An evening with Anberlin

Initially I was going to call this post 'The second-best day of my life', but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the title of the event was perfectly adequate in describing the event, the evening and how I felt about all of it. But it was also probably the second-best day of my life.

The Best day of my life happened about nine years ago in November. It was a stinking hot day and I'd done a walk-thru the Old Testament seminar and post-seminar, asked God to direct my life. I don't have any photos from that day. I cannot actually remember what date it was either. But it was in November, and I highly doubt that anything else I will experience in life will surpass the importance of that day.

Currently, I shall divulge to you the events of last night.

Also, I apologise in advance to those who don't understand my language. I revert back to Brookespeak when heavily fatigued.

The concept started about two weeks ago, after returning from a weekend away with my bible study group. My mind had been wandering, and suddenly ratcheted onto my most-favoured band. This was partly because it was the time of year when they had released albums for the previous three years. I had been thinking, "I wonder if Anberlin will be putting out a new album soon?"

So when we arrived home, I hopped onto their website to check.

I didn't find information on a new album release. But I did find information on a tour.
This prospect was exciting. I had never seen them play live before.
I clicked madly around the site, collecting the data that would tell me whether I could make it or not. An idea formed, and after mulling over it for a couple of days, was sent out to a couple of friends.

Do you want to come and see Anberlin live with me?

Sadly, all requests came back negative. I had previously run the plan past my mother, who had lived and breathed Sydney in her uni days. She said that the Enmore Theatre was small, and that if I wanted to go, I'd have to get a wriggle on.

Eventually I made a snap-decision. I'd done London for six weeks, flaneuring, by myself . Sydney should be no problem. Bookings were made, memberships were entered and I studiously checked the train timetables. I was going and I was going to enjoy it, by jove.

So, with much anticipation, the day drew near. Finally Thursday arrived, and, after dropping in on the classes and errands I needed to run, I headed for the train station and began the trek to Syd's knees.

<<Wow. It is getting late.>>

Arriving at Central, I dropped in long enough to deposit my stuff and meet my roommates. There were two girls from Norway and an American girl who was looking for work. I met one of the Norweigan girls and spoke to her, and the other one I probably woke up when I arrived back from the show. But I'll get to that.

Slightly befuddled by traffic and my shoddy sense of direction, I followed the black-shirted youths that travelled in groups and were murmuring things about live shows, all the time thinking to myself, "Should have brought some water. So thirsty"

Which is of course completely unrelated unless you happened to know that I had been a stupidhead earlier that day and forgotten to take water to drink. Thus, dehydration was getting kind-of, well, bad. This problem was rectified and the blog post moved forward in time and space.

Suddenly, I had finished making my way down Enmore lane and was standing in the line outside the door, clutching a piece of yellow card with my name on it and inwardly cursing the fact that I hadn't strapped my ankle up fully before leaving the backpackers.

Oh, that's right. I'd failed to mention that. My ankles have a tendency to pack it in with minimal provocation. Performing a minor stunt in the car park after church the Sunday before I went had been provocation enough. I'd spent the week with my foot in a pressure bandage.

However, this was not to get in the way of what was ahead. The doorman took part of the ticket and in our line poured. Some people gawped, some walked straight to the stage; some headed to the merchandise stall. I went down to the floor level to observe the surroundings, thinking, "Mum was right. This place is tiny." The size of the venue did not detract in any way from the ten-metre-tall stack of speakers I observed to my right. This was going to be a lot of fun.

It is important to mention at this stage that, after having an inner-turmoil battle-of-the-percieved-stocks-of-merch-table, I went up and purchased a T-shirt and poster. Then I went back down to the D-floor and tried to think of what I could do with them. For once, I'd not taken a bag and instead taken my jacket with 11 pockets. The jacket required some rearranging, but eventually the T-shirt found a pocket. It was only after the line-up band finished that I figured out what to do with the poster.

