Thinking about Chords

I just got back from assisting Leeor Schweitzer, the lighting GENIUS, with the lights for the spring talent show. Overall, the acts were done well, although the hosting was kind of lame. There was, however, one thing that really bothered me. In most of the acts involving self-written music (excluding Sophie's and Eran Schweitzer's), the underlying chord structures were remarkably bland. When I think of writing music, it seems to me that the chords should move the song. In other words, there should be variety in the chords, they should change with some rapidity (this varies widely depending on the desired effect), and their progression and flow should be the force that takes the song somewhere. Instead, there were a lot of boring and highly repetitive progressions that were more static than moving. I've never made a serious attempt at writing music, so I can't say that I could do any better. I have thought about writing songs and how to go about doing it though. To me, it seems like it would be most natural to build from the chords up, first establishing a root motion, and then building the melody or surface of the song. Actually, what I'd really like to do is to start by writing some simple jazz tunes of the bebop-esque blues and rhythm changes progressions (with lots of chord substitutions: yea for ii-V's!). Then, my final goal is to collaborate with Colin and try to write some simple trumpet concerto or something. That would be fun.