Just Like the Real Thing

I haven't had regular access to a turntable since high school, so the vinyl that I collected back in the mail order days have been collecting dust for almost 10 years now. I never intended that to happen but since I move every year or two, I've never been able to convince myself it was the right time to buy one. In those ten years, I've kept my vinyl spending to a minimal (exclusives only), but I'm missing be able to have a turntable at my disposal more and more these days.

I know there's the audiophile argument for vinyl: less compressed, crisper quality, warmer sounds, etc and while I do notice those nuances, I mostly miss the idea of sitting in one room and listening to music. I bump my iPod in the car so when I get a new CD, I have to go home, rip it onto my computer, and then transfer the songs onto the iPod, before I listen to it. Then I put the CD on a shelf, only needing it when a friend wants to borrow it. Vinyl doesn't seem as disposable and cheap, it's something to be cherished. It's almost feels like you have the real thing, opposed to some mass produced CD (obviously vinyl is mass produced as well).

A couple of months ago, I was notified by Josh and Sherlan that they had acquired a turn table for their apartment. I was especially excited since I had just gotten an exclusive Pavement Live LP in the mail a couple of months earlier and I had failed in my attempts to find a friend who had a record player. Unfortunately the needle was in poor condition and needles not in high demand or supply, so I was left back where I started, with an unlistened to Pavement LP.

This past weekend, I showed up to their apartment with the sole intention of hanging out and grabbing dinner with Sherlan. Dinner was good, perhaps too good. "When can food be too good?" you might ask. It's when you get fried sweet potatoes lathered in butter. That is the answer. It's always amazing when you go to one of your favorite places and still find new things to dazzle your taste buds. These are the surprises in life that I wake up for every day. To my surprise, this surprise was just the appetizer to the main course.

Shortly after Sherlan and I returned to the apartment, Josh came home, and for some reason the turntable discussion came up again.  It turns out that Josh had acquired a working turntable and had also brought a box of various records from home.  Though I didn't have any of my vinyl with me, there was plenty of good stuff.  Sherlan had his Talking Heads debut album, which he had picked up on Record Store Day (I picked up a second Pavement Live LP and a Flight of the Conchords 7"), and Josh had everything from John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band to Van Halen's 1984.  After a brief spin of Plastic Ono Band and Talking Heads, 1984's and Queen's Greatest Hits' A-Sides were listened to in their entirety.  Everything sounded clearer, crisper, there was a larger discrepancy between the soft and the loud, the guitar solos had more of an edge.  And then, everything just came together.

First we fired up the Tetris arcade machine they had, thinking Tetris and rock and roll would work.  It was alright, Rush combined with Space Invaders probably would've been a better choice (see Futurama).  Then we decided to do some Wii Bowling while listening to Sports by Huey Lewis and the News.  All of a sudden, their living room had magically been transformed into the coolest virtual bowling alley (I understand the oxy moron here) that could ever be imagined.  Sure Daniel Plainview had a bowling alley built into his mansion in There Will Be Blood, but to me, that didn't feel like a bowling alley.  A bowling alley isn't about solitude and class, it's about League Night, loud music and friends.  Bowling is awesome in the same vein as karaoke.  It's about disregarding tact and the limits that we place on ourselves daily.  This was not a night to quietly listen to Animal Collective while drinking scotch.  It was a night of the Tetris Soundtrack, Van Halen's "Panama", Sports, and a healthy dose of trash talk, just like the real thing.

You Can't Spell Recession Without Recess

In the Osseo Area School District, a child enters elementary school in kindergarten and graduates after sixth grade, where they move on the junior high school. In the San Diego Unified School District, elementary school ends after fifth grade, and then students move on to middle school. It's a subtle difference, one that parents probably don't really worry about. It's probably one that children don't really think about much either, unless they are like me, where they moved in the middle of 6th grade and miraculously went from elementary school to middle school within a week. That's right folks. I never graduated from elementary school.

While it's easy to make the argument that 6th grade is 6th grade, I'd beg to differ. There is one huge difference between elementary school and middle school: recess. As a 6th grader at Palmer Lake Elementary School, we had time to eat, and then time to play. At Wangeheim Middle School, there was time to eat, and if you wanted to eat fast or not eat at all, time to get about 10 minutes of four-square in. The grassy playground and fields of Palmer Lake also were replaced by pavement and some lines for four square. During PE, we had to wear school shirts and shorts with our names stenciled on them. I felt like I was placed in a prison.

Obviously I managed to survive the shocking adjustments of middle school life. It's now 16 years later, I've gone through high school, college and have landed on my feet in the "real world". I face much larger issues now: a crumbling economy, paying for rent and insurance, and bracing myself for a potential layoff. My morale has been surprisingly high in such a dire time with unemployment rates rising. Maybe it's because I've survived unemployment before, maybe it's because I'm anticipating it opposed to being blindsided by it, or maybe it's because I'm just worn out.

I'm definitely grateful that I'm employed, whether I'm working my dream job or not. I'm fortunate to have made it this far in the recession, but I'm going to be able to live comfortably for a while, and I will believe that things will have happened for the greater good in the end. I may no longer be in the market for a black velvet blazer or a brand new guitar, but I also won't have to sit in an office trying to figure out how to make it through another week.

I first tasted unemployment a couple of years ago. It came 48 hours after the ending of a long term relationship, so in a way, you could perceive it as me hitting rock bottom. So by that logic, since I'm single now, unemployment can only be half as devastating this time around. I survived unemployment the first time around by playing Super Mario Galaxy all the way through. This was my entertainment, opposed to going out with friends. I lived off of cans of soup and whatever else I could get on the cheap. The days were spent trying to find a job back in the film industry but that proved fruitless so eventually I ended back doing IT work. I became anti-social not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Hanging out with friends usually leads to spending money. It was a miserable time to say the least.

