Songs With Distortion, Drinks in Proportion
I landed my first paid music job, in part, because my boss and I prattled on about Elvis Costello during my interview. I spent the first night of grad school getting drunk off free orientation wine, singing Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag” on the walk back home with a girl from the program I barely knew. Months later, she was my emergency contact. I made my first friend in college smoking cigarettes on the front porch, talking about our favorite bands, searching for an excuse, any excuse, to avoid going back into the party. One of my oldest friendships is founded on an especially out-there 5PM karaoke performance of Sum 41’s “Fat Lip” — three gin and tonics and we’re a disaster, microphone masters.
I met so many writers hosting dumb listening parties in my sixth-floor walk-up.
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Before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be in a band. I wanted to play drums in a band. I wanted to sing backup vocals in a band. I wanted to write songs for a band. And if I couldn’t be in a band, I had an extensive list of other imaginable vocations that would put me in close-enough proximity: I could manage a band. I could record bands. I could go on tour with bands. I could book bands. I could sign bands. I could run their MySpace account. I could muffle their bass drums with pillows. I could disentangle the cords on the studio floor. I could go up and down my street pinning up promotional posters for venues. I could write gatefold copy. I could work the door at their shows.
As an expat, as a teenage immigrant, pop-punk instilled in me a sense of rightful unbelonging. My bands were telling me the in crowd could suck it, 9-to-5s could suck it, our sports and models-obsessed culture could suck it, and girls who listened to Minor Threat and Social Distortion were hot. I never looked back. I liked Social Distortion.
But there was more to it: one shitty screen-printed band t-shirt, and you had a friend for life. By seventh grade, the other pop-punk kids in school found me and we started a band. We spent our breaks brainstorming names for our new collective: Above All Else, The Falling Downs, Stephanie Says, Jane’s Aversion. Months later we arrived at Twisted Amplitude. It made little sense, but we stuck to it. We designed a clip art logo. We got matching t-shirts and bracelets. We made a MySpace account. We curated our Top 8 to represent a careful mix of our favorite American bands, hipsters we knew from the local scene, and Steve Aoki. We stole Kill Hannah’s layout. We befriended older kids who were in a band. They invited us into their recording sessions. Their friends made art and smoked cigarettes. They burned us mix CDs with Cure songs on them. They were so fucking cool.
My first band didn’t pan out. We went on an “indefinite hiatus” after our guitarist moved to Australia in ninth grade. But I carried that feeling of rightful unbelonging into the rest of my adolescent life.
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Two months into the new year, and the days are blurring together again. Within ten minutes of waking up, I’m back at my desk, watching the sun rise from my window. When I look out again, it’s too bright, then completely dark. Eventually I’ll rise to share a meal with E. We’ll talk about the state of the world. We’ll watch TV until we’re too tired to keep watching TV, and then we’ll go to bed. The day will loop itself over like there wasn’t any other kind of day before it. We’re too young to be living like this! I say to him every week. We’re losing all our good years!
I’m genuinely afraid the next time someone asks my age I’ll get it wrong. It’s been two years since anyone’s asked.
I arrive at a temporary fix: let’s get wasted like we used to. Let’s sing to an imaginary audience. Indulge in some good old-fashioned self-destruction! E pulls out the karaoke machine. We guzzle piss beer and bust out the classics. We spend the next day unshowered on the couch, subsisting on Jimmy John’s and ibuprofen, chased down with overpriced vending machine kombucha.
Weeks of this rigmarole, and I’ve learned to forgive him his bad decisions: The Offspring, Matchbox Twenty, a half-ironic rendition of Hozier’s “Jackie and Wilson”. He’s learned I will never stop bragging about the time I got a tattoo with (read: next to) Pete Wentz (look, and I’m doing it again). I’ve learned we cannot handle our alcohol like we used to.
I’ve learned I’ve been saying “like we used to” a lot.
My Chemical Romance is headlining a festival called When We Were Young.
The Super Bowl brought on forty-nine-year-old Eminem, fifty-year-old Snoop, and tried to sell us commercials starring Meadow Soprano.
The kids on Jeopardy! don’t remember Easy A.
Earlier this year, I was invited on a podcast reminiscing the band Good Charlotte.
Good Charlotte!
Getting shitfaced on a Friday night singing Bowling For Soup feels a little like cosplaying our younger selves, but it’s also the source of pure, unadulterated, teenage-bedroom joy.
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There’s nothing more embarrassing than growing up. I did all the things I set out to do, and they brought me here.
An editor friend told me last year that all writers are failed musicians. Maybe she’s right. Maybe running a magazine is not dissimilar to managing a band, or being in one. I love what I do. I love what we do. Publishing new work is like discovering new music and getting excited enough to burn your friends a CD. Editing is like muffling the bass drum, getting the air flow in the shell just right. Call it a band. Call it community.
