Ice Ice Baby by Diana Ciuca

Ice, Ice, Baby.

Cool, clean, cute: ICE. Ice watches are simple, silicone, and stylish. I apologize for all the alliteration but these watches really have got me amped. I have a watch: it’s black, metallic, Kenneth Cole, but it doesn’t particularly stand out. However, it is functional, as watches are. I suppose that is another often overlooked point; not only are watches fashionable, but they conveniently tell you the time.

Now, instead of having to dig in your purse or pocket to whip out your cell phone to check the time, you can easily look at the nice accessory on your wrist known as a watch. I hope they haven’t lost their practical value since cell phones have rapidly replaced them.
Now that you’re convinced that life without a watch is meaningless – and that a cell phone is not a watch – allow me to demonstrate why an ice watch is the hottest new thing to grab. While working, I complimented a customer whose watch seriously stood out (prior to being introduced to Ice watches) was one with a studded faceplate and braided-texture silicone band akin to an ice watch.

Similarly, a week later I read an article in Neurology Now featuring Cindy McCain, John McCain’s wife, sporting a similar item in white. I was given a purple one to review. That’s the beauty of these ice watches: they come in such a variety of colors that they can be easily matched or mixed up. While I’m bland and prefer black, nothing stopped my mother from “borrowing” my watch and receiving some praise about it, too. Even if my fancy customer and Cindy McCain might have worn different brands than Ice Watch, only this brand has so many different colors, from plain white with different faceplates to a plethora of band colors to match the season (check out their new winter line!). Buy them and wear them like skittles, or have only one that makes you stand out every day.
For more info, check out www.ice-watch.com.  My video is coming soon!!

Drowning Pool Interview

Drowning Pool Phone Interview:

Paige: Well, first I would like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us (Rock Star Stories) today.
Drowning Pool: Yeah, not a problem.
Paige: First why don’t you tell us how you first got started in performing music? Did you always know as a child that this would be the career path for you?
Drowning Pool: Um.. You know honestly we didn’t think about it as a career for a long time, we just enjoyed doing it always. You know Mike and I had a little garage band at the end of High School you know it was just something we did for fun… and then we started doing it for the four of us.. you know me and Mike, CJ and Dave around Dallas to really have fun play clubs, earn money you know in our younger days it was mostly revolved around the parties.. Have a big fun.
Paige: So you would say this was mostly for leisure and the crowd’s pleasure?
Drowning Pool: Yeah, and you know slowly but surely just over the course of a year… every time we played it would turn into a mad house and one of our songs goes to a local radio station and everyone goes crazy so then here we are the four of us living in this little tiny crappy one bedroom apartment together and every label in the country is calling our old school roaders phone. It was just a real time that went from not taking anything then BOOM it’s a real career.
Paige: What was your first song that became widely played on the radio?
Drowning Pool: Well the first song in Dallas was a song called Tear Away, and that was the songs that lead us to a record deal. Once we had that record deal, the label decides that the first song should be Bodies, and that was our first nationwide song.
Paige: And what is that song about?
Drowning Pool: Bodies? Its about kids in a mosh pit. It was a song we wrote about our live show. It was kind of like our prospective from the stage you know seeing kids moshing, stage diving and all that crazy stuff.
Paige: So would you say you are happy that the Nation recognized you by that first hit? Were you happy to be known as the group who sang that song Bodies?
Drowning Pool: Yeah of course. You know here it is, we’re ten years later after that song came out and every night we played it, people would just lose their mind you know? I don’t know what it is that’s so relatable about that song, but you know ten years later people still go nuts every time we perform that song. You know every time we play it just seeing the crowd react that way it just gives the song energy for us.
Paige: With writing song you must have some inspiration from somewhere. Do you get it from a certain object, or other bands that you look up to?
Drowning Pool: Most inspiration comes from facing your idea that what you want to do and what you want to write as a kid and what you used to listen to and for us, it was a lot of Metallica, Anthrax, Motley Crew, and mostly the bands big in the late 80’s. That’s mostly where the bands identity I would say evolved.
Paige: What have you guys been up to now? Are you out across the nation touring?
Drowning Pool: Yeah we’re on tour with Five finger Death Punch and God Smack right now.
Paige: What city are you currently located in?
Drowning Pool: Today, we are in Sacramento.
Paige: What would you say your favorite venue to play there is? Or in general?
Drowning Pool: Today we are at the Arco Arena, but theirs a lot of cities we do really well in Kansas city, Dallas, Denver, but there is one venue though that I love that Ive been to but we’ve never been able to play a show there called Red Rocks in Denver. Have you heard of it?
Paige: Actually, no I haven’t? Tell us a little about why you like it.
Drowning Pool: It’s like this outdoor little amphitheater that’s kind of built into the mountain.. it’s an awesome place. If you watch U2, they have a live video shot at Red Rocks. It’s just a really awesome place.
Paige: When you aren’t touring, what do you tend to do on your down time? Do you spend it with the band, family friends?
Drowning Pool: Well, we are all huge football fans so we spend a lot of time on the bus watching games. We even have our own Drowning Pool fantasy league. A lot of stuff is very sports related for us.
Paige: So being from Dallas, im assuming you’re all big Cowboy fans?
Drowning Pool: Absolutely, living in Dallas my whole live im a huge Cowboys fan.
Paige: During the tour do you have a way for your fans to follow you and see news updates from the band?
Drowning Pool: We have all that cool stuff: Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and our own personal website. We are all into Social Networking for our fans.
Paige: Thank You very much for taking the time to talk with us today and good luck with the rest of your touring.
Drowning Pool: No Problem, Thank you for talking with me.

