For this "New Music Monday," let's talk about consistency. In a world where there’s constant motion and nothing is ever the same, it’s nice to have an old predictable standby now and then. The group Bad Religion, despite having a fluid lineup over the years, has been the model of consistency musically for the last 30 years. Formed in 1979, the group has done things their own way and on their own terms.


An independently ran band on a self started label both which have grown in the face of constant worldly change. 15 studio albums and a handful of live records later, the recipe remains the same. Sophisticated, socially responsible lyrics with soaring three part harmonies (oohs and ahhs). While musical ‘staticism’ is dangerous for most acts, Bad Religion has hung its collective hat on a way of writing and playing their music. And it works.

30 years is a long time to do the same thing and not get tired. “The Dissent of Man” is the fifteenth studio album from Bad Religion and coincidentally aligns with their 30th anniversary. And while it isn’t all that much different from stuff produced a decade or two ago, it’s kind of comforting to have a reassurance in something you have always known. Is it their best? I don’t think so but it is a solid addition to any Bad Religion fan’s library.

I’d estimate overall that “The Dissent of Man” has clear evidence of the Bad Religion sound, driving guitars, and pissed off lyrics. But I would say that there are tunes on this record that are clearly filler. Most of the songs are slower than the typical ripping anthems created in the past. That’s not bad or good. Just a little different. I wouldn’t say that there are definitive songs off this album. It’s one of those punk records you just let play because of a mix of standouts and filler. Bad Religion has always addressed the important stuff in their songs, social consciousness, political thoughtfulness, and existence. Greg Gaffin has that distinct voice of punk and has led hi band through the years of change and maturity while maintaining a truthfulness to his objective

Only Rain – Prototypical BR. A ripping beat, ultra fast guitar riff, oohs and ahhs, and metaphoric lyrics about judgment and the end of the world. Listen to this song if you have never heard BR.

Someone to Believe – BR has always run contrary to the grain and questioned beliefs of the masses and the need for people to follow a flock. Musically, it’s a punch in the stomach while the lyrics are about self awareness and confidence found in oneself rather than a pulpit.

Cyanide – Ah the analogy of lost love is like kissing cyanide. We all know the feeling. This is a little folksier, bluesy, BR. The melodic hardcore roots are there but its tempo is slower for the average listener

Bad Religion is one of the all-time great punk bands. They’re one of the premiere melodic hardcore bands, blending hooks and smooth vocals with hardcore music. After 30 years, the band is still touring and releasing new albums. As a matter of fact, Bad Religion appeared at the Showbox in Seattle several nights ago. They’ve always been a politically charged band behind the “oohs and ahhs”, and their new album is no different. If you are a fan of genre defining acts, Bad Religion is just that.

After three decades, the band can still hash out new material. "The Dissent of Man" is not a masterpiece by punk or music standards. However, the handful of distinct Bad Religion-true songs on the record make this album a worthy add to you collection. Furthermore, this is an album that will definitely satisfy BR fans and punk fans alike. To continue forging forward through the winds of change and the fickleness of the music industry is a major accomplishment. Can you do the same thing and remain relevant for 30 years? Not many of us can without reinventing ourselves. The element of punk consistency does not disappoint in "The Dissent of Man."

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become a little predictable in my behavior and decision making. However, I’d say my emotional instability is still very volatile. But one thing that has remained innately consistent is the loneliness I feel from time to time. It exists as a numbing agent but the degree of its inflammation varies from minute to minute. It’s been six years. And they say, with time, all will be healed. Wrong. You don’t heal, you don’t mend, you don’t accept. You tolerate. You tolerate the pain and the heartache. You tolerate the fact that you can’t change the inevitability of the loneliness after the loss. It’s an impairment that no physical or emotional therapy can remove or subdue.

“Here I am alone, broken by my ghosts. Will they always haunt me when I’m drowning?”

You can’t help but wonder “why?” even after six years. It’s definitely easier to ignore the loneliness rather than tolerate it. Unfortunately, the memories stoke the embers of loneliness into a full blow blaze on days like this. While six years in the physicality of our world is not the ruler of measurement where he is at, I’m governed by its structure and measure the days I miss him, weigh the gravity of the loss, and count the moments where I wish he was here.

