Part 2: A spark is lit; the powder keg awaits.

As Middlebrook Hall President, my duty was to preside over building council meetings, set the agenda for them, and generally be a positive representative, among other things. I was also obligated to participate in the all-dorm council known as RHA. It consisted of its own executive board, along with all the other hall presidents and some other assorted individuals.

The very first RHA meeting I attended in early September 2005, I got news from the RHA Vice President that a band from Madison would be playing a show in my building on the 28th, which coincided with our very first "open house" meeting for the Middlebrook Hall Council. Cool, I thought. That should help get people to show up, though free pizza was usually the most effective way.

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005. That evening, four dudes rolled up in a van. I felt myself obligated to welcome the visitors, introduced myself as the hall president, and greeted them as they arrived. They were a band called The Profits.

I helped them load their gear in, though it would only be a few instruments as they'd be playing a low-key acoustic show in one of the common rooms. I made a crappy orange sign that read "The Profit$" and hung it up behind where they would be playing, and then lined up a bunch of their CDs on a table underneath it. We then set out on patrolling the building to get people to come downstairs and check out the free show.

People slowly showed up, and The Profits introduced themselves before playing a few acoustic tunes. I sat along the side of the room and snapped a few random photos with my crappy point-and-shoot while listening to this impressive but unknown (at least to me) band out of Madison. "Where did these guys come from?" They were so good but not like anything I would normally have been hearing anyway, as they likened themselves to "Jack Johnson meets John Mayer with vocal harmonies" at the time.



Afterwards, the band spent some time chatting with their many new fans, inviting them all to come out to their show at The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown in two days. I mostly hung back and helped them pack up their gear. Then, after most of the people had left, I chatted with the band some more and showed them a few of the photos I took.

Lucky for me, they thought I was a pretty cool dude too. They signed a flier for their upcoming show and even gave me a copy of their new album along with a spot on the guest list for the show on Friday. Sweet! I figured I'd better bring my camera with and snap a few photos at that as well.


(See another familiar name there?)

The true convincing of this band's greatness though didn't really sink in for me until after they left later that night. I popped their new album, Far From You and Your Everyday Noise, into my computer and was instantly blown away by their music. Sure I already had a positive opinion of the band to begin with, but their songs far exceeded my expectations of a group that I'd never heard of and wasn't any kind of a well-known or nationally-touring act.

To say the least, I was stoked to see them play again two days later.

September 30th, 2005. I biked over to The Varsity, ran into The Profits outside during the opener's set, then promptly realized I had forgotten my camera. I rushed back to my dorm and grabbed the camera before returning to The Varsity pretty much right as the opening act was finishing up. Who was that, do you ask? Why, a guy by the name of Ari Herstand.

I didn't actually see more than maybe a song or two from his set, but a friend who was also at the show that night told Ari to add me on Facebook. He did, and since then I've seen him play 59 times, second only to Roster McCabe at 89. (!) The girl who essentially first connected Ari and I though? Haven't seen her since then, strangely enough.

It was finally time for The Profits to take the stage though, so I positioned myself near the front stage-right and pulled out my camera. Here's a few of the better examples of what I got from the show:











Pretty crappy photos, eh? I was a no-talent nobody without a clue and a crappy point-and-shoot, but I had a lot of fun and thought they were pretty awesome pics at the time. One actually did turn out kinda cool though, and it was a photo I made a point to show the band after the show.



The band was blown away by this photo in particular, and I was amazed that they actually put up every photo I shot at the show on their website. But there was also one last moment that really sealed the deal and convinced me to keep checking out their shows in the future.

About halfway through the set, a pair of girls who I hadn't seen since the previous semester randomly wound up beside me in the crowd. We recognized each other and remarked on the fact that it'd been a while, something like 5 months I believe. They spent the rest of the show by me cause I told them I knew the band and I'd even introduce them afterwards.

Almost immediately after The Profits finished, I snuck the girls backstage at The Varsity and we ran into the band. They were a little bit shocked by this obviously, plus sweating a bit after their performance. I introduced the girls to them and they all obliged in a group photo.



It wasn't my first concert ever or anything like that, but it was my first experience in being at a small show, knowing the band, and thus being cool to some people as a result. To me, it was a very big deal and something I hoped to repeat. After all, I took some pictures that the band liked (and even used!), and also got to hang out with a pair of cute chicks who I hadn't seen in months. "Hey, I could get used to this."

Though I only got to see The Profits 11 times (they broke up about a year later; JP and Ben now continue on in We The Living while Mike and Scott play in Mike Droho & The Compass Rose), they left an indelible mark upon my life. To me, they were like The Beatles. A pair of dynamic singer-songwriters fronting a band with a unique and intertwining back-and-forth style to their music. The Profits never got to be bigger than a midwestern college buzz, but to me, they're where it all began and what prompted me to see more local shows.

(Sidebar: "Sex at Six", their song you will never hear live again, was a kind of college anthem that everyone knew and chanted at the band endlessly, even well after their breakup. I personally am partial to "Atlantic" as their best song though, as the back-and-forth between amazing vocal and lead guitar lines combined with epic lyrics was nothing short of perfect to me. And sorry guys, but WTL just can't do it as well as The Profits did. That first recording is untouchably brilliant.)