This time around will be much more different, not because I have a huge savings waiting for me or because I'm going to be reckless with my credit cards. I don't have any crazy plans to go backpack through Europe or hit up grad school, and I have no plans to move back in with my parents. I know I will have to put a lot of my future plans on hold, but there are always going to be things that force you to put the future on hold anyways. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise. It's not good to live too much in the future and being unemployed really forces you to take a close look at the present. It's a time where all you can do is look inward, since the hustle and bustle of the work grind is no longer there to distract you.

For me, I'm just going to revel in the fact that, for the first time in 16 years, I'll be able to enjoy my lunch and go outside for recess.

The Resurrection of the Get Up Kids

So the story goes, on the third day, Jesus rose again from the dead, and this marked history's first reunion tour. Like many of his ideas, they were ahead of his time, so it wasn't really until Coachella started paying bands boatloads of cash to get back together that people realized that you're usually more popular when you get back together than when you were in your prime. The Pixies played small clubs broke up and when they got back together, started playing filled amphitheaters. Other than licensing "Where is My Mind?" for the Fight Club soundtrack, they did very little directly to make themselves popular. Like a chia pet, they just let their legend grow.

The Pixies aren't the first band to cash in on the reunion circuit, but they're probably the first band that saw their fan base exponentially grow the second time around. Groups like Simon and Garfunkel and Fleetwood Mac have been cashing in for years, but they had huge followings, the Pixies did not. So recently a lot of not-so-popular bands have been cashing in, like My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr. and... The Get Up Kids.

If we were playing a game of "One of These Things is Not Like the Other" with a hipster douche bag, and I listed The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., and The Get Up Kids, the hipster would immediately single out The Get Up Kids. The Pixies influenced Nirvana, and Nirvana in turn changed the modern rock landscape. My Bloody Valentine's Loveless has inspired everyone from Radiohead to the Smashing Pumpkins. J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. is revered as one of the great guitarists of this generation and Nike gave him his own shoe. Unfortunately, The Get Up Kids don't have a glorious resume. Fall Out Boy seems to love them, but I'm not sure that this is something the band is proud of. See, The Get Up Kids unknowingly helped usher in the emo craze even though they themselves weren't a big fan of the genre. When they tried to become more artsy, all but two of their fans revolted. Those two fans were Chris and I. (Actually it's 3, my old roommate Patrick also didn't mind the new direction, but it's a better story if it's just Chris and I). We caught them on their last tour (they unfortunately played their last show the day before my birthday) and we begrudgingly moved on.

Then they decided to get back together 5 years later. Was their rejoicing? Not really.

I didn't even check on the dates of the tour. I wasn't upset, I just felt like I had closure with the band. It wasn't until Chris called me asking me if I wanted to head up to LA to try to catch them, that I even considered trying to catch them. I was on my way down to San Diego to see my parents, and it was reported that the LA show was sold out, so I told Chris we should try to catch them the next day at the Bamboozle Fest in Irvine. They would be playing a shorter set but the LA show was sold out, which in my mind made a potential trip to LA not worth it. Also, the added fact that Chris could get us into Bamboozle for free pretty much sealed the deal.

Chris gave me the set times Saturday afternoon, and luckily, The Get Up Kids weren't scheduled to hit the stage until 8:30pm, so I had plenty of time to make it to Irvine from San Diego. When I arrived, Chris and I started our trek out to the stages, which were side by side. A band by the name of Metro Station was in the middle of their set while The Get Up Kids were setting up on their stage. There were about 30 people already waiting for The Get Up Kids. I would say they were in their mid to late twenties and even possibly their early 30s, and much better dressed than the fans on the other side, dancing to Metro Station in their Hot Topic clothes, spiked belts and skinny jeans. Also while The Get Up Kids fans had rimmed glasses, they were not wearing any mascara.

Have you heard of Metro Station, the band that is fronted by Hannah Montana's brother and her co-star's brother? They even say they're from Hollywood, not from LA. Classy. After dropping a slew of F-bombs, they ripped into their Myspace hit "17 Again". While this train wreck was going on, we saw Matt Prior take pictures of the fans waiting from the stage, and we saw the rest of the midwestern rock outfit, The Get Up Kids, get ready for action.

They came out in t-shirts, flannel shirts, jeans, just like they did 5 years ago, looking like normal people, probably a little shocked by what "emo" looked like today. Bassist, Rob Pope, was the best dressed out of the bunch, Chris and I attribute that to him now being in Spoon, a much more profitable band. Actually, Chris attributes this to Britt Daniel dressing Rob, but as of now, this cannot by confirmed by the band's publicist at press time.

The band opened with "Holiday" and the set went according to plan. They played the fan favorites, they told the Fall Out Boy fans to shove it, and us older fans sang along, as did most of the people watching from the side of the stage. Their set was a bit shorter than if they were playing a club (about an hour opposed to an hour and a half), but they played long enough to make us remember why we loved them so dearly. The band seemed to be enjoying themselves even though knowing that a lot of the kids at the festival had no idea who they were, and were perhaps amused that they indirectly were responsible for this emo explosion. They probably didn't really win over any new fans, but they reminded the few and faithful fans that had come out, why everyone thought they were going to be the next big thing around the turn of the millennium. I would use the cliché that they brought us back to a better time, but that would be false. Adolecense was a very bizaare time.

To see them now was a nice bonus, as they sang in their song "10 Minutes", "all good things have endings." So whether this is their final goodbye or not, I wish them the best, and I just hope Rob Pope stays in Spoon.