Five Years and Counting: "B.Y.O.B." - A System of a Down

As naive as this may sound, if my life can be said to have a purpose, I would say that that purpose is to enlarge my soul, to take more and more in - - you know, the nothing human is alien to me approach. And perhaps for me music is a measure what sounds are within my ken, what sounds remain alien. I have been downloading one at a time Bartok string quartets. Though I have encoutered them from time to time in the concert hall, they remain a challenge, hovering on the outermost border of my understanding. So on good days Bartok is the first thing I listen to when I first wake up, still warm in bed, still fresh and receptive. And, slowly, day by day, its strangeness becomes familiar: patterns emerge, melodies even.Prior to my conviction that our country would invade Iraq Matchbox Twenty and Creed formed the outer limits of my tolerance for "hard" rock music. But during the run-up to the war, as friends protested and said again and again how sick they were about this war and our leaders lied to us, something any me changed and suddenly the music I was listening to on Rhapsody had labels like post-grunge and alt-metal. Now when someone new tells me they don't care for hard rock or rap or metal, a part of me envies them, wishes myself once again safely swaddled in a soft rock cocoon. It's hard to say what is in the music we listen to versus what it is we bring, but either way, in the dark winter of 2003 I needed a place to take my rage, despair, and helplessness and music came throuhh. While it might be overstating things a bit to say that such music saved my life, I've no question that it has helped to keep me sane in the face of a world gone mad.Checkout the basslines and the boppy little chorus with its so cool harmony. And the screaming, I am not the kind of person given to raising my voice, so it's nice to find a surrogate screamer.