Now, exactly four years later, I'm still doing it, albeit a lot more and a heck of a lot better than when I first started obviously. Since 2007 I've been to 600+ concerts, spanning the entire gamut from dead local dive bars and acoustic private shows to being VIP at Lollapalooza and shooting the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails. And all points in-between.

Yet all of this happened simply because a little unknown four-piece semi-acoustic act played a show at my dorm, I thought they were cool, and they thought I was too. Seems to be a bit of a stretch, but at the end of it all I'll know I can trace my roots in the Twin Cities music scene back to a single Madison band that is gone but will never be forgotten (and I'll remember every September 28th):

The Profits.

Part 1: The decision, and a life nearly completed before it even began

We last left off on a cliffhanger of a tale: What could possibly be such a life-changing decision for me? Is that even possible these days? Well, I'll tell you this... I'm not going to answer that just quite yet. Haha. Instead, I shall share with you a little more of my history to fully lay the rest of the groundwork.

Though I was the inadvertent outcast in high school, I discovered an "in" which tied in perfectly with my penchant for technology and computers. I became... a shutterbug.

During my junior year, I discovered that the front office had a bulky digital camera that, by today's standards, was basically like the glorified joke-of-a-camera on my cellphone. It could shoot about 30 640x480 pixel photos on a 3.5 inch floppy disk (remember those?), as the image compression was so strong that most images were about 40 KB in size. By comparison, a single jpg photo from my current camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi, takes up the equivalent of about 3 to 5 1.44 MB floppy disks.

Also that year, I took a class on HTML and wound up as the only person in the class who really cared about it. So much so that I pretty much took over the school's website and did about 8 times as much work on it as the rest of the class combined.

My newfound love for photography combined with the means to distribute it in the pre-Facebook era (remember life before then?) actually gave me a reason to interact with my classmates beyond simple and routine drudgery. Nice.

Anytime there was a sports event or something else happening at school and I cared enough to go, I'd grab the camera from the office as well and get a few random shots of the event and my classmates, both candid and posed. It gave people a reason to talk to me beyond simple and routine drudgery. Nice.

[Green Day's Dookie is my current soundtrack, and "Basket Case" came on right as I hit here. More cool timing.]

Fast-forward to college. Freshman year I didn't do much of anything with my camera, though I did take a black and white film class in the spring semester. Funny side story about that: I actually wound up befriending a girl who I inadvertently captured as she was passing by on her bike in a scenery picture I shot for class. It was pretty much a simple matter of later on running into her in the dorm and being like, "Where have I seen you before?"

Towards the end of freshman year I was presented with the opportunity to become a "U-Crew". Essentially like an assistant CA/RA with none of the perks, though you get to help out with floor events and essentially are a role model for incoming freshmen.

Also, largely on a whim, I ran for Hall President for the following year at my building, Middlebrook Hall. With a campaign centered around a picture of me as Tony Montana from Scarface (it's the only picture I've ever used on my MySpace), I won by only a few votes over a to-be junior who eventually wound up running for and winning the vice-presidency anyway.

Unfortunately, I couldn't be both a U-Crew and Hall President. Not just because the responsibility would have been too great when combined with my classes, but because the U-Crew position that was offered to me was in Bailey Hall on the St. Paul campus.

I was faced with quite a dilemma. Should I stay in Minneapolis in a building I know and be its president, or should I take the U-Crew position in St. Paul and be only minutes away from all my classes for the foreseeable future? I had just recently transferred out of Computer Science in the IT Honors department into Graphic Design in the College of Human Ecology, later known as the more-sensibly named College of Design. (IT Honors was a total fucking disaster; my first college semester's GPA was 1.556 because I basically bombed all my ridiculously hard honors classes, which I hated to begin with. My next semester, which wasn't in IT Honors and didn't suck? 3.5 GPA.)

It was a total coinflip situation, but one in which, had it gone the other way, almost none of you would know me right now. Most likely I wouldn't even exist to your knowledge, which is a strange thought considering that I'm about as inseparable from the Twin Cities music scene at the moment as peanut butter is from jelly. Sure you can take them apart, but it's just not right...

I chose to take the position as Middlebrook Hall President (which you knew or maybe at least had surmised by now) for the 2005-2006 school year and stewed at home in Albert Lea over the summer, eagerly waiting for September to come and my "good" life to begin again in the cities.

[The new album by Muse, The Resistance, is now my soundtrack. It could make for some weird irony if I told you one of my strangest stories about being Middlebrook Hall President, but then again, maybe not. Either way, it kicks ass. Not as much as Black Holes and Revelations, but whatever, I just like good music.]

So how did being president of a dorm make me a rock and roll photographer? It didn't. But I met some people who essentially functioned as my first band-muse, of sorts. (Hey, there's some nice timing.)

Before I break into that story though, I have one last tale of preparation: The night I almost got on stage with Green Day. (It's different than when I saw Green Day for the 3rd time back in July this year, as I actually tweeted that entire show and have a much more tangible memory of it as a result.)

September 16th, 2005. Twelve days before my life changed forever, it already did, in a way.

