Well yesterday I got my wisdom teeth taken out. Yeah, tons of fun, I know. It was a strange experience for me, considering I had never had actual surgery or been put under before. Surprisingly enough, I was actually kind of nervous coming into it, which, if you know me, is strange because I like to pride myself on being laid back at all times. I was very NOT laid back this time. So the doctor put the IV in and I had no idea what to expect. I felt totally awake and then the next thing I know, I was waking up an hour later. My entire face was numb, which can be incredibly frustrating when you're trying to talk. I guess that wore off in about an hour after the surgery. Then the REAL fun started. My mouth hurt so much worse than I ever expected it to. I was miserable. Then the good ol' meds kicked in and I felt great. Luckily, my friend Morgan got hers out that same day, so we were comparing stories and pain all day. Its a refreshing feeling to have someone going through the exact same stuff you are.
This give a whole new meaning to the term "getting swole"
My face wasn't especially swollen yesterday, but today it got a little worse. Fortunately, I've had a big old ice pack stuck to my face to hide the swollen-ness. Thank God for the little things, I guess.
In other news, my big brother Collin got called up to the AA team in the minor leagues last week. He got to start and pitched really well. Needless to say, I'm a proud brother. Hopefully he'll be able to stay there the rest of the season, or even get moved up to AAA. By the way, he writes an awesome blog called "A Day Older, A Day Wiser". You should definitely go and read it because it gives great insight into what it means to be a minor league pitcher and also a newlywed couple. Go check it out.
I recently found out that one of my favorite bands of the last year or so just came out with a new CD. Company of Thieves is an alternative band based out of Chicago. This three-piece came out with their first CD a couple of years ago and I've been listening to it ever since. The lead singer, Genevieve Schatz, has a powerful voice that complements the music in a very unique way. Anyways, I'm stoked to get their new album and I hope its as good, if not better, than the last one. Here's their singles "Oscar Wilde" and "Death of Communications" from their first and second albums, respectively. Enjoy!
Well my first year of college life is officially over. Honestly, I feel like I just moved into my dorm last week. It flew by that much. Its hard to believe that it's over and I'm back home in Atlanta living with my parents again. Needless to say, it's an adjustment. Not necessarily a bad one though. I'm truly excited to see all of my high school friends again. I've missed them quite a bit. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to see a lot of my college friends this summer because they're from all over the place. Anyways, there are a lot of things I'm going to miss about not being at college this summer and probably an equal amount of things I'm NOT going to miss.
So I've made a list of pros and cons of moving back home. Enjoy.
Pros:
1. No more Mcallie (that's our dining hall, which consists of the laziest workers on the face of the earth. Oh yeah, and the food sucks big time)
2. I don't have to worry about school work for FOUR MONTHS. Awesome.
3. I'll actually have a job in Atlanta. Sorry Murfreesboro, I'm kind of starting to get sick of your over-saturation. Seriously.
4. I'll get to hang out with some of my best friends in the entire world. You guys know who you are.
5. My sister and brother-in-law live close (relatively) now. I guess the same goes for all of my family. Oh wait, nevermind that because Evan lives in Nashville and Collin is in Port St. Lucie. Eryn, I'm glad you're still in Atlanta.
That's all the pros I can think of so far so here are the Cons:
1. I won't get to see most of my college friends until next semester. You guys also know who you are. I already miss you guys.
2. I'll probably find myself being incredibly bored at certain times this summer. Its bound to happen.
3. I won't be able to go to the rec center at MTSU and play pick-up basketball games with people who automatically think I'm bad. Its ok, I relish the idea of proving them wrong.
So I think that's all I've got at this point, but thanks for putting up with all of these posts these past two semesters. I understand if they're pretty lame. And I'm totally ok with that.
As you go, I'll leave you with a video of I think 3 songs from this guy that I've been listening to like crazy for a while. His name is Conor O'Brian (yes, of course he's Irish) and he's the frontman for a band called The Villagers. They're awesome so enjoy. Oh yeah, try to ignore his terrible teeth. They can be a bit of a distraction.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for not keeping all you guys updated in blog form. I guess I've just been a little more scatterbrained this semester than I had originally expected. Nonetheless, there have been some happenings in my life that some might consider significant. Of course, I'm referring to me cutting my hair.
Yep thats right, it actually happened. Let the record show that COLBY MCHUGH CUT HIS HAIR OF HIS OWN FREE WILL. Normally, I wouldn't be making a big deal out of this at all, but it seems that it is in fact quite a huge deal (at least according to all the people who no longer recognize me, which is a little too many for my comfort). People keep asking me, "What made you cut it?" and I always give them the same answer: "It was just the right time, I guess". That's really the only way I know how to describe the decision. I figured I'd played around with the long hair for a while, and now people had begun associating Colby McHugh with long hair. What mean when I say that is that having hair became all I was to everyone around me and nothing more. I didn't like that. So, I figured the best way to deal with that was to just cut it without telling anyone, and then see their reactions one by one. I must say, it was quite entertaining watching friends look at me and do triple takes before they realized it was me. What's funny to me is the fact that, up here at MTSU, people don't even know what to think of me with short hair and back home in Atlanta, I'm back to normal in their eyes. Its backwards almost. Whatever, I'm sick of talking about it at this point.