In the interim before that though, I was stuck with the poster in one hand, thinking, "What kind of idiot goes and buys a poster and then takes it into a mosh pit?"
The idiot in this case was obviously myself.
Holding the poster became less of a problem once it had been tied inside my jacket.

Eventually, the lights went down and that sent up some kind of signal, because a lot of people started making a lot of noise. Then the opening band came on - they were called 'Tonight Alive', and while I'd never heard of them before, they reminded me a lot of Paramore. Well, Paramore back when the Farro brothers still played: Five Man Band, with a female lead. The songs felt rather similar too. Well, the lyrics of which I could make out.

The sounds were...loud. Really, really loud. Make-your-ribcage-buzz-when-they-hit-the-bass-drum-loud. But exciting too. There were fists pumping and headbobbing and minor mosh activity.

And then Anberlin came on.

This roar went up from the crowd, and I looked on, slightly dumbstruck, as the band members took up their positions.
I got to know, got to hear of Anberlin about four years ago - when Cities was released. I had known that they'd changed their 'look' for the band since the Tooth and Nail years but was still very much used to their faces from 'The Unwinding Cable Car'. (I used it as an inspiration source for a uni assessment on 'Identity' and deconstructed the music video into storyboards.)
Anyway, they looked different. But they still sounded very much the same.
The crowd had already been revved up by the opening act, so with much gusto the band launched into Dismantle.Repair. The audience followed, singing, roaring. We moshed like....Masai warriors. Sung along like the words were battlecries for the soul (Some of them were, mind you). Danced like mad things and fist pumped like we were in an Anberlin concert.

Funny that.

I wish....I wish I was still there. I wish they had a live album recording. I wish I'd taken some initiative and given at least one of them a hug after the concert. More about that later.

The songs continued on, and so did we. I moshed until a giant cramp in my side advised against further activity, and eventually the songs plateaued into some of the quieter ones. It was really very awesome to hear all of these other people singing along - so loud was the music and the people that I could barely hear my own straining voice along with the multitude. For a long time, the only other people I knew who were into Anberlin were those who had introduced me to it. The Old Guard (those who were the last generation of youth group) back at my hometown church all listened to them in varying degrees, and I am fairly certain we all were stuck on Cities.

My point?
For a long time the only people I knew who even knew who Anberlin were I could count on my fingers. And then I met my (now)ex's cousin, who had Paperthin Hymn and two years later, went to see them at Soundwave and made me rather jealous. So, there weren't a lot of people who knew about them. And suddenly I was in a room with people who knew every lyric from every song, and Stephen Christian and Joseph Milligan and Christian McAlhaney and Deon Rexroat and Nate Young are there and we're just...just...

<<brain short-circuits.>>

It was amazing. I really, really enjoyed it.

At this stage, I'll give a brief overview of what happened next and then tell you a little bit more about a couple of the songs they performed and what I thought of them.

Fast-forward to the end of the night, where we, after thronging inside the theatre, began to throng on our way out past the table where the band members were sitting and signing things. I saw a couple of guys walking over clutching drumsticks that Nate had thrown out into the audience, and bit by bit made my way over to the table, fiddling with the poster that had somehow remained intact for the duration of everything.

In the end, I didn't get to say much. There was a 'thank you', a 'you played excellently' and an 'I really enjoyed listening to you'. But I got to look Stephen Christian in the eye. And in hindsight, I wish I'd been able to say something. Shake hands. Tell a joke to. Buy a beer for. I'd scribbled a note mentioning some part of the amount that I wished I'd expressed and had it in my hands. It was given to Deon, who was at the end of the line, along with the words "Have a thing."

I'm so eloquent.

