Switchfoot Live videos + New facebook photo album + New music albums

New Facebook photo album. Moar albums to come! Click this! CLICK IT NAO!


Thank God for holidays! I've got time to upload stuff now.

I finally found a way to upload my Switchfoot videos to youtube. I had to do some stupid tweaking.
Its going on facebook now.

This is Awakening.




Sorry for the bad camera handling. I was new with the camera, and didn't really know how to take videos properlly. I learnt from my mistakes, my future videos doesn't have so much movement and irratic zooming.

But at least it isn't too shaky. Look at the idiot in front waving his hands to the rhythmn WHILE VIDEOING THE BAND. Dumbass.

Jon Foreman solo playing 24.






I wanna watch Switchfoot again!

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I've finally brought Rise Against's Appeal To Reason. I also wanted to get the Black Keys' Attack And Release, but they sold out, so i got the nearest thing I saw: Black Stone Cherry's Folklore and Superstition.

Both are Hard Rockin'.

Rise Against is recommended for the rebel in you. Also recommended for the part in your heart that gives a damn about the world.

Black Stone Cherry takes away the "classic rock" and adds the "metal" in Southern Rock (What's ts southern rock? Rock coming from the Southern part of America. D'uh) . To describe them, they are like Lynyrd Skynyrd (the one that wrote Sweet Home Alabama) or maybe Allman Brothers Band (you probably never heard of them). Except they drank alot of moonshine, used heavy metal licks and screamed their lungs out.

Neither are mainstream/pop nonsense.

Youtube Videos + God makes us happy?

I finally uploaded my first YouTube video. Pretty exciting stuff. I have repeatedly tried to upload Switchfoot live in Sinagapore concert performances, but its keeps stopping at 95%. Ugh pisses me alot. I guess this would help me avoid legal issues from EMI or something haha.

If you want Singapore Switchfoot videos i got two. (24 and Awakening). But i was pretty new with the camera, so the zooming in and out can be abit irritating lol.

Anyway I think I was waiting for something or what I dunno it was after church I think... This busker at White Sands was playing my favourite song (Knockin' On Heaven's Door). So I videoed him. Later he did Let It Be, another beautiful song. You can also see this video on my Facebook





Sometimes I wish I have the time to stop and watch buskers for extended periods of time. Some of them are really talented like this one.

I have 3 or 4 or more videos that I feel like uploading. I might go back to my old craze of doing stop-motion videos too haha.

Since we are at the topic of videos, heres a really funny one i saw recently! Old people are sexy.



The first one was pretty bad, like a Methodist church Holy Communion done wrong.. But the rest just cracks me up! The Ridin' Dirty one is actually quite impressive.

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Does God wants us to be happy? LG session made me think about this. Jesus said stuff like love your neighbour or obey God, but not stuff like "Be happy dude".

I mean, God even says we'll have suffering and hurt. Sometimes, obeying God feels like a chore, like loving not-so-lovable people or serving in Church. Does that make me happy?

But then again, the Bible never said God did not want us to be happy. (The old twist the statement around argument technique lol)

I guess if we live our lives out like how God would want us to, joy would come in as, for the lack of better word, side-effect. Loving others obviously makes one happy, despite the repercussions that come with it. Serving God is also something that gives me great joy too.

God promises to bless us in the Bible. There's no hard and fast rule that one of the blessings He'll give is happiness, but definitely true "clean" (not sin-induced) happiness should come from God. Besides He also blesses us with other cool stuff. If being alive, with sufficient food to eat, a roof over our heads, basic human rights like education and even luxurious stuff does not at least make us content, let alone happy, we need to look back and count our blessings.

And the joy that one gets when earnestly worshiping God... whats that? Its not just some "happiness"...Its much much more than that. Its something I can't really explain in words.

Hero of War - Rise Against

I tried to learn guitar chords for modern pop-rock songs... so that i can at least play some of the stuff that the kids and friends in church like... songs like Yellowcard's Only One (okay), Boys Like Girls' Thunder (eeew come to think of it its a crappy song and band) and One Republic songs (a closet guilty pleasure of mine).

But i gave up on learning all of them after hearing Rise Against's Hero Of War. Now i only stum this song lol.

