Nervous Acid

I’ve been to Spain only once before, but it was on tour,...

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:09:08 -0400

I’ve been to Spain only once before, but it was on tour, so that doesn’t count. Kids who like your band will always tell you that your Spanish is fantastic, even when it’s not, because they don’t know about the tangled relationship you have with the language. They don’t know about the complicated feelings you associate with the sound of Spanish people speaking Spanish quickly and aggressively. It reminds me of home.

Technically, I am Spanish. Ancestrally and partially, but enough to walk around this country with an inkling that I might belong here. For the next few nights we’ll be staying in Chueca — Madrid’s gay neighborhood — and this, too, is familiar. The twinks with their angular haircuts and gymfit hunks in their G-Star gear speak a language I’m also familiar with. But for now, I’m looking for some ground less tread. I’m looking for the parts of me that had been unknowingly passed down. I’m also looking to have some fun, but sometimes, history gets in the way.

In case you don’t have one, my advice would be to find a...

Thu, 31 May 2012 22:16:00 -0400

In case you don’t have one, my advice would be to find a boyfriend who knows how to play the airline-miles game with the kind of skill that allows you to buy two roundtrip business-class tickets to Madrid for, like, seventy bucks. No joke. I have one, he’s awesome, and we’re in the special-people’s lounge right now, wining and dining and filling our backpacks with snacks for the trip because we’re far more proletariat than the bourgeoisie gatekeepers know.

Wherever wi-fi allows, I’ll try to document this trip. I’ve never really done that kind of live-journaling before, so let’s see how it goes.

"No Christian can quote those passages [about homosexuality in the Old Testament] with any..."

Thu, 31 May 2012 16:54:00 -0400

“No Christian can quote those passages [about homosexuality in the Old Testament] with any credibility. For if they do suddenly start getting pious about verses in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, then they can only do so if they adhere to other verses in it such as circumcising all your male children, as it also commands; abstaining from pork or prawns, as it also commands; not wearing garments in which wool and linen is mixed, as it also commands. If you don’t keep up these, but do object to homosexuality, then you are just doing a pick and mix job, and are driven not by religious beliefs but by gay prejudice. If you take this approach to scripture you should also not object to stoning rebellious children or nailing your slave’s ear to the door post.”

- Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain gets real with Christians who use Judaic scripture to justify antigay discrimination and pretty much wins the argument.

I love you Internet, but at the end of the day, I still live to...

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:33:00 -0400

I love you Internet, but at the end of the day, I still live to get published on paper — to feel a book in my hands and trace the letters with my finger. If that makes me outdated, a Beta Norm as opposed to a Norm 2.0, then so be it. I’ve seen my name online and I’ve seen my name in books, and there is very little that gets me more excited than the printed word.

So here’s what my contribution to The Official Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll Lists looks like. (It goes on another page.) The book appears to be available now via Amazon, but hard copies will be in stores on June 5 through the venerable Soft Skull Press. In addition to myself, the book also features contributions from Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Michael Musto, Steven Blush, Andrew WK, Rich Juzwiak, and Kurt B. Reighley, among others. No, seriously. Willie Nelson and I are in the same book.

At any rate, here’s an excerpt from the essay I wrote — which, truthfully, is one of the best things I’ve ever written — called “Five Reasons Hardcore is More Homoerotic Than Emo.” Reason #1:

Hardcore bands sing almost exclusively for and about men.

You can say what you want about a band called Cute Is What We Aim For, but there is very little doubt that “The Curse of Curves” refers to a woman’s body. And when it comes to asserting your sexuality, there is probably nothing more brazen than naming your band Boys Like Girls. Which makes it all the more glaring to note the total omission of similar sentiments from the male-obsessed hardcore scene. I mean, there doesn’t seem to be a single girl in the DYS “Wolfpack” (where “every kid is my brother here”), and Judge’s “New York Crew” — which repeatedly invokes the nostalgia of a “New York brotherhood” — almost makes 1982 sound like a fraternal S&M club. At the very least, I can’t imagine wearing “chains around our waists” anywhere else.

A big thanks goes out to Judy McGuire for putting this all together and for giving me another notch on my Publishing CV. There will be more to come, I hope.

