icesickle

Self explanatory:

I'm trying a new thing called Ice Sickle's Book of the Dead. Basically, the Book of the Dead is me hosting things that have disappeared from the web that I think should still be around. I'm going to kick things off with FoBomb's stuff on Rackets and Drapes.

FoBomb
To give you some very brief background, FoBomb was a fellow Rackets and Drapes fan. We met on the band's message board, met up in real life (since we lived in the same state), and became pretty good friends. Fo went on to eventually became a member of Rackets and Drapes years later. (As far as I know we're still friends. However, he moved to another state, and we've been out of contact for about 4 years. If you ever read this, miss you, man. Hope your life is going well.)

FoBomb's Mørkerom
Fo had several websites, most of which he stopped updating before we dropped out of contact, including a website he liked to call "FoBomb's Mørkerom" (Mørkerom meaning "darkroom" in Norwegian) which was hosted on Tripod, a free webhost that was pretty popular big back in the 90's. As tends to happen in life, websites grow old and get discarded, and for this one it was no different. The Mørkerom went on life support in 2004 and stopped being updated altogether sometime in 2004 or 2005. The skeletal husk of that website does remain, but Tripod is itself near death and the sites that cling to it's tattered frame seem to be virus laden these days.

The original page can be viewed here:
(Warning: follow the tripod links at your own peril. I get lots of warnings from Web Of Trust when I go there. That site might infect your computer, but hopefully not.)
http://fobomb.tripod.com/RacketsAndDrapes/

And his website is/was (same warning):
http://fobomb.tripod.com/

Because of that, here is a mirror, backup archive, blatant ripoff, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it of the portion of FoBomb's Mørkerom having to do with the Christian shock rock / industrial / goth band Rackets and Drapes. Hopefully he doesn't mind that I'm doing this.

People ask a lot of questions about R&D. And most of them are about the song Kill Your Self and about the symbol. So, here's some info for those of you with questions. Kill Your Self The Symbol

I'm not going to be posting here much (har!) because of a priority shift. I'm still following several people here, so I will be checking by every now and then. This journal will probably also still receive the occasional letting-steam-escape-so-I-don't-blow-my-top rant as well.

I'm spending more time on Facebook now. If you know me and want to hook up there, PM me and we'll make it happen. (But please explain how you know me... meaning, if it's not going to be obvious to me who you are, please do some explaining. I'm not going to give random strangers my FB info, but if we were ever web friends that's good enough for me.)

I also finally have the perfect storm: enough free time (yay unemployment, yay successfully quitting WOW 2 years ago) and a lot of already written unpublished content. Because of that I'm looking into starting a small blog/website type deal. Although I'm not completely sure what it will look like yet, anime reviews, game design, writing of various kinds, obscure music, theory, and old portfolio stuff will feature prominently simply because they're what I've been doing. (The portfolio includes: a few programs, art, websites--yes, I checked, the long finished but unpublished FF7G backup still survives, might as well include it in the mix.)

I will *NOT* be linking to any of the above from here. This place is my semi-secret hidey-hole for ranting or whatever you want to call it, not the home of my public web persona. If people figure out the link between the two, more power to them, but I'm not going to go out of my way to tell anyone.

Feel free to PM or post here if you want the info when it's off the ground. (Assuming it gets off the ground, of course. Maybe I'll suddenly get hired again! I can dream. :)

Also, Virginia Creeper is no Rackets and Drapes, but they're the closest thing I've heard in a long time: Bible thumping Industrial Metal. Recommended for anyone into such.
Virginia Creeper Myspace | Virginia Creeper preview of their first album on Youtube

Raaaaage.

"Politics and crime, they're the same thing."

Woot!

Preface
I don't like most pop rock bands. Relient K has been an exception for me, despite being a darling of the Contemporary Christian industry, the RIAA, Christian corporate radio, and mainstream radio. To me those are all negatives. I give the band a pass because they seem sincere, because their lyrics are insightful plus often brilliant, and because their three chord songs are catchy. Despite liking their later stuff, I haven't bought any of their music since Two Lefts because I'm boycotting the RIAA, but that's me. People still think, "hey he should listen to less creepy Christian metal and I know he likes Relient K," and get me new RK albums for birthdays and whatnot. Yeah. Big list of reasons I shouldn't care aside, this interests me. And despite my protesting too much, I have a shelf upon which sits almost every Relient K album, so I'm going to dive in.

The story goes
So Matt Thiessen, lead singer of Relient K, and his fiance, Shannon Murphy broke up in December of 2008. No big deal. It happens.

