Musings On Religion, Part 3 (Redemption)

I’m thinking that rather than write a trilogy on this subject I should have just cut the material down to one decent post with an actual point in mind. When I started part 1 I did have some sort of plan in my head for what each part of the trilogy would be about, but that’s got lost amongst other useless information acquired since then. Oh well. If you visit this blog often you may have seen my interpretation of the lyrics in Snow ((Hey Oh)), by Red Hot Chili Peppers, this is kind of a similar idea, based on Muse’s Uprising. You might say I’m redeeming the lyrics for my own ends.

I’m currently borrowing 365 days with Spurgeon, Volume 2 from my brother, which contains an extract from a sermon with a relevant passage from the Bible for each day of a year. Monday began with the words “Christians are soldiers.” He then goes on to ask what use would our soldiers be if they dreaded going into battle?
“Christians are runners too.” Would we not laugh at an athlete who could only compete when no one’s watching? We should defy all onlookers. It doesn’t matter who’s watching, a Christian is looking to Jesus.

However, it’s a much more comfortable life to go along with the crowd, and the majority of people, at least in this country, are heading in the opposite direction to Christians.

So, although I’m pretty sure Uprising is actually about a political uprising, I like to think of it as a call to battle for Christians.

They’ll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed-down,
and hope that we will never see the truth aroused.
Another promise, another seed,
another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed.

but

…we should never be afraid to die.

…their time’s coming to an end.
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend.

They will not force us.
They will stop degrading us.
They can not control us.
We will be victorious.

Musings On Religion, Part 2 (Resisting the Truth)

You could read religion into more lyrics than I have written about here, but I’m probably taking this a bit far as it is.

Guiding Light

I’m lost, crushed, cold and confused with no guiding light left inside.

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – Jesus

you’re losing life’s wonder

Ignoring the reason life was created is bound to lead to problems, and the results can be seen in the number of abortions that take place. Between 1967 and 2007, 6.7 million babies were killed. 0.4% were due to risk to the mother’s life. 1.3% were due to foetal handicap. 1 in 5 pregnancies in England and Wales ends in abortion.

Unnatural Selection

 

No religion or mind virus, is there a hope that the facts will ever find us?

So religion is compared to a “mind virus”. I’m glad he doesn’t just lump all religion together though. In an interview with Q magazine he says: “I want to decipher the motive and the beneficiary behind things. Like Catholicism. Is it about God? No. It strikes me as more likely being about power, money and child abuse.”
Bringing up child abuse is probably crossing a line, but he has a point, if religions are false (and they can’t all be right), then the power they have over people is quite scary.

I think science has limits to what it can tell us, so if that’s all you’re relying on, then I don’t think all the facts will find you. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein

Muse borrow from ABBA?!

It’s not just my imagination, at least 2 other people on youtube noticed it.

Counter balance this commotion…

Don’t go wasting your emotion…

P.S. Sorry for banging on about Muse so much recently, I’m sure I will run out of things to say about them sometime.

Setlists 2: Giving The People What They Want (or A Seaside Rendezvous)

I went to Teignmouth on Friday.

The first band on were called The Quails, another local band, they were quite good, but not in any danger of outshining the headliners. You can usually get some idea what a band will sound like from what they look like, but they were a bit confusing, the singer looked like he belonged in We Are Scientists while one of the other guitarists looked like a Metallica tribute band member. There was at least one too many guitarists, the singer and Mr. Metallica Tribute seemed to be playing exactly the same thing the whole time, which annoyed me, but overall I might get round to listening to more of them.

Then there was Cosmo Jarvis. I instantly liked him based just on his name. His music wasn’t bad either, with songs with titles like Gay Pirates, you know he’s not taking himself too seriously. I would say he sounds like a cross between Jamie T and Lee Evans. Opener She’s Got You was probably his best song, it started with a Ukelele and finished with a Recorder. I wasn’t optimistic when he later announced “This song’s called Jesus”, but it turned out not to be too bad, he was singing to a friend who’s “not Jesus, but you’re saving me”.

Muse were obviously awesome.

I wrote before that I would have liked to hear lots of the new album. We got 5 songs from The Resistance: Uprising and United States of Eurasia which had been heard in full already, then there was Resistance, Undisclosed Desires and Unnatural Selection, of which I’d only heard 30-second samples. They also played a “jazzy” piano version of Cave (“Oh, those were the days.”)

Muse have a lot of songs starting with the letter ‘U’.

I think they got the balance between new and old stuff pretty much perfect.

I said before that I would have liked them to play all of the new album, but when it came to it, it was better that they didn’t. For me, the best type of music by any band is a song that a large crowd can sing along to, a couple of good examples of the sort of great moments I mean would be Knights of Cydonia on the HAARP DVD and Coldplay’s Fix You on LeftRightLeftRightLeft. So while I would love to see more of the new stuff live, it would be much better to know the songs beforehand.

Resistance and Undisclosed Desires sounded great, and I think the samples gave a good idea of what the songs would sound like. The lyrics to Resistance are clearly influenced by George Orwell’s 1984, while Undisclosed Desires is another step away from the Muse of the past, beyond Supermassive Black Hole and Map of the Problematique.

EDIT: How could I forget to mention Matt’s Keytarcaster used for Undisclosed Desires?

I like the “I Want The Truth” moments in Unnatural Selection, and there’s an epic riff going on that, from videos on YouTube, sounds a bit like the New Born guitar riff, but at the gig itself I was standing too close to tell what it really sounded like, it was just a lot of noise.

I was also reminded that I actually like going to gigs by myself. I’ve seen Muse and Red Hot Chili Peppers twice, once each with other people and once by myself. When you go with other people you have to find the best place to stand to please everyone, I’m pretty tall so not being able to see isn’t usually a problem (although at this gig I was briefly stuck with my nose about 2 inches from the back of someone’s head who was only slightly shorter than me), while some people don’t want to be in the middle of a packed crowd jumping up and down (I don’t jump around much myself, but it doesn’t bother me being in the middle of other people doing it). I’ve also seen Blackbud 3 times, twice with other people and once by myself, and in this case, being a relatively unknown band, I was unsure whether the people I’d taken along were enjoying it.

But in summary, Muse are awesome!