Been listening to Jellyfish a lot lately. They had two albums, Bellybutton in 1990 and Spilt Milk in 1993. I remember how stunned I was when I first heard them, years after they had broken up. If only their sound had caught the world on fire instead of Kurt Cobain’s mumbling grunge in the ’90s, think of where we might be now. Unfortunately, last I heard, Roger Manning and Andy Sturmer — whose songwriting partnership was the band’s driving force — were on the outs, and never want to work together again. Manning went on to join Imperial Drag, and later the Moog Cookbook, and he has a solo album out now. Sturmer contributed his excellent songwriting skills to Puffy AmiYumi, a Japanese pop duo that had their own show on the Cartoon Network. But Jellyfish’s two albums remain their shining achievement.

“New Mistake” was the second single from Spilt Milk, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the best song they ever wrote. I intend to cover this song one day.

Sooner or later I need to find a copy of their Fan Club box set, with all the outtakes, acoustic renditions, and live performances they recorded. Unfortunately, it’s out of print and going for up to $200 on eBay.

I came across this soundtrack today and was absolutely blown away. I haven’t played a video game in years, but after hearing this score, I have to play this one. The last time I heard a score this gorgeous was Yasunori Mitsuda’s soundtrack to Chrono Cross, which to this day I find to be some of the best musical composition I’ve ever heard. I have a feeling Leon Willett is going to join the ranks of John Williams for this lush, vibrant work of art. That he supposedly accomplished this entirely with synths and midi samples instead of live players is even more extraordinary.

I don’t talk much about my religious beliefs. Some of my friends know that I am a Christian, but it usually doesn’t get much deeper than that. I remember how surprised my friend Paul was when he found out I went to church — apparently I was a lot less pushy and close-minded than the Christians he was used to. It’s always been sort of a private matter for me. I’m not afraid of talking about it if it comes up; it’s just not usually a conversation starter. The only evangelism I really take part in is an attempt to live by example. I’m not much for proselytizing.

But I would like to break away from that just once and tell you why I believe in God. Because I think I just figured it out for myself today.

I spent a long part of my youth figuring out what it was that drew me to Christianity, as opposed to other religions, and was satisfied with my conclusions. I’ll spare you the details, but I will note that I have never been satisfied with the question of why I believed in God in the first place. And as a result, I have had long bouts of serious uncertainty as to whether I really do believe. Often times it feels like I’m going through the motions, or trying to believe as a “just in case” measure.

Penn Jillette (half of the comedy magic act Penn & Teller, and a research fellow at the Cato Institute) once wrote an essay explaining why he was an atheist, and how it affected his life. He had clearly thought out all of the hard questions. To him, the removal of God from the picture made the things and people around him all the more precious. I have a lot of respect for that position, because it is honest. And I must admit it was a persuasive argument, one that has been present in all my doubtful moments since I first read it. But I have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t work for me.

You see, yesterday I was married. Outdoors in perfect weather, it was a lovely ceremony. Katie was beautiful, and the way she recited her vows… if only you could have heard the honesty and enthusiasm in her words the way that I did, her heart in her voice; there really is nothing like that sound. No matter how well I sing, it will never be as beautiful. I was surrounded by family and old friends, most of whom were from halfway across the country. My family had flown in from Baltimore, hers from Pittsburgh. And my friends… I had family friends from Nashville who have known me since the day I was born, old friends who came from Washington, D.C., Corpus Christi, and Kansas, and friends who have been there for me since I’ve lived in Austin. My best friend for ten years toasted us. I got to dance with my mother, and with my grandmother. And my father, who I admire more than anyone in the world, told me he was proud of me.

During the reception, my aunt, who is also my godmother, mentioned that she could not find an appropriate card for the occasion. Instead, she gave me a copy of the song My Wish, by Rascal Flatts (here’s a clip). Today, after Kate and I got home, we took a listen to it.

