Mock Trial Update 2

Another update on Mock Trial. These probably won't be so close together, but since it's the beginning of the year, there's alot happening. Namely, the witness roles got auditioned for and decided on this past meeting. Here's the roster:

Prosecution
Ryan Reynolds: Josh Pomerantz and me
Devin Walsh (expert): Joe Barakat and Hazel Peralta
Peyton Bralow: Elliot Taylor and Julie Dinkler

Defense a.k.a. guilty ppl
Loren Perry: Mark Barakat and Daniel Margulis
Jordan Nathanson(sp?) (expert): Aaron Pomerantz and Cassie Dinkler
KC Perry: Amy Hulehan and Kelsey Worgess

That's all for now. Now I gotta do a ton of math and go finish a precis, which is all due by tomorrow morning/afternoon respectively.

Duty calls...

Skillet Awake Review

Man oh man, Skillet has come a long way, or should I say gone. Unfortunately, I can’t truthfully say that I think the old Skillet was, or the new Skillet is, a good group. Both musical styles have something good in them, but lack something essential to make it “good music.” The two main things I find totally different in the old and new group are the lyrical content and the musical style. To explore these in depth, let’s compare the “old Skillet” to Skillet’s newly released album, Awake.

Awake was greatly anticipated by fans, due to Skillet’s previously released Grammy-nominated album Comatose. This brings me to my first point, the lyrical content of Skillet’s Awake compared to the “older” Skillet. To be honest, I was surprised after hearing one of the most popular songs off the album, Monster. I wasn’t surprised at any appallingly bad written lyrics, but rather how dark and similar the lyrics and music sounded to Three Days Grace’s song, Animal I have Become. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way defending Three Days Grace’s song any more than Skillet’s, but after hearing the rest of the album, I was very surprised about how similar the ideas in many songs off Awake were so… well…dark and emo, a quality that at least I think definitely reflects 3DG’s style and lyrics. The songs that blatantly follow this lyrical pattern are Sometimes, Monster, Should’ve when you could’ve, and It’s not me It’s you.

How do these song lyrics differ from their previous style? Skillet has deviated from Christian themes more and more with each album for popularity purposes, but even Awake is a huge jump from the lyrics of Comatose. This is surprising, because when I refer to the “new Skillet” I refer to Comatose and Awake, yet the lyrics from Awake were surprisingly dark compared to Comatose. There is not one specific reference to God in the new album, and there’s only one song with a possible reference to God. Of course it’s only in the form or a “hero who saves people just in time” that they go about doing this. No reference to God, and probably none intended, just a vague description of someone, a "hero" who saves people just like God. It's not the lack of reference to God that bothers me, it's the fact that if you didn’t know they were a Christian band before listening to Awake, you wouldn't think they were anything close to a Christian band, and maybe even something opposite.

This brings me to my second point, the musical style of Awake. Despite my derogatory comments about their lyrics, I was actually quite entertained by Skillet’s new instrumental approach to their music. This style wasn’t developed in Awake however, it started in Comatose, and was probably the main reason it received its Grammy Nomination. Skillet does however deviate slightly from that style in a few songs, diverting to a more metal/hard rock tone which I personally find incredibly ugly and hard to listen to with John Cooper’s voice singing.

In terms of musical appreciation, John’s voice was the only big problem I had with Awake's musical qualities. I'm not saying the rest of the music was anything spectacular- it wasn't, But it wasn't bad either. John's voice went so well with Skillet's old style of music, and, although it wasn’t as good as the older style, it still went pretty well with the instrumental approach of Comatose. But now that Skillet has introduced this harder, more metalish tone, it doesn’t mix AT ALL. Its like... trying to eat something tough like steak, with something much more mellow (not saying his voice is mellow, just saying it’s more mellow than a real metal singer’s), like... milk. Try eating steak, dipped in milk. Yeah, it doesn’t work. Sorry for the stupid analogy, but you get the point. If you don’t, just listen to Sometimes from Awake, and you should know what I’m talking about.

In conclusion, I personally, was surprised at Skillet’s new album. I anticipated something almost identical to Comatose musically, and, I didn’t really expect anything different lyrically. When you got a good thing going, you don't wanna blow it huh? I believe the purpose of Awake was to produce an album with some remeniscence of Comatoses' instrumental fame, while at the same time tweaking it and adding some darker and more emo themes, for popularity purpose of course. They got carried away with the popularity issue, and would’ve gotten better results if they stuck with the style that made Comatose so popular. Instead of tweaking that instrumental acompaniment into a harder style, Skillet would've gotten better results with a softer approach, or at the most something just a little harder than Comatose.


**Out of *****

Music News

I found this bit on ultimate guitar's homepage, gotta love their music news updates. Anyway, Smashing Pumpkins is giving away their entire new record, Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, for free. According to the update given on their website by Billy, they will release each song individually for free, starting around Halloween until they've released all 44. Here's the two links.

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/upcoming_releases/smashing_pumpkins_to_release_44-track_album_digitally.html

and

http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/pages/news/announcement-from-billy-corgan-about-new-smashing-pumpkins-album

Mock Trial Update 1

So, I thought I'd just give some updates every once in a while about how Mock Trial is coming along, just to give me something consistent to post about...

To start off, we had our first official MT meeting tonight besides the parents meeting. The case was finally released this past Friday, which was pretty annoying since last year it came out in early August. The case this year is criminal, and deals with kidnapping. Needless to say, it's complicated... but awesome at the same time. Tonight I auditioned for two roles, the babysitter who was sitting at the time of the kidnapping, and the father of the kidnapped child. I'm not really sure what role I'm going to end up with, but I know that I'm one of the few that tried out for the babysitter, mainly because it's probably the hardest role in the case. We'll just have to wait it out and see...

Also, if anyone cares, here's the link to the case. (it's mega long, 6 witness statements... 3-4 pages each, yeah...)

http://www.njsbf.org/images/content/1/1/11325.pdf

That's all for the first update of (hopefully) many.

~Chris

We Shot the Moon

There's a really cool pretty new indie/alternative band called We Shot the Moon that I started listening to the other day. Just wanted anyone who reads this that they have got a sample of three songs from their newest album The Silver Lining available for free along with two bonus songs from their first album and a song from Jonathan Jone's (vocals and piano) solo CD. http://afternoonrecords.com/stream/weshotthemoon/

They're really awesome you should check 'em out.

This video is classic. Note: This is probably the only thing Tim Hawkins produces that I will regard as funny.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsJHqstPuNo&feature=related