I had a pair of tickets to see Green Day for the 2nd time that night. I had first seen them less than a year before at the Target Center, and this time around they would be at the Xcel Center.

[Sidebar: While digging through my computer files to find any previous write-ups I've done about this story which I've told many a time to many a person, I found some really emo bullshit I wrote way back when as well. Yikes.]

I brought a female classmate of mine from one of my sophomore design classes to the show and we arrived on the floor right as opener Jimmy Eat World started their opening set. They played all of their well-known stuff, though the only songs I knew were Pain and The Middle. Fun, and a much better warmup than Sugarcult and New Found Glory last time I saw Green Day, at least to me.

After they finished, the wait was on for a while, but as I expected, the infamous pink bunny (or rather, some guy in a costume) that tours with Green Day made an appearance on stage. He was chugging a few beers and tossing small stuffed bunny dolls to the crowd, all to their amusement.

The bunny departed and Green Day came on soon afterwards, opening with American Idiot (recall, this is back in 2005). Played it brilliantly as usual. They followed with Jesus of Suburbia, a great track to be a part of live. Then came Billie Joe's self-proclaimed giant "fuck you" to George W. Bush, Holiday. Estatic. A short interlude followed and they predictably continued into Are We The Waiting/St. Jimmy, smoothly going into Longview after that. Kick ass.

After Longview my mind grows fuzzy on what they played, but I know they did Hitchin' a Ride, Brain Stew & Jaded, King For A Day, 2000 Light Years Away (with a kickass solo that doesn't appear on the studio version), Maria, Minority, Wake Me Up When September Ends, Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Basket Case, She, All By Myself, a cover of We Are The Champions, a cover of Shout, a cover of something I didn't know, and Good Riddance. Not all in that order though. Thrown in there somewhere was the most important song of the night for the fans though...

At the time, the song they always had people come up on stage to play with them was "Knowledge", a cover of an Operation Ivy song. It's literally only a D C G pattern of closed major chords. So simple that I could do it in my sleep... maybe.

So with my friend and I having successfully worked our way close to the front of the stage, I beckoned Billie Joe like the other 20,000 people in the arena to "PICK ME PICK ME!" to play when that song came up and they were searching for people to accompany them. He grabbed a drummer from the right edge of the T right away, then drifted over our way looking for a bass player.

Amazingly, Billie Joe Armstrong literally looked DIRECTLY AT ME, asked if I could play bass (obviously I responded with "YES!"), and then asked the same of someone next to me wearing a pink shirt and glasses. He spent a short while debating over whether to pick me or the guy next to me, but eventually picked Mr. Pink Shirt. Fuck.

Then he went back to the other side of the stage and got a 10 year-old kid up to play guitar. And as luck would have it, it was literally the kid's birthday that day. The first thing Billie Joe told the kid was something like "Hey kid, you're gonna get laid tonight cause you're playing with Green Day!" Hilarious.

So they went through the rest of the song, as usual, but then the bastard who got to play bass did what still continues to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. HE SMASHED THE BASS GUITAR TO PIECES ON STAGE. Oh my god. The crowd was in shock for a moment until the dumbass got his ass beaten down by security and dragged off to deafening boos. Total idiot, and Billie Joe played him off as such without missing a beat. The drummer got to do the only stage dive of the night and the kid who played the guitar got to keep it, so long as he promised not to smash it of course...

Truth be told, had it been me up on stage playing with Green Day, I wouldn't have smashed the bass. No, I practically would've kissed Billie Joe and subsequently died a happy 19 year-old at the time.

But that's not what made me a rock photographer, though what did happened in the midst of a few huge shows for me. I already knew that it was a big deal I was getting to see 4 awesome national shows all within a few weeks of each other: Green Day, Franz Ferdinand, Foo Fighters/Weezer, & The Bravery. (None of which I had a camera at, go figure).

Boy, was I in for a (now-not-so-)little surprise though. One that set me on the path which has spiraled out of control to the point where there's no going back, no other choice, nothing I would rather do but live a life deeply connected to rock and/or roll through my photography and my passion for music. Keep on reading for the story of my birth... in the Twin Cities music scene.

Prologue: The unexpected preparations for 4 years of unimaginable experiences

Big words, but I speak of something of great importance for me, so it's justified.

As I sit here listening to Abbey Road reflecting on what the last four years of my life has brought me in photographing the Twin Cities music scene and beyond, I can't help but think about the things which inadvertently set me up for this wondrously insane life I've chosen. Then again, sometimes I'm almost certain that it chose me.

Let's lay down some basic groundwork on my past. I was born October 24th, 1985 (Sidebar: Guess what? My golden birthday is this year! Big plans in store, stay tuned.) and raised in a small town in southern Minnesota, Albert Lea. My parents first owned a bar called The Long Branch Saloon in Manchester, a tiny town of less than 70 a few miles out of town. I'm told that as an infant I would crawl about on the pool tables, and as a toddler I would imitate select bar patrons by hitting and cursing at the pinball machine. I call BS on that, mainly because I don't remember it. (Well duh.)

A few years later, my parents sold The Long Branch, bought an old bank building about a block away from the bar, and turned it into a bar/restaurant, the Main Street Bar & Grill. My only sibling, sister Melissa, was born around that time in 1989.

