Lost It All~ Leagues, January 28, 2021


 Lost It All 
I had a dream last night that I returned to America to visit my mom. Somehow, using dream logic, I looked in a mirror and noticed that I was bald with just a band of brown hair around the edges. Then I looked again and my face had aged and I noticed less hair on my head. I also saw liver spots on my head. I woke up to a beautiful, warm January morning, hair intact. Around noon I decided to go for a walk. On the walk I saw that the weather was predicting a winter storm. It's 50 degrees, it's not going to snow, I thought. Then as I walked farther away from my house I saw the gold had turned to grey. I turned around for my plan to walk farther had to be surrendered.

STARTING OUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO SHINE. If you're of my generation or older you know what it's like to buy an album. You might hear the single on the radio or maybe the band had a good last album or you just like the cover art. You put the disk/tape/LP on and listen to it. You're either immediately taken by it or not. If you didn't like it you listened to it again and again to find some gold. And often in that search, you would find an album that was much better than the easily accessible one. I didn't buy this record. I think the last physical album I bought was before 2011. I actually got it for free on NoiseTrade (now Paste) when the band was giving it away for free. I had heard "Spotlight" on RadioU. The band included former Audio Adrenaline guitarist Tyler Burkum, who has been awesome in every project I've seen him in. I had big expectations for this record. But it wasn't immediately satisfying.

THE TRUTH WOULD COME OUT IN TIME. I started making iTunes playlists (now Apple Music) some time ago. Just started dividing up my music part intentionally and part randomly into playlists like "Exercise," "Coffee," and "At Work." One frosty morning I was biking to school and "Lost it All" happened to come up on shuffle in my "Bike Mix." The song starts off slow and then builds. The musical guitars meet the vocals of Thad Cockrell and by the time you get to the bridge you think that the musical formula has solved the world's problems. This song led me to listen to the rest of the album. Songs like "She Kissed Me" and "Walking on Water" have similar production that start off slow and build. 

THE ONLY WAY OUT OF THIS IS TOGETHER. It seems that Leagues is no more. Time will keep marching on. But isn't it great that this music exists? Isn't it incredible that of the 50 million songs on Apple Music and Spotify we can keep coming back to the classics or our favorites? You and I have not even begun to scratch the surface of all the songs out there. And if things make a turn for the worse canceling all of our plans, we can find wisdom and comfort in a verse or chorus or guitar solo. Into the future, AirPods in.



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