Capital Lights
Summer Roadtrip Playlist
I love roadtrips, music, and summer. So, with the aid of the terrific fans of TFCMB’s Facebook page fans and rad Twitter followers, I’ve combined a list of some of the best summer roadtrip songs. For best results, listen on an open highway with the top down and the wind in your hair and a few of your best friends in the car.
- Group 1 Crew – “Live It Up”
- TobyMac – “Getaway Car”
- Newsboys – “Go”
- Whiteheart – “Convertibles”
- Johnny Cash – “I’ve Been Everywhere”
- House of Heroes – “Sooner Or Later (You’ll Want I All)”
- The Almost – “Souls on Ten”
- Relient K – “High of 75″
- Jars of Clay – “Scenic Route”
- Anberlin – “Autobahn”
- The Rocket Summer – “Hills and Valleys”
- Ruth – “Rolling With The Punches”
- Newsboys – “Wherever We Go”
- Mat Kearney – “Nothing Left To Lose”
- Capital Lights – “Mile Away”
- The Elms – “Back To Indiana”
- The Wedding – “Southside”
- Relient K – “I’m Taking You With Me”
- The Wedding – “Fireworks”
- Audio Adrenaline – “Free Ride”
- The Almost – “Free Fallin’”
- Owl City – “Sunburn”
- Relient K – “Forward Motion”
- Jonezetta – “Communicate”
Additions:
- Paper Tongues – “Ride to California”
- House of Heroes – “Mercedes Baby”
- Superchick – “Karaoke Superstars”
- TobyMac – “Boomin’”
- Hawk Nelson – “Live Life Loud”
- Stephen Curtis Chapman – “Live Out Loud”
- Hawk Nelson – “The Show”
- House of Heroes – “God Save Us the Foolish Kings”
- Mae – “Summertime”
- The O.C. Supertones – “Supertones Strike Back”
- Ruth – “Back to the Five”
- Relient K – “Chapstick, Chapped Lips, and Things Like Chemistry”
- Anberlin – “True Faith”
- The Rocket Summer – “So Much Love”
- Owl City – “Cave In”
- Blood and Water – “The Government Stole My iPod”
- The Classic Crime – “Solar Powered Life”
- Number One Gun – “Forest”
- Newsboys – “Born Again”
- Rapture Ruckus – “Hold On”
- We Shot The Moon – “The Bright Side”
- Ghoti Hook – “On The Road Again”
- Audio Adrenaline – “Chevette”
- MxPx – “The Wonder Years”
- MxPx – “Southbound”
- Family Force 5 – “Ghostride the Whip”
- Leeland – “Follow You”
- Avalon – “California”
- Fireflight – “Desperate”
- Hawk Nelson – “California”
- Relient K – “Forget and Not Slow Down”
- Lecrae – “Jesus Muzik”
- Owl City – “Tip of the Iceburg”
- Lost Ocean – “Just Glide”
- RED – “Hide”
- House of Heroes – “Code Name: Raven”
- The Fold – “Backseat Drivers”
- Mainstay – “Roads”
- Group 1 Crew – “Movin’”
- TobyMac – “Ignition”
- Thousand Foot Krutch – “Forward Motion”
- Switchfoot – “Mess of Me”
- Skillet – “Awake and Alive”
- Kutless – “Tonight”
- The Almost – “Hands”
- Decyfer Down – “Crash”
- Krystal Meyers – “Feels So Right”
- Switchfoot – “The Shadow Proves the Sunshine”
- Relient K – “High of 75″
- Stellar Kart – “Student Driver”
Well, there you have it. Am I missing anything obvious? What would you pick?
Capital Lights Farewell Party: A Recap
Wow, it’s hard to believe it was over a week ago now that Capital Lights announced that they were breaking up, and I randomly announced the first (and last…) Capital Lights farewell party. You can get the full details on the original post, here, but in a nutshell, basically, myself, and dozens of dedicated Capital Lights fans decided to give the band a worthy send out by voting them to #1 on several different radio & TV shows. A week later, I’m sure most of the people who participated are a little curious how well we did. So…
First, the bad news. Due to various factors, I’m not sure how well Capital Lights did on either TVU’s TMW or Steelroot’s Countdown. (If you know, please let me know!)
There is good news though. On RadioU’s Ten Most Wanted, we drove Capital Lights’ song “Return” to number ONE on Friday, and not only that, we kept in the countdown for a couple of days afterwards. That’s fantastic! I’m really stoked about that. If you were one of the ones who participated, go give yourself a pat on the back – you did good kid. 
Really, everything went remarkably well. At this point, I think the final step is to be praying for the different members of Capital Lights as they follow God’s plan for all of their individual lives, whatever that maybe.
Again, thanks everyone who participated, we rocked.
