I am fulfilled. I have seen Stryper in concert and they surpassed all my expectations!
I’ve been an enormous Stryper fan since 1988. They played a crucial part in my coming to know Jesus Christ in a very real way. I’ve memorized every note and lyric of every song of every album they have released. I just had never seen a live show.
Until this past Saturday, November 14th that is. And man, what a freakin’ eh awesome show it was.
Stryper at the soundcheck:
I had the privilege of getting a “meet ‘n greet” pass that enabled me an early entry into the concert, a chance to hear the sound check, and a chance to meet the band.
This didn’t go as well as I’d hope. We were supposed to get in at 5pm but weren’t given entry until 6. The band was on stage and as I walked into the club, it was like I was in a dream! There was Michael Sweet, the Stryper frontman! Right there, 5 feet away from me! Tim Gaines, one of the best bass players in music, right there! Mr Oz Fox, guitar player extraordinaire, right there!!! Robert Sweet was behind his drum kit, so I didn’t get to see him so well. I was a little overwhelmed!
The band ripped through 2 songs and it was magical! The club stagehand was being a little pushy as they were an hour behind and sat the band down at a table and put everyone in a single file line to get an autograph. At this I was more than a little bummed.
I don’t care about autographs. I just wanted to tell these guys “Thank You” from the bottom of my heart. They helped me get through those tough teen-age years with my sanity and faith intact. We were rushed through the line and I did get to shake hands with all the guys except Michael. I got to say thanks, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for.
All that activity took us to about 6:45pm. I went straight to the front of the room where and got my place almost dead center. There was just one problem: the concert didn’t start until 8:30pm. Oh well….I just got my legs locked and waited almost 2 hours in one spot.
Finally the lights went down and on came 3 young guys from Canada (eh!) that made up the band Manic Drive. I wasn’t expecting much, so I was taken aback as they came out and rocked the house! They had a lot of energy and looked like they just loved to entertain. I liked ‘em so much I bought both of their CDs at the merch table.
Manic Drive:
The next band to hit the stage was called Flight Patterns, featuring Michael Sweet Jr on guitar. I had never heard their music, but was hoping to like ‘em.
That was just too much to hope for. Flight Patterns just plain sucked. They were off key and off pitch, and they sounded like a very bad wanna-be Relient K cover band. The bass player was super annoying and played an open E string for every song.
Flight Patterns:
Eventually Flight Patterns got off the stage and it took about 45 minutes for the roadies to set up Stryper’s equipment. My back was aching and my feet hurt for standing up for so long, but the moment of truth was near!!!
The lights went out…..long silence…….and then DUN DUN DUN DEDUN! Stryper came on stage ripping through Soldier’s Under Command!! Yellow and black leather (not spandex!), long hair, ah, everything I dreamed of!
It is all kind of a blur, but I remember they played through most of To Hell With The Devil and The Yellow and Black Attack. They played probably 3 or 4 new songs from Murder By Pride and even covered Judas Priest’s Breaking The Law. I will say this…every song they played they played with an intense fervor and energy. Say what you want to about the yellow and black and the big hair and all that, but Stryper are some absolutely awesome musicians.
They played their encore to To Hell With The Devil. It was one of the most bestest moments of my life (aside from my wedding and kids and such).
Now I can check off a life long goal to see and meet Stryper. Thank you Jesus!
My Bekah turned 12 this weekend and I can not believe who fast those 12 years have gone by.
When she was first born, she was nothing but cheeks and hair. She would waddle over to you and give plant a big juicy kiss on your face. As she grew older she literally wrote, colored or scribbled on every wall of our house. It was at that point we knew she’d be a creative one!
As she grew, so did her vocabulary. She started writing awesomely descriptive stories and still hasn’t stopped. My favorite one was written when she was in the 1st or 2nd grade. She wrote about a beautiful butterfly that loved life but hooked on drugs and ended up dying. It was so matter of fact!
Now she’s in 6th grade and growing up too fast! She is still writing and playing piano as well. She loves people, especially little kids. Most importantly, you can see Jesus shining through her!
So I log into Gmail the other day and was kind of bummed to find the above email from AT&T. I’ve been using Flickr for about 2 or 3 years now, so I’m more than a little sad to be losing this service, at least the Pro Version of it.
As you can see, I’ve uploaded quite a few pictures to my account. Flickr has always been very easy to use and it has always been very easy to share pictures with friends and family. I use Slide.com to import my different Flickr sets and make some pretty cool slideshows (just posted one here as a matter of fact) Now that I am being downgraded to a “free” version of Flickr, this is what I’ll be getting:
BOO! 100mb a month? I can shoot that many pictures in just one sitting! And as you might know, shooting low resolution pictures (like 300kb instead of 5Mb) will make printing said pictures a pain in the neck. Grainy and horrible prints is what you’ll get!
So I’m looking around at different sites now. If I gotta pay, I’m gonna get the best one I can find. Watch for at least one or two more posts to come and see if I can find the perfect picture sharing website.
Howdy! I have three things to share today and they are all no way related and I just don’t have the creative juice to tie them together.
The first item: Nathan played his first soccer game of the year. It was darn near 110 degrees outside today, so I give Nate some major kudos!
[slideshow id=576460752337249268&w=426&h=320]
The second item: As I lounged in my cool house not wanting to go sit in the heat to watch Nathan play soccer, I went to the dharmawantsyou.com website to take test 3. Once there, I noticed a new video message, so I recorded it to share with all you fellow Lost obsessed people.
Third item: My wife and I are goofy and bought our dog Lucy a halloween costume. Now, we have bought our other dog, Zorro a costume too, so we are double goofy I guess!
This is Zorro, the bat dog! Yeah I know, pretty cool, eh?
And this is a dragon named Lucy! She kept moving too much for me to get a good picture, and she keeps chewing on the arms.
Yeah, thats my house. We had a small electrical fire in the attic (right above the door in the above picture). I’m just so thankful that our entire house didn’t go up in smoke. Even the firemen said our entire house could have easily burnt down if hadn’t of caught it in time!
If you had been wondering why my blog has been a little stagnant as of late, now you know!
We are back home and the construction company should start the restoration work soon. Since things are getting back to normal, I’ll be blogging my heart away soon. (I can’t wait to do a review on Death Magnetic, Metallica’s new album that my friend BT let me borrow today!)
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon
delicious
Digg
Last.fm
Youtube
User
