All The Pain Money Can Buy | Fastball

11/30/2011

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              All The Pain Money Can Buy  |  Fastball

         release date:  1998         record label:  Hollywood

track
listing:    1) The Way 
               2) Fire Escape
               3) Better Than It Was
               4) Which Way To The Top?
               5) Sooner Or Later
               6) Warm Fuzzy Feeling
               7) Slow Drag
                                                                               8) Good Old Days
                                                                               9) Charlie, The Methadone Man
                                                                               10) Out Of My Head
                                                                               11) Damaged Goods
                                                                               12) Nowhere Road
                                                                               13) Sweetwater, Texas
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                        “I complain very little because
                                                                            it’s better than it was…”

Fastball continues to play shows around their native Austin, Texas, releasing their latest album in 2004, and yet the band has never come close to replicating the success of their sophomore effort, All The Pain Money Can Buy.  Released in 1998, the album, propelled by the hit radio singles The Way and Out Of My Head, achieved platinum status (surpassing one-million sales) in only six months. 

It’s amazing just how much difference time can make.

A used book and CD junkie, I’ve spent countless hours combing the shelves of my two favorite places in Lexington:  Half-Price Books and Goodwill.  In the music sections of both, I’ve noticed a trend:  a handful of albums are repeatedly for sale.  These records, once extremely popular, have now taken up permanent residence on the shelves of second-hand stores.  Some of these albums are masterpieces like August and Everything After by Counting Crows or U2’s Achthung Baby (seriously, who is giving these albums away?).  On the other hand, some albums belong on those shelves – honestly, how many copies of Hanson’s MMMBop can there be in the world?

Fastball’s All The Pain Money Can Buy is one of those albums; I’ve seen it over and over in used CD bins.  A fan of 90’s music, I’ve considered purchasing it numerous times but always found myself changing my mind at the last minute.  A few months ago I ran into the album again, this time at Goodwill.  For whatever reason (maybe the money in my pocket was burning a hole), I finally broke down a bought the album for a whopping price of $2.50. 

I’m rather ashamed to admit that after the car ride home, during which I played the two radio singles on repeat, I promptly forgot about my purchase.  Until this week I’d never listened to other eleven songs on this platinum-selling album; truth be told, without this project, I probably never would’ve.   

All The Pain Money Can Buy starts off with a bang, the first four songs being among the strongest.  The record opens with The Way, a song inspired by true events.  In 1997, Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple from Texas, left home to attend a festival in a nearby town.  Two weeks later, their bodies were discovered at the bottom of ravine, some 500 miles away from their intended destination.  In The Way, the band reimagines a happier ending, painting a picture of a couple taking to the open road with no particular destination in mind, searching for a way to escape from the world around them.  The band’s most successful single, The Way spent much of April and May 1998 as Billboards #1 Modern Rock track. 

The next officially released single, Fire Escape, follows, begging the question “I can be myself, how about you?”  Better Than It Was comes third, a hopelessly optimistic song declaring that life only gets better with time, followed by Which Way To The Top, a tune which sounds like it could have been pulled off any Wallflowers album (and coming from me, that’s a compliment). 

The second half of the album, however, doesn’t quite hold my attention like those first four songs do.  By no means is the remainder of the record a wash – its certainly worth a listen – I just find the album to be a bit frontloaded.  Bright spots on the latter half of All The Pain Money Can Buy include Slow Drag, a fierce breakup song, and the exceedingly sing-along-able Out Of My Head.


Less than a month ago, the world was up in arms.  The focus of their ire was a popular socialite, who 72 days after walking down the (heavily televised) aisle in a (very) public wedding ceremony, filed for divorce from her newly married husband.  I try to keep my life as far removed from celebutantes and Hollywood gossip as possible, but I could not dodge this story – it seemed to be on everyone lips (even NPR’s).  I’m in no way qualified to make an assessment of this short-lived marriage, except to feel remorse for the couple.  Most of world seems to believe this marriage was nothing short of a shameful moneymaking venture and popularity boost – and it certainly may have been.  But it’s also equally possible that in moving so quickly to divorce, the bride was only acting out what she has seen modeled. 

Research shows that children from broken homes run a higher risk of experiencing divorce than those children whose parents remain married.  In fact, if your parents divorced, you’re at least 40% more likely to experience divorce yourself.  If your parents married others after divorcing, the chances of your own marriage ending in divorce increase to 91%*.  That being said, I know plenty of couples in happy and healthy marriages who grew up with the pain of separation in their homes.  It’s not impossible to beat the odds – by the grace of God broken things can be made new again.  We can be rescued from the mistakes of our families, but at the same time we cannot ignore the effect of divorce on the children who are forced to live through it.  For whatever reason, divorce seems to beget more divorce.