At the time Shannon posted a nice, "the engagement is off" neutral message on Gotee Record's website.

From December 29, 2008: I'll make this short (And as sweet as I can): For those of you who missed my announcement on the show a few days ago, I am no longer engaged. I called it off after learning a few things about Matt that I simply just could not handle. He's a wonderful person with an amazingly huge heart, and I love him more than anything. But ... No more wedding bells. I'm leaving it at that, and I hope you will, too. I need a lot of privacy, a lot of support and a lot of inspiration as I begin the "healing process."

People, of course, are being typical celebrity chasers and are not leaving it at that. Everyone's trying to figure out what went down, and why, hoping to find out just how bad of a boy Matt was.

The Saga decides to not die and instead kicks it up a notch
July 31, 2009 new details emerged. A story appeared on mlive.com. They'd found that Shannon Murphy had emerged as a new co-host of a talk radio program in Detroit. The key bit is this:

While calling into the show, Murphy revealed three tidbits:

• She turned down a shot to compete on ABC's "The Bachelor" to co-host on 95.5.

• She co-hosted the 1991 Thanksgiving parade, anchored by WDIV news legends Mort Crim and Carmen Harlan, and that her family watches it every Thanksgiving.

• She was once engaged to someone she described as "unfaithful." Murphy declined to go into detail.

After doing some muckraking, mlive put two and two together and determined a Christian Rock singer potentially cheated on his girlfriend. Nice find. Ooh, juicy drama! Sigh.

Soon Matt Thiessen got clued in via Google and apparently texted Shannon he wasn't happy about what was going public on mlive. Apparently she shared that with her new coworkers. Then the talk show and it's new co-host got in on the act on the air. From the excerpt in the story, it sounds like mostly the two sleazy sounding male co-hosts led the charge, repeatedly trying to milk the story into drama and further goad their female companion into escalating the situation. However, Shannon wisely says very little in the way of specifics, and, again, is very careful to avoid actually saying Matt cheated on her. The closest she gets is advising a caller that someone who does such a thing shows a lack of respect to the other person, not necessarily a lack of love.

The rumor mill is now in overdrive
Instead of that quieting everything down, people took the above respect comment as de facto proof that Matt cheated on his ex-fiance.

I wasn't looking for any of this, by the way. Until today I knew nothing. Now I'm surprised about Relient K's Wikipedia page having nothing, as related Youtube and lyrics site sections are all talking about this and little else. Allegedly most of Relient K's just-released album, Forget and Not Slow Down, including the title song deals with this subject matter.

i wouldnt be surprised if it was the concourse in ATL airport since this whole album is about him and his fiancee who broke up.
its probably something he heard alot on his trips to visit her.

Interesting, but just speculation.

"I know matt. and he did not cheat on shannon! Evadently she got the wrong impresson when matt said that those songs were not about her anymore and he kept talking about another girl, which i can tell you truthfully who she is. She is the girl who god realy wants matt to be with in the future. But the thing is that they have not even met yet, ok! So how could he be cheating on her with someone he has not met? Shannon hearing him sing curl up and die and talking about a possible breakup. evedently she thought that he was cheating on her with “the girl” so she broke up with him. everthing is just one big misunderstanding mess."

This person knows!

I really don't buy that. At all. I've heard that from the fans over and over again. You know what? She caught him. More than once. It wasn't a one time thing and I seriously doubt she would throw away a long lasting relationship and engagement over a simple misunderstanding like that. If she wasn't the one for Matt and that was the central issue, I really doubt she'd get on the air and discuss, with other women going through similar situations, the fact that he cheated more than once. I may never know the full truth and most likely neither will any of you, but I'm allowed to have my doubts nonetheless. The guy's not perfect and he is capable of screwing up.

This person also knows! How can they both be right?

Oh, right, "facts" on the "internet"
I'm surprised no big media outlet has picked this story up, but someone probably will sooner or later. This has the makings of the next Evanescence-level controversy for so-called "Christian" music, whether wanted or not. That applies even if this is all eventually turns out to be a big misunderstanding. If the past is a guide, we can always count on Christian bookstores to react like Wal-Mart over things like this: a good-for-business decision will be made and then you are for them or you are against them. Depending on what happens, the band could get dropped from CCM like a hot potato or the whole thing could just be buried by skillful PR aaaaand business as usual.

If/when the story either breaks or word-of-mouths to critical mass, I think most Relient K fangirls will be crushed but then a curious thing will happen. All right, not really that curious because it's happened before with other bands and other celebrities. The fans will fiercely defend Matt Thiessen with the fervor of impossible Michael Jackson fans.