One thing I'm NOT sick of talking about is music, of course. I've really been listening to a super talented singer/songwriter from Minneapolis named Matt Moberg. The first thing that got me about him was his unique voice. The only person I can think of that he really sounds like is a guy named Joshua James, who I talked about in a post a while back. The second thing that got me was his great songwriting. He tells stories and paints pictures with his songs, which is something that I've always enjoyed and appreciated in writers. Anyways watch these videos, and let me know if you like him as much as I do. Oh yeah, I almost forgot! His EP is FREE on Noisetrade.com! There, now there's no excuse to not go out and get his music! Enjoy!
So I just had my Spring Break last week. Its so strange to think that second semester is already halfway over. I mean seriously, it seems like I just got here a couple weeks ago. Anyways, I decided that I would go to Chattanooga with a couple friends and stay at their lakehouse/cabin in kind of the middle of nowhere. Coming into this, I didn't really know what to expect, I just knew I was going to be hanging out with some friends doing who knows what.
When we got up to the cabin, we immediately realized that we had ZERO phone service and ZERO internet. Personally, I was pretty much ok with that. I'm normally pretty solid without internet. Unfortunately for my friend Nigel, he needed internet in order to be able to Skype with his girlfriend and his family in Australia and Malaysia. Needless to say, he got bored pretty quickly. One of the first things we realized was that there were literally tons of wasps everywhere. Our first order of business was to kill them. The thing was that whenever we thought we had gotten all of them, some more would just appear the next morning. I think we got the magic number up to 21 before we finally got rid of the dreaded wasps.
The other thing we realized was that we didn't exactly have a lot to do except watch whatever movies they had up at the cabin. Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you look at it), all of the movies they had were VHS tapes. Man, that brought back some memories. I had forgotten what it meant to have to rewind a movie before watching it. We wound up watching everything from Fight Club to The Jungle Book. We even went and tried some fishing, which eventually ended up with us just standing out at the dock and not even getting a nibble.
Long story short, I had a great time at the cabin. I loved just being able to hang out with some cool people and not have to worry about things like my phone or internet. It was very refreshing.
Next on my spring break agenda was to come back to Murfreesboro a couple days early to meet one of my great highschool friends Christian, who was coming up so we could go see a concert in Nashville together. I hadn't seen him in a couple months, so I was pumped. He also brought one of his friends from college whose name was Wes. These two introduced me to the 50 count nugget at McDonald's for just ten bucks. That's right, 50 nuggets for TEN bucks. Obviously, we split them. Otherwise, one of us probably would have passed out just from the sheer number of nuggets.
Later that night, me and Christian headed to the concert. We were going to see one of our favorite bands, The Bridges. I think I've talked about them before in a post but if you haven't listened to them, you really should. You won't be disappointed. What really surprised me though was how good the other two performances were. The headlining band was Apache Relay (yep, that's a Heavyweights reference for all you movie buffs out there). They had one of the most energetic shows I've seen in quite a while. It consisted of lots of jumping around and dancing, but in a really cool way. The opening singer/songwriter of the night was a guy named Rayland Baxter. I had never heard of him before, but I was really blown away by his great songwriting, unique voice, and catchy songs. Plus, he has one of the most rocking mustaches ever. Check him out for sure. As always, I hope you enjoy! (sorry this post went a little long, I got a little carried away)
-Colby McHugh
For those of you who don't already know, last week we saw more or less the "Big Break" of one of our favorite local bands, Elenowen. We had found out that they were playing a FREE show right outside of campus so obviously we were pumped for a great show. We were all introduced to Elenowen last semester when they played another free show that pretty much blew away all of us. We all thought the same thing: "Why have we never heard of these guys before?"
So we went to this show fully expecting a great show and needless to say, we weren't disappointed. Then we were greeted with quite an unexpected surprise. After finishing their first or second song, the owner of the venue came up on stage and handed the band an envelope that was entitle The Voice. I personally had no idea what The Voice was, so I was completely lost. As she opened and read the envelope, it was easy to see that something big was going down. She read it and said in a voice that really showed true joyfulness and excitement, "You have made the final cut for The Voice!" (or something like that, I was thoroughly confused as to what exactly was happening). Quickly, I had someone explain what this mysterious The Voice was. I soon saw the importance of what had just happened. The Voice is basically ABC's version of American Idol or something like that, and Elenowen had just made the final cut for the show, which means that they would be on TV and get tons of exposure. The next thing we knew there were these big TV cameras coming out of nowhere. Elenowen was asked to repeat the act of opening the envelope and acting surprised so they could get the reaction on camera. It was clear that the band was maybe a little too flustered by the excitement that they couldn't really make it seem realistic. We (the audience) were also asked to give a standing ovation at least 4 or 5 times. I lost track after the third. After all the hooplah (yes, I did just say hooplah) died down, we were treated to one of the best shows I've seen in quite some time. One of the highlights include a folked out cover of the Spice Girls' Wannabe. It was AWESOME.