About 6-7 years go by and my parents decide to trade-up, selling the Main Street Bar & Grill in Manchester and purchasing a larger old restaurant in a slightly-larger town (about 650) called Alden, about 10 miles west of Albert Lea on I-90.

They still own & operate the Main Street Grill in Alden, though not without a strong desire to sell and finally get out of the restaurant business for good. It's not like they've just phoned it in though. You'll always find some of the best service and food at a fair price anywhere around down there. Plus I've got a few older prints of my concert photos hanging up on the wall there too.

Long story short: I was raised in the hospitality industry by parents who have toiled away in it pretty much all their lives. However, they've done it without having to work for "The Man", in so much as they own the place themselves. I think that's pretty awesome, and their kindness, generosity, and all-around rapport with the customers instilled a great sense of social openness in me as well.

However, I'm also the awkward type. I say weird, funny, amusing, random, obvious, or just plain dorky stuff at times. Other times, I say other things. Sometimes I'm witty with reflective/observational humor, and I also love puns. I also have a mind that spends a good deal of time in the gutter. I attribute most of that last bit to my dad's sense of humor, which I mostly share.

It's not like it's anything that out of the ordinary, but I think it's because I was actually a really smart kid way back when. Like top 2 or 3 in the class, and a total whiz at stuff like math, history, and vocabulary. (All the big words you find should make that last one obvious.) It put me in a weird position, because I wanted to be "normal" but didn't really feel like it in more ways than one. So to say the least, I never really fit in with any groups growing up.

I remember very little from elementary school, except for the fact that in 1st grade, I got 3rd place in the class spelling bee. I misspelled "better" as "beter". My first crush in 5th grade, Karen Leonard (who eventually got a 34 on the ACT and I always liked because she was one of the very few people I knew was smarter than me), got 2nd place and misspelled "empty". The kid who got 1st place? His name's Erik, and I think he wound up a huge stoner or something random like that. Funny how that works out, haha.

One thing that shaped a lot of my childhood outside of school was baseball, a sport which my dad loves and introduced me to at a young age. I actually wound up as the only kid (out of many dozens of other kids) my age in my town who played baseball every year from teeball at 6 to high school/summer town baseball at 18, so I guess I was the only one who stayed dedicated to it for good.

Never was a power hitter or anything flashy like that, just a scrappy kid with a lot of competition and drive in me. Baseball was something I knew I was average at but felt I had the ability to be more than just that if I kept working hard and hustling.

Unfortunately, not fitting in at school also translated to the baseball diamond, as I found myself regularly on the short end of the stick when it comes to the adolescent boy's need to prove their superiority while cutting down their peers. But that's just a fancy way of saying I wasn't popular.

Still never really figured out why I was the outcast growing up, but between being an outsider-looking-in at school and on the field, I eventually grew a pretty thick skin. Sure I was pretty thin-skinned at times, but these days I laugh off just about anything that you can throw at me in terms of ridiculous ridicule.

I suppose that also explains my knack for self-depreciating humor, which I always tinge with a strong dose of sarcasm (yet another family trait). Better for me to laugh at your ridicule than to let it bother me. It still sucked a lot though, being basically rejected by my peers as nerdy, unimportant, or anything else stupid they could make up in their heads.

Rejection still affects me like no other though. I suppose that's what's kept me a very timid person when it comes to the ladies. I'll befriend practically everybody (that's what happens when you're raised by parents in hospitality) but the overly gentlemanly chivalric code I live by keeps my hormones almost always in the off position when I'm out and about. Better not to be shot down 100 times by girls than succeed once is a weird way of thinking about it, but it's pretty much the story of my life, minus one.

I eventually grew weary of the mostly mean or less-than-caring adolescents in Albert Lea and open-enrolled at Alden-Conger High School in 8th grade. I'm not sure whether or not that was necessary, cause all I did was drop myself in a new environment that was already tight-knit with cliques with kids who had known each other since kindergarten at this K-12 school.

It was convenient having my parents' restaurant a block away from school for lunch, but that was about the only benefit of going to school in Alden. Ironically, the girls in Albert Lea turned out way hotter and the school I landed at was also full of a variety of outcasts such as myself. At the time I was there, Alden-Conger High School had the highest percentage of open-enrolled (out-of-district) students in the state, as something like 40% of the students were from other tiny towns nearby that they too were probably sick of.

It took a mountain of courage for me to even talk to girls back then, but most of the time it was me being a teenage dumbass and trying to be funny but too smart or them just shooting me down. I think I wore a lot of black classic rock T-shirts junior year, which I'm sure didn't make me look very attractive anyway.

[Just finished Abbey Road, now putting on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. Music inspires me to keep going, obviously.]

Either way, I wound up as little more than a social nomad in high school, bouncing around between varying circles that all overlapped but still didn't find me interesting enough to include for more than just a moment here or there. I remember a moment senior year where I came back from lunch feeling sick and puked in my hand in the hallway. My sense of humor made me laugh and say "cool" (I watched a lot of Beavis & Butthead and own 120+ episodes on DVD, there's you're clue), but a girl freaked out on me and I found myself disappointed that she thought this random unfortunate happening couldn't just be a minor but amusing mishap not worth more than a minute's worry; cleaning it up.

