The entire crew at Brandon’s Buzz wishes all of its readers a safe, happy, and healthy 2010. Coming this week: a slightly overdue post-mortem on the best music from the year (and decade) just passed. Happy new year, everyone!
Thanks to some unusually temperate weather and an inordinate amount of rain in the past month, my rosebush — which was just planted two weeks ago — has already begun blooming. (Perhaps this is normal — my thumb is so not green, it’s purple — but I’m going to go with the assumption that rosebushes aren’t supposed to look like this in November, even in Texas.) Based on the early empirical evidence, I’m gonna be bold and predict this beauty is gonna be a knockout come March.
Forgive me for a transitory shift toward the somber, but amid all the fun and frolic of this warm May day, I hope you’ll take a moment to remember not only the friends, the family, the loved, who have passed on from this plane, but also those brave warrior ones who lost their lives protecting your right to spend this Monday however you choose, whether you’re boating and boozing with the boys, tangled in the sheets with your lover, or simply trying to compose a short, serious blog post that is devoid of banal sap. (It’s harder than it sounds, believe me.)
Happy Thanksgiving, all. May your day be filled with fun, family, friends, and football. (And not necessarily in that order.)
And tonight, one for the “you just never know” file:
If you’ve watched even a tiny measure of television in the past week, you’ve no doubt seen a commercial for the Subaru Grand Vitara automobile which is scored by the classic Switchfoot smash “Dare You to Move.” (Just watching a couple of hours of ESPN football highlights and VH-1 music videos last Monday morning, I caught the ad, like, ten times.) Apparently, I’m not the only one who has seen this promo spot, but it seems as though I am the only one who recognizes the song: behind the scenes here at the Buzz, I have access to a wonderfully educational page of statistics, through which I can learn not only which pages are being viewed most often, but also how folks are getting here to begin with, and it seems that people are rushing to their computers to Google the lyrics of the song — it begins with the lines “Welcome to the planet / welcome to existence” — in an attempt to ascertain the title and artist. And because I used those opening lyrics as a category for a post back in June, the Buzz is popping up near the top of many of those searches.
Because you’ve not found what you’ve come here looking for, I’ll happily ease your frustration. Once again, the band is Switchfoot, and the song’s title is “Dare You to Move” (here’s a handy 
link, s’il vous plait), and it can be found on their bold, coolly magnificent 2003 major-label debut
The Beautiful Letdown
the playlist I painstakingly crafted at summer’s start?) And, finally, whatever freak stroke of Google-determined luck brought you here to the Buzz, I sincerely thank you for your patronage, and hope you like what you see and have decided to stick around. We’re having lots of fun here discussing life and the meaning of it.
(PS: This week’s record store report is forthcoming. I swear.)
According to the stats provided to me by WordPress (and lord only knows how credible they are, but I take them to heart nonetheless), the Buzz will be viewed for the thousandth time at some point today. (As I type this, we currently sit at 996 “hits.”)
We’re not even flying at 30,000 feet yet, but this crazy, demented exercise in loquacity — love ya, Mike! — has already been far more successful than I would ever have dreamed a month or two ago.
So to all of you who have allowed my madness to touch your life on even the most superficial level, I offer a sincerely heartfelt word:
Thanks.