Bell and Sebastian Review

Belle and Sebastian Write about Love
by Melanie Hemminger

Being compared to legendary indie acts such as Bob Dylan and The Smiths, Belle and Sebastian have made a name for themselves in one very competitive music industry. In 1996 the indie music industry was blowing up in the UK, and one band in particular was on top. Oasis had just released their third album and it was the fastest selling album in the UK chart history. How would a band come out of the woodworks at a time where a band was dominating the UK music industry? Belle and Sebastian managed to come out of Oasis’s shadow with one song that defined the bands name and sound.
In 1996 Belle and Sebastian formed over in Glasgow. Current member, Stuart Murdoch, and past member, Stuart David, came together and decided to record some demos at Stow College. The recorded these demos with professor Alan Rankine. The college had a label itself called Electric Honey. The label usually only produced one single a year, however with the talent the boys showed they recorded the debut album, Tigermilk.
The band had become so popular it was time to recruit some new members, and so both Stuart’s did. Stevie Jackson (guitar and vocals), Isobel Campbell (cello/vocals), Chris Geddes (keys) and Richard Colburn (drums), Sarah Martin (violin/vocals) were recruited as members of Belle and Sebastian. With the new members all settled in, the band preceded to make a sophomore album known as, If Your’re Falling Sinister. Spin magazine had even labeled it was one of the 100 greatest albums with the time periods 1985 to 2005. The growing success of the band even led them to sign with Jeepster Records. The band followed their sophomore album with two EPs: Lazy Line Painter Jane and 3..6..9 Seconds of Light. The band would release albums and EPs from 1996 to present never disappointing.
Belle and Sebastian are now back at it again performing live since almost four years ago. They just dropped their eighth studio album which is titled “Belle and Sebastian Write About Love.” “I Want the World to Stop” is a timeless indie song. The melodic tones when the chorus comes together is easily stuck in your head for days to follow. Having female and male vocalist on such tracks such as “I Didn’t See It Coming” and “Write About Love” adds a unique touch to album the album, and they can undoubtably be labeled as a “feel good” song. Unlike a typical indie band, Belle and Sebastian also use many instruments in there song. They of coarse have the typical guitar, bass, and drums, but they also have violin, keys, and cello. Those fine touches add to this bands unique sound.
Belle and Sebastian are filled with such great passion, and one can tell that they put that passion in to each and every song. There newest album Belle and Sebastian Write About Love is a cd you should consider picking off the shelf next time you at the record store.

Matt and Kim Concert Review


By Diana Ciuca

I have great difficulty characterizing concerts. They are composed of the quality of music, the band and the crowd. That’s a given. But, concerts can be phenomenal for a singular reason, possibly a gag (like balloons or feathers) or a beautiful person (there are tons of those at concerts), not necessarily a combination of those three factors. Last night, the Matt and Kim concert was amazing not because of their unique music or the insane crowd, but due to the band’s energy.

Kim, with the widest, goofiest smile on her face, hopped around the stage when she was not beating her drums vigorously. She occasionally stood on the drums, ever-raising the audience’s energy level. The variety of their songs did not matter, everyone just ate it all up with smiles on their faces the whole time. However repetitive the songs may have seemed – you can’t expect too much diversity from only a synthesizer keyboard and drum set – the duo threw in a few exciting covers, like Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend” and Major Lazer’s “Pon De Floor” which featured Kim wildly shaking her booty.
Finally, Matt announced that he was playing the last ‘thong’ (since apparently that’s what he slipped and said at a concert in Louisiana where he got too man thongs thrown on stage). He prefaced it by saying that this is a song that you should listen to if you ever need to cheer up, and that’s all I could think of while dancing to it.

I also have a tendency to go unprepared to concerts, either bringing the wrong shoes or too much stuff. By now I should be an expert, only wearing sneakers and bringing a cell phone and wallet. This concert was a point in case of my stupidity. At the Passion Pit concert, I lost my bag; at the Against Me! concert I lost my shoes. Now, I somehow held onto both but wasn’t as able to fully enjoy the constant motion of the crowd. My huge purse hung around my neck as I pushed and was shoved around. I had just gotten acrylic nails for the first time, and was so afraid of breaking a nail. As girly as that may sound, my alternative was to protect my nails and fist pump throughout the concert. Somehow no one was bothered by my Jersey Shore-like habits since they all were in their own realm of joy.

This was a happy concert. You could just lose yourself in the high energy and strong beat. I was happy as a lark (singing causes dopamine release in birds, surprisingly). So, I highly suggest that even if you may think all their songs sound the same, they are worth seeing for whatever price even if the concert was only $15. I left less stressed and sporting everybody’s sweat, not only mine, but also sporting a big, albeit exhausted, smile.