, was how seriously they took their craft. The musicianship they displayed was incredible, and how they would give it their all in each album they would work on. They would not let their abilities limit them on taking on some rather complex songs, and they would push themselves to get to a place where they could do the songs they wanted. Even though they were all accomplished musicians, they were still learning, still improving on their skills. I have always been very impressed when I see someone highly skilled in their field, excel at it.

So after watching that documentary, it makes me want to try and push my own skills, and not be satisfied with where they are right now. A person can always build on what they know, get better, do things they may not have been able to do before. I also found it inspiring, that they stuck to what they wanted to do, even though it was not deemed popular, and met some negative criticism. It said to me, trust yourself, and not the noise around you. I fall into the trap of looking for approval from others, but at the end of the day you live with yourself, and that should be all the approval you need. If you feel good about what you have done, then others will as well. As noted in the documentary, Rush has an extremely loyal fan base, they liked the music, even if the critics where writing it off.

It is nice to watch something, which after forces you to re look at yourself. I have a few projects on the go, that I have been a hesitant and wavering on, but now I am thinking of how I can improve myself, to make them better. There is so much to learn, and that I am excited to do so. It is cool to get that little bit of inspiration from time to time, it really does keep a person going.

Tags: Inspiration, Rush, Subdivisions

The past few weeks for me for the most part have been quiet, with nothing to exciting happening. We came off a long weekend last weekend for Family Day, which I did not do to much, but that was ok. It gave me a chance to finish work on a new website I created, which is called Popoff Podcasts.

The purpose of Popoff Podcasts is to be a general place for a person to go and see all the podcasts Jason and I are involved with. As usual, it was fun to work on the site, as I really like getting into building these sites, and it turns out to be weekend long project. I can sit for hours and work on the site, as it is something I really enjoy to do. The site is nearly done and I am pretty happy with how it came out.  I found a WordPress template I liked, and then modified it to what I wanted. It really helped me learn a lot as I was able to add things to the template that were not there. I find I am reading php and css sheets better now, and understand what they are doing, which is good, as maybe in the future I would like to get into web development.

This past week I attended a digital camera course with my Dad. I have to say I learned quite a bit about my camera in the first class. I have another class on Tuesday. The first class they went through some of the settings on the camera, things that I never really knew where there, or did not really understand what they do. It gave me a better understanding of what my camera can do. I am looking forward to the next class and learning even more. I might consider taking a photography course in the future, so will see where it leads.

I also got the opportunity to help my friend Jen from the Anomaly Podcast on a new site she it working on. It was a lot of fun to work on it, she has picked a great theme for her site, and it helped me expand my knowledge on WordPress some with editing php and css style sheets. She is still working on it, so looking forward to seeing it when she is done, as I think it is going to be great. You should check out the Anomaly Podcast, it is a real fun podcast to listen to. This past podcast, they did a review of a Star Trek TNG episode for their worst of Trek series. It was a fun review of the episode Sub Rosa, from the seventh season of TNG. I have to admit, that this episode also ranks up there in my all time list of least liked Star Trek episodes.

I also started a new Star Wars book that I am excited about, it is the Fate of the Jedi series and the first one called Outcast. I have really gotten into this book, and made quite a dent into it just reading for a few days. I really enjoyed the last Star Wars series The Legacy of the Force, all the books in that series were top notch. I get the feeling this series will be just as good, and I like the long story arcs that go from book to book, more so then some of the event type one off books.

Also, last week, my friend Rick bought me an iTunes copy of the new Stryper CD called The Covering. They  cover a lot of cool Heavy Metal and Hard Rock songs from the 70′s and 80′s, such as Iron Maidens’ The Trooper, Van Halens’ On Fire, Breaking the Law by Judas Priest and Heaven and Hell from Black Sabbath. It is a really cool CD with a lot of other cool covers from some great bands.

Tags: Anomaly Podcast, Black Sabbath, Fate of the Jedi, Heavy Metal, Iron Maiden, Jason, Jen from Anomaly Podcast, Judas Priest, Legacy of the Force, Popoff Podcasts, Rick Moyer, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stryper, Van Halen

My friend Rick has started a new podcast. The podcast is called Take Him With You, and it is spiritual podcast, but not religious. The first few podcasts, Rick has talked about himself, and some of his experiences growing up. Rick approaches the spirituality in an interesting fashion, and not as traditional as others would. He mixes it in with other topics and show you can be spiritual and still enjoy other things. Rick has also covered on his podcasts the past few weeks, some cool subjects such as The new Battlestar Galactica, LOST and 80′s Heavy Metal. All things I really enjoy.