And thus, the theatre was exited. Oporto was the next stop, where a much-overdue dinner was sought out at the time of 11:40pm. It would be considered a late dinner if I was in Europe, where they eat late anyway. NZ dinners FTW.
Walking up the street, it was easy to spot the fellow concert-people. Many were carrying white rolled-up posters, much the same as my own. Eventually the night bus came, and, at the end of it all, I arrived back at the Backpackers at about half-past Friday.
Mum got a message to say that I wasn't dead, and I proceeded to consume my dinner, which had all the connotations of being 'a slab of fried gold'.
It certainly tasted like one, all the way up until I got Oporto sauce down my shirt. I don't know how. It just happened.

As silently as I could muster, the bed was crawled into and I closed my eyes at 1am, wondering when the ringing in my ears would die down. It had been a long day. But it had been marvelous and I was very thankful for all of it. Except maybe for getting Oporto sauce on the pants that I'd have to wear the next day. But that kind of paled into insignificance next to everything else, so that was okay.

<<Now I think I'll tell you about some of the songs. Expect ranting.>>

Pray Tell.
This song is probably my favourite off 'Dark is a Way, Light is a Place.'
Despite the fact that there are already some videos from last night on YouTube, there isn't one for this. But that is okay.
Before going, I was being busy getting wound up over actually getting to go. Then I listened to this song and went, I really, REALLY hope they play this!
It's like the track was made to be played live. The drumbeat is unreal. And one minute we're standing in the crowd, and the next I can hear the start of the drumbeat and I know that the next three minutes is going to be freaking awesome.

The Art of War.
Another from 'Dark is a Way, Light is a Place.'
I don't know if it's ironic or what. This album was given to me by the only person I want to sing this song to right now. Listening to it being played live, I hoped and hoped that maybe they'd hear it. Maybe they'd know. But while singing along, my whole heart was in it.
<<Maybe Brooke would stop going third-person on the rest of the readers.>>



Alexithymia.
Finally, I know how to pronounce this one! Stephen Christian mentioned before starting it that this song was the one 'that got the most tattoos'. I'd never heard it played acoustic before. So worth it.

  Fin*
This is from 'Cities.'
They'd just finished, and left the stage. There was the roaring of the crowd, and in a relatively short period of time, a distinguishable chant could be heard:
One more song! One more song! One more song!
There was a moment of uncertainty, and then the most excellent and probably completely exhausted gentlemen made their way back to the stage, finishing the night with (in my opinion) the greatest song they've ever made.
What was really cool was that the audience pretty much formed the choir part that occurs in the song.
What was also insane was that Stephen finished the performance by dropping the mike onto the stage.

Now that I sit back and think about it, he was probably completely drained. I do not blame him in the slightest.

<<>>

I can't think of how to finish this post.
I may stick up more videos as they trickle onto YouTube.
Or I may just go and try to draw out the humungous knot that has formed in my leg from excessive moshing.
Whichever way the cards fall, It's late and I am really, really tired. So bed it is. Bed, sleep, and dreaming of the cause of justifiable hearing loss.

Movie soundtracks

Movie soundtracks are always something I have had a general interest in.
Musical score is something that is always much more complex than your standard four-chords-pop-album structure. It's deeper than auto-tune and more whole than any album of angry white boy music.
A soundtrack or score is actually the musical equivalent of the film's plot - it is designed as an emotive amplifier so that the audience also gets to be excited or afraid or victorious along with the characters.

One of the interesting things about soundtracks is that the newer ones integrate almost seamlessly with the film's feeling. I had to watch some movies from the 30's in school and the soundtrack is always more prominent in them - Laurence Olivier's rendition of Wuthering Heights was full of whistles and wailing violins, while the absence of ambiance in Twelve Angry Men was painfully obvious. That film was so. incredibly. slow.

My preamble over with, I would like to talk a little more about a few of my favourite soundtracks and why they are awesome. Or odd. Or something in between.

I'll start with saying that Hans Zimmer is a genius.

Zimmer is a bit like the Red Dorito packet at a party. His work turns up frequently, but that doesn't detract from his level of awesome.

