X Ambassadors: Accidentally Listening to Them for Years

If you've played video games, watched regular television or Netflix, or listened to the radio in the last two years, you know who the X Ambassadors are; you just don't know you do. They've been featured in all walks of media, very heavily in the last half-year.

These four New Yorkers, currently on tour with Jamie N Commons, hit the ground running in 2009 (as Ambassadors), though they didn't really hit the world stage until last year. In 2012 & 2013, X Ambassadors had three of their songs featured in separate Need for Speed games. They also featured on Eminem's The Marshal Mathers LP2 in "Wicked Ways". 

Their most recent work, and I know you've heard it, "Jungle", has flooded the mainstream lately. Featured in Hercules, WWE, Orange is the New Black, MTV's Teen Wolf, and the new Battlefield trailer, it is impossible to avoid, not that you'd want to. These guys are good at what they do, and there's no doubt that they're nowhere near done giving us music to use as background noise to explosions.

Riot Fest is the new Warped Tour

In 1995 Vans started a tour around the nation showcasing punk rock and ska music that spoke to a generation that really understood how to have fun at a concert. This tour was the Vans Warped Tour. Not only did punk rockers and skaters enjoy Vans shoes, but they also enjoyed their taste in music. The first tour was headlined by the bands Sublime, No Doubt, and CIV, but didn't contain the huge amount of fluffer bands to create a huge lineup. The following year the tour added more punk bands and reluctantly the band Creed, the person who made that decision surely being fired shortly thereafter. It seemed year after year Vans got huge punk rock bands to play and kept adding venues to play at around the nation. As time goes on and things get bigger that's when d-bags like to ruin all things good. I dont want to sound like an old man but…

Exactly. Warped Tour is no longer about sticking to its punk roots, and I know things have to evolve, but Warped Tour took a few steps back and became the weird uncle who you see once a year and are scared to talk to him for fear of ending up in his basement. Since 2008 I have checked the tour's lineup online and repeatedly stated "It got worse from last years" and I am done. There will be no need to check next years. There is someone new in town, and her name is Riot Fest. Riot Fest is what Warped Tour was in 1998. It doesn't travel all around the country, but it hits a few major cities, and one of them happens to be Chicago. This year I have the chance to see all the bands that are too old to jump around like they used to, but can still play music fast enough for a great mosh pit. Nofx, The Bouncing Souls, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and Samhain are just a few bands that I am stoked to see. The tour is filled with a ton more punk bands and I highly recommend checking out www.riotfest.org for the complete list.

Coming Out of Their Shells

Bedazzled denim-vests. Colorful electric guitars. Drum lines that give you that odd 90's aftertaste you completely forgot about (for good reason). A crowd that has no idea how to react. That weird "sparkle" sound that you only heard in pop music from the 80's. This is exactly what I expected when I heard that the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went on a nation-wide rock concert tour back in 1990. And, I'll tell you what, I wasn't disappointed. Well, I was disappointed, but my predictions weren't.

Every song in this concert sounds like it was written by Bob Seger... a heroin-addicted Bob Seger selling his soul to score a fix. You could have sat through the whole concert, and you wouldn't have recognized a single song. That's because every song they performed was written specifically for this tour, each track getting embarrassingly worse than the last. Seriously, boys, this is so bad. Splinter came out of nowhere, switched his voice into Asia-tone (you know, "Heat of the Moment"), and sang a solo song about skipping rocks on a pond. That's not a joke. I would rather have my wife catch me naked-Skyping with my ex than have anyone catch me watching this YouTube video.

And don't worry, Shredder's in this. He apparently discovered how to freeze time. April O'Neil is in it too, and she's pretty hot, in a 1989 kind of way. Shredder shows up just in time to "ruin" the concert. Thank Christ. He scares off the Turtles, holds the fans "hostage", and then heckles the crowd. Honestly, best part of the show. Then he declares that he hates music, four seconds before singing a rap song called "I Hate Music", and his foot soldiers did the worm on stage. I don't know what I was expecting...

I can't do this anymore guys. This is so bad. So bad.