The fact that almost half of all marriages in America end in divorce has done our society a disservice – it has normalized the premature end of marriage.  Divorce is no longer shocking, no longer appalling or surprising; it’s treated as an unwelcome, but accepted, part of everyday life.  We treat divorce like taxes – we don’t like it, but it can’t be avoided. 

All of this combines to create what scientists call a positive feedback cycle.  Divorce leads to divorce which leads to divorce.  When ending marriages becomes the norm, then divorce looks like the only answer to a relationship on the rocks.  I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but it seems like many marriages end not because the couple has exhausted every means for reconciliation, but because divorce is the simplest, most accepted answer.  Let me be clear, I don’t speak for every situation – Christ himself seemed to allow divorce in the area of infidelity – but, if we’re talking big picture, it’s easy to see that our society too quickly rushes to end our most important human relationship.  We (myself included) have become a people who look to our own needs first, willfully ignoring the compromise and sacrifice that family life requires.    

Which brings us back to that newly divorced socialite.  Of course, the choice to end her marriage before it was barely out of the gate is her responsibility – but at the same time, we can’t diminish the effect her life played in that decision.  At the age of 10, her parents split up.  Less than a year later, her mother remarried; her father followed suit in 2003.  No one can say for certain what role the end of her parents marriage played in her own decision to move toward divorce, but we would be wise to refrain from judging, especially when we don’t know the whole story.  It may be that the cards were never fully stacked in her favor to begin with.     

All this rambling eventually leads to my parents.  The family I was born into is easily one of the biggest blessings I have ever received.  My parents have profoundly shaped my life and set me on the course I am currently on:  working a fulfilling job in ministry, engaged to the woman I love, and living a life of purpose.  I could write volumes on the lessons they have taught and modeled for me, but as the day of my own wedding approaches, one sticks out above the rest:  the way my parents have stuck it out together.  To be honest, I know little about their conflicts, because neither of them have ever degraded or talked negatively about the other in front of their children.  I do know, however, that over the course of twenty-nine years of marriage, conflicts will arise.  My parents have managed to love each other not only during times of happiness, joy and peace, but also through the dark nights of disappointment, pain, and regret.  Only they could really tell the story of their lives, but from my outside perspective, I know that it’s not always been a cakewalk – and yet, they muscled through it.  Together. 

My family is not immune to the pains of divorce either.  While studying for the ministry at seminary, my father learned that his own parents were splitting.  This broke his heart; he could have let it define and set him on a course destined for the same end.  But by the grace of God, he and my mother have found a way to persevere.  While doing so, they have become role models for those around them, not the least of whom are their three sons.

The video below (click the link) is a small tribute to a couple that lives as if every day together is better than the last.  Your marriage has set a foundation that generations of your children and grandchildren will be able to stand upon.  Thank you – for following your God, loving your children, and keeping your commitments.   

"Better Than It Was" - A Tribute to Mom and Dad





* Nicholas Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 

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All The Hype That Money Can Buy | Five Iron Frenzy

11/10/2011

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    All The Hype That Money Can Buy  |  Five Iron Frenzy

       release date:  2000          record label:  5 Minute Walk

track listing: 0) What’s Up
                      1) The Greatest Story Ever Told 
                      2) Me Oh My
                      3) Solidarity
                      4) The Phantom Mullet
                      5) Ugly Day
                      6) Fahrenheit  
                      7) Four-Fifty-One  
                      8) You Probably Shouldn’t Move Here
                                                                                         9) Hurricanes
                                                                                       10) Giants
                                                                                       11) I Still Like Larry
                                                                                       12) All The Hype
                                                                                       13) It’s Not Unusual
                                                                                       14) A New Hope
                                                                                       15) World Without End

                                                                           “Giants roam the land today,
                                                                    Gaining dominance with every stride…”

The whole nation had dreamed of this moment for hundred of years.  As slaves, their hearts had always been somewhere else, far away – a land that flowed with milk and honey.  They raised their children on stories of this so-called Promised Land; pledged to their ancestor Abraham hundreds of years earlier, still they waited.  Naturally, as the years passed, doubt and unbelief spread; the nation began to worry that they would never reach their happy home, that they would never know freedom, peace, and the blessings of God.  And then Moses was raised up, and the nation found reason, once more, to hope for their homeland. 

Rescued from Egypt, taken through the sea and then led by God through the desert, the entire nation stood on the edge of all they had ever hoped for – a land to call their own.  Instead of rushing in, they sent twelve spies to scout out the land, size up their enemies, and bring back a report.  Forty days later, they did just that.