[Currently running back through this entry and making changes & edits as "Positively 4th Street" plays on my iTunes right as I hit this spot. I love perfect timing.]

I suppose that ties in with my self-depreciating nature, in that I can brush stuff off like nothing. Sure comes in handy sometimes anyway. And though I'm sure I've exaggerated a lot about my experiences growing up, it's still basically true.

Anywho, after finally escaping the confused confines of high school, I moved on up to the north side (i.e., the Twin Cities) for college at the University of Minnesota. And out of my graduating class of 45 (a huge one for that school), I was the only one going to the U. Thus, I would be stepping into a brand-new situation without knowing a single soul.

One might think that with my past this was a recipe for disaster, but it turned out to be quite the contrary. Why? Because this time I wasn't the only one. I believe that the greatest advantage college offers teenagers is that everyone has to start over fresh, with no prior reputation and no past to distort your image in the eyes of a student body who is going through all the same crap you are too.

My good side (the one inspired by the hospitality industry) finally got to shine through in full at college, as I found myself making friends pretty much wherever I went. Freshman year was an enlightening experience in that I finally found like-minded people who were also open-minded and willing to make new friends too. Instead of a social outcast, I was now a social butterfly, bouncing around between varying groups of new acquaintances as needed while also establishing a few preliminary connections that eventually came to fruition in my later days in the music scene.

It really, really, REALLY hurt me on the inside to leave and return home that first summer after freshman year, but before then I was faced with what turned out to be literally one of the most life-changing decisions I've ever made. One that inadvertently made me who I am today. More on that... in my next blog entry.

Ooh, cliffhanger. I'm such a bastard. Luckily it won't be that long before the next post though cause I wanna post it today, the day of the 4th year of an important anniversary for me.

Finding relevance is a matter of timing.

My life is ridiculously cool right now. I get to shoot bands and shows and parties and all sorts of other crazy stuff while being surrounded by friends and music and pretty girls and fun. I maintain a sort of uncorruptability to my personal choices (it is insane how many people out there have wanted to get/see me drunk but I still stand by my personal choice not to touch the stuff) and I pretty much always try to be a kind, caring, sharing person. To be happy and to make other people happy with what I do is literally the only thing I want in life, and I'm insanely lucky in that I've found out what makes that goal a reality.

It's a sort of wonderful rut I've dug myself into, but a rut can wear itself down to nothing if it is overrun. Do I expect myself to walk away from a life so deeply ingrained in the Twin Cities music scene? I think not. It's still getting exponentially more interesting as time goes on, and good thing too.

But I want to take it to the next level. I want to rid myself of the chains that keep me from being "on top". Not for fame, or money, or anything like that. Just so I can say someday that I did exactly what I wanted to do with my life. What that is could completely change over time, though probably only in that it gets bigger, grander, more ambitious.

Every day I think about music, and bands, and cool people, and how I find myself in the middle of a perfect storm that should be a far bigger deal than it is. Personal biases aside, I think I know what the hell I'm talking about when I say that the music I find myself following most often is the best in town, bar none. Eat your heart out Twin Cities folkies, because rock and/or roll can never die.

I don't question my ability to do what I do because I'm confident enough to say I do it better and with more passion than anyone else here right now. It has nothing to do with quality or quantity; it has everything to do with the fact that I probably would cease to exist otherwise. I exist because everything that has ever happened in the past has created a present that must continue towards the future.

I remember having my mind completely blown the fuck out by the movie Almost Famous in about January 2008 when I saw it for the first time. It was almost too relevant, too eerily similar to the life I was living and was expecting in the near future. I just watched it for the second time earlier, and while it was still pretty freaky, it didn't have that same sort of total freakout first-time effect. But I picked up on new things, new understandings of my life and the people that surround me.

I ramble on and on and on and on with no real direction, delete sentences that don't make sense, rearrange paragraphs to try to create something that seems logical, try to keep this entry to a digestible size. You probably won't read all of this, and if you do, you probably won't get all of it anyway. But that's fine, because someone once said something along the lines of "Only one person needs to get something for it to make sense." I think he blew his fucking brains out from getting too famous though...

So much of the pressure in life is self-induced. I'm in a position where I could almost take over the world if I knew what the hell I was doing. Aren't they supposed to teach you life skills in school? If they did I sure didn't pay attention, and if they didn't then how the hell did everyone else figure it out? I'm so scatter-brained at times, it keeps my wheels spinning at 100 mph while never reaching the finish line.

I question the means to making the life I want a reality.

Do I really want to have to follow the same path as everyone else?

I feel like my mind is both my greatest asset and my biggest downfall.

It's bizarre how I feel like I'm always getting closer to one of my life's current goals yet it always stays a few feet out of reach, both literally and figuratively.

Does being a social nomad make me incredibly adaptable or incredibly outcast?

There's only so much that can be done with bands in one pair of cities, though I will probably never leave here permanently.

I don't want The American Dream, nor do I really know what it is or if it exists. I want my dream. If I have to be completely stubborn about one thing it's that I will not fail at succeeding. But does not failing also equal success? And who's to say that success even equals the happiness which I have already found?

