The Hollywood Bowl - It's This Cool Little Venue in LA

Sergio and I are going to a concert tonight. It's this cool little indie band I discovered called Vampire Weekend.

OK, maybe they're pretty big now. Maybe they've "sold out" (which as far as I can tell means "started to make money" so I don't see why it's all that big a deal). But once upon a time they were a dinky little nearly unknown band from Columbia University.

And some may call it a stretch but to that I say "screw you, get your own blog" as I present

Brennan's Top 10 Bands You've Probably Never Heard Of

Years Active. How I discovered them. Choice Track.

10. Tally Hall

Years Active: 2002 - Present

Self-described as "wonky rock," Tally Hall is a band from Ann Arbor, Michigan that has a lot of fun making music, and it's really easy to tell just by listening to their songs. They play around with exotic instruments and weird vocal settings and create a soundscape that's unlike just about anything else.

How I Discovered Them: When I joined drama in my sophomore year of high school, I was friends with a group of seniors who loved them.

Choice Track: "Taken For A Ride"

Also Check Out: "Good Day," "The Whole World and You," "Ruler of Everything"

9. Blümchen

Years Active: 1995 - 2001

God help me, but I do love Eurodance music. Blümchen (in English, "Small Flower") is a German dance pop artist who definitely isn't for everybody but her bright voice, peppy beats, and general German-ness win me over every time. She is still around today, but now she goes by the name Jasmin Wagner and has moved on from her old image.

How I Discovered Her: I was browsing the German Pop section in iTunes (I know, right?) and discovered one of her English tracks, "Little Satellite." I loved it and bought it, but when I discovered all of her songs had German counterparts, I left that song by the wayside and dove into her German discography.

Choice Track: "Odysee in 3D"

Also Check Out: "Kleiner Satellit," "Verrückte Jungs," "Boomerang"

8. Amber Pacific

Years Active: 2004 - 2011

Amber Pacific is just another Warped Tour alt rock band but they ruled my world for a good year in middle school with their tight harmonies and angsty teen music. I ate that sh*t up. I still hold a great fondness for them now that I'm older, and I'll defend them to death. Although once their lead singer left, they crashed and burned.

How I Discovered Them: I actually found them on a Punk Goes 80's album, where they performed a cover of "Video Killed the Radio Star."

Choice Track: "Fall Back Into My Life"

Also Check Out: "Summer (In B)," "Temporary," "Video Killed the Radio Star"

7. Fanny Lú

Years Active: 2005 - Present

If I've ever driven you anywhere in my car, you've heard Fanny Lú. Just like most of my favorite people, she started off as a Spanish language news presenter (the other person I have in mind is Manuela Velasco, the star of the [REC] series). However she successfully transitioned to the music industry and is a fairly successful pop star. She's now a judge on La Voz Colombia, the Spanish language version of the reality show The Voice in her home country. Her best tracks are cheerful songs about heartbreak and she's one of the foreign artists that it breaks my heart they haven't successfully made it big in the States.

Also, during my research I discovered that in the Spanish dub of the movie Tangled, she performed a cover of Grace Potter's "Something That I Want" and I cried tears of joy.

I love Fanny Lú. Look at her hair. Look at her face.

How I Discovered Her: A common project in my high school Spanish classes was memorizing the lyrics to a Spanish song. She was never featured in any of my classes, but my friend Laura gave me a playlist of her class and Fanny Lú was featured prominently. I bought all her albums and never looked back.

Choice Track: "Tú No Eres Para Mi"

Also Check Out: "Fanfarrón," "Corazón Perdido," "Y Si Te Digo"

6. Army of Freshmen

Years Active: 1997 - Present

Army of Freshmen is another alt rock band with an airtight collection of albums. Their LP Under the Radar is one of those albums where every single track is strong enough to be a single, a rare achievement in the world of music. They frequently tour along with Bowling For Soup, another band I love that you've certainly heard of, even if it's just for 1985."

How I Discovered Them: In freshman year of high school, I was writing a musical based on Romeo and Juliet for an English project and I searched "Juliet" on iTunes to see what came up. They did and my life changed forever.

Choice Track: "Down at the Shore"

Also Check Out: "Maybe in the Midwest," "Juliet," "Wrinkle in Time"

5. The Sounds

Years Active: 1998 - Present

How could I not love them? They're from Sweden! I have not encountered a single thing from Sweden in my entire life that I have not loved with an all-consuming passion. The Sounds were the soundtrack to my first semester in college with their creative instrumentations and rocker chick vibe.

