The Guest

It's taken me awhile to come to grips with the fact that I watch the O.C. on a regular basis and enjoy doing so, but that's done nothing to banish the twinge of guilt that I feel (and ignore) as it comes on each week. So I'm glad that the season's over, because I won't have to deal with this for awhile. But as the trailer promoting next season ran, I finally realized how much I like the show's theme music, and since I have no morals when it comes to stealing music, I figured I might as well look it up and see if I could steal it. Turns out the band is Phantom Planet, who I've been a fan of since 1999 (I mean, last century!). And I didn't know! It was a song off their second cd, The Guest, and I felt like I'd betrayed them or something because I hadn't kept up with what they'd done since Phantom Planet is Missing.

So I tried to make up for it by finally buying music legally off iTunes (I really did, cuz I couldn't find anything but California--the OC theme song--on Kazaa), where I bought most of the album (ok, I did find a couple of other mp3s elsewhere) The Guest. And that's the title of this post because I really love it. I'm one of those people who goes through phases in their music, where I'll just listen to one cd over and over for at least a couple of weeks, and then that becomes the soundtrack for that particular phase in my life. I did this with the Magnolia soundtrack over the summer, and now whenever I hear one of those songs, it makes me remember exactly what it felt like then... and then I get kind of homesick. But whatever. The thing is, I'd exhausted my current music selection and needed a new cd to obsess over, and this is that cd. The song California also makes me homesick, not surprisingly, but I love it anyway, and then there are a bunch of others that remind me why I used to listen to Phantom Planet's first album. They remind me of a less refined Matchbox 20, for some reason... like both started out sounding the same but diverged awhile back and Matchbox 20 has been at it longer and sounds less raw.

Anyway I could babble on meaninglessly for awhile longer and since it's doubtful anyone read this far to begin with, I might as well just call it a night and get some sleep.

Oh yeah, just remembered that half the point of this post (and it's a silly one, to be sure) was to vindicate The O.C. somewhat for at least reintroducing me to a good band. I still hate the spirit in which the show was conceived, but someone somewhere made it turn out well anyway. Props.