Rocket Radio

Special guest Colin French joins us to talk about summer and some of the firest albums of the season. He gives ratings to these albums in terms of tears, hairs, and coloring books along with his professional musical analysis. These albums are: Retrograde, Blonde, Home of the Strange, Aggressive, Home Inside My Head, Misadventures, Coloring Book, and The Bible 2 spanning genres from pop-punk to metalcore to hip-hop. He also answers some thought-provoking inquiries such as: "Who is your favorite Greek god?", "Do aliens exist?", and "If you designed an Olympic sport for another solar system, what would it be?". Colin also selected some summer-themed jams for this show: "Dismantling Summer" by The Wonder Years and "Summertime" by My Chemical Romance.

The Vans Warped Tour is an annual summer music festival which boasts being the oldest North American touring music fest as well as the US' largest. Spanning a wide range of genres, this summer's lineup (varying from venue to venue) includes Sum 41, Falling in Reverse, Crown the Empire, Four Years Strong, 3OH!3, Good Charlotte, Neck Deep, State Champs, We The Kings, The Story So Far, Mayday Parade, Sleeping With Sirens, and Yellowcard. Rocket talks about going to this years show in Mountain View, his third consecutive Warped Tour with his younger sister (her first concert). Rocket talks about the day's activities and all the bands they saw including many from the list above. Rocket also talks about Acme's summer show, The Madwoman of Chaillot, which closed this weeekend and the ensuing strike process to clear the theatre. Rocket also reads a good number of cringe-worthy elephant jokes because during the Madwoman shows he wished he had more elephant jokes on hand.

This show is all about Ireland and Rocket's recent month-long trip there with 23 California college students and his family. Over the course of the film-making summer abroad class, the group travelled from Dublin to Belfast to Derry to Galway to Cork and back to Dublin. The class learned about Irish history and culture from pubs to geology and by the end of the trip each student had made a film. Rocket acted in one student's film, "The Protester", which is available on Youtube. Rocket talks about events from the trip including visting the Giant's Causeway and the Dublin Pride festival. On the trip, one student told an obnoxious shaggy dog story which Rocket repeats about a little boy named Jimmy and his good friend Tom who witness a horrific accident that ruins Jimmy's life. This show also features a couple Irish jams: The Irish Rover and Dirty Old Town by The Pogues.

Welcome to finals week, summer is mere days away. Having just taken his chemistry final, Rocket reads about the evolution of the theory of continental drift from the book "Scientific Feuds: From Galileo to the Human Genome Project" by Joel Levy. Rocket also mentions the rallies that Bernie Sanders hosted in Davis and Hillary Clinton hosted in Davis this past week. Featured for the first time on Rocket Radio is "Tell Me This Isn't Happening: Real Kids Tell the True Stories of Their Most Embarrassing Moments" by Robynn Clairday and the very first story, "Making Waves". The show starts with the song "Standing on the Edge of Summer" by Thursday because we are standing on the edge of summer. The show also includes "Uprising" by Muse which was featured heavily at the Bernie rally, "Kind of Anything" by Beartooth from their brand-new album, Aggressive, and "Rocket Man" by Elton John in reference to a recent musical English project at school and dedicated to Ms. Hamrick at DHS.