Colorful – The Verve Pipe
This song was featured at the end of the highly underrated Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star.  As a man who’s married to a woman WAY above my pay grade this song really speaks to me.

The show is over close the story book
There will be no encore
And all the random hands that I have shook
Well they’re reaching for the door
I watch their backs as they leave single file
But you stood stubborn, cheering all the while

I know I can be colorful
I know I can be gray
But I know this loser’s living fortunate
Cause I know you will love me either way

Most were being good for goodness sake
But you wouldn’t pantomime
You are more beautiful when you awake
Than most are in a lifetime
Through the haze that is my memory well
You stayed for drama though you paid for a comedy

I know I can be colorful
I know I can be gray
But I know this loser’s living fortunate
Cause I know you will love me either way

Look ahead as far as you can see
We’ll live in drama but we’ll die in a comedy
I know I can be colorful…

There’s Something In The Way She Moves – James Taylor
If I had to pick one song that represents the way I feel about the wife, this is it.  JT is an incredible singer/songwriter and this is by far my favorite of his tunes.

There’s something in the way she moves,
Or looks my way, or calls my name,
That seems to leave this troubled world behind.
If I’m feeling down and blue,
Or troubled by some foolish game,
She always seems to make me change my mind.

And I feel fine anytime she’s around me now,
She’s around me now
Almost all the time.
And if I’m well you can tell that she’s been with me now,
And she’s been with me now
Quite a long, long time
And I feel fine.

Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning,
And I find myself careening
Into places where I should not let me go.
She has the power to go where no one else can find me,
Yes, and to silently remind me
Of the happiness and good times that I know, you know.
Well I said I just got to know that:

It isn’t what she’s got to say
Or how she thinks or where she’s been.
To me, the words are nice, the way they sound.
I like to hear them best that way -
It doesn’t much matter what they mean,
She says them mostly just to calm me down.

And I feel fine anytime she’s around me now,
She’s around me now
Almost all the time.
If I’m well you can tell that she’s been with me now,
And she’s been with me now
Quite a long,
Long
Time -
Yes, and I feel fine.

Blind Faith – Warrant
I don’t think I can ever make any kind of “favorite song” list without including some 80′s hair metal.  This unreleased classic from Warrant really speaks from the heart… or the hairspray.

Darling I know you’re sleeping
But there’s something that I’ve just got to say
Wonder if you’ll hear me while you’re dreaming
You make a lifetime out of every day
Thanks to you now I know
All my dreams can come true

Blind faith in you, oh yeah,
I got blind faith in you

Your eyes keep things well hidden
Just a hint of what you’re holding inside
And the first day that I met you
I consider the first day of my life
Thanks to you now I know
All my dreams can come true

Blind Faith in you, oh yeah.
I’ve got blind faith in you
And I’m not sure that I deserve
A woman so true,
But I love, that you think I do

With You and Faith, beside me
I’m feelin’ stronger every day

Love Walks In – Van Halen
My favorite band.  My favorite of their albums.  This song captured a moment and to this day every single time I listen to this song I’m back in that moment.  That’s what a great song is all about.

Contact is all that it takes
To change your life, to lose your place in time
Contact. Asleep or awake
Coming around you may wake up to find

Questions deep within your eyes
Now more than ever, you realize

And then you sense a change
Nothin’ feels the same
All your dreams are strange
Love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Waits for the opening
Simply pulls a string

Another world, some other time
You lay your sanity on the line
Familiar faces, familiar sights
Reach back, remember with all your might

Ooh, and there she stands in a silken gown
Silver lights shinin’ down

And then you sense a change
Nothin’ feels the same
All your dreams are strange
Love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Waits for the opening
Simply pulls a string
Love comes walkin’ in

Oh, sleep and dream; that’s all I crave
I travel far across the milky way
To my master I become a slave
‘Til we meet again some other day

Where silence speaks as loud as war
Earth returns to what it was before

And then you sense a change
Nothin’ feels the same
All your dreams are strange
Love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Waits for the opening
Simply pulls a string
Love comes walkin’ in

Love comes walkin’ in
Baby, pull the string
Love comes walkin’ in
Love comes walkin’ in, yeah!