How I Discovered Them: Their song "Something to Die For" was used prominently in Scream 4. When I bought the soundtrack, that song dominated, and I eventually researched the band's other tracks.

Choice Track: "Dance With the Devil"

Also Check Out: "Something to Die For," "Painted by Numbers," "Better Off Dead"

4. Joshua Radin

Years Active: 2004 - Present

Of all the artists on this list, Joshua Radin is simply the most pleasant to listen to. His acoustic guitar songs and soft voice are featured prominently on my sister's "Go To Sleep" CD and I listen to him the most when I want to relax. 

How I Discovered Him: The first drama production I ever worked on (David and Lisa) closed with his song "Winter." Dave, the drama director is a huge fan of his and it bled over to me.

Choice Track: "I'd Rather Be With You"

Also Check Out: "Vegetable Car," "Winter," "You Got Growing Up to Do"

3. Ludo

Years Active: 2003 - Present

Ludo is one of them "funny" rock bands. Their first biggish single ("Good Will Hunting By Myself") features a minute long breakup rant that contains the phrase "Oompa Loompa monkey problem." I actually used it as a comedic monologue for an audition once. But their magnum opus album, You're Awful, I Love You is a masterpiece of baroque alt rock that is absolutely captivating.

How I Discovered Them: My friend Laura loves these guys and she shared them with me.

Choice Track: "Such As It Ends"

Also Check Out: "Good Will Hunting By Myself," "Lake Ponchartrain" "Mutiny Below"

2.The Pipettes

Years Active: 2003 - Present

This British girl band has seen some massive lineup changes since their debut album We Are the Pipettes, but that album blows Britpop out of the water with track after track of solid, danceable, 60's-inspired pop confections. Gwenno, Rosay, and RiotBecki are alternately sweet and somber and lovably British through and through.

How I Discovered Them: My dad was raving about them, and I can't help but agree.

Choice Track: "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me"

Also Check Out: "It Hurts To See You Dance So Well," "ABC," "Dance and Boogie"

1. Jay Brannan

Years Active: 2006 - Present

After failing to make a splash as an actor (but having an... interesting role as one third of a threesome in John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus), Jay Brannan set out to be a musician despite not actually knowing the names of the guitar chords. To this day he can't even give tabs for his songs because he just makes it up as he goes along, but it works. Trust me. A gay indie guitarist, Brannan's songs are filled with heartbreak and explorations of how to deal with a world that doesn't want you to exist.

Asialani and I got to see him in concert for my birthday last year and it was one of my best live experiences.

How I Discovered Him: Asia and I were working tech for the yearly dance show in our sophomore year and one of the performances was to his brilliant cover of Ani DiFranco's "Both Hands." It blew our minds and now we're longtime fans.

Choice Track: "Beautifully"

Also Check Out: "Both Hands," "Can't Have It All," "Housewife"

Bonus Artist Who You've Definitely Heard of But Probably Never Knew Made Anything of Merit: Paris Hilton

Years Active: 2006

Boy I wish I was kidding. But honestly, I kind of love Paris' self-titled album. It's not even good, but it's so much better than I ever expected. Produced before the advent of "Anybody Can Make Music Because Autotune is God," Paris' vocals lack the robotic thrum of today's reality star hitmakers. Oh sure, her vocals are heavily altered but her music sounds like actual songs, not a sequence of words run through a vocoder.

How I Discovered Her: Come on.

Choice Track: "Nothing In This World"

Also Check Out: "Stars Are Blind," "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," "Jealousy"

So what do you think? Am I a secret hipster? Heard of all these bands? Think I'm a poser? Hate Paris Hilton? Anyone can comment, so please let me know.

Word Count: 1592

Musings Part 2: Not So A-Musing

Yesterday when I was at work, we got a call to shut the doors and lock down the premises - there was an armed gunman on campus.

My coworker, Nancy, and I gathered the two people from the patio and closed the shop, turning off the radio and staying away from the door and windows. I dug around in the cupboards to find some potential weapons, should things take a turn for the worse. I pocketed a screwdriver and kept my phone out, switching between attempting to call my friend Shannon, who was at an RA orientation event on campus, and checking the CSULB emergency site for information.