I realised why i don't listen to mainstream rock and pop-rock and pop... It sucks. The singers all sound the same. The melody structure follows the same structure as boybands, i.e. easy listening, memorable verse melody but lack real gritty thought-provoking substance. Electric guitars are non-existent (whats rock music without them?). Singers sound like they never reached puberty. Most are one hit wonders (well, maybe you can call them 2-3 hit wonders, but that elevates them only to the level of boybands)

And don't get me started on pop-punk! Yuck! The worst subset of rock music... its so fail it doesnt deserve a place in the rock music family. Every, I repeat, every singer have the same voice, and its a pre-pubescent whiny crybaby voice. The chord stucture is the same throughout every song(I, Minor, IV V, repeat), guitars are just high pitched power chords, lyrics are restricted to break-ups, new love, and masturbation. Melody is the irritating kind that gets stuck in your head. POP-PUNK SUCKS!!!!!

Sorry, i grew up listening to a few real punk rock music... Very little mainstream elements in them, they don't hold back on aggresion and distortion... stuff like The Offspring, The Ramones, Rise Against.... So i know that punk has so much potential than the "pop" kind you hear on the radio

And nowadays i stopped listening to music just for the music and opened my ears to the lyrics. The lyrics of pop-rock songs are at best okay, i guess, but there are more lyrical themes other than love, break-ups, finding love, walking together... notice the similiarity with boybands here?

Yes, I'm talking about the themes usually explored by political punk bands, not-too-Christian bands, metal bands and such. Themes like politics, violence, death, brotherly love, stepping up for our society, war, religion, peace, basically all the hippie stuff but darker.

Enough of ranting about music. I want to get back to the main feature of this post: Rise Against's Hero Of War. Its my new favourite song. Heres a homemade Youtube video.



Rise Against is punk rock band that i heard a few songs years ago...They sing alot about politics, society, suffering, rebellion but also sometimes the standard fare of love and hate... Only last year did i get to hear more of their songs... They are a harder kind of punk band, meaning they lean on the hardcore side.. They scream some of their choruses ala Foo Fighters style(but even more xiong). But this is the first time i heard an acoustic song from them.

If you took the time to hear the song, and even watch the video, i'm sure that it somehow got those brain cells working a bit. Even if the music doesn't really suits your taste, surely the lyrics must have gave you a new viewpoint of soldiers, essentially but not necessarily American.

I personally feel the melody is great, on the mainstream side, like today's pop-rock ballads... but this song conveys more emotion that the other modern ballads i heard. The lyrics actually have substance. (Pissed in his hands... surely thats an eye-opening line? Shit like these happens in this world btw) The chord structure is simple, again similiar to others, but the whole song just.... trumps the rest.

The song gave me a few different perspectives: The persona, a soldier most likely an American (they wrote the song in such a way it could be ambigious, but the first verse, involving how the soldier got influenced into joining the army, is uniquely American).

His ideology of war changes in 4 minutes of the song: From a gung-ho, proud new recruit, wanting to be a hero of war, to a callous commanding soldier, although having a little conscience left, does his job in a slightly cold-hearted way.

Soon, he guns down a civilian woman, which i assumed he feared to be hostile, but couldn't discern through the chaos and battle(soldiers face this shit. Thats why sometimes they shoot innocents or friendly soldiers: Its hard to discern whos friend and whos foe in the thick of battle). Upon realising that the woman was holding the white flag of surrender, his whole attitude towards being a "hero of war" change.

Then theres the perspectives of the others: The captured man, his family and friends, the children around, the lady with the white flag: All victims of war


Rise Against's newest album, where Hero of War is taken from. Thinking of buying it.

It made me think about us... we have never gone through war, and some if not all of us will/has not lose/lost a loved one through war, let alone be inside a war-torn area. Truly we are blessed, but what about others?

And what about the soldier? America, desperate for recruits, resort in aggressive marketing to portray being in the army as cool, hip and heroic. Many youths, swayed by the charisma of soldiers giving talks in schools and a sense of patriotism, signed up, not knowing the consequences of almost inevitability getting into a warzone.

I just wanna say that theres better music out there that the mass-produced radio hits that most ppl listen to... Hopefully I can introduce a little bit of those to you guys. In turn, you guys usually corrupt me with pop music too, haha, so its fair lol. :)

OH YEAH I DON'T HAVE THIS SONG!!! ANYONE WHO HAS IT CAN SHARE WITH ME??? THANKS!