Notes From an Exit Exam

Sat, 19 May 2012 15:10:00 -0400

There are 25 minutes remaining on the clock. The room is packed, save for two students: one had a health scare, and I hope he’s feeling better, while the other may have just been scared. I did everything I could to prepare my students for this afternoon, but as is always the case, some of them will need another semester in this class to get it right. It’s not punitive, really.

Writing is an activity, a skill, but that skill is independent of the actual ability to form a sentence or to know your grammatical morphemes. To teach writing, in this sense, is to teach thinking — not what to think, but how to process ideas, to discern what’s credible, to evaluate opposing concepts in the dialogical sense. That’s what I tried to do this semester, but as is always the case, some of them will need a little more time with developing the kind of critical acumen we need to exist — and participate — in this world. The world is words. It’s not an insult, really. Most of us are trained from birth to accept and summarize and just shrug our shoulders at the things we could change if we just said “Fuck that” more often.

There’s only 10 minutes left on the clock now, and students are still scribbling. One of them wrote her first word less than 15 minutes ago, and — considering they were given two hours to write — that scares me. Obviously, I want everyone in my class to succeed, to have a eureka moment, to walk out of this exam somehow transformed. I poured my heart out to these students not as a teacher, much less a “professor,” but as a fellow writer who knows how frustrating this is and who has faced his fair share of blank pages and blank headspace. But as is always the case, there’s no way for me to accurately share with them the rush that makes it all worth something — the feeling you get when you read something you’ve written and it feels so true that you’re not even sure it belongs to you anymore. It takes time to get to that place.

As is always the case, we don’t always get the time we need.

I am in the thick of some deep academic business — which will be...

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:43:12 -0400

I am in the thick of some deep academic business — which will be all over in a few days — but to make it up to you (not really), here’s an opportunity for you to actually listen to me tell stories as opposed to reading them.

Going Off Track is a new podcast brought to you by Steven Smith (from FUSE TV and Steven’s Untitled Rock Show), Jonah Bayer (a former music editor for Alternative Press and music critic extraordinaire), and Brad Worrell (producer and much-loved New York fixture). The goal is simple: Invite a guest and go on a tangent.

I am this week’s guest on the show and that’s pretty much exactly what we did — going from the story of my legal name-change to the first time I went to a Hare Krishna temple to that time I played with Foo Fighters for an hour. And more. This was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in an interview — much less a podcast! — so I hope you have as much fun listening as I did talking. You can download or stream the show now, and I’ll catch up with you here very soon.

"It’s funny, the Toto IV [cassette] — the one with ‘Rosanna’ and..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:51:00 -0400

“It’s funny, the Toto IV [cassette] — the one with ‘Rosanna’ and ‘Africa’ on it — they made the mistake of putting ‘Rosanna’ on the first side of the record and the last song on the second side was ‘Africa.’ So you’d play ‘Rosanna,’ flip it and play ‘Africa.’ I bet you no one has heard the rest of the record, to this day. Maybe until it came out on CD.”

- Dashboard Confessional’s John Lefler talks tapes. I’m pretty obsessed with figuring out how the ways in which we listen to music changes along with the mediums we use to listen, but this super true observation of cassette-listening quirks escaped me until now. There’s a reason the two songs I remember most from The Cure’s Disintegration are “Plainsong” and “Untitled.”

Everyone seems to be gearing up for the 2012 Music Diary...

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:52:00 -0400

Everyone seems to be gearing up for the 2012 Music Diary Project, but I’m bowing out this year. For one, I did it last year and it’s a known fact that I hate being forced to write. But more sadly, I’m being forced to write something else right now. I’m always being forced to write, it seems.

As long as I’m freestyling about music though, here’s something: I subscribed to Rdio yesterday, after some unintentional evangelizing by my friend Matt Rubin. This marks the first time I’ve ever paid for a subscription music service — unless you count the Columbia House Record & Tape Club in 1987.

Honestly, I was never even marginally compelled to subscribe to Spotify, and there were many reasons for that: the desktop application is a memory-chomping maniac, the response time is lacking, the interface is annoying (and ugly), and most frustratingly, I’m not sure I listen to music the way Spotify wants me to listen to music. So I was kind of amazed to discover that everything I disliked about Spotify, Rdio just seemed to get right and more intuitively — especially in terms of user experience. Seriously, though? I hate Spotify.