But the memories are good. I have the memories and the pictures. Some days, I can convince myself through business that there is no loneliness. I can forget it for a short time. But I can’t, and won’t, forget the memories. So I guess after six years, and maybe even after a lifetime, you play the memories like an old slide show in your mind. And just like an old slide show, there is graininess to the quality of its projection. The visions aren’t perfect, they aren’t totally clear. They’re slightly discolored after the years. But the one thing that weathers the fading and the pale colors is the feeling of the moment. For some reason, the memories of the feelings are crystal clear.


It’s really the simple, obscure memories during the slide show that choke you up and make you want to pluck that person right off the screen. I can remember when we took cardboard boxes and taped colored construction paper to the sides. We used electrical tape to segment the colors on each side. The result? Rubik’s Cube costumes for Halloween. Also, there were two trees in my parents’ front yard. One his and one mine. With sheets and clothes pins, we built forts in each tree. And then there is Mossyrock, Washington and camping with our grandparents. I don’t know how many times I had him pedal his little bike behind me to find the next skate spot. Then, he’d sit by and take pictures of me practicing tricks on private property. Years later, I remember picking him up from junior high. We’d head back to our house and play pick up basketball against the neighborhood. Most of the memories involved very little dialogue. In fact, he said very little to me in regard to popular opinion. But it was so obvious to me when I damaged our relationship. He absolutely hated a chick I was dating at one point. He never said anything about it, but it was just so uncomfortable in the room. Not much for public speaking or the lime light, it was a step out of his comfort zone to be the best man in my wedding. The toast, while the context is blurry, the vision of him controlling the audience as he talked is strong. Seeing him, I had so much satisfaction that day. While simple and irrelevant, I can still see the vision of my little brother shoving a guy back into the mosh pit at a concert we attended. That memory is the last one I have where we were in the same place together while he was still alive. The last. But I knew I didn’t have to fight his battles or protect him from the world. At that moment, I knew he’d be all right. No matter what. While others don’t have the pale slides of memories or have forgotten him, I’ve remembered. And every time you cry, you are reminded that you are alive and you miss them so much.


“This is a request; crawl out from graves of regret. This is a request; don’t waste your time tonight.”

The other day, I was listing to the typical return-home-commute programming, Jason Ellis. Interestingly, his tone was incredibly somber. He was discussing his family and its collapse after his little brother died years ago. His rough Australian tone and rugged vocabulary started to crack. I couldn’t help to begin to relate to what he had to say. Not so much in the collapse of the family structure, all though you could feel the tension between us all. Communication was very strange, almost like I wasn’t even their child anymore. It’s tough to say how it got there. Maybe it was because I was an adult now and my relationship with my parents had become more peer-like. With the loss of my little brother, I so wanted to go back to being their little boy, sheltered from the pot holes of life. Now, I was now an only child. Something I had never been before.

I really related to the bludgeoning effect of the personal loss Ellis had. The pain and heartache after the loss were real. He talked about his other brother, his father and his mother and how it affected them each individually from his own unique perspective. But what I found the most poignant is how he looked at himself after the loss. The main point was that he believed his brother would have wanted him to be happy and successful. We all talk this concept when we lose someone valuable in our life. Of course our loved ones would want us to move on and be happy. But it’s far easier to write those lines here in text than to actually live out those words.

He continued on that it’s not disrespectful to be happier now than you’ve ever been in your life after someone has passed. He spoke about his professional successes, his sobriety, and more importantly, his love for his wife and his little girl. He’s tolerated the loss in a rough-Outback-like way. And while the articulation of this feeling was profanity-laced with an Aussie accent, he conceded that he’s in pain with the loss but knows deeply that it has changed him in to something stronger and happier. His brother wanted these changes for him. The lost want that for you. They don’t want you to regret and stand still. They want you to push harder and succeed more and be happier.

The affect of the broadcast is something that cannot be perfectly explained in this context but it’s about living life with no sense of regret because your lost loved ones want that for you. It’s not disrespectful to be happy in your life despite them not being physically present other than in a picture. It stops here, he said. Today is the day where you take charge and make yourself happy and won’t live in the heartache. He wants me to move forward and succeed and create something beautiful for me and my family.