Jacob – Jackopierce
This entire album is full of introspective stuff like this, but Jacob stands out for me.  I loved this song before I had kids and now that I have children of my own it hits me even harder.

Jacob’s a fine boy
But his parents don’t get along
They hardly talk, when they do
He thinks he’s done something wrong

He heard all the screaming
As he lay down to bed
He should have been sleeping
But he listened instead

They say he’s fine
It’s not his fault
Between the lines he somehow got caught
‘And in our game
It’s more like war
I just don’t think i love you anymore’

He picked up the phone
His tears touched the receiver
His grandmother answered down in Tempe
He told her the story
That his daddy was leaving
She tried to convince him it was nothing he’d done

She said ‘you’re fine
It’s not your fault
Between the lines
You somehow got caught
And in their game
It sounds more like war
I just don’t think she loves him anymore’

Jacob’s a father
And his kids are in teens
He’s done what he could to make meager ends meet
When it comes down to family
It’s the primary goal
To keep the thing working
No matter the toll

His sons heard them screaming
About something he said
He opened the door and invited them in

He said ‘Now sons
It’s not your fault
Between the lines you somehow got caught
So when you’re hurt
You lean on the crutch
But I still love your mother very much’

PLOT:

Written by John Stockwell, directed by Stephen Herek, and executive produced by none other than George Clooney, Rock Star tells the story of mythical hard rock band Steel Dragon who is in need of a new lead singer.  Chris Cole (Mark Wahlberg) plays in a Steel Dragon “tribute” band and is about as big a “fan” as you can possibly be.  He makes several references to the fact that his band (Blood Pollution) is a “tribute” band rather than a “cover” band.  He has such a love for Steel Dragon that he takes his musical “performances” very seriously.  Of course, Chris gets the job as the new Steel Dragon front man and takes on the moniker of “Izzy”.

The rest of the movie is quite simply as the tag line says, “The story of a wanna be, who got to be.”  We follow Izzy through the ups and downs of the rock industry in the late 80′s completing the holy trilogy of sex, drugs and rock & roll.

COMMENTARY:

Aside from Wahlberg in the main roll there are some pretty interested performances thrown in here.  Jennifer Aniston plays the girlfriend Emily in a complete non-Friends roll.  She’s a typical metal-head girlfriend from the 80′s: trashy, leather and border line slutty.  There’s a scene that is just beautiful where she’s wearing a mesh see through “dress” with a thong beneath it.  Also, if you look closely you’ll see the first lesbian kiss for Ms. Jennifer in here.

With the exception of Timothy Olyphant the rest of the cast is relatively unknown… unless of course you’re in the music business.  The two bands in the movie (Steel Dragon & their tribute band Blood Pollution) are made up of actual musicians including:

• Jason Bonham – son of John Bonham
• Jeff Pilson – Dokken & Foreigner
• Zakk Wylde – Black Label Society & Ozzy Osbourne
• Myles Kennedy – Alter Bridge
• Miljenko Matijevic – Steelheart
• Nick Cantanese – Black Label Society
• Blas Elias – Slaughter
• Brian Vander Ark – The Verve Pipe

The point is, this isn’t just a movie about musicians… the music sounds good/real because it is.

Of special interest is how the plot of this movie mimics that of metal legends Judas Priest.  Essentially the same thing happened to Tim “Ripper” Owens when the band decided to replace legendary front man Rob Halford with Owens.  Owens at the time was playing in a “tribute” band as well.

RECOMMENDATION:

I’m a big metal fan.  If you can’t stand metal as a musical genre you’re not going to like this movie.  Not because it isn’t a good movie but because the music is so entrenched in the whole plot.  There are certainly some bad parts to this, but there’s something about the “normal guy hits it big” story that appeals to the best in us.  I have to say that after his hip-hop roots Mark Wahlberg pulls off metal quite nicely.  Rock Star isn’t going to win any awards but I’d say as long as you don’t hate metal it’s worth checking out.