Capital Lights Farewell Party
Tragedy of tragedies! One of last year’s best new bands, Capital Lights, has just announced that they’re calling it quits. You can read the band’s full blog post about it at their MySpace, here, but the gist of it after much prayer, the band is feeling God calling them to something different then music. While that’s probably the best reason out there for a band to break up, it’s still really disappointing that we’ll never hear more music from them.
Anyway, after I heard the news, I was quite sad, but after a while, I realized that ultimately, if that’s God’s plan for the band to go their separate ways, then it’s for the best, and that I probably had something better to do then being depressed all day. So… I racked my brain for a way to give Capital Lights a good sent out, and finally, came up with a plan. I’m calling it the Capital Lights Farewell Party.
It’s pretty simple, really. I’m going to be voting everyday for the band’s music on RadioU, TVU, and Steelroots Countdown, and try and drive them to #1. Of course, if it’s just me, I probably won’t get very far (plus, it’d be a boring party), so here’s where you come in. I would love it if you could visit the three sites below (and any other ones you know of) and vote for Capital Lights. I know all three shows pretty well, and I think that there’s a good chance we can make this happen.
Anyway, R.I.P. Capital Lights: They were a great band, made up of great guys, who made great music. And it would be awesome if we could make this happen. No pressure, but I’m counting on you. Thanks!
-TVU’s Ten Most Wanted-
(Vote “Outrage”!)
-RadioU’s Ten Most Wanted-
(Vote “Return”!)
-Steelroot’s Countdown-
(Vote “Outrage”!)
Now Hear This! Discover New Music!
That’s right, I think it’s time that we heard and started discovering some good new music. Well, EMI CMG’s new artist promotion has made it possible for us to do just that. At Amazon’s MP3 store, you can get either Now Hear This – Pop or Now Hear This – Rock. The pop sampler includes the artists Sarah Reeves, Josh Wilson, Phillip LaRue, Kristian Stanfill, Christy Nockels, and Jason Allen Rich. The rock sampler includes Danyew, Above The Golden State, Philmont, Future of Forestry, Seven Stories Up, and Capital Lights. Several of the songs on Now Hear This were also given as free downloads at tangle.com as well. So if you can’t access an Amazon account, you can search tangle.com and pick some of them up there. Also, Amazon requires you to purchase each sampler as a whole to get it free. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay $0.99 for each song. I don’t know why it is like that, but I’d take both samplers for free rather than buying it song by song. 
As a side note, you can also get your hands on this sampler at your local Christian bookstore with a purchase an album by any of the featured artists.
-Now Hear This: Discover New Music – Pop on Amazon.com-
-Now Hear This: Discover New Music – Rock on Amazon.com-
While you’re on Amazon, you can also pick yet another Christian music sample. Yes, you heard me right. This time, the sampler is from the Word Label Group. You might have seen the new 6 Picks: Essential Radio Essentials from artists such as, Stellar Kart, Big Daddy Weave, or Sixpence None the Richer. Each 6 Picks EP is compromised of the six best songs from each respective artist. It’s sort of like a ‘best of’ album, just that it’s an EP. Anyway, you can get the 6 Picks Radio Hits Sampler for free at Amazon. This sampler includes Big Daddy Weave, Building 429, Barlowgirl, Rachael Lampa, Sixpence None The Richer, and Jaci Velasquez.
The Capital Lights of This Beautiful Republic
Okay, please forgive the not-so-clever-pun in the title. Not of This World (NOTW, for short) has got two free tracks on their website for the month, “Outrage”, the clever & catchy second single from Capital Lights, and “Going Under”, the rocker from This Beautiful Republic’s debut Even Heroes Need Parachutes. Both are quite good, and worthy additions to any Christian rock fan’s playlist. Enjoy!
James’ Top 10 Downloads Of 2008
So, it was hard, but I narrowed down my top 10 list. And I only included three of my own posts, unlike Matt, who listed ten of his. Nevermind the fact that I joined him late in the year and only posted one day a week for not even every week til the end of the year…
Anyway, I sorted through the 300+ posts and probably 1000+ songs and ended up with this list of favorites:
10: Tie Between Children 18:3, Children 18:3, and Children 18:3 – So, Matt had a tie at 10th, so I thought it was only fair that I do the same. Children 18:3 was a band I found near the beginning of the year and was the first band that year to show me that pop-punk could be something that I could enjoy if it was done right.
9: Sides of the North – This small band was one of Christian music’s best kept secrets, which is a shame because they were awesome. Six songs by them is definitely an awesome post and worthy of placing in the top 10.
8: Summer Slam Volume 2 – Indie Vision Music has been one of the top sources of free Christian music, and SSV2 is their biggest and best. It gave me free songs from Project 86, Stavesacre, Ocean is Theory, The Dark Romantics, and introduced me to a bunch of smaller bands, especially The Human Flight Committee, with their song “She’s A Car Destroyer.”