He would never do something like that...

...goes the refrain so far.

And yet there's got to be the always nagging thought in the back of the mind: but what if he did? However, even if it turns out he did, most fans will suddenly find themselves morally compromising because, hey, they still like his introspective, soul baring music. I for one still do.

To be fair this whole thing is mlive's fault, but, if not them, someone else in the rumor machine would've been snooping and discovered this information sooner or later. Heck, it's all publicly available. So really what's to blame is people's insatiable desire to put "better" people on pedestals, to create celebrities and then hound them to their graves, and, of course, to dig up the dirt, especially on anyone who dares to call themselves a "Christian."

A less obvious take on the subject
"See," (best read with a sneer on your lips) is the subtle implication, "Christians are all hypocrites." Um, yeah, which, if you know anything about Christianity, is not inconsistent whatsoever. It's kind of the point. Premise 101 is that all people are basically evil. The one difference, 1, is that Christians accept that premise but think anyone can be forgiven by Jesus. That's it. There's nothing about them not screwing up. There's even the implication that Christians could screw up more because of how aware of their hypocrisy they are. Christians aren't fixed. They are normal people who believe--hope--Jesus really was God and they'll get fixed after death. Is that enough of a mind trip?

"Give us a king," the citizens of Israel say.
"You don't want a king. I pretty much am one, anyway," replies God.
But they insist. And God relents. And Israel gets Saul. He is a natural leader and good looking. Soon, no one likes his talks on unity, his heavy taxes, or his policies on Education, or on the War, or foreign policy. But that's not the worse of it. He becomes a tyrant over time. All, in large part, because he's trusting his gut instincts and doing the best that he can.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" As a human, your so-called gut feeling is lying to you more than you'd like.

Some things the rumor mill is ignoring
• I am not defending Matt Thiessen, by the way. If he's guilty of cheating, then he's guilty of cheating and should face the music consequences. I am going with innocent until proven guilty, however.

• But, regardless, we the masses don't know.

Keep in mind... there are two sides to every story.

Side 1 actually says: ?
Side 2 actually says: ?

• And we the masses don't necessarily deserve to know. It's a private matter. Caveat: Christians do place a lot of stock in holding each other the "accountable" buzzword, even more so regarding people in positions of influence. Public confession followed by repentance does hurt, but God does seem to honor it. Especially if there's genuine repentance and not something like, "I'm sorry I got caught. I promise not to get caught next time."

• From a Christian perspective, there's other ways to be "unfaithful" besides cheating. To illustrate, here are two what-ifs: maybe he was looking at porn. Maybe he was putting the band ahead of her in ways that were compromising their relationship. A lack of info is a lack of info.

•

I really hope this isn’t completely true. I look up to him and his music more than anything and well. . . if it’s true then I lost a huge role model. Regardless I am sorry for the loss on both sides and I hope you have both recovered a fair amount.

If you are someone who has Matt Thiessen as a role model, and are disillusioned, you don't necessarily have to drop him. Let's assume the worst case scenario: he cheated. He still has good points. Take him off the pedestal instead; recognize that he is human; and aspire to be the things he is good at. The rest is a cautionary tale. Like King David, he has a gift for praising God and, I would argue, following after God's own heart. If, like King David, he also completely screwed up with cheating, the similarities are ironic... and interesting.

Is history repeating itself? Well, God does not change. Obviously there will be consequences, as that is just the way life works.

Otherwise, if you only want perfect people to be your role models, hurry up and get rid of all your other ones. There's only one person who qualifies. Guess who it is?

• Despite some sins being really taboo these days while others just get winked at, in the Bible, all sins are equally bad. The point is, anyone who sins once is guilty, period. Secondly, everyone sins, so by extension, everyone is guilty. Thirdly, Jesus is willing to forgive everything, period, no strings attached. That's it. No one stops sinning when they become a Christian. For most people, being famous just ups the pressure.

Welcome to this truly wonderful thing we call, "grace."

Possible call and response
My final 2 cents: a good Christian response is not to disavow or attack or even defend Relient K, nor to demand to know what happened. In the same way, attacking Shannon or assuming everything is her fault does no one any good (...but neither does assuming her not-even-confirmed accusation is right on and Matt cheated.) Of course, it is also no better to sweep this under the rug and pretend none of this exists. Instead, consider praying for God's will and leaving it at that.

All the same, if you happen to hear a guy yelling, "Marco!" from a great distance, that's me.