It’s true.
Yesterday, I was listening to Something for Kate’s echolalia CD, and here is what I remembered.
1. I bought this CD after work one day. I had bought my only Ben Folds Five CD (which is so beautiful) on the way to the bus stop, except I missed the bus. So I visited an old second hand shop on Parramatta rd, and they were selling this CD for only $6. I had heard Mark rant about them several times, so I decided it might be a neat investment. It was.
2. Either just before or just after primary school finished, I (or we?) were at Kate’s house, and she had bought the Monsters single. She liked that a band had her name in it.
3. Mark and I went to The Great Escape. Mark seemed very disappointed with the people in the crowd. I thought the girl in the band didn’t smile enough. Sigur Ros were really cool.
4. Once at uni, Nicole told me she liked the song White and would play it on her guitar. I was suprised, I thought maybe Something for Kate was too mellow for her. I haven’t seen Nicole in ages and I miss her.
5. There was a really really neat chord progression that they use a lot. I wish I was musical enough to pin it down. It is more than neat. It is indescribably amazing. Sufjan Stevens uses it it The Transfiguration and I think it is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. Sometimes it makes me want to be a musician, but I don’t think I could handle it.
Akrokorinth 
Heya, I’m listening to Echolalia right now! 😀
1. I remember when you bought Echolalia 🙂
2. Heh, I knew a number of girls whose first or second names were Kate or derivation of it and were proud of the band being named what it was.
3. Sigur Ros were really cool. I had seen SFK play for awhile that time we saw them at The Great Escape. I guess it was different going with you compared to going with other rabid obsessed fans and us standing around teeny boppers, but more so, I was starting to question heavily at that point some of Paul Dempsey’s lyrics that weren’t sitting right with me anymore now as a Christian. More on that in the next point. (in the next comment actually or I’ll exceed lifejournal’s character limit if I try putting it in this one…)
There’s a character limit?
Yeah, about 4500 characters or something like that.
4. Nicole? As in Nicole Statts? I haven’t seen her for ages too (her Facebook page is… odd)
White is one such song that doesn’t sit right with me anymore. Basically, its lyrics are echoing Dempsey’s viewpoint about a lack of an afterlife. “White”, or something holy is something the song purports is something that theists believe is connected to their brain (the soul?) and that the idea of living forever is something they take without question as an objective rule – “eternity, is a policy”. The theists, he believes, are caught up by the “magnetism and mystery” of religion, but ultimately he thinks it’s just “wishful thinking and fantasy” and he hopes that you’re not hoping that he’ll be saved or find God or hope that he’ll come to believe what you believe. He believes that when you see the world that “reason collides” with religion and the belief you have of a God out there “transmitting from space asking you to line up and take your place”. Instead he claims that the “infinity” of space and time is the only “reality” – that we’ll all just die and the energy in universe will entropy one day and that was all it ever was about, and that we don’t need to put on “life jackets” (religion) to save ourselves from our impending doom and we don’t need “sympathy” for the loss we’ll all face, because it’d just be “bullshit daydreams”. He says that he knows that you the theist can’t be knowing the the truth for him, so he hopes “that you’re not hoping for” him.
So yeah, I find it sad to listen to that song these days because I do know just how wrong he is and I certainly am hoping and praying for him. It just amazes me how someone so intelligent (he’s never had any tertiary studies but he’s quite the polymath having taught himself many fields by self-study) can be so wrong. Perhaps it’s like the other Paul said in the bible: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)
5. Sufjan Stevens uses the same chord progression in The Transfiguration that Paul Dempsey uses in White? Or elsewhere in Echolalia? *has a listen to The Transfiguration*
I wanted to be a musician during my Something for Kate following days. I bought a guitar (two actually, an acoustic and an electric) and took guitar lessons but I didn’t get as far as being in a band. I think these days when it comes to artistic expression, I’d rather be a painter or a drawer or film maker or any type of visual artist. I’m probably better at expressing myself visually than musically. Leonardo di Vinci put it best for me, that trying to create music, is like trying to paint with invisible ink.
I’m listening to the The Transfiguration now. Gosh, it’s beautiful! 🙂 And just what I need after analysing White above, heh.
Hey, Kristi gets here in about two weeks. Meet up? Yeah yeah! 🙂
Heh. I’m snobbish. When I think of musician, I do not think of band-members. I think of (what in my brain is called) real musicians, i.e. people who studied it in college and play their instruments in a symphonic band or orchestra or for gigs or operas or such…people who know how to analyze music and write GOOD music.
Of course, the deal here is that there are many people in bands who are real musicians (in the sense of which I speak above), but there are also many who are just trying to make a quick buck and don’t know much about music at all. So I guess the defining thing for me for being a “real” musician is actually knowing something about music and progression and such. Oh yeah…and being proficient on some sort of instrument or with your voice.
/snobbishness.
Heh.
Yes!!! Meet-up!
Yes yes yes!!
real musicians ^ hehe
:O
You have posted a picture of me from high school! Shocking!
But yes, those are the kind of musicians my mind automatically thinks of when one says “musician.”
I like your dresses 😛
Oh they were…high school band dresses. 🙂
Velvet black bodice with a shower curtain looking skirt…shimmery black with little velvet polka dots and big poofy sleeves made out of the same material. They were something. But…it’s part of high school band. 🙂
I look quite thin in that picture. *misses being young and prettier*
You are young and pretty 🙂
You are still young and very pretty!
Did you have to buy your own dress or were they recycled every year?
We had shiny maroon vests.They were so cool.
I can’t remember the song, it’s towards the end of the album. And the intro is full of major and very uplifting chords (a couple that are like the the transfiguration). And when they start singing, it suddenly goes all minor, and the uplifting chords stop. Although occasionally come in subtly in the chorus.