7: The Devil Wears Prada – I became a fan of TDWP when I saw them at Warped Tour (and crowdsurfed to them). So I was very excited when I found a free sampler containing “Hey John, What’s Your Name Again?”
6: The Awkward Romance – The Awkward Romance was already my favorite local band before they came out with this CD, This Song Is Writing Me, but this CD caught me by surprise by how well produced it was. And the fact that they gave it away for free was an even bigger surprise.
5: Capital Lights – What Children 18:3 started was reinforced by the introduction to my of Capital Lights. And what we have here with “Can I Get An Amen” is Capital Lights at their best.
4: Stavesacre – Stavesacre is a band that I’d heard of a for a while but never listened to for the longest time. However, once I saw on here that they had a song (“It’s Beautiful Once You’re Out There”) up for download, I decided to give them a listen. I was far from disappointed, and I must say that I have found one of my new favorite bands.
3: mewithoutYou – As I’ve mentioned before, mewithoutYou is my favorite band. The only reason that this isn’t listed higher is that I already had the song long before I found the download that I featured. Still, they are my favorite band.
2: Tooth & Nail Fuel Sampler – Any Tooth & Nail sampler is gonna have awesome songs on it, but this one caught me by surprise with the artists that I enjoyed the most on it. Now, I already had the great songs from Children 18:3 and Showbread, but this sampler introduced me to Capital Lights and Oh, Sleeper plus it gave me amazing songs from Sever Your Ties and my personal favorite on the whole sampler, “Abracadavers” by The Classic Crime, which was a band I had long ago written off.
1: House of Heroes – Sure, I found it before I found this site, but the three free songs, in combination with the ones they streamed on myspace, held me over until their new CD finally came out in September. “In The Valley Of The Dying Son” has been in my collection since March and has yet to ever at any point get old, and neither have any of the others, which is why this places as the number one download of the 2008.
Honorary Mentions:
Everyday Joe’s – This sampler was no longer available by the time that I found this site, but anything that includes Listener Project is awesome.
Christmas Day 12 – Matt put a ton of work into this post, listing something like 2 dozen artists with Christmas songs up for download.
Matt’s Top 10 Favorite Posts of 2008
Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that it’s 2009 already. Strangely enough, it doesn’t feel much different from 2008 so far. Hmm. Anyway, James came up with a great idea for the end of the year. We’re both going to go through last years posts and pick our top ten. There was a ton of great music last year, and I had trouble narrowing it down to just 10, but I finally succeeded. Without further ado, my list:
10. Tie: Jonathon Steingard’s Atlantis EP & Fighting the Fall- I just couldn’t decide on this. The Atlantis EP is an excellent & personal solo debut from Hawk Nelson’s guitarist Jonathon Steingard that I really like. On the other hand, Fighting the Fall is a talented independant emo/screamo band with two good free songs. Both Atlantis & the FtF downloads are still available.
9. Run Kid Run “One In A Million” and Sanctus Real “Turn On The Lights” – “Turn On The Lights” is a great song, but the real reason I particularly love this post was “One In A Million”. It’s an awesome, catchy song that I can’t get enough of. Sadly, both songs are no longer available.
8. Leeland “Opposite Way” – Not only do I like the song, but I also really like what Leeland did by asking fans to share their stories about “going the opposite way”. This one is still available, if you’d like to check it out.
7. The Devil Wears Prada, Burden of a Day, Before Their Eyes – It’s hard to top The Devil Wears Prada, and when you add in two promising new bands like Burden of a Day (with an excusive demo, I might add) and Before Their Eyes, it’s probably going to be good. Still available.
6. The Tooth & Nail Fuel Sampler – I shouldn’t really need to explain this one much. Something like 25 free songs from the best Tooth & Nail Records bands. My favorites are Run Kid Run, Capital Lights, and The Becoming. By the looks of it, this sampler is still available too.
5. House of Heroes’ FreeHoH .com – Three awesome songs from The End Is Not The End, House of Heroes’ latest that could very well be the best CD of the year. Really, really good. As far as I can tell the songs are still available.
4. Staple “Dictatorship vs. Democracy” – I don’t know what it is about this song, but I just don’t get tired of it. This one has been on my mp3 player all year, and I still love it. This one is also still available.
3. Number One Gun – Pure alternative rock goodness. I don’t think I can begin to count how many times I’ve listened to these three songs this year. Still available, and highly recommended.
2. Three Cord Wonder – Even though they may not have been the next big thing musically, I think Three Cord Wonder was one of the coolest Christian bands I featured this year. I listen to a lot of music, and I rarely ever get to hear such a unashamedly Christian band. Sure, the lyrics are simple, but they’re true, and give glory to God. That’s a band I can look up to.
1. Esterlyn – I’d never heard of the group Esterlyn before 2008, and now, they’re one of my top artists. In fact, I liked their music enough to write up a whole spotlight on them. Extremely good.