I'm not entirely sure how Mr Zimmer feels about being compared to corn chips. But if it were me, I don't think I'd mind. 'Cheese Supreme' happens to be my favourite flavour of Dorito.

Zimmer is immediately recognisable as a composer, not in terms of a particular instrument, but in method application. There's this little hook of awesome that happens somewhere in the film and it makes everything amazing.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows how the Pirates of the Carribbean theme goes. If not, play this and imagine Captain Jack Sparrow being awesome.

One of Zimmer's other trademarks is his naming of the score pieces using lines from the movie.
I brought up Zimmer not just because of Pirates, but also because he made the score for one of my favourite movies - Sherlock Holmes.

This soundtrack uses the fiddle and string quartet predominantly to capture the feeling of 19th Century London - Incorporating drama and swagger whilst presenting the 'attractively soot-smeared face' 

(You know, the one where there's two, maybe three smears - one on the forehead and the others on the cheek - it says 'I'm able to look dirty and attractive without getting grease everywhere like a person who was actually working with grease would. This reasoning is suddenly seeming circular. Give me a sec.

Hopefully that makes it clear.)

Where was I? Sherlock. Right.

The album has track names like 'He's killed the dog again' and 'Catatonic'. 'Discombobulate' is the theme and hook of awesome, while 'Psychological Recovery...Six Months' was the longest track on my iPod at 18 minutes.

I say 'was' because I bought it and then I had a series of events (Computer died and lost files, iPod got accidentally reformatted and lost all files) that ended in 'I don't have this album anymore'. Slight rage. I mean, losing Sherlock? It's like losing the emergency spare set of keys. I've lost Sherlock. How the heck am I going to find the rest of the files?!

...

Moving along.

The next soundtrack I want to talk to you guys about is the one for Amelie.

This movie was one that I saw the front cover of, and decided that I wanted to see after reading the blurb. Unfortunately, I wasn't immediately able to get my hands on it and instead I found the soundtrack at the Library. This was an odd experience because I associated the first theme with a Wheel of Time book instead of the movie. Weird and funny. The soundtrack, like the movie is distinctly arty and distinctly French.

The composer, Yann Tiersen, uses the accordian and piano mostly. I really liked the film - actually, I found it hilarious. The title character is rather eccentric, and gets up to quite a few interesting activities during the film. I'd recommend it as long as you don't mind the subtitles (Like I said, it is a French movie) and the occasional joke about coitus.

The main theme is called 'La Valse d'Amelie' (If I could ever manage to spell correctly). That would be 'Amelie's waltz'. Prue and I are figuring how to play it as a duet on Ukelele. It sounds really cool.

The other soundtrack I really wanted to bring up is this one.

The Big Blue is one of Mum and Dad's favourite films. It was made in 1988 and along with the VHS, Dad bought the soundtrack.

Family fact funtime!

Years and years and years back, when I asked Mum about our names (so, about the same time I found out that I may have been Brontë instead of Brooke) she mentioned that her and Dad had named Jack (my little brother) after the main character in this film - the free-diver Jacques Mayol.

So that's how much Mum and Dad loved this movie.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that ever since I can remember, we have listened to this album. It's a good album and is very ambient. I actually realised recently that a lot of the bells that you hear in the film were recorded underwater, further adding to the water-themes in the film.

So, I've spent as far back as my memory can span listening to this album.

Guess what film we watched last night?

The experience was really really different from any film I'd seen before, simply because my siblings and I resonated with the music more. Every time a piece of music came on, we were aware of it. The soundtrack wasn't integrating with the movie - I think we rather got an inversion of the process and had the movie integrate with the soundtrack. 

It was like, instead of going "I'm watching dolphins and oh, there's a couple bells playing."
It was more like "I"M LISTENING TO BELLS and there are dolphins."

Seriously weird, but seriously cool.

The process would probably take a long time, but if you've got maybe a fifteen-year-plan you want to take up on the side, I'd suggest giving it a go.

