7th post! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Dallas Brass!

Last Tuesday on October 21, the Dallas Brass came into town to perform with the Edina Varsity and Concert band. If you are not familiar with the Dallas Brass, they are a group of six men who tour around playing brass instrument, and teaching clinics. They are very famous, have played in front of a few presidents, and have been around for over 25 years. This talented group consists of a two trumpet players, one tuba, one French horn, a drummer, and one trombonist who is the founder and leader of the band. They have become one of America’s foremost musical ensembles. So when they came here to Edina, we performed a concert with them. In the programs that were handed out, there was a long article about how the Dallas brass was originally founded, so I read it. The crazy fact is that the idea of the Dallas Brass came from the Edina band concert in the 1970. When the trombonist, Michael Levine, was a junior in high school, he drove to the Edina Pops concert, and watched the band perform. He stated that it was the concert that changed his life. He grew up in St. Louis Park and wasn’t that interested in music until his junior year in High school, when he randomly went to an Edina “Pops” concert, and it blew him away. From that moment on, he knew that he wanted to play music for a profession. He said that he left that auditorium on such a high, that 38 years later, he still isn’t completely down from it. He has seen hundreds of bands, but non like Edina band. Edina has a strong influence in the Dallas Brass. This article really inspired me, because it shows how lucky I am to be in the Edina band program. Since I want to do music as a career, I am going to have a greater advantage rather than others since I went to Edina. This article and concert changed my perspective on music, and influenced me even more into to doing what I love, playing music. Hopefully one day, I will be able to inspire someone else into doing what they love.

6th post. Political debate!

The new issue of Zaphyrus at our school just came out. It was all about politics. I, personally, am not interested in politics at all, but I thought to myself since this newspaper was written by kids my age, maybe their political views would be more understanding for me. I have a great deal of relatives that are republican and independent. All my friends are democrats. This is not fun for me. I have one friend who is especially into debating about political views. I have been in a car ride where she battles it out with my parents. Let’s just say it is not fun for me. My friend tells me to read the back page about Obama VS McCain. When I read it, it made me a little upset. Instead of stating good things about Obama, and how he can help our country, the author of the article just wrote about how stupid republicans are! He made fun of republicans by actually saying that they are not intelligent. He may not agree with republicans’ point of views and beliefs, but he has no right saying that they are all dumb. The author offended my family. He did a good job writing, but he had so many down putting facts about republicans and their feeling/decisions that it turned me off. What I found the most amusing was at the end of the article when the author wrote that we should all be like liberals and refer to the issues instead of personalities for once. What I hypocrite! In the end this was a disappointing experience for me because I ended up not learning anything about the facts of the candidates, but instead more about how each others personalities are dumb. Hopefully one day I’ll decide for myself what I believe in and fight and talk about the right reasons to vote for a president.

5th post! Katy Perry.

I saw on the cover of a Blender Magazine a picture of Katy Perry, so I picked it up and started reading. My friend had just been recently complaining about how no one knows Katy Perry for any other songs besides “I kissed a Girl”. This frustrated her because she said that her others songs are great and she is a very talented singer. I read the article all about Katy Perry that was in the magazine. It had many details from the beginning of her life all the way to what she does now everyday when she is on tour performing. Katy Perry’s real name was actually Katy Hudson. She lived with two siblings and a mother and father who were both pastors. She began her musical career when she was only 17 with her first album in 2001. Katy acts like she is one of the guys, but in reality she spends 2 hours doing makeup. I find a lot of this humorous because it is hard to imagine a singer such as Katy Perry being born and raised by two Christian Pastors. Another girly aspect of Kerry is the fact that she hasn’t performed a show once without wearing a new and different outfit or style. When I first thought of Katy Perry I thought that she was a new, selfish, spoiled, but after reading this I figured out that she is a human being and that she does have feelings just like the rest of us. It humored me when I found out that not just one, but both of Katy’s parents were pastors, because you usually wouldn’t think that a pastor daughter would be very outgoing like Katy Perry. She is devoted to her fans, and hugs them even if she doesn’t know who they are. I admire that because it shows that she is a nice and outgoing person. I hoped that this taught me never to judge someone based on what other people say on them or their looks, but instead ask and find out who they really are themselves.

4th blog "Cancer" by MCR

Today I was listening to MCR on my ipod. I usually skip this slow and boring song, but today it caught my attention. It is titled “Cancer”. I went home and looked up the lyrics. I assumed that the title was just an attention grabber to have people listen to a stupid and pointless song that had nothing to do with Cancer. I hate it when a title doesn’t have the same meaning as the song. I read the lyrics to the song and realized that they were very touching. It was about this person who was dieing from cancer. He realizes that he is infact going to die no matter what. He doesn’t talk about how horrible it is for him, but instead talks about his love ones. He repeats over and over about how the worst part of everything is leaving “You”. He is talking to a love one and says that he will not kiss you, because it would be too hard for him to let go. The lyrics also include details of what is happening to him. For example, “Cause I'm awful just to see, all my hairs abandoned all my body”. It gives a visual description of what is happening to him and you can tell that he is dieing of cancer, since people lose their hair when going through chemotherapy to fight cancer. These lyrics really got to me because my grandma died of cancer, so I can relate to it. It was very hard for my mother to let her mom go, and so I know how the love one is feeling because my mom had to go through that too. I hope that when others listen to this song, they will understand the trued meaning of it, and that it will touch them in some way.