That said, I’m listening to the Rdio Top Songs Chart as I write this, meaning that if you were to be reading a Music Diary Project entry from me right now, it would certainly make note of these three totally important opinions:

I feel bad for the drummer of Maroon 5. Ever since they went super-pop, the drum machine’s been getting way more liner notes than that dude.
I just realized that Justin Bieber’s incorrect use of the subjunctive is going to make me hate this song even if I wanted to like it. It’s supposed to be “If I were your boyfriend,” goddamn it, and that will never not drive me crazy.
I still can’t believe my friend Tucker plays drums for The Wanted. But it’s awesome that he gets more shine than the drum machine from Maroon 5.

Basically, you guys are so lucky I’m not doing it this year. You’re more than welcome to follow me on Rdio, though, where we can not-so-secretly listen to One Direction together and not be forced to write about it on Tumblr.

One night, about fourteen years ago, I watched a movie at Adam...

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:17:07 -0400

One night, about fourteen years ago, I watched a movie at Adam Yauch’s apartment.

It was a movie about the Tibetan struggle for liberation, a cause he deeply cared about, and I was invited — I think — because he knew about my background with the Hare Krishna movement and the time I spent in India. From what I can recall, he had something to do with the production of the film, and the version we watched was a rough edit. He was looking for criticism, suggestions, feedback. I have no idea if it ever got made.

Yauch lived in Soho back then, in a humble, but elegant apartment with high ceilings and museum-white walls; his living room tastefully furnished in a warm, but minimal style. If anything, I remember walking inside and being somewhat underwhelmed. It was nice and all, but I had assumptions about millionaires, goddammit, and Yauch resisted every last one of them. He didn’t even shake my hand when we met. He hugged me.

There were only five or six of us there, and Yauch made sure to circulate the conversation around the room — as if to ensure the night wasn’t all about him. I remember thinking that his humility in real life was so palpable that it might be impossible to listen to an old Beastie Boys record ever again with credulity. When you’ve been in the same band for thirty years, that time you bragged about sipping “def ale with all the fly women” loses its ring with maturity. But for Yauch, the transformation from malt-liquor-loving rap star to contemplative-unpretentious-Buddhist was so seamless, it defied explanation. Unlike Madonna, who announced her conversion to Jewish mysticism with a red string bracelet and very little else, we accepted Yauch’s change because we perceived his change.

It would be disingenuous to say I’m not upset by the news of his passing, but I am also comforted by the fact that I’ve met lifelong Hindu monks who seemed less at peace with themselves than Adam Yauch. You can only imagine the type of person you need to be to leave such an impression on someone — especially after only one night, fourteen years ago.

On the 22nd Anniversary of My Best Friend's Death

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:19:00 -0400

I spent the first fourteen years of my life without ever really knowing how it felt to be loved unconditionally, without ever feeling like I was a part of something bigger, without any indication that the rest of my life would be any less lonely than those first fourteen years. I didn’t know there was any other way: For as long as I could remember, my mother essentially called me a biological gamble — in which she put everything on GIRL and lost the pot — and I was reminded of her loss, daily, every time she whipped me with a leather belt or pummeled my body with a wooden clog. When I asked my father for help, he said I should shut the fuck up and leave him alone. Years later, when I tried to make sense of this with my brother, he suggested I was exaggerating.

“We were never abused,” he said, stressing the first-person plural pronoun, and that’s probably half-right: He was my family’s jackpot. I was snake-eyes.

Galen, the second-century Roman physician and philosopher, talked about pain as a “sixth” sense that marked damage or dysfunction, but in some cases, he explained, it was possible for physical and emotional pain to subside from our consciousness without ever actually being healed. The absence of pain in the presence of suffering, he says, is due to a new normal: Our bodies and minds simply adjust to the damage. It was because of this, perhaps, that in school or at church or on the street, no one ever registered a problem with me. I was a generally affable young kid and an obsessive overachiever, and — in spite of these things being the most obvious telltale signs of despair — this worked as a dependable cover for fourteen years. So I was surprised when, sometime in 1988, a kid I’d only known for ten minutes pulled me aside and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I told him everything was fine, but he didn’t believe me.

“You look sad,” he said, and he gave me his phone number.

II.

I don’t remember the period between meeting Chris and realizing that he had become the most important and influential figure in my life. It’s a window of time too short to quantify. Our friendship was instant and intense and seemingly aware of the reality that we didn’t have much time. So we developed a routine: Chris’s girlfriend had a 10 p.m. curfew on weeknights, which meant that he’d come over to my house at ten-after. Every night, without fail, I’d see him pull up in front of the curb, and all of the sudden, everything was OK. His headlights made me happy.