Reporting to Moses, the spies agreed “the land to which you sent us… does flow with milk and honey!”  Two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, full of faith in their God, insisted on taking the land immediately.  The other spies, however, were less confident.  They took their report to the nation as a whole, stoking the flames of fear as they spoke:  “the land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature.  There we saw the giants.” 

For most of the nation, this would be as close to the Promised Land as they would get.  Up in arms, the people went to Moses, weeping and crying, their hopes of a homeland dashed by the reports of giants in the land.  Some Israelites suggested traveling back to Egypt and submitting themselves once again to slavery; others advised killing Moses and electing new leadership. 

As can be imagined, God was none too pleased with the lack of faith displayed by His people.  Because of their disobedience and unbelief, God commanded Moses to lead the people back into the desert.  There they would wander for forty years.  Every Israelite over twenty years of age, save Caleb and Joshua, would die in the shadow of the Promised Land, having never tasted of her milk and honey.  Fear robbed them of what they had always longed for.


Part of growing up in the KERA era of Kentucky public education meant writing portfolio pieces every year.  The bulk of my formative years were spent writing – which, come to think of it, may be why I’m still writing today.  At any rate, our teachers would prod us to write poems, informative pieces, persuasive essays and, of course, the personal narrative.  We hated every minute of it. 

A few months ago I was spending some time at my parents’ house in Danville when I came across a ratty folder, stuffed with my old writings.  The majority of them were songs and poems, penned from the utter depths of despair:  unrequited youth group crushes.  It was painful to read, not because of the heartache, but because it was bad.  I mean really, really bad.  Like I should use the bulk of it as litter box liners – that bad.  Among the tear stained poems, I did manage to find a few school assignments, one of which was a personal narrative for my 8th grade portfolio.  It started something like this: “The lead singer took the stage shouting, ‘this is a new song.  I hope you hate it!’  The band behind him started into a song about Canada.  This was Five Iron Frenzy, my favorite band.”   

Standing there in my old room, I began to wonder what my middle school teacher really thought of it.  Of course, as an 8th grade student, I didn’t have many life experiences that would have made for a compelling personal narrative, but I’m sure my teacher scratched her head as she read about an eight-piece band from Denver who sang both about issues of faith and odes to lost combs.  Looking back at it now, though, my choice seems a perfect fit.  Nothing quite defines my life in both middle and high school as the music of Five Iron Frenzy.

By accident, I came across Five Iron in a Christian bookstore as a sixth grader.  Later that same year I would see the band live at the Ichthus Music Festival – back in the old days when it was held during the rainy (and oftentimes cold) Kentucky spring.  They were my very first taste of ska music – a style that can best be described as the illegitimate child of punk rock and swing – rock and roll with a horn section.  The music of Five Iron, though, rises far above any type of classification, incorporating elements of reggae, heavy metal, and salsa.  To be honest, I’m not sure I can do it justice with words – it’s just something that has to be experienced. 

Even more than their distinctive music, though, I fell in love with Five Iron’s lyrics, which span the spectrum from questioning and introspective to down right hilarious.  The bands third full-length release, All The Hype That Money Can Buy, is classic Five Iron Frenzy – a split between the serious and the silly. 

Long before Derek Webb was questioning how Christians treat homosexuals, Reese Roper, lead singer and principal lyricist for Five Iron was owning up to, and mourning, his judgmental attitude toward Freddie Mercury, lead singer of rock icons Queen in the song Fahrenheit.  The band questions the lack of unity among Christ’s followers in Solidarity and finds hope among the ruins of the Columbine school shooting in A New Hope.

There is, however, also plenty of silliness to go around.  The Phantom Mullet is an homage to all those brave souls who are “cutting [their] hair like Billy Ray Cyrus.”  You Probably Shouldn’t Move Here extols the virtues of living in Colorado instead of California, while All The Hype, from which the name of the album is taken, is a tongue-in-cheek reflection of how musicians are put onto god-like pedestals.  Near the end of the song, Reese admits, “its all wrong, so far from true, in secret, I’m just like you.”


In February, when I started this ridiculous attempt to listen to, and then write a blog about each album on my iPod, I noted that I wanted to “rediscover the music that has shaped me and, perhaps, even rediscover myself.”  Five Iron Frenzy disbanded in 2003 – as a college freshmen, I drove to Wilmore to see them on their final tour.  For whatever reason, perhaps I was in mourning or disbelief, I all but quit listening to Five Iron Frenzy soon thereafter.  Years passed without even the thought of Five Iron, and then, about a week ago, I re-listened to All The Hype That Money Can Buy.  I fell in love again.  I’ll be honest, I’ve been on a Five Iron Frenzy bender ever since.  It’s a strange feeling – rediscovering something that you already know you love – but at this point in time, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  Fifteen albums into the quest to conquer my iPod, I’d have to say that this experiment has already been a success; the rediscovery of a band that has meant so much to me proves it to be so.  

