Music

So I will start talking about my current favorite band and why it's been such a staple in my college career.  I guess to say band is not a great term, more so the band's lead singer: Tom Delonge.  Now I know that you are thinking, why would I say current favorite and not all-time favorite or something along those lines, but I still have very strong roots in my country music.  It really hits home of who I am.  blink-182 and subsequent punk rock, pop-punk, and post hardcore bands really only came into light during college.  It is true that they have probably had the most influence on my music and the way I really think of music now than any other genre, let alone band.  I was never a big fan of blink-182 in high school solely because I did not know of them.  I know that seems hard what with access to anything and everything on the internet nowadays, but it was never anything that came up.  I listened to country music radio stations in my truck and a mixture of classical, from my parents, and country at home.  So I never really listened to punk rock because it wasn't on very many radio stations around me, or I just never knew of them.  When my ex-roommate, ex-bandmate, fraternity brother, and best friend introduced me to blink-182 I guess to say it was more of an enlightenment than anything.  I realized when he had me listen to "All the Small Things" that I had heard of it before.   But then I listened to more of the first album: Cheshire Cat, then Dude Ranch, Enema of the State, and I think you get the picture.  Needless to say I was hooked.  And it wasn't just listening.  That was back in freshman year.  We, my afore mentioned best friend, and my other best friend decided to make a band.  I had an acoustic guitar at the time, but no electric.  I used his extra guitar, just a starter Fender Strat.  He of course had the Tom Delonge, semi-hollow body, Dirty Fingers humbucker, Epiphone.  And we were off.  He wrote a ton of music, I wrote a few songs, a couple which I had already written prior to the band and were more of an accoustic nature than most of the punk the lead guitarist wrote.  I slowly wrote a few more that were of a simliar nature, but I was not writing what I wanted.  After really playing a bunch of the stuff our lead guitarist wrote I still didn't know what I was looking for.  Then my roommates exposed me to Tom Delonge in a different light: Angel's and Airwaves.  It was as if my world slowed down a little bit.  I found what I was looking for.  I wanted to hear that from my music, I wanted to sound like that, and I wanted to be able to write like that.  Of course it didn't really happen like that.  Even now I still don't write like AVA, but I've learned what I really want to do.  Have my own sound.  I haven't really gotten it nailed down yet, but I haven't really had time to perfect it what with school and not having my electric guitar here with me.  Plus I have only one pedal and for all the effects I want I need at least a few more.  And a recording program, and a music writing program.  So I am kind of empty handed.  But I do have ideas.  So that is a little look into my short history with Tom Delonge.