In my room, we talked for hours. Everything I had only been able to say to the stack of notebooks inside of my desk was finally being heard by another person, who responded with empathy and kindness and reassurance that the worst was over now. It turned out that Chris, too, had his own problems — speaking about the day we met, he laughed, “It takes one to know one” — and I tried to be that consoling person for him. Chris and I told each other everything without fear of rejection. We were both fiercely protective and fiercely protected.

I remember Thanksgiving, in 1989, the best. My family never celebrated holidays, so I always felt left out of the greater cultural conversation. Chris wanted to include me, but his card was already full: He and his girlfriend were doing two Thanksgiving dinners that night, one with each of their families, and there just wasn’t any time. I didn’t begrudge him for it, and when I told him to have fun, I meant it. We’d get to hang out on the weekend.

But sometime after midnight, I heard a knock at the door. Through the screen I saw Chris standing in front of the house, the falling snow already frozen in his hair.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I asked him where, and his eyes darted to the side as if he hadn’t considered that yet.

“Who cares?”

I put on a coat and hopped in, but the rest is a blur. We drove across Long Island all night, slowly and aimlessly through the snow, until the sun came up and it was time for breakfast. Over the next six hours, there were stretches of conversation, intervals of music, and periods of total silence except for the windshield wipers pulsing back and forth.

As night gave way to morning, Chris tried to be clear about it.

“I hope you didn’t think I’d just leave you,” he said.

III.

I understand now that the entire course of my life was changed by one person’s life and by that person’s death.

When I found out that Chris had been killed in a car accident on the morning of May 1, 1990, it was clear that I couldn’t go back to being the person I’d been before. Chris demonstrated a sense of acceptance and encouragement that I never thought possible. He proved that there were other people in the world who were willing to share the weight and ease the burden. He showed me that a friend could be family, and effortlessly changed how I think about human connection in a way that persists to this day. He willed every good thing you know about me into existence.

People always ask if I’ve ever considered the counterfactual — that is, if Chris were alive today, would we still be friends? — but, to me, that’s a pointless question. If Chris were alive today, I would love him no matter what. That was the promise we made to each other, the promise that may have very well kept me alive.

The hardest thing about getting older sometimes is realizing...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:11:00 -0400

The hardest thing about getting older sometimes is realizing that your most formative experiences — moments so vivid and tangible in your memory that you still remember the date — will continue to fade so far into the past that entire human beings will have emerged into adulthood in the interim.

Case in point: Seventeen years ago today, a few blocks from a hospital in Boston, my friends and I recorded three songs that somehow changed our lives. Somewhere, at least one of the babies born in that hospital on April 29, 1995, is totally about to finish high school. That’s fucked up.

Now that I’m forced to consider Levon Helm’s life...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:01:00 -0400

Now that I’m forced to consider Levon Helm’s life and legacy — in the wake of the tragic news that he is currently in the final stages of cancer — it feels important to assert the fact that we really don’t need to go as far back as Music From Big Pink or The Last Waltz to be inspired by the man. In my mind, 1968 and 1976 may have been creative highs for Helm, but they weren’t exactly peaks. To use that word is to say that, since then, there has been a dip in either the quantitative activity or qualitative value of Helm’s work, and that simply isn’t the case. Artists who peaked in the 1970s don’t generally win Grammy awards in 2008 and 2010 and then again this year; artists without creative fires don’t transform their homes into public venues every week for an opportunity to collaborate with peers and descendants alike. Levon Helm is nothing if not contemporary, and the only thing that might hurt my feelings more than his eventual departure is the idea that many of his eulogists will have already buried him with The Band.

I quit playing music for a living several years ago, but it was never my intention to quit playing music. To see Helm still playing the way he does at 71 years old is to see that it can be done. To see Helm building new musical communities in 2012 is to see a commitment to the kind of transformative social network that will never be realized by Facebook or Twitter. To see Helm collaborating with younger generations — as he does on this 2008 track by my favorite band Ida — is to see a man who recognizes the kinetic nature of music, and shuns the static bliss of nostalgia. He’s a flashlight-wielding shepherd in that regard, and I’d be blessed to follow him.