It's all relative to what you think of you, me, we, us, them, everything, and everyone. Life is literally a relative experience. You are literally the center of the universe... but only to yourself. Your brain is the star that all planets orbit about. You will find personal relevance in literally anything if the timing is right.

Certain songs I've been enjoying for most (or maybe just a few months) of my life are now striking me in ways I could have never imagined because they're hitting me at a time where they're relevant. Lyrics are the primary form obviously, but when was the last time a melody or a rhythm pattern actually hit you in the gut and made you think, "Has someone been retroactively reading my mind?"

I'm William Miller. I'm not William Miller.

I am the everyman. I want nothing more than to be myself.

Is it possible to be two completely opposite things at the same time? I think so. Perhaps even more than you think.

This stream of consciousness brain dumping is brought to you by Mike Minehart at his most electrified hour, approximately 2-3 AM.

I have no ability to write without feeling incredibly awkward about it, even if I care and/or know what I'm talking about. Who's to say that what I say even matters?

I find that me writing vaguely makes things more personal and easy to understand because relevance is easier to derive for anyone. Not that I can't go into some juicy details, it's just that I spew so much specific stuff from my mind elsewhere that this random late-night rambling could not be satisfied with placing itself in one definitive category.

I think I was telling a story earlier but I completely derailed myself. I don't want to go back and change any of it because it's so raw and organic and I like having my grammar keep going on and on and on and on with run on sentences because it amuses me for reasons I don't know why.

Selective perfectionism is pretty much where it's at when it comes to something you're really nitpicky about but don't have the time to do the whole way through.

My desktop is ridiculously overloaded with photo folders.

If money were not such a powerful religion I would already have achieved my penultimate goal in life.

I like the fact that I lost 25 lbs. and got a fairly cool new look, but I don't like waiting for my day to arrive when I'm more than good enough for it to have been years in the past. Maybe that's a good thing though. Or maybe you don't know what the heck I'm talking about again. That's good though. I don't like advertising certain facts about myself unless it would seem to be beneficial in changing things for the better.

My life is ridiculously cool right now. My mind is not cooperating. My body is right where I want it to be. Something else is not. What, I both do and do not know at the same time.

I want to keep going but this blog has just about run out of relevance for me. Maybe it'll be relative again later...

A little 4 AM wonderment on the 4th

The "Captain Obvious" in me has already told you what you might already know about memories. But let's try (but probably fail) to get away from constant generalizing for a moment. Also, let's trade shoes. You'll need mine for this next paragraph.

What happens when you decide to break away from your usual pattern of capturing shows on a weekend night and decide to go out to the middle of nowhere and party at a lake cabin on the 4th of July? Surely some long-living memories should come out of it. They just might not be the ones you were hoping or planning for.

That's not to say I had any expectations going into a trip up to a buddy's cabin on the 4th. It's just that even though my life has followed a steady upward trend, I still feel completely naïve at times. Perhaps it's a lingering effect of my less-fulfilling past, a sense of things I have not accomplished, or my hopeful obliviousness to the future.

Long story short, I went to a party at a cabin on Sugar Lake, about 70 miles out of the cities. Made a few new friends, had a good time, watched some fireworks while on a boat, felt out of place on occasion, but still enjoyed myself for the most part. Almost a pretty cookie-cutter experience on the surface, but it's what lies beneath that makes our memories (in fact, all of us as people) unique and interesting.

My over-thinking mind finally got a chance to just let loose around 2 AM though. By then, everyone had basically headed in for the night, while I remained ever-awake and restless. (I was up till 5 AM at another party the night before, hence the need to do something.)

With no one left to talk to, I walked out to the end of the dock and sat down on the bench, gazing across the water at the few specks of campfire light that still dotted the edge of the lake. A boat would occasionally rev in the distance, and one of the passer-by crafts proudly blasted the aforementioned "I'm on a Boat" song as it tore around the lake in the wee hours of July 5th.


(This is from the daytime, but it's a view of straight across the lake from the bench, which faces west.)

But for the most part, it was a calm, undisturbed moment for me to sit and ponder in. I looked to my left and saw the (almost) full moon shining in its glory, and remarked at how amazing it was to think that it could make the night seem bright, yet serene. To my slight-right was the northwest, and beyond the trees I saw the faint glow of what was probably St. Cloud far off in the distance. Above it was the Big Dipper, and when the water was completely calm you could actually see it reflected in the lake as well.

I was all alone at the lake, but strangely I knew that someone else was watching all of this with me too. I texted a friend who I was reminded of and I knew had to be experiencing the same thing I was at that moment of serenity.

I stared at the lake until I grew chilly, then grabbed a jacket and went back out to the bench. After some more gazing around the lake I decided to lay down and stare straight up at the stars, something I don't think I had really done in years.

A million thoughts continued to flow through my mind as the moon began to yellow and finally disappeared below the trees around 3:45 AM, leaving nothing but the stars to light the night momentarily. And for a moment, for the first time since I don't remember when, everything seemed to stop.

Alone, with nothing but the stars. This... was... peace. A fleeting feeling, but one that shouldn't have to happen but once in a great while.