Over the last two weeks, I have been inundated with and overly excessive amount of daily work activities which have kept from even thinking about my next entry here. It was one of the first times in my life where I was completely unable to fabricate some small piece of time to outlet a little creativity. For the most part, I have been pretty unhappy with how demanding life has been recently. There has been no shortage of obligations, commitments, and responsibilities. The incredible vacuum like sound of time being sucked right out of life has become the topic of discussion here.

This entry will definitely be more of a plethora of thoughts and happenings that have bestowed both positive and negative inspiration on me these last few demanding weeks. Based on pre-described rules I’ve mentioned in another post, I can’t discuss the near nazi-like, soul-clenching, life-draining demands of employment. Needless to say, the activities in the office have put a strangle hold on the neck of creativity for a many days. Just the amount of time needed in the day to meet deadlines was so excessive that I couldn’t even approach a topic shyly like a twelve year old at a junior high dance. To make matters worse, there was what is called a ‘Reduction in Force’ in the work place. Despite being worked like a pack mule, we were all waiting for our one-on-one meetings with management only to learn of our no longer needed useless skills sets. There is strange irony in working your ass off only to find out your position is a ‘surplus.’ To make a long story longer, I wasn’t reduced. This comes as both good and bad news. There’s a piece of me that needed the ultimatum to be reached. Then there is the responsible side that has the voice of my mother whispering in its ear about playing along and appreciating that I have steady income and healthcare from a global conglomerate.

Now that I’ve broke that rule, on to my next topic. I’ve mentioned that I am now the proud father of a soccer player. Son #1 is on a soccer team for four year olds called the Pandas. The name alone inspires fear in the masses, or at least scares the shit out of bamboo trees. To date, they have had a total of four practices which range in the volume of focus by the players and the amount of water breaks given by the coach. I have to keep reminding myself that these kids are only four years old. But I feel like we needed an hour (or ten) more of practice to explain some of the subtleties of teamwork and, I don’t know, maybe the game of soccer. So I volunteered to assist in keeping these hellions focused, enthused, and running. The first game has come and gone and if we were keeping score, I would estimate that the final score was 4-0. Pandas on the losing end of it. But because this is for ‘fun,’ we are not keeping score. I will say this based on my observations: While tough to communicate field boundaries, direction, teamwork, passing, competition, and the overall ‘feel’ of the game, the one thing that transcends and is totally understood is the purity of fun. Smiles. It is obvious in the Pandas’ smiles.



Next up: wedding anniversary. As a husband/male you are bound by some sort of rule set or societal obligation to fulfill some sort of ‘Oh he is such a sweetheart’ comment issued by your wife’s friends. I hate this pressure. When I am planning something for my wife or out shopping for her, I am constantly playing the ‘What did he do for you?’ track in my head. Because if your wife can’t answer this question with a beaming smile and equally beaming piece of jewelry or latest in fashion couture, you’re worthless drudge of slime found under the salty docks of the tide flats in Commencement Bay. Believe me, I’ve been there literally and philosophically. In the weeks leading up to our anniversary, I repeatedly thought about traditional and modern gifts and how I could assemble something meaningful that would successfully answer the above womanly questions, score me points with the wife in order to build credit toward my next two-wheeled purchase, and ultimately eclipse others and shine the light of inadequacy on the significant others of my wife’s friends. Good plan, right? Well, I had intended on multiple research and shopping days to execute on this plan. The Man got in the way with professional obligations, meetings, projects, and the general exercise of killing your creative soul. Needless to say, I nearly ran out of time but I was able to squeeze some research in on one day and then made five total stops during my lunch break and after work the next day. I couldn’t show up to my own anniversary without a gift(s). Crisis avoided. Wife happy and the anniversary was a good day.


The overarching theme here is about time or the lack of it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so consumed with every second of the day. They feel like they are just slipping through my hands. Think: cliché sands of time through your fingers here. I have always felt like I could handle everything thrown at me no matter the volume of responsibility or level of commitment. I would always find ways to milk a little more time out of the day. It’s like the enacting the Toyota philosophy upon my schedule management. For those of you who are not engineers or geeks like me, this is a reference to the Toyota manufacturing Lean philosophy of removing waste (not poop, but extra processes and useless handling) from the manufacturing system. As I grow up, I realize that it is a little more effort to manage the ever-slipping time resource. Man, where has the time gone.