Of course, listening to All The Hype That Money Can Buy as a twenty-six year old man was a much different experience than the days I spent listening to it as a teenager.  Back then, I identified with Five Iron’s outsider status and the lighthearted fun they created.  Today, I find myself drawn in by their honesty, questions and insight.  Eleven years after its initial release, this album remains widely relevant – almost prophetic.  This time around, one song, in particular, grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go – Giants. 

I’ve never taken a class on economics, so I don’t claim to have any real understanding of money and markets.  But as I’ve grown from a boy into a man, I have learned that our world is made up of two types of people (at least, in terms of finances):  the haves and the have-nots.  In fact, at its root, that’s what this whole Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be about:  to the self-identified have-nots, corporations and too-big-to-fail-banks (the haves) are running our country in a self-serving manner.  The rich get richer at the expense of the poor and middle-class.  This looks like thousands upon thousands of foreclosed homes and record unemployment while CEO salaries continue to rise.  According to the AFL-CIO, in 2010, chief executives at some of the nation’s largest companies earned 343 times more than a typical American worker.  That statistic, and many more like them, fuels the fire of Occupy Wall Street. 

With Giants, Five Iron tackles a topic that is rarely, if ever, discussed among Christ followers – ethical economics.  This song, which bemoans the role corporations have taken in our everyday lives, compares them to giants roaming our land, “gaining dominance with every stride.”  The song continues, “don’t you cry for the mom and pops / nothing but dry eyes for integrity’s demise / hulking machines grind as whistles blow / Corporate Darwinism crushes everything below / advances in efficiency increasing productivity / are narrowing the margins for liberty.” 

The band doesn’t take this lying down – in the chorus, the question the entire system:  “who’s behind the curtain anyway / who pulls the levers and tells the lies?”  What do corporations have to lie about, to cover up?  In short:  plenty.  For instance, Nestle would hate for you to learn that, as one of the world’s largest corporations, they routinely use oppressive child labor (even slaves) to harvest the cocoa used in their chocolate bars.  Likewise, Coca-Cola would never want you to learn that, in order to produce their bottled water brand Dasani, they drain underground aquifers in impoverished Indian communities such as Kerala, leaving entire towns water starved.  They’d never broadcast that fact that, between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders from their bottling plant in Colombia died under mysterious circumstances, each after leading protests against the corporations labor practices.  And that’s saying nothing about Wal-Mart’s uncanny talent of destroying local business, Monsanto’s abuse of hardworking farmers or Nike’s sweatshop labor. 

In America, corporations are treated as individuals – this practice is known as corporate personhood.  Yet it seems quite obvious that many of them lack something that actual humans have:  a conscience.  As followers of Christ, we cannot blissfully spend our money any way our hearts desire.  Because our Savior has commanded us to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” we must be informed about the companies and corporations that we support.  Every purchase is a vote.  When I buy a Nestle chocolate bar, I am voting in favor of child labor.  When I spend money on a Coca-Cola product, I vote in confidence alongside their decisions to rob impoverished communities of the one of the most basic human needs:  clean water.  When I shop at WalMart, I support a future in which locally owned businesses – Mom and Pop stores – do not exist.   

I’m still learning about what it means to embrace ethical economics – to attempt to serve Christ in everything, even with the purchases I make.  I’ll be honest, it’s not easy, but I am motivated by a desire to avoid the mistake of the ancient Israelites – a fear of giants.  Compared to transnational corporations, a movement of Christians choosing to shop wisely may appear insignificant, but I know that my God is in the business of bringing low what stands tall. 

Forty years after their first attempt, the Israelites once more found themselves on the cusp of the Promised Land.  This time, though, they learned from their mistakes.  Through faith in God, the nation conquered the giants and moved into the land promised to their ancestors ages before.  Today, giants are again attempting to co-opt what belongs to the Father, making a mockery of His people and His creation.  As they were in the time of Joshua, these giants shall too be brought low.  But until that day, may Christ’s followers not even give them a dollar to stand on.



For more information about the worst corporate human rights violators, visit the global exchange. 

Want to know how a brand or corporation rates in terms of human rights or environmental stewardship?  Look it up on this outstanding website:  the better world shopper. 

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