There you have it, the year 2008 in free Christian music as seen by Matt. Now, even though those were my favorite free music posts, there were a couple of others that deserve mention simply because they were particularly fun, random, and unusual. That list includeds No More Gloom, the free CD Everyday Joe’s Coffee House (in Fort Collins, Colorado) released, featuring different songs by artists who’ve played there, which was really random. And then there’s the BarlowGirl song on the German site that required step-by-step instructions. That was a lot of fun to write up. And, last but not least, the mind-blowing weird song titles post. That was so much fun to research and write for, and totally random too.
That’s why I decided to start stockpiling song titles for version 2, which you can look for sometime soon. Like last time, I’d love it if everyone could contribute their favorite weird-and-wacky titles. Leave a comment, or shot me an email at freechristianmusicblog@gmail.com. Thank everyone for reading, and happy New Year!
Oh, and I just remembered, I was going to ask what your favorite posts from 2008 were. Do you agree with me, or have your own top pick?
Free Sampler with “To Know That You’re Alive”
As you may know, Kutless released a new CD not long ago entitled “To Know That You’re Alive”. You’ve probably heard the first single “The Feeling”, and hopefully, you got it free. (The post)
If you haven’t already picked a copy of the CD up, make to check this out: If you purchase the new CD at select stores, you can get a free sampler from Tooth and Nail and BEC. It’s got songs from Underoath, Since October, Manafest, Capital Lights, Thousand Foot Krutch, Run Kid Run, and more.
For a full list of participating stores, arranged by state, check out the link below.
Brand New Tooth and Nail / Solid State Sampler
This could very well be the biggest news in free music since MyFreeMusicFriday.com shut down. Only this time, it’s good news.
Tooth and Nail and Solid State Records have teamed up again to create the ultimate free sampler once again. (The last one was the Hey! sampler, last year.) This time, it’s full of free new and unreleased songs from the latest and greatest artists on Tooth and Nail. To save time, I’ll just post the track listing. It speaks for itself.
- Children 18:3 – “LCM”
- The Classic Crime – “Abracadavers”
- Underoath – “In Regards To Myself (Live)”
- Capital Lights – “Outrage!”
- Ivoryline – “Be Still and Breathe”
- Sever Your Ties – “Captive”
- August Burns Reds – “Composure”
- Secret and Whisper – “XOXOXO”
- MYCHILDREN MYBRIDE – “HEADSHOT!”
- Oh, Sleeper – “Vices Like Vipers”
- Inhale Exhale – “I Needed A Spaceship (Instead I Got Problems)”
- Destroy the Runner – “Mr. & Mrs. Cuckoldom”
- Emery – “The Party Song”
- MxPx – “Shut It Down”
- The Becoming – “I Cry”
- Anberlin – “The Haunting”
- Demon Hunter – “Storm the Gates of Hell”
- Once Nothing – “The Dust of A Town”
- The Famine – “Scar the Earth”
- Advent – “Blackout”
- The Chariot – “And Shot Each Other”
- Soul Embraced – “Curtain of Deceit”
- Showbread – “The Pig”
- Search the City – “Son of a Gun”
- Family Force 5- “Fever”
- Run Kid Run – “Captives Come Home”
- Far-less – “A Toast To Bad Taste”
- Norma Jean – “Robots 3 Humans 0″
You can get all of the mp3s for free, in one .zip file, just by entering your name, email, and country of residence at the website. Tooth and Nail will them email you the link for the sampler.
Standout tracks are Anberlin’s “The Haunting”, which is a hauntingly beautiful Cities b-side, Capital Lights’ “Outrage!”, which is so unbelievable happy and catchy, it should be a controlled substance. Capital Lights is one of the best power-pop bands I’ve ever heard, and a must-hear for Hello Kelly and Eleventyseven fans.
For hardcore fans, “Vices Like Vipers” by new hardcore band Oh, Sleeper, is amazing. Tons of lyrical depth, plenty of screaming, eerie choruses, the works. And you can’t go wrong with Demon Hunter, Norma Jean, The Chariot, Inhale Exhale, and August Burns Red.
Actually, most of the songs on this are must-hear. Packed with new and old songs, this is one sampler you don’t want to miss. After all, it’s free!
Free Capital Lights Mp3
I found out about Capital Lights (formally AfterEight) about a hour ago when I received a friend request from the band on Myspace. Upon further investigation, I found that they had the song “Can I Get An Amen” up for free download. I also discovered that Capital Lights has been signed to Tooth & Nail Records and has played with the likes of Hawk Nelson, Run Kid Run, and A Rotterdam November.
After giving the song a couple of listens, I’m impressed. It sounds really good. Definitely on the rockier side of punk/rock. I’d highly recommend you give Capital Lights a listen. After all, it’s free.
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