I should hate everything about this song. It’s the pop country equivalent of a monster ballad. It’s not written by the band. It’s formulaic and emotionally manipulative. And yet, when I listened to it, it struck a chord within me. Because despite all that, I knew that it was exactly what my aunt, who my mother has referred to as “the sweet one” in their family, wanted to say. Because I know that she really meant every word. And because I know that the line “And while you’re out there gettin’ where you’re gettin’ to / I hope you know somebody loves you / And wants the same things too” resonates with every person who was there, and that it is their sincerity that makes the song special.

And so a while later, when Kate and I lay down for a nap, exhausted from the weekend, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about how so many people had made a significant effort to be there. How all of them cared enough about us to go out of their way. How I truly felt so loved, by everyone. And suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I had been meaning all weekend to stop a moment to pray, just sort of as a ritual to say “thank you” to whatever higher power is up there. But I was constantly interrupted and could never find the right words. I was choked up, and needed to stand, so I thought I would step out of the bedroom and try again.

Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was, as my wife would suggest, that I just hadn’t quite mentally prepared for it all. But I walked into the living room, knelt, and broke down and cried like a baby. Because all I could think about was how I don’t really deserve what I have. How all of these people who cared enough about me to be there would one day — not soon, but one day — be gone. And how fully I understood that all of those people cared for me, and how I never wanted it to end.

So yes, I believe in God. Because I have to. Because unlike Jillette, I am greedy. The time I have with these people, whom I love so much, is not enough. My whole life with Kate is ahead of us, and it’s still not enough. Thirty years from now it will still not be enough. Because I cannot bear the thought that the time we share here and now is all that I get.

And because I would rather believe that all of these things — a sweet, caring, beautiful wife, and a supportive family, and such good friends — are given to me, not as a reward but as a kindness that I do not deserve, rather than a random chance in a world where so many have so little. To put it succinctly, it seems wrong not to owe my thanks to someone for the life I have found.

To all of you who came to see us; to all of you who could not be there but were with us in spirit; to all of you who cheered for us, and supported us, and watched over us, and gave us your love… thank you. Thank you for everything. I will try my best to deserve what all of you have given. We will try our best to make you proud.

Muse was robbed!

Day 3 of ACL turned out to be more fun than the previous two days. The weather smiled upon us in a number of ways. It was raining in the morning before we headed out to the festival, but the sky cleared up by the time Kate, Josh, Dan and I arrived. We got there a good hour before the shows we were going to see, but Dan took a head start over to see Matisyahu while the rest of us perused the art booths while listening to Patrice Pike in the background. She was surprisingly good, much like Charlie Sexton from the day before. A solid show with a solid vocalist.

We made our way to see Ween. Unfortunately, they’re just not a festival band. Much like Gnarls Barkley on Friday, they were decent but they just weren’t really pulling the show off. Halfway through, Josh ditched for Matisyahu. Kate and I stuck it out to hear the highlights of the show, like “Bannanas and Blow” and “Even If You Don’t,” from the White Pepper album. But overall, the show fell a bit flat.

We met up with Josh and Dan for food, but split up again as they went to see Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. Kate and I chose to check out the Greencards instead. Kate’s a bigger fan than I am, but they were good. The performance was solid and their music was fun; unfortunately their sound was plagued with a lot of bleed coming from the Ben Harper show, and it was hard to hear them on the softer stuff. On a personal note, they seemed a little cocky on stage, which turned me off a little. But when you’re good, you’re good, I guess. They ended earlier than Ben Harper, so Kate and I went early to stake out a good spot for Muse, where Josh and Dan would meet us.

Muse was absolutely the best show of the festival. Energetic, explosive, and loud, they delivered a live show that was arguably better than their recorded work, which is a real accomplishment. Everything — the music, the sound, the lights — was “on” during their performance, and everyone agreed that they put on the best show of the festival. Unfortunately, they were robbed of their final fifteen minutes; someone decided that all stages had to cut power once Tom Petty went on.

It is therefore deliciously ironic that Petty’s performance got rained out about thirty minutes into it. By then, we were driving home.

Yesterday saw the beginning of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, our hometown’s annual 3-day romp in Zilker park. I’ve got a 3-day ticket and a free weekend, so here’s my rundown of how it’s been going.