I’m not home yet, but for the last week I’ve been...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:41:00 -0400

I’m not home yet, but for the last week I’ve been here in California, driving up the coast with my boyfriend. Anyone who’s known me for any substantial amount of time will tell you that I can be extremely cynical about what we call “nature” — the trees! the skies! the sand! the water! — and that I regularly marvel over concrete and wires and art and music in its stead. (I mean, OK. The sight of a waterfall is fantastic, but music just comes out of thin air and changes people’s lives!) But the things we did and saw this week — basically living on the Pacific coast, feeding ostriches, hiking in Big Sur, riding bikes through wine country — hushed the urban critic for a second and allowed me to indulge in a new appreciation for these things. All that wine had nothing to do with it, either.

That said, I’m in an airport lounge right now waiting for my flight back to New York, and — I’m not gonna lie — I’m looking forward to the severity of its artificial landscape and harsh familiarity of its thoroughly unfiltered residents. It isn’t a slight to the majesty of a Redwood to concede that, even after a brilliant week away, I’m still one of them. We can both own our own niche in the ecosystem.

Hi Tumblr. It’s been a long time! I’ve been insanely...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:33:00 -0400

Hi Tumblr. It’s been a long time! I’ve been insanely preoccupied this month — apparently, teaching college is harder than going to college — and I plan to get better caught up here soon, but right now, I’m kind of roused. Which basically means that someone on the Internet has so sufficiently annoyed me in one sentence that I have not been able to let go of it, even after a 24-hour timeout.

First of all: One Week One Band! It’s one of the best ideas on the Internet, and it’s generally something I look forward to reading — somewhere an invested writer or critic can really take some time to develop thoughtful narratives about a particular artist beyond the scope of one or two 300-word blog posts. So when it was announced that this week would be dedicated to Deftones, I was intrigued — not only because I think Deftones are an incredible band, but because they’re still not the kind of incredible band that “serious” people take seriously. They just don’t get the same kind of gentle critical massage that bands like Tool or The Mars Volta get despite the fact that they’re actually, like, a million times better than those two bands.

They’re also friends and acquaintances. A conversation I had with Chino Moreno at a Deftones show in 1999 was essentially the catalyst that had me move to San Francisco within months to start New End Original with Jonah Matranga; while at some point a few years ago, my friend Sergio Vega joined the band after their original bassist suffered a horrible car accident that still has him in a partially conscious state. (Love you, Chi.)

But having said all that, this isn’t about Deftones! This is about a Deftones-related post by One Week One Band author Maxwell Cavaseno that minimizes my friend Ian Love into the role of “guitarist for Walter Schriefels’ post-Quicksand project Rival Schools (and about the second or third greatest Tom Capone clone).” It’s a side note at best, I understand, but it’s also one of the most ill-informed lines of music writing that I have ever read — the symptomatic perception of a Quicksand fanboy gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Of course, I don’t know Cavaseno. But I do know that the only way someone could make that estimation of Ian Love in comparison to Tom Capone is if their estimation of Tom Capone were over-bloated to the point of human impossibility. Here’s the thing: Tom is my friend, too. I love Tom. Tom is one of the guitar players that inspired me to get creative on guitar, and make no mistake, his role in Quicksand was super crucial. But to call Ian Love a “Tom Capone clone” is to basically admit that you have no understanding of guitar whatsoever. It would be hard for me to come up with two more disparate styles of playing.

So who is Ian Love? Ian Love is a kid who came up in the late ’80s and early ’90s hardcore scene, a staple at the Anthrax club whose guitar playing even back then earned him a nickname — “The Prod,” short for “prodigy” — that no one ever disputed. As soon as he got a little older, Burn quickly snatched him up to play for guitar for them, and not too long after that, Ian surprised everyone when he started a band called Loaded which proved he could not only play guitar flawlessly, but that, oh yeah, he also had an insane five-octave vocal range. A few years later he’d resurface with a band called Cardia (whose self-titled debut is one of the best albums you’ve never heard) and a sublime acoustic solo album that laid rest to any doubts about his ability to write and execute a traditionally-structured pop song. There was also Rival Schools, sure. But I’d be willing to wager that’s the only way Cavaseno has ever heard Love, which makes his comparison uneducated at best.