I sat back up and pondered what to do next. There was no reason for me to go to sleep, but I didn't want to sit around for another 5 hours until people started waking up. So I decided to leave the lake at 4:30 AM and drive back to the cities, with no destination in mind.

Whenever I make an extended trip, I always pop in an album or two to accompany the journey. On a whim, I chose to start with the new album from The Alarmists, The Overhead Left. Instantly my mind was blown (what I like to call a "mindfuck", in that it fucks with your mind) by the immediate relevance of the opening lines on "Flutter and Fly".

A summer day, but you feel cold... cold
Another day that you grow old... old

And I forget, the things I'm told...
Well you know time will take it's toll...

So simple, yet a near-verbatim summary of a lot of what I was experiencing on that dock only minutes before. Once I reached the 694/494 loop via I-94 at about 5:15 AM, I chose to go down the less-traveled (for me) 494 and popped in Solid Gold's Bodies of Water. For some reason, it made perfect sense to listen to it at the crack of dawn, and I jumped off 494 to MN 55, cutting east towards downtown Minneapolis.

The morning mist was pretty cool on parts of I-94 & 494, but once I got into Golden Valley on MN 55 it really started to make me geek out at how amazing it was going down misty roads I had never been on, seeing things like the downtown skyline from a new perspective, and just being awake with literally no one else on the roads at this beautiful hour.

I meandered around downtown for a while, making a point of it to pass by The Music Box Theatre on 14th and Nicollet where exciting things may be happening soon (I had never knowingly seen it before), and eventually decided to cut over to the U of M campus. It was time for a new album when I got there, so I put the self-titled album from This World Fair.

Another mindfuck hit me with the This is not my destination / It's only where I'm used to standing line that opens the first track, "Can't Stop Falling". I went to the U for the better part of 5 years, and while it did help make me who I am today, it's definitely not something I foresee being really that important to my future. It's just that I still can't seem to get away from it either...

I decided to head towards St. Paul, and took University Avenue the whole way from campus all the way past I-35E. I was intrigued by all that I saw on the parts of University that I don't frequent east of the Midway area, plus the fact that it runs right behind the State Capitol is pretty sweet too. I continued east, deciding that it would be cool to check out different parts of roads that I knew but hadn't seen beyond certain points.

By this point, I was nearing the end of the album. The final track of TWF's self-titled album, "Count To Ten", includes a powerful repeating line during the outro:

This isn't what we wanted
We're back to where we started

This particular line gave me chills down my spine one time while driving back the day after the Cake/Ari Herstand show at Concordia College in Moorhead back in April 2007. But at about 6:30 AM on this trip, I found myself passing by the house of a close friend's place, which was where I had started my day on the 4th, literally right as the line kicked in. Total mindfuck once again.

I was amazed to actually find someone still awake at the place this early the day after the 4th of July, and hung out for a bit before leaving to drive back to Albert Lea. My wide-eyed curiosity then finally began to fade into sleep-deprivation, which is definitely not a good thing when you've still got over an hour left to go on a drive. Slammed a Dr. Pepper at a rest stop and finally made it back home around 9:30 AM, right in time to crash until about 5 PM. Though I had only been awake for about 21 hours, it felt like I had experienced twice that between all the driving around and time spent at the cabin.

Life is about making memories that last until better ones come along. And in this case, I expect this one to last for quite a while...

Life is about making memories that last until better ones come along.

I'm struck by this strange thought that I just had, and I feel inspired to poke around the inside of my head (via blog post) until something more tangible comes out.

For one, memories are fleeting. We find it harder and harder to remember things the further into the past they occur. The more unique, unexpected, or profound the memory is, the stronger we retain the ability to remember it. And while technology gives us the ability to add tangibility to our memories (I'm a photographer, guess what a lot of my memories are made of?), it's not like we can always treat these things as eternal.

In this regard, I am quite grateful. My life has followed a fairly consistent and steadily-increasing level of "happiness" for years, so much so that I have a difficult time remembering much of anything about high school and beforehand. That's how much more "fun" life has been for me these past few years.

I mean c'mon, how could you not have fun when your passion involves spending a lot of time with a diverse cast of characters in a realm of creative bliss? That's what photographing the music scene is like for me. Sure I don't make any money at it (at least not yet), but I'll be damned if it isn't what I want to do for a long, long time.

I've made so many incredible memories through shooting music and being at shows, but as time goes on I find that most of my older photos just don't carry the same weight they used to. There will always be a few photos that never die, but who's to say that I won't someday capture something that tops even the epic-ness of that or other photos I tout as amazing?

Perhaps that is what drives me to always be at shows, looking to outdo even my own best work. But this is the kind of mentality that has killed many a person (Michael Jackson comes to mind in a sense) when really all I want in life is to be happy and make other people happy with what I do.

If it were possible to truly separate the need for constant self-improvement from happiness, perhaps we'd all be living as Buddhist monks. But this is where the memory factor comes in. As time goes on, that which is "now" becomes then. "Then" becomes older, less tangible, further alienated from the life we live in the "new" now, even if our level of contentment remains. We inevitably either long for a better "now" or for it to be more like "then". (Is this where the liberal/conservative line separates?)