As for some background information on Elenowen, here it goes. Elenowen is basically the husband and wife duo of Josh and Nicole Johnson. They released their first cd about a year ago and are currently working on a releasing a new one sometime soon. As for genres, I've never been one for just labeling bands with a genre but if I had to, I would call Elenowen a folk band with some basic, subtle country influences. Many of their songs are co-written, which gives each song a certain kind of dynamic that is hard to find. That said, the subjects of most of their songs revolve mainly around Josh and Nicole as they have gone through their first year of marriage. Every once in a while, I'll hear a guy and a girl singing, and it'll give me goosebumps because their voices just go so well together. Elenowen is pretty much the definition of that feeling. PLEASE check them out and support them, because they absolutely deserve it.
I couldn't find any quality videos on Youtube, so the best I can do is paste a link to their Myspace. http://www.myspace.com/elenowenmusic. Enjoy.
With this winter being one of the coldest I've experienced in my life, I have been counting the days until I would be able to walk around in shorts and a t shirt again. I mean seriously, I got iced in over christmas break for 3 full days. IN GEORGIA. Its not like I live in Minnesota or something, where ice is a normal thing. Georgia is NOT supposed to snow more than a single day out of the year, and absolutely never ice over. Nonetheless, it happened, and I had to deal with it so its pretty safe to say I was ready for warm weather.
Well my dream came true. Earlier this week, it was warm enough to go outside and throw the frisbee (which I think has become one of my favorite past times). We wound up doing this for probably about 2 hours before our arms started to feel like they were going to fall off. And I was perfectly ok with that simply because i got to be outside in athletic shorts and a t shirt. Like I said, it was a dream come true.
I'm going to cut this blog post a little bit short this time because I feel like all of my other ones have been pretty long, so I'm trying something new. Keep it simple: that's the mindset here. Anyways, I've been listening to a really talented guy that goes by the name The Tallest Man On Earth. He's a Sweden-born singer/songwriter who's real name is Kristian Mattson. He clearly has been influenced by Bob Dylan (you'll know what I'm talking about as soon a you listen to him). Mattson has one of the most unique voices I've heard in quite some time. He really doesn't sound like anyone I can think of. Oh yeah, and he sings in English, so you don't have to worry about learning Swedish to listen to him. So I hope you guys like him and sorry for not being nearly as consistent with these posts as I was last semester. I've gotten a little distracted by life, I guess. Anyways, Let's hope this awesome weather keeps up. I'm sick of being cold.
Well I've been back at college for about 2 or so weeks now and, to be honest, I've missed it quite a bit. Like I said in my last post, I was pretty much on the verge of insanity for those last few days I was at home. To say the least, it was a relief to get back to college life. It was incredibly refreshing just to see my friends that I hadn't seen for about a month. After seeing them almost everyday for pretty much the whole semester, it was pretty weird to not see them for almost a month. My first order of business when I got back was to just see everybody. I never thought I would miss good 'ol Murfreesboro this much.
So far, my classes aren't too bad. Psychology is pretty interesting so far, but I kind of figured it would be. Computer science is about as boring as it sounds. I mean as much as I love learning how to use Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, I think its pretty safe to say that I wouldn't be taking this class unless I absolutely had to (which I do). My writing class is fairly difficult so far, but that's only because he requires a lot of research to go along with the writing. If you know me, then you know that I would much rather just write instead of finding sources and such. I mean what kind of teacher actually wants us to back up our writing with facts?? Lame teachers, that's who. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's important, it's just that it makes something that I actually enjoy doing (writing) kind of burdensome, that's all. I really thing I'm going to like my history of the recording industry class because I had the same teacher last semester, except he taught a different class, and he's a really good teacher.
I can already tell what my hardest class is after only having two classes so far. Audio Fundamentals. It's going to be incredibly hard for two reasons. First of all, I have literally ZERO interest in recording and sound engineering, which is what all the content in the class covers. Second, after a single class, I can safely say I understand about 5 percent of the stuff we've gone over so far. Normally, I would feel like an idiot because of this, but after talking to people who actually enjoy recording and things like that, they're about where I am in terms of comprehension. Needless to say, I felt a little bit better about myself after talking to them.
I've got a couple of really talented guys that I've been listening to these last couple of weeks. First, yet another Nashville-based singer named Andrew Belle (sorry if it seems like I'm obsessed with Nashville, but I think I'm a little bit biased since I live really close to there). The song I'm going to show you guys the single from his CD called The Ladder. It features Katie Herzig singing backup on the song. In case you don't remember, I talked about her in my last post. Second, make sure you check out a guy named Allen Stone. I found out about him because he sang backup for Andrew Belle a couple of times and I really liked his voice so I looked him up. Honestly, I really didn't expect a goofy looking white guy to be able to sing like he can, but that just goes to show that you can't judge a book by a cover. So check out these guys because I really enjoy their music, so I hope you will too.