My first-day experience was terrible; I was late getting out of work, which was a bad time to begin with, and by then my friends had taken off without me. So I was angry, hungry, and tired when I met up with Kate and Josh at the festival just before 4. I grabbed some food, and then Kate took off to see Nickel Creek while Josh and I headed over to see Gnarls Barkley.

I was looking forward to seeing Gnarls Barkley, since Josh and I ran across them on YouTube and have been impressed with their album, St. Elsewhere. It was a little disappointing; the sound was poorly mixed (I’m told that this particular stage had problems all day), Cee-Lo rambled a bit too much to hold the festival crowd, and for a 1-hour show, there were an awful lot of covers. Neither of us were feeling it. We met up with Kate, who said Nickel Creek was fabulous, so I guess I chose… poorly.

Josh and I left the festival afterwards; he was feeling sick and I was just too tired and still ticked off from work, and my sandals were killing my feet. We both figured we’d make it back for either John Mayer or Van Morrison, but he lost track of time and I was just too tired. Turns out that was another mistake because Kate came back saying Mayer was fabulous as well. So I wasn’t feeling too good about my first day.

…

After a restful night, I convinced myself that today would be better. I wasn’t excited about anyone on the lineup today, but maybe I would find something new. Josh sat today out; he’s still burned out, probably from too much exercise the past few weeks. Kate and I took her brother Dan and her friend Janelle with us today.

The girls headed off to see Nada Surf, which I have always disliked, so Dan and I checked out The Secret Machines. I think the secret is that they suck. Dan described the sound as “The Cure meets Elton John,” though I think the emphasis is on the former. We left after about three songs, which were long and kind of pointless. I like long songs, but they need solid musicianship to hold them up. These weren’t going anywhere — just pointless repitition.

Instead we caught the tail end of Ian McLagan and the Bump Band, which was enjoyable. Decent blues bar-rock. Older guys know how to play — these young bands don’t really hold a candle to them. Singer sounded a little like Rod Stewart, which was cool.

I met up with Kate after that, and as Dan and Janelle took off to see the Shins, we checked out Los Lobos. Los Lobos is a great band, I have a lot of respect for them, but I am pretty bored by their music. The mix of tejano and country and rock influences makes for a wide variety of sound, but I’m pretty specific about what I like. They performed very well, though. We stuck around until it was time for Charlie Sexton to start at another stage.

Charlie Sexton is probably the most solid act I saw today. I’ve railed against Austin’s deluge of singer-songwriters, but at least Sexton rocks out. He had a couple good songs that I’d like to hear again, too (particularly “Burn”), which is saying something for a band I’ve never heard before. Definitely worth seeing.

The rest of our group joined us halfway through Charlie Sexton, and we all stuck around the same stage for hometown heroes What Made Milwaukee Famous. I’d heard good things about them from Kate, so I wanted to hear them. They didn’t blow me away, though. I dug the frontman’s lyrical proficiency, but the music didn’t grab me. The instrumentation wasn’t complex enough for my tastes.

I split off from the group to hear the South Austin Jug Band instead, and I’m glad I did. Hippy bluegrass, you could call it. Two guitars, a banjo, a mandolin, and a bass. And they were all very good, particularly the banjo and mandolin players. Their instrumental stuff was fantastic. I should get Kate out to see them more often, she’d love it.

I met up with the group again to check out Kings of Leon. That was my biggest disappointment today. I’d heard great things about them, but they didn’t live up to the hype at all. Their opening number was an absolute mess; screams inserted into the vocals, drumming that didn’t match the rest of the instrumentation — I don’t even know what the drums were supposed to be doing in that song; I literally couldn’t find the beat. We stuck around for a couple more songs but it was pretty clear that these guys were pretty talentless, and the music was just raw and boring.

Kate and Dan followed me to see if Explosions In The Sky were any better. They were for a little while, until we realized that this was an experimental instrumental band. I’d be fine with that, but for it to work you have to be technically proficient with the instruments. These guys were just wanking about, making noise. You’d have to be high, and I just don’t do that.

We ended the day with Willie Nelson. I’m not a big fan of Willie, but he’s a true country icon, and when he and Merle are gone, country music is over, as far as I’m concerned. And Willie was a staple of Austin music in the late 60s, so I wanted to take the opportunity to see him live. There were some issues with sound — the music was so low that people in the back of the crowd were chanting “Turn it up!” until it was fixed. Aside from that, it was a pretty good show. I enjoyed it enough to be glad I went. Kate enjoyed it even more.

All in all, it was a fun day. I heard some new things, some things I liked, some things I didn’t, and I got to spend time with Kate and my friends. It really made up for having missed out yesterday. Here are a few random observations:

• I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the marijuana odor was no more prevalent at Willie Nelson’s show than any other; usually it’s hard to tell whether the audience is there because they’re fans of Willie or because they’re fans of getting high.
• I never realized text messaging could actually be useful. Our group used it to communicate and gather, since talking on the phone would be nigh impossible.
• Comfortable shoes make all the difference in the world. Sandals don’t cut it.
• Austin breeds musicians who can actually sing on key. Charlie Sexton, the singer from Milwaukee, the Jug Band, Willie Nelson — they’re all from here and they all sing well. It’s pretty nice, since so many other singers sound like they can’t hit the notes. Some of them do that on purpose, too, which drives me nuts (I’m looking at you, Rhett Miller!).
• I picked up a big belt buckle that says “HANK” on it in big block letters. Maybe I’ll give it to Josh, since he was absent today.

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to seeing Ween and Muse. Hopefully Josh will be feeling up to making it out there with us, too.

Well, as critical as I have been of Drupal, it turns out that Joomla is even worse.

The advantages I thought it would provide just evaporated once I started really digging into it. The GigCalendar I liked so much doesn’t work on MySQL 5, for reasons that can be chalked up to shoddy programming. There is no built-in forum on Joomla, either. There are a lot of various forum modules and bridges to connect to other forum software, and I had intended to use them, but they were more effort than they were worth. In the end I realized I could do the same thing with Drupal. Once comments and forums were out of the equation, user registration was no longer an issue, which means that the separate admin interface of Joomla was no longer a major plus, either.

What’s more, Joomla introduced a host of new problems, not the least of which is the fact that program logic isn’t completely separated from page design — in order to have complete control over the page design I would have to hack the code. Joomla’s codebase is also in a state of flux, with a highly anticipated upgrade on the horizon and no guarantee of compatibility with the current version. And to make matters worse, the community attitude is even less helpful than that of Drupal, with people playing the “volunteer” card and fanboy watchdogs populating the forum. You know the kind I mean — people who attack any and all criticism with hypersensitivity and the notion that open source developers don’t need to live up to their commitments since they aren’t getting paid. At least Drupal’s developers take their work seriously.

Despite the problems I have with Drupal, there are a few things that it does really well. The module system is excellent and there are more and more modules becoming available. No GigCalendar yet, but I’m willing to bet someone will put it together. The template system is also far better and more stable than the alternatives. And Drupal is gaining a lot of acceptance and prominence in the community — it is a fast-growing project with good promotion and good documentation. I can’t say the same for Joomla.

I learned a few things from the experiment, such as the fact that requiring user registration in order to comment on my posts is a major obstacle for people. With the exception of Consul and Kate, I can’t even get my friends to post here; what makes me think I can get strangers to do so? I was requiring user registration to keep spam comments out. It worked flawlessly in that regard, but there are other solutions that might accomodate random posters better. And I did find the excellent PunBB while working with Joomla. I’d prefer an integrated forum solution, but Drupal’s integrated forum is pretty lackluster right now.

I also learned that I’m pretty embarrassed by most of the writing I’ve done on the site. I think my writing has improved significantly since I was in college, but it’s clear that the things I was focused on two years ago are not the things I’m focused on now. When I started this site I originally intended to have an all-encompassing community site, with news and forums and chat and all sorts of things. Now I want to focus less on the happenings in the outside world and more on myself. And even then, the focus should be on my music, not on my opinions. Hence the move of the blog off the front page.

One other little change prompted by the site migration: referring to my music as “symphonic rock” instead of “progressive rock.” The fact is that what I do isn’t terribly “progressive” these days — most of that territory was mined in the ’70s. Besides, I think “symphonic rock” has a nicer ring to it.