Why Korn Is the Greatest Band Ever

I live my life through music. Seriously, I do. My computer currently holds enough music to play for 41 days without repeating a song. Good luck finding anything on Loafy next year.

As I write this I’m sitting alone at a Dairy Queen in Lexington, Virginia listening to Korn while I down a medium Oreo Blizzard and try desperately to think of a topic for this column.

I live my life through music. It can make me happy and it can make me sad. It can get me excited and it can calm me down. It can make me want to dance and it can make me want to rage. Recently it’s been making me very introspective.

Korn has “Alone I Break” to cover that one. When I’m excited, they have “Word Up”. When I’m depressed there’s “Falling Away From Me” (“beating me down, beating me, beating me, down, down, into the ground”). When I’m horny there’s “A.D.I.D.A.S.” (It’s not about shoes; it stands for All Day I Dream About Sex.) And when I’m pissed off there’s “Right Now” or “Here To Stay” or “Let’s Do This Now” or…

Well, they do “pissed off” a lot. (When I’m really livid my favorite is synching “Got the Life” with the very end of “Ænema” by Tool. Try it sometime.) Korn has a song for just about every manifestation of anger. I guess I’m just angry a lot. And there’s a lot to be angry about these days.

My last column strayed too far from my usual anger and cynicism, so let me be clear: If Bush is closest to any animal in the Chinese Zodiac, he’d be a mix between a Ram (deeply religious, yet timid by nature; sometimes clumsy in speech) and an Ox (bigoted; they anger easily, have fierce tempers, are remarkably stubborn, and hate to be opposed). I can’t just sit back and let him mold the world in his image. Unfortunately, my fellow activists and I have made few tangible gains in the last 5 years.

Korn is the greatest band ever because they invariably help me get through the disillusionment that comes along with fighting a system that sometimes appears unstoppable. (Greatest album honors go to Incubus’ “Make Yourself” for similar reasons, but that’s another column. I’ll save it for next week’s writer’s block.)

I was originally going to write about the words that every Luther student should know before they graduate, like “intransigent” and “vicissitudes” (you mean you haven’t looked those up yet?). But I’m not going to do your homework for you.

I live my life through music. Through it all there is Korn. Ok, so maybe they can’t pull off happy, but they got the rest. And besides, I have 41 days of other music to cover happy. Sometimes I just need Korn to assuage my anger. As the saying goes: “If you’re not pissed off, you’re not paying attention.” And if you’re not drowning yourself in Korn, you’re not pissed off enough.