Sitting on the floor next to the soda cooler, we could hear helicopters buzzing overhead.

We spotted glimpses of police cars in the distance past the quad.

I was shaking. Getting a call like that can sweep the whole world out from under your feet, and the only solid ground I could find were the two things that matter to me the most. Unironically, those two things were people and movies, in that order.

When one is put in a situation that threatens to be perilous, all that stupid BS that we worry about day to day stops mattering. I did not think about the new Lady Gaga single, the stress of moving into my new apartment, or the impact the lockdown would have on my work hours. I thought about my friends. I thought about my family. I thought about Sergio.

What it all boils down to is that personal relationships are to be valued above all else. Make sure the people that are important to you know that they are. If somebody you love is struggling with something, make them your priority. Don't blow off important moments with your friends or family for stuff like an essay or a Netflix binge, no matter how important your homework might seem or how lazy you might be feeling that day. Nothing else matters in the long run.

And since this is a movie blog, let me steer the topic to the impact of media violence on our culture. As a veteran watcher of splatter pictures, I am uniquely qualified to address the concern that some people might have over the proliferation of gore and violence on TV and in cinemas.

First off, let me open with a quote from Scream.

"Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative."

Yes, sometimes there will be a copycat murder after, say, a new Hostel movie comes out. Perhaps if that movie had not come out, that person would not have died in that manner. But barring the film from release would not have saved their life. The viewer's psychopathic tendencies were inspired by it, not born from it.

Media violence usually serves one of two purposes for the mentally sane viewer:

1) Engaging the visceral part of the human brain that delights in mayhem in a safe and non-destructive way.

2) Presenting the audience with a situation that they may not have experienced, allowing them to understand the atrocities human beings inflict upon one another from as close to a firsthand perspective as possible and using the horror of the predicament to highlight the depravity of such an act.

Yes, there is that caveman part of us that delights in a young co-ed being ripped in half, and that is why the Friday the 13th movies still enjoy a massive following. Slasher and splatter movies allow us to indulge in that carnal release without actually having to hurt anybody. Think of it as a less morally reprehensible version of The Purge.

Some argue that such films (including the ones I enjoy the most) desensitize the viewers to graphic violence and even encourage it, but that is absolutely not the case. It's true that these films can act as a buffer to help us cope with the brutality of the real world, but for the most part, especially in more thematically intact horror films, the torture is meant to be exactly that - torture.

Films show scenes of torture as a means of denouncing it. By using it to horrify the audience, the implied warrant is simple - torture is bad. This should never be inflicted upon anybody. The screams from the theater seats behind you prove my point.

So please please do not take this recent proliferation of campus violence to be a result of entertainment. In fact that very same "threat" is what propelled me through my waking nightmare.

Yesterday, the first thing I thought of when we closed those doors was What did Mr. Schue do in that school shooting episode of Glee? No joke. Like it or not, pop culture provides a lot of our background knowledge on events and experiences outside of our range. Taking cues from Glee allowed me to keep calm and avoid panicking.

The rules about slasher films that I wrote only a week ago were likewise careening about my head. I gathered weapons because I hate when Final Girls don't fight back. I stayed quiet because I hate when Final Girls give away their positions. I maintained focus because I've seen what can happen when a Final Girl loses her head.

And therein lies the tentpole of my argument. Without having watched the "wicked violent media," I would have felt a whole lot less sure of myself and might very well have dissolved into a weeping wreck on the floor.

That certainly describes my personality, I think. I drew my strength from my loved ones and Freddy Krueger.

Anyway, I would be honored to have somebody learn from my experience if that means they wouldn't have to go through it themselves. The two things to take away from this are to take strength from whatever you can, even if you think it's ridiculous and stupid (I make a good point with that media violence thing too, but my pontificating won't help in this regard) and to cherish the people that love you.

Now, as it turns out, the lockdown was a false alarm. A few students were spooked by a drill we'd had earlier in the morning and mistook another student's phone for a gun (which, to tell the truth, is pretty much how that Glee episode ended). Despite the threat level of the situation being, in actuality, zero, that does not make my reactions and emotions any less significant.

I consider myself very lucky to have gotten the life lesson without the life endangerment and despite the fact that the most dangerous thing that could have happened to me yesterday was burning myself on the coffee machine, we really did think we were in that predicament, and that's what really matters, doesn't it?

Love each other.

Word Count: 1131