Most of you might be scratching your heads and wondering why any of this matters, and to that I can only say it just does. Ian is one of the most talented people I’ve ever met, a true original, and a person worth defending. When Texas is the Reason reunited for two nights in 2006, we could have asked anyone to open the shows, but we asked Ian Love. That’s how high of an esteem I have for this person and his art. And that’s why I do things like blog — because I’d always rather see that someone who deserves praise over criticism gets just that. If four true paragraphs can undo one false sentence, I will be the first person to write them.

The other night I tweeted something about Clams Casino being a...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:24:00 -0500

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

The other night I tweeted something about Clams Casino being a “breakbeat Slowdive,” so tonight while I was going through my samples and acapellas, I decided to make a track that aims to find out what a breakbeat Slowdive might sound like with Liam Gallagher on vocals. I’m not sure how I got from A to B on that one either, but surprisingly, the early prognosis is quite promising! I just might finish this one.

My boyfriend John told me he loved Ernie as a kid, but I loved...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:39:00 -0500

My boyfriend John told me he loved Ernie as a kid, but I loved Bert. He couldn’t understand why anyone would love Bert — he is the boring one, after all — but in my mind, it made total sense that I’d want to be best friends with someone who collects paperclips. For one, my family couldn’t afford your fancy stamp and baseball collections, but my mother was delighted to buy office supplies for her five-year-old son. (I am not even making this up.) More importantly, you need to have a brilliant imagination to sit around and actually appreciate the nuances of a paperclip. That’s not always the person I am, but that’s still the type of person I want to be.

Dear Patrick Stump: When Rolling Stone published a story about...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:04:00 -0500

Dear Patrick Stump:

When Rolling Stone published a story about the blog post you wrote this week using the headline “I Am a 27-Year-Old Has-Been,” the first thing I thought was: I hear you, dude. If anything, I might have even been a little jealous over the fact that you had a few more years (and a few more million dollars) than I did when I came to that conclusion for myself. But whatever the case, I’d love to take this opportunity to usher you into the exclusive social club of People Who Made That Record Once. We’re happy to have you.

Membership requirements are not so stringent. In order to keep your membership in good standing at this club, you need only provide proof of personal contact (or Internet criticism) initiated by exclamations such as, “You made That Record once!” or concluding with inflexible, and preferably snide broadsides like, “You’ll never be as good as the Person Who Made That Record Once!” Senior status is awarded to those members who can provide proof that a.) present-day musical or nonmusical performances are consistently marred with requests for songs from (or stories about) That Record, b.) recent interviews still continue to focus on That Record, regardless of the artistic merit and/or contemporary relevance of your current work, or c.) reviews of your current work privilege the discussion of That Record over your new stuff at a word-count ratio of 26:1. That’s when we know you’re really one of us.

So first, the bad news. That thing you call a “barrage” of hatred from kids who “liked me better fat” and “paid for tickets to my solo shows to tell me how much I sucked without Fall Out Boy” will probably never end. The problem with making That Record is that, for many psychologically underdeveloped people with Internet access, you have become That Record, and therefore, cease to exist as a human being with the capacity to feel, change, and/or do anything else. So while I can’t say that I’ve ever had a threatening letter sent to my home the way you have, I can say that just last month, someone actually went to the trouble of making a blank Facebook profile using a variation of my name combined with the words “Fatfaced Dork” so that he — let’s face it: women don’t do this shit! — could friend-request me, and presumably, make me angry. (Unfortunately for him, I can’t say I was angry so much as I felt like I was on an episode of Glee.) In other words, it’s been more than sixteen years since I made That Record and I’m still on the receiving end of vitriol. You’ve got a ways to go.

Once this initial shock subsides, however, you’ll find that membership to this club has its privileges. Playing in a popular rock band is a difficult drug to kick, and as with all difficult drugs, the chase for that original high is a self-destructive one — perhaps because, quite simply, it can’t be done. Life before That Record happens only once, and after that, the seal is broken. Your enablers will tell you it’s a matter of scale, but that’s just a lie to keep the party going: The first time I performed in front of 15,000 people only felt marginally superior to the first time I played to a sold out 300-capacity club. Meanwhile, going from Fall Out Boy to Soul Punk was basically like going from crack to heroin. You thought you could beat the addiction by changing the recipe, but by the time you realized the high still wasn’t there — and that the game had, in fact, only gotten darker — you’d already “blown your nest egg.” As with every life-altering drug, there’s a rock