Your Vegas. No, not My Vegas. That would just be silly.

I have recently come across a CD that I thought I had lost. That CD had to do with a band called Your Vegas. Yay. Another small band that has yet to do anything worthy to join the realm of bands that are actually known. (Cue the party noise makers, or whatever)

Anyway, even though they have only produced an EP (Extended Play, you unknowing reader, you) I recommend you try to find them. I suspect youtube will work. They are like...cool people. I would know, because I saw them be the opening act to a Duran Duran concert, so they must be cool people. I mean, I even managed to hang out with the singer for a few minutes to get my CD case signed. Yeah, CD case. Take that, piracy.

Long story short, I was kind of floored by how committed (For lack of a better word) the band was. The singer, who I'm pretty sure is Coyle Girelli, had a broken leg. Or maybe it was Mat Steel. I forget. Anyway, point is that even though the singer had a broken leg, he still was on stage singing his heart out, and hopping around every now and then to look silly. It was one of the more captivating performances in my life, until Duran Duran finally came on stage. But I'm not talking about them. Yet.

They are a rock band that is on the 'lighter' spectrum of what is known as rock. I say lighter because they don't really have any screaming vocals, clean/clear or otherwise. And they sing about issues that people should actually give a damn about, like war. War is a good thing to sing about, right?

If you are one of those people who just reads this to be amused, well...go look them up. I'm done rambling about nothing today.

Lostprophets. They aren't actually lost.

Well, unless you have no idea where the eff Wales is. (It's in the UK, by the way. Just for that one twit who reads this that doesn't know)

So anyway, Lostprophets. If we're to trust Wikipedia (Which is the worst idea in the world, by the way. Who knows how many people have edited articles so they contain false information), they are a rock band. That is about as general of a description as you can get. Unless it just said "a band", or something stupidly similar. But I digress.

They're a bunch of pretty cool bros. They play music and everything. Like, good music. Of course, they aren't as big as some bands, but who cares, right? It means that when they become the most popular band in the world, I'll be one of those smug people who knew who they were before you. Like now, for example.

As I love to keep people in the dark, I recommend you Youtube them, and listen to the oldest song of theirs that you can find. Afterwards, listen to their most recent album. I find it interesting as to how a band can be so diverse. I guess that's why their considered a rock band. Meh. You'll figure it out when you listen to them. (Which I assume you are, since I recommended that you do. That includes you people who like to read blogs without commenting on anything)

Ian Watkins (The lead singer, you ignorant person, you) likes to pretend he's emo and have clichéd emo hair, all while singing/screaming words that make you contemplate the greater questions of life. Except it's uplifting and happy and stuff. It works really well. I guess Lee Gaze, Mike Lewis, and Stuart Richardson help out by producing backing vocals, or whatever. But, yeah. Emo hair. Who knew. (Why the eff does it matter how someone's hair looks like, anyway? It works. Besides, he hasn't killed himself yet, so he can't possibly be an actual emo person, because the only real emos are dead.)

Tangents and digressions aside, the point of this is that you should check them out. I was going to complain and stuff about bands that were really clichéd, and were awful, but I figured those 3 people who read this blog actually deserve something good for the first band I talked about.

What's In A Song?

Getting straight to the point...

What exactly is in a song?

Well, I suppose at the most basic level, you could say that a song contains vocals, along with the noise of musical instruments. But, is it really that simple? If you're the kind of person who doesn't care about what is in a song, I wouldn't hate you for making it that simple, but why the eff would you be reading this blog if you were such a simpleton? Anyway, I don't think a song is that simple. No way, no how. Not with the diversity that we have in this day and age. The implications would shatter my feeble little mind.

Unless you've created an a cappella song, or an instrumental piece, there are two pieces that makes a song what it is: Vocals (lyrics), and Noise (musical instruments). Like I said above. Anyway, I think that to see what is really in a song, we need to delve deeper into each of the two pieces (we'll just exclude a cappella and instrumentals for now). Well, let's start with the noise. What instruments did they choose to create the noise? How does the noise sound (tone, pitch, blah blah blah)? What do the instruments look like? Brand, model number, colour...anything. And then comes the vocals. What tone and pitch are the vocals in? How do those two things vary? What choice of words were used?

Taking all this into account, I can safely say that a song consists of the emotions of the artist(s), on top of the vocals and lyrics. Look at a band like Jimmy Eat World. At times, all I think Jim Adkins is doing is moaning in either a condenser or dynamic microphone, but I bet he has a good reason that he decided to put moaning into the song. Of course, that's some quirky Emo band that no one listens to. I think they go by Alternative Rock now, though. I think that's why I started listening to them. On another point on the spectrum, we have something like In Flames. Instead of moaning like you're in a certain soft-core industry, you have screaming that will take days to figure out what is actually being said. Instead of chords and licks and riffs that might be catchy, you have people just going "BWUEIHRGWOFIJWIHWEABABALGH" onto guitar strings with their fingers and making it sound good.

The only thing I worry about is whether comparing those two bands is a good idea.