Truly, competition is the enemy of contentment. Time itself has become a competition of sorts. It's like we're asked to play a game... it's called "Fulfill all of your ever-changing dreams as fast as you can before you die." Has anyone ever won? Perhaps, but were we granted immorality we'd inevitably raise the bar into infinity over the course of eternity.

On the bright side, raising the bar is largely a sign of progress. And as our standards rise, that which falls by the wayside doesn't remain as ever-present in our memory. But we also find ourselves locked into a need to reach that next level, which only begins the cycle anew.

I'm going to abruptly cut off this blog entry and begin working on a relevant follow-up regarding the 4th of July. Why? Because if I keep going on this one you're never going to be able to read it all. Shame on me for writing novels I suppose, but those who truly know me know I always have a lot on my mind. I just want to make it easier for you (and I) to digest...

The 3-year anniversary of the most rock 'n' roll thing I have witnessed thus far

Ah, old memories and the lanes which they create. Let us take a walk (or rather, blog) down said memory lane. (I will be pulling out some especially old photography in this, so please bear with me...)

It happened on a Friday night all the way back in the summer of '06. Though it would be another 8 months before I finally purchased my first "real" SLR camera, I was still snap snap snapping away at shows with my comparably crappy little Olympus 8 megapixel point-and-shoot camera.

I found myself at The Varsity on June 9th, 2006 for The Alarmists debut EP release show for A Detail of Soldiers. I had only seen the band once before (at The Varsity about a month prior when they played with This World Fair at The TV Sound CD release show also at The Varsity) but I already knew I had found something special in them.

Supporting The Alarmists at their debut EP release was Low Lustre, a band that would soon move to New York, and White Light Riot, their BBFF's (best band friends forever). WLR had first caught my ear and my eye two months earlier when they played with TWF at some fashion show at Myth Nightclub, so they too were new on my list of bands worth checking out more often.

(Side note: That first encounter with WLR in April 2006 involved frontman Mike Schwandt telling me they sounded kinda like Fall Out Boy. Bullcrap. They're way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way wayyyyyyyyyyy better and sound nothing like them in my opinion, in that WLR is actually good.)

Getting back on track, I witnessed something so incredible at The Varsity that night that it may never be repeated the same way without someone intentionally doing it themselves. But I don't think anyone is really crazy enough to tempt fate in such a way that they also cheat death itself...

I'm speaking, of course, of what Mike Schwandt from White Light Riot did during about the 3rd song of their set. During the solo, the band rocked out all over the stage, with Mike swerving back and forth between guitarist Joe Christenson and bassist Dan Larsen on either side of him with drummer Mark Schwandt keeping it all together in-time in the background.

At one point, Mike did some kind of spinning swing with his guitar, thrusting it upwards as he was leaning forwards and inadvertently whacking himself in the forehead with the head of his guitar. But he didn't go down or even really miss a beat. I'm told that when he stumbled over towards Dan, Mike said something along the lines of "Am I alright?" before heading back towards to the mic at the end of the solo.



But when Mike turned around to finally face the crowd and get back on the mic though, I heard some in the crowd let out a collective "Gasp!" in utter shock of what they were seeing.


(Click image for bigger version)

Mike was gushing a huge stream of blood from right above his eye! Luckily for me, I was in the right place at the right time with the flash turned on, which resulted me in capturing that photo. The band finished the song and then briefly stopped their set as a few people from The Varsity came around the stage with towels and began tending to the self-wounded WLR frontman.

Nobody knew if WLR would be able to keep playing with how incredible the injury was to Mike. But in true rock 'n' roll fashion, the band carried on and finished their set with Mike continuing to bleed all over himself. Sure he'd towel off after songs, but the wound would quickly re-grow into another big stream of blood that would run down the side of his face. Joe Kuefler from The Alarmists even made a cameo on stage on tambourine, which was later reciprocated by Mark from WLR during the headlining set.



Mike actually had to go to the hospital and get stitches after WLR's set. He missed the headlining performance from The Alarmists (which proved to be even more incredible if that was even possible at this point) but not the afterparty, which was probably the stuff of legend as well. I wasn't there, but then again, I (and 3/4 of WLR) wasn't even 21 at the time. Amazing to think that that's how long ago it was now...

So yes, that is what happened 3 years ago on this very day. Mike's clumsiness and penchant for self-injury created one of the most insanely awesome moments I've witnessed thus far. And even though WLR is not on the bill for the latest CD release show by The Alarmists for The Overhead Left this Friday at The Varsity, you can bet your bottom dollar that the band will be there. Heck, you're already guaranteed to see at least one member of WLR anyway, cause Mark is also drumming for The Alarmists now as well.

But know this: On what is only a few days after the 3-year anniversary of that memorable moment in Minneapolis rock history, The Alarmists will bring it all full-circle for their second full-length release. Between the band bringing original keyboardist Joe Kuefler back into the mix and playing at my favorite venue, I'd say this show will inevitably be one of the biggest and best of the year for the local scene. So be there, and be ready to rock. You know I will be.



The Alarmists CD Release Show for The Overhead Left
Friday, June 12th at The Varsity Theater
With The 757's, The Championship, and Coach Said Not To
8 PM doors, $8 advance/$10 at the door, 21+