I am really enjoying Ricks delivery, he has a great perspective on things. It has made me start to think about some of my past, and how it related to God. When I was in Grade 7 and 8, I went to a Catholic Boarding school, that was run by a group called the Salesians. The Salesians were founded my a person named Saint John Bosco, and their mandate in a sense is to look after children and young people. The Fathers and Brothers that ran the school I went to were from California originally, and I thought a lot of them were really cool. Even though it was hard at that age to be away from my family and friends, I did have a lot of good memories as well. The Brothers were young men in their early to mid twenties, so they related very well to us students. For a Catholic Boarding school, they seemed very easy going, as that was where I was fist introduced to Heavy Metal. In the evening after supper and before Study Hall, we would sit in the gym and we would listen to each others tapes of music on our Ghetto Blasters (That’s what we called Portable Stereos back in the early 80′s). We would play things like AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Def Leppard, and it was a lot of fun. Sometimes if we were lucky, we would convince the Brothers to strum some AC/DC on their guitars, and they were cool about that, well sometimes . Also we would do other cool things, like on Friday nights we would have movie nights, and we would watch on a big projection screen that was donated to the school. That was the first time I saw Star Wars outside of the movie theatre. I remember we were all so excited the days leading up, as the Priests were able to rent a copy of Star Wars on some player that predated laser disc. We watched in the cafeteria, and it was full with everyone in the school there. I also recall seeing some other cools movies, like the first Star Trek movie and Clash of the Titans as well. Probably my favorite day besides Christmas was Saint John Bosco day, as we would get out of class early, and there would be lots of good food and fun things to do. We also did cool things like built things in a big work shop, that a bunch of cool tools such as a drill press and a lathe.

When I was at the school, I also started going to mass regularly, as we would have it each day at lunch. It was optional, but I wanted to go, and I got so interested that I became an Alter Boy as well. I found I was really interested in God and religion mostly because the Fathers and Brothers were so great about it. A few years later when I left the Boarding school, I went to a christian school for a year. I am not sure what their faith was, but to me it felt very strict. I sort of tuned out at that time, as all the things I had experienced in boarding school, was the exact opposite at this school. Things like Heavy Metal was outlawed, and we were taught if you did not live you life by a strict set of guidelines, you were essentially a sinner. To me what ever message they were trying to deliver about god was lost of me, due to the fashion and the environment they setup. I was only at the school for one year, and I was very happy to leave after that. To me, whatever message those people were delivering, was not getting across, as a lot of the students, such as myself just tuned them out, and would end up doing the opposite of what they taught. The daily religion classes were just one disruption to the next by us students. Many times the principal would lecture the whole school on taking it serious, but we just never did.

So basically to sum it up. Rick has done a great podcast, he delivers his message in a very current, fun and non judgemental fashion. Even if you are not overly spiritual, you still would get some great things out of his podcast as he has some good thoughts on just living a great life.

Here is a cool YouTube Video from Ricks last Podcast, he plays his guitar, and some cool Heavy Metal riffs from back in the day. It certainly sparked my interest to dust off some of the old stuff and give it a listen again.

For Christmas I received some CD’s Saint of Los Angeles by Motley Crue, Black Ice by AC/DC and Chinese Democracy by Guns n Roses . I finally got around to listening to them over the weekend. I had burned them to my iPod, so I will give some quick reviews, as I have only really listened to them a few times each.  I thought it would interesting to review them based off of my first impressions.

The first one I will review is Saints of Los Angeles by Motley Crue. This is my favorite out of the 3 I got for Christmas. It had been out for awhile, and I was always interested to get it, as I have listened to Motley Crue for a long long time. It is one of my Guilty pleasure I have to admit when listening to music. I found this CD interesting in that it is sort of a concept album. Most of it is about Los Angeles, and a lot dealing with Motley Crues’ start in the music business. The songs seem to have a lot of energy to them, but I did find a lot of foul words in the lyrics. That might be an odd thing to say, but I have found historically, Motley Crue never had a lot of swear words in their music, but this CD has a lot, which I thought was strange. Some songs were pretty good and found myself humming along, and there was not really many slow ones. I thought it was pretty good, but I would probably only rate it above the one which did not have Vince Neil in the band. What this CD needs is more Cow Bell, like Too Fast for Love

The next CD I will review is the new one from AC/DC called Black Ice. I have heard a few songs on the Radio, like Rock n Roll Train and Big Jack. The songs are pretty short, and a there is a lot of them.  It sounds a lot like AC/DC, and they never really stray to far from their format. I found that this CD did not rock enough for me, sure the songs were fairly fast paced, but I did not find it to be very hard. The guitars sounded more rock and roll sounding, or blues, more so then hard rock. I sort of wished they would have cranked them up a bit more, as they did not sound powerful enough for me. This is probably a great Rock and Roll album, but not as much Hard Rock. Makes me want to listen to Fly on the Wall, my favorite AC/DC album.

The Gun N Roses CD I liked the least, and by a lot. To be honest, for over 10 years in the making, it sucks. There were a few songs like Chinese Democracy or Better that I felt were ok, but the rest were weak. This CD at times to me felt like a very below average 70′s band, as it had a real bland vibe to me, and the 70′s was the only era I could really picture this in. Guns N Roses from the Appetite for Destruction days is long gone, even he Use your Illusion CD’s. When I first started listening to it, I said to myself, would be nice if Axl Rose sang a bit about his personal struggles, as it might be interesting, boy was I wrong, it seemed after the first few songs, the rest felt like songs about relationships or personal issues. This CD just felt very self absorbed on Axl Roses part, and just plain got tired of listening to song after song about pretty much the same things. The songs were just to slow for me, and I felt that it would be over produced, and it certainly was, just to much in them. It comes off as an Album of attempts of redoing November Rain, and never gets any higher then that to me. This is CD is sinking on the charts, and I think because it is so weak, besides name Guns N Roses is truly finished.