My statement regarding The Kaleidoscope, Brighter

This summer has been pretty up and down in The Kaleidoscope, Brighter camp.

I have finally come to the extremely tough decision that I will be leaving the band. There is no dramatic story to this; I have been with the band for 2 years, since it started. I have seen 4 friends come and go from this band, some because of personal differences, and other because of different life directions. Now finally it is my time to leave too. This is not personal differences between myself and the band, but a different vision.

I am hoping that I will be able to play a farewell show with the band in Bowling Green, OH in the late summer/early fall, but I'll keep you updated about it.

The next step for myself is simply this: make music. I will not be starting a new band, I will not be starting a "solo project" that plays shows, no myspace, no facebook musician page, etc. I will be, plain and simple, making music. So be on the lookout for some new songs from me in the late fall, and some spoken word pieces by the end of the summer, both of which I am super stoked about.

Thank you for supporting me and all of my creative endeavors. Please continue to support The Kaleidoscope, Brighter also as they continue making music.

an analyzation and railing against "myspace bands"

Urban Dictionary definition of "Myspace Band":

1.	Myspace Band
	1. A band whose popularity comes from their popularity on myspace.com, thus lacking any REAL credibility in today's music scene. This lack of credibility comes from the simplicity through which their popularity is achieved: record songs with decent sound quality, take some pictures of yourself, and add as many friends as possible. This formula thus saturates the music scene with hundreds of thousands of bands that will never make it. Those that do, will have no lasting value. These bands typically will eventually replaced by a newer, more hip, band (See also: flavor of the week). 2. A band followed typically by only the "myspace generation" Myspacer1: "Brah, I'm telling you,(insert name of current flavor of the week band here) will be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame one day." LogicalGuy: "That myspace band, or any other myspace band for that matter, will ever be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame"

Last night I went out with some friends to more or less finally see a band that we all talk a lot of smack about...basically to give them a fair chance.

What I encountered was more than disturbing, so please brace yourselves:

For starters, I am in a band myself. We love playing music, and we try everything we can to be genuine and not fake anything. That being said, we have to rely on myspace to get our music out to people, as do hundreds and thousands of both famous and local (such as we are) bands.

If you have not frequented myspace for a while, good for you. Lord knows I deleted my personal account years ago and even the band one doesn't see too much action. That being said, for those of you who are unfamiliar how a myspace band page works: you have a player with your songs on it, and the number of times your songs have been played next to each title. At the bottom of the player it lists the number of total plays you have. In the middle of your page is also your friend count, or, how many other myspace profiles are linked to yours.

Generally these two numbers can be used to gage how popular a band is. Well...no, not anymore.

For instance: We have 2646 "myspace friends" (saying myspace so much makes me cringe I feel like a 16 year old girl), and 14,000ish total plays of our songs.

The band I am ranting about has: OVER 1,000,000 total plays of their songs, along with OVER 31,000 myspace friends, along with over 12,000 comments on their page (TKB has about 400?).

So anyways, my friends and I went to check out this band that has played in the area a fair number of times, easily more than TKB has. So seeing these numbers, I am expecting at least 100-200 swooped hair teen-emo kids. We get there, they start playing. There are 4 kids that came to see them. Let me say that number again. 4 kids. 4 kids who were actually watching the band (sitting down @ a table, mind you).

To start bring this together, let's go over the facts:

BAND A (the one I'm ranting about)

friends: +31,000

comments: +12,000

plays: +1,000,000

kids at their show actually watching: 4

I haven't taken a math class since senior year in high school, but to me, those numbers simply do not add up.

BUT WAIT. Here is the catch. Unknowingly to a lot of younger kids who do not have bands (1/4 kids on myspace?), there are "bots". Bots are simply this: kids (or programs) that enable you to have hundreds and thousands of plays per pay (or per song), along with comments and friends. A tell tail sign that a band is using a bot is one of two ways:

1. Scroll through their comments and see how many are actually from kids. Better yet, kids that commented the band before the band spammed them with "Hey we're The LollyPop Gang and we have a new record out! Check us out and tell your friends!". Also note how many of the comments are more band spammers/general spam.

2. Their myspace player lists 1,000,000 total plays, the band has had a myspace for less than 2 years, and their actually DAILY play count is 9.

