{"id":639,"date":"2013-09-11T18:14:18","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T23:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/?p=639"},"modified":"2013-09-12T03:50:42","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T08:50:42","slug":"911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/911\/","title":{"rendered":"911"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>September 11th, 2001&#8230; I will never forget that day. Ever. I was awakened by the sound of Tracy McShane screaming out of my answering machine &#8220;Billy, Billy!! Turn on the TV!!!&#8221; I turned it on just in time to watch the second plane slam into the south tower. No words can describe how I felt as I watched the towers collapse, live on TV. Absolute horror.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the <a href=\"..\/insomnia.html\">Insomnia<\/a> album was written and recorded in the time between that fateful day and the &#8220;shock and awe&#8221; attack on Bahgdad which I also watched in  horror, live on TV. The days that followed were very surreal and unsettling. I tried to put it out of my mind. <\/p>\n<p>Listening to this music takes me right back to that time and in many ways I feel like I have ignored it because of that &#8211; still wanting to put it all of it out of my mind. For those who never made the connection &#8211; and surprisingly, not one single review ever did &#8211; that is why the twin beacons were included on the inner sleeve artwork. It was the zeitgeist, the dark shadow that malingered over everything. We went as a band to ground zero not long after the attack, saw the beacons, witnessed the destruction up close. It felt&#8230; personal.<\/p>\n<p>Although this piece of music <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pB7Q60Y0n0A\" TARGET=\"_NEW\"><i>Last Cigarette<\/i><\/a> wasn&#8217;t written specifically with 911 in mind, it was always in the back of my mind. Looking back, I think it probably best captures how I was feeling at the time and even though it&#8217;s been 12 years now, it&#8217;s still hard for me to listen to sometimes. Along with some other personal issues, it was a very difficult time. I didn&#8217;t want to deal with it and because of that, combined with dramatic changes in the music business, it took years to see the album released. &nbsp;<i>Insomnia<\/i> almost never saw the light of day.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pB7Q60Y0n0A\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Musically speaking, this is my personal favorite on the album. The guitar solo-turn-duet with Jens Johansson&#8217;s brilliant counterpoint is probably my favorite musical moment. Looking back now with some objectivity, I still think we made a good, solid album. Life goes on.<\/p>\n<p>-Bill Berends 9\/11\/13<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>September 11th, 2001&#8230; I will never forget that day. Ever. I was awakened by the sound of Tracy McShane screaming out of my answering machine &#8220;Billy, Billy!! Turn on the TV!!!&#8221; I turned it on just in time to watch the second plane slam into the south tower. No words can describe how I felt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11,5,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-mastermind","category-music","category-news","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":687,"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mastermindband.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}