I had a lot of great ideas to tackle this morning, and I will, I promise. But right now I'm just flying high from a Nashville Predators victory last night in the first game of the first round of the NHL playoffs, against the heavily favored Chicago Blackhawks. So what I'm going to do is leave this page minimized, and when I remember what I was going to write about, I'll come back to it.

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Okay I thought of it. It never ceases to amaze me what influence others can have on me. Especially ones that I am in a band with. When I was with the band back in Michigan, I got very much into music that my band mates listened to. This has happened again, but this time, in a new part of the country. When I/we started this band, I was listening to, I don't know, whatever I was listening to. But then I start hanging out with these guys, and now I'm catching up on all that music I missed growing up, when I was stuck in my "hard rock" phase. Let's face it, I was listening to NU-metal. Linkin Park, Mudvayne, Korn, Slipknot, Nonpoint...the list goes on and on and on. Well anyway then I went punk, then Screemo, then Emo, then indie...the natural progression of a twentysomething. Well, I realized within the past year that there was a lot of great music I missed out on in the late 90's and early 2000's, and now I'm trying to play catch up. Especially, due to the fact that the bands I missed out on are the ones that are the biggest inspirations of my band mates.

The two bands I've been listening to the most lately are Alkaline Trio and The Get Up Kids. I feel like I have to do this because I need to know the mindset of these guys if I want to play with them. I knew where Chris and Andy got their inspirations. Tim, too, even if that was less clear than those other guys. TJ's natural secretiveness made it hard to tell what he was exactly listening to, ever. But I had an idea, even if I was wrong. That was easy because I knew these guys for years. I've known Sean, Dave and Andrew for three months now. It is obviously harder to know what these guys like and dislike, because we haven't had those experiences together. We're trying to play catch up, cramming a lot of life experiences into a very short period of time.

Getting to know my new friends is one of the coolest things I get to do in Tennessee. Part of getting to know someone, at least for me, is knowing what they listen to. It says a lot about a person, in my opinion, what they listen to, and what they used to listen to. So the way I find out about a person is to listen to their music. Good thing these guys like good music. I can't believe I missed the boat on The Get Up Kids. That band is great. So if nothing else, I got that out of this.

I vowed not to make friends here so it wouldn't be very hard to move away, but that ain't happening. Instead, this is happening.

********To learn what else Brad is listening to, check out his Last.fm page!********