A main point of doing this, is so when said myspace band spams a record label with their crappy music and press kit and myspace link via email, the band thinks "Oh, the record label will see our myspace page and all our friends and comments and plays and sweet hair cuts and outfits that they'll just HAVE to sign us! I mean, we are SO LEGIT!".

Unfortunately for all these bands, record labels are NOT as dumb as the myspace band is, and are more than aware of their bullcrap tactics.

Whereas if you check out some up and coming bands I really dig, such as All Get Out and All the Day Holiday, you will not find millions of (fake) plays, millions of (fake) friends, or millions of (spam) comments. What you will find if you go to their myspace is music. Real. Genuine. Music.

And THAT is why THEY are on legit labels, and do all the sweet things that they do. Because they actually give a crap about music, and not about myspace.

I think if bands started to care more about making music that is genuine, and stopped worrying about their online image, it would be right around the same time hell would freeze over.

The lesson: bands can fake the number of friends, plays, and comments all they want, but the number of people at your show, and the number of kids that are actually into it, does not lie. At all.

i am a emotion junkie(?)

"An emotion junkie"

This is a phrase that I often think of to describe myself, but then totally forget about two seconds after I think of how and why.

I have had many conversations with my friend Justin Price, and they often strike me at odd times- days, weeks, or even years after they occur. I recall one conversation about a band called MuteMath, he was saying how he loves them, and I was saying how they don't really do it for me. I think they are a talented band, for sure, but they don't really have that "thing" for me.

He then said that he thinks it's because they're not emotional, or angsty, sad, or angry for me. I couldn't really tell if he was joking, and we both just blew it off and went on with the conversation. But last night while I was at a bar/club (the Cla-Zel) with my friend's Brian, Scott, and Brian's fiance Katey, it finally hit me what he was saying:

As I was listening to the cool, 80's music stop, and the house DJ start spinning, my mood suddenly went from stoked and happy to something similar to "What is this hell being laid on my ears?" as the tunes went from what sounded like Lil'Wayne to a million other dudes that sounded just like him, I was thinking "This music is so dull. There is no life to it. It's just going through the motions, with not a single ounce of emotion in it."

Then it hit me.

I walk around campus with my music playing, drumming on my legs, slightly to mildly head banging, adrenaline pumping, a smile on my face, not because I want to be entertained on the way to my next destination, but because I want to feel something. I want to feel stoked listening to Oh, Sleeper, Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada. I want to feel excited about life, I don't want to feel nothing.

When I watch movies, I want to feel the same way. I love suspense- because I feel like I'm on the edge of my seat. I love movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Vanilla Sky, The Butterfly Effect, because they are emotional movies. You can't watch those movies and not feel moved and touched by the characters on the screen.

After school, I get in my car, plug in my ipod, and rock out on the way home, because of how it's making me feel. When I get home, I plug in my ipod into my laptop and turn on much mellower music because it makes me feel relaxed and some of it even makes me want to fall in love, or feel like I'm the verge of it (The Album Leaf, Bon Iver, The Civil Wars).

I have my ipod constantly on play not because I want to be entertained by music, but because I want music to move me. I want music to make me feel.

This is why I can't stand typical club music, because there just isn't any feeling to it. Or why I can't watch sports on TV, or just TV in general, because there's just no feeling in it. Yes, TV and sports can be emotional, but they rarely ever actually make me feel anything.

From all of this, I call myself an emotion junkie. From the Chet Early Dictionary, 2010 1st Edition:

emotion junkie: someone who constantly wants to feel powerfully moved in an emotional way. light to mild cases take the place of people consistently moving themselves via mediums such as art, books, music, movies.

So I don't know yet if this will positively or negatively affect my life, but I do know now that it is a huge part of it, and I can't help but wonder if there are other people like this too.

I can count the times where it has been a burden to me though, cases where I will be extremely stoked on life, through listening to music, and be on this huge high- only for something during the day to go horribly wrong. This causes something like a bipolar feeling within me. I got straight from that amazing high to just feeling absolutely terrible in a matter of seconds.

Anyways, this is just how I see it. And my attempt to do a little bit of psychology on myself.

I believe that one of the keys to living the best, and most happiest life you can- is continuously try to understand yourself.