I mean, with this movie the plot was a bit everywhere anyway. I think Enzo might have been the McGuffin.

The one on the left is Jacques and the one on the right is Enzo.

But yeah. Listen up for the soundtrack next time you watch a movie, hey? It really deepens the experience of the story and every other bit that happens that you aren't conscious of.

I think it's kinda cool.

Adventures in Newcastle. Part 2 - the most awesome friday. ever.

I can't guarantee photos for this. It all happened so fast, there was really no time to begin taking photos. So close your eyes and get someone to read it to you while I explain in detail why this was possibly the best Friday I have experienced all year.

The first part of Friday mostly consisted of zombie-shuffling it to uni.

Lecture at 9am = have to beat the traffic = leave home at 7am.

Bec and her cousin Sam had gone to a beach the day before and didn't arrive home until some early hour of the morning. So understandably it was a little bit before we were able to get the ball rolling. We left a bit after 7, all tired and scrubbing our eyes. With my roommate and her cousin and their five hours of sleep, this was understandable. I'm just not a morning person.
I remember (and I had this struggle this morning also) looking into the 'tea/coffee storage area', eyeing off the coffee. Wondering if it was worth it.

When I arrived two weeks ago, Dad was kind enough to do the shopping for essential bits. He did bring me back instant coffee. But it was Decaf.

I love you Dad, but it's still Decaf. I'm having caffeine withdrawals and I keep trying to tell myself that the caffeine is a placebo and I really just want the coffee taste.

Decaf is not coffee.

So. I had been eyeing off the coffee. I think I had some. Too bad Bec doesn't drink it too.

We left a little late with the intention of dropping Sam off on the way. She sat in the front of the small Suzuki Swift, giving reactive directions towards the house we were in hot pursuit of. Even though 'hot pursuit' might seem a little overrated, believe me, it wasn't. It wasn't Sam's house, so we wound up motoring as quietly as a 22-year-old sports car would allow us through the streets of suburbia. We found the house, and Bec and I set off for uni.

You would think that having spent so much time out looking for the house, we would now be resigned to double-clutching it up the large hills and doggedly trying to get in the left lane so we wouldn't have to leg it across North Lambton. But we got there.

Bec checked the car clock as we climbed the exit ramp to University Drive, and, surprised, remarked on the time it had taken us to traverse northwest Newcastle. I replied,

"That's because I am secretly a Time Lord, and this (here I gestured to the dark blue Swift) is my TARDIS"

Spot the Doctor Who fan if you dare.

Getting to uni was no trouble. We did manage to get a bit lost on our way to the lecture room - all the while wandering through the thick cloud of mosquitoes that throngs the Uni. They feast on the blood of students, and thrive in the bushland that enshrouds the learning facility.

Bec was swatting them. I was not smart enough to take a bag for my lecture book, so occasionally I managed to smush one or two using the butt of my water bottle. It looked like the club of a battle-worn warrior  - lots of bloodstains - by the time we emerged from the woods and entered the housing for the lecture theatre.

Post-lecture and uni we still had a large amount of day to survive. But the first thing we needed to deal with was actually the fuel in the car. It had been empty that morning, and we'd put twenty dollars in. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to fill the tank, so we meandered off to Mayfair in search of Woolworths Petrol stations and their discounted petrol.

As we were exiting the uni, I had a sudden desire for ice-cream. It wasn't even a slight hankering for, although I suspect it was not as insatiable as the cravings of a pregnant woman. I don't know. I have not been pregnant. But I still wanted ice-cream.

So, we are now driving through Mayfair, a part of Newcastle neither Bec or I had been to, in search of cheap(er) fuel and ice-cream.

Our search yielded a Woolworths with a special deal on my most favoured brand of ice-cream. In small punnets. We were sold, and shortly after we located the plastic spoons in the store Bec and I were sitting in the TARDIS, in the shade, lost in the bliss of 400mL of ice-cream. We had two punnet-things: mint choc-chip and cookies and creeeeeeaaaam. I LOVE cookies and cream.

SO good.

We perused suitable directions from the checkout lady, and were soon in pursuit of a fuel station on a street that didn't exist. Failing that, we started looking at the maps for fuel-station icons, and with no particular place in mind, we set out.

At the traffic lights of the intersection that would take us back onto a 20-year-old highway, we spotted what was most possibly the best-named noodle bar in Newcastle.

"KUNG-FU NOODLE"

To phrase it as Bec had done - 'It's like the perfect combination of Kung-fu Panda and Spagattah Nadle! It's like, a kung-fu noodle with a speech impediment!" (If Spagattah Nadle makes no sense I suggest going here. It will explain all.)

So far, it was looking like a pretty awesome Friday.

We drove on for a short period of time, and suddenly! There was a fuel station. I bet that by now you're either bored, waiting for it to get really good, pitying the way I get excited over small things or possibly getting excited yourself. I don't know. You tell me, reader.
There was a fuel station, and I remembered which side of the car the fuel was on, so we were pretty much sweet. It was a Woolworths station, and we filled the car and set off, keen for home.

By now we had approached the part of the afternoon where I would start chanting the word 'pool'. The world had heated up sufficiently and I wanted nothing more than to head back to our place in Cardiff Macquarie Hills and get. in. that. pool.

It was only as we began to climb a hill not far from the refueling that I noticed the fuel gauge. Most cars, when full, will have a gauge that looks like this:

F|                         E

(The little | next to the F is the needle.)

Ours looked like this:

|      F                                      E

So we were both pretty excited.
I think there is a photo. I may post it. It was taken while driving, with Bec holding my mobile phone and me making the car go.

As we continued, I began to recognise the occasional landmark, feeling slightly less lost and more like we were headed home. My sense of direction generally sucks, so the way things work with Bec and I is very simple at the moment.

I drive. Bec navigates.

It's worked well so far.

Anyway, she was telling me about an intersection we would pass through very soon that I would definitely recognise, that if I didn't recognise it, there was something wrong with me. As we passed through it I felt unfamiliarity until I saw the RSL club. It took a moment for my brain to rotate its position and suddenly I knew exactly where we were. About two intersections from home, that's where.

We pulled up and barreled inside, only to encounter a most perplexing of choices.

I had been expecting two packages in the mail, and was indescribably excited about th prospect of having not one, but two packages coming within the next week or so.

One of them was on our loungeroom floor.

Russell (the landlord) had placed it there when it arrived, and I was immediately faced with a dilemma.

Box or pool first?

Box won. There was a clamp-light that Mum had bought at Bling from home. It already has a name.

Have a guess what.

WALL-E.

Ooh yeah.

Shortly afterward, Bec and I had, with the absolution and deliberation of an avalanche, made it to the pool.

Pools are great. I like them a lot.

You would have to think that this is the end of the day?
This is the bit where if it was an infomercial, I'd have a smaller stunt double jump up from behind the counter-or-whatever-I-am-advertising-from and we'd both yell,

"but wait, there's MORE!"

And you're all like "what? how can that be? can this day possibly get more excellent? how will they do it?"

And if this was an episode of bleach, that would be the bit where the motion would freeze at a dramatic point and the words 'to be continued' would spider across the screen and make you want to headbutt the universe because the episode can't end there - you have to find out what happens next! Fifty episodes later!

I am getting overexcited.

Anyway. We had an early dinner, made greater by the fact that I had made a lot the night before and nobody else had been home to eat it. We simply heated it up and then proceeded to sit on the loungeroom floor, munching on rice and chicken meatball while watching Bleach.

Bec hasn't encountered Bleach before. And I'm actually quite enjoying watching the first season again.

We crashed relatively early.

But it was still, without a shadow of a doubt, the most awesome friday. ever.