Top 5 music albums

Five favorite music albums:

5. Yo-yo Ma: Classic Yo-Yo

This list needs a good classical album, and this sampler of Yo-Yo's beautiful cello performances of classical, film soundtrack, and folk is an excellent choice.

4. Evanescence: Fallen

It's a tragedy that Ben Moody left the band; Amy Lee's amazing voice is just a pleasant sound without his songwriting. The words, voice and music combine perfectly in this album.

3. Good Charlotte: Young and the Hopeless

I don't have enough experience with "real" punk bands to compare it to them, and they are geared toward a high-school audience, so I won't claim that Good Charlotte are great rockers. However, they do a good job with their rejection of popular culture and the story, treated in several songs, of how their father left his family when they were 16. Avoid their subsequent sellout album, The Chronicles of Life and Death.

2. Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around

Some of the covers, such as "Tear Stained Letter" are fairly weak, but the power of the rest of the album makes up for it. "The Man Comes Around" and "I Hung My Head" are the best of the album, along with "Hurt" which has one of the few profound music videos ever made.

1. Death Cab for Cutie: Plans

When someone coined the phrase "music to my ears", he was surely talking about this album. Favorite tracks: almost all of them. I could listen to this every day for the rest of my life.





Honorable mention: Some albums that don't quite make the list, or that I haven't listened to enough to include them, are the School of Rock soundtrack (in all seriousness, I want to see the School of Rock give a live concert), Death Cab for Cutie: Transatlanticism, Eiffel 65: Europop (great electronica), and the 5 Browns: No Boundaries.

For other great top five lists, see elgaberino's posthere.

Atoms

So there's this atom.

He says ....

"I think I have lost an electron!"

Another atom asks..
"Are you sure?"

The atom says
"I'm positive!"

yeah.

A neutron walks into a bar, orders a beer, and asks, "How much?"

The bartender says, "For you, no charge."

(thanks to I want you to throw and rsadelle)

My hero

Jesus is awesome. He didn't care what anyone else thought, but did what he knew was right. He protected the weak, shamed the strong, accepted no excuses for himself, needed none. When he was to be arrested, he threw his captors onto their backs in the dirt simply by speaking a word, but let them kill him anyway. Tried for crimes he did not commit, he did not defend himself or plead for his life, but when asked "are you the Christ, the chosen one?" merely said "I am." He walked out of his grave by God's power, in defiant victory over man's most hated and feared enemy, death. He conquered Satan by the power of God's word. He forgave his murderers, the entire human race. Jesus is my hero, the ultimate man.

Herald

I just got my hands, or my hard drive, on the Friday, March 17 issue of the Herald. It was quite helpful in giving me a perspective on the recent events at my college.

I especially appreciated Stefanie H's editorial which called for a calm, sensible response.

comment and I'll email you the issue.

More pictures of my brother

Three more pictures of Caleb (now known as Airman Derby, he leaves Monday for the pansiest boot camp ever). As you can see, he'll have no problem there, because he's xHaRdXcOrEx.







DPK 4 life/ 4 eva! He's the one on the left.






















And the last picture of Caleb. I'll miss him, that punk.

Concert: The 5 Browns

My family went out to see the 5 Browns in concert this evening. The Browns are Desirae, 26, Deondra, 24, Gregory, 22, Melody, 21, and Ryan, 19. They all play piano, together, each on an individual piano. It's quite impressive. You can hear them on their website, but it's definitely more impressive live.

Their quintet pieces included Stravinsky's Firebird, and Bernstein's West Side Story, and an combination of "Simple Gifts" from Copeland's Appalachian Spring and "Going Home" from the New World Symphony.

Gregory, Melody, and Ryan soloed. Gregory played a crazy Superstar Etude No. 1 - a tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis by Aaron Jay Kernis - and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6. The sisters played a piece on one piano, written by Rachmaninov originally for 3 sisters to play together. They played with violinist Bryan Hernandez-Luch, Desirae's husband, in the beautiful "Aquarium" movement of The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns

How did they get to be good enough to be in the Billboard classical top ten for the 50th consecutive week? They started the piano at age 3, studied hard (their own choice, not from excess pressure from their parents), and attended Julliard together. The lucky kids have 10 Steinway Grands at home, 5 for practicing together (4 hours a day during summer) and 5 for individual practice (another 4 hours).

As an encore, they played Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, possibly their best piece. To not play it at the concert would have been like Panic! at the Disco not playing "Time to Dance" in their show (true story.. I was mad).

The Browns produced a self-titled album last year and just released their second, No Boundaries. They say No Boundaries is even better, but the first contains the Flight of the Bumblebee. Both are available in a dual-disc set with DVD.

Check their tour page regularly at the5browns.com. If they don't have a show near you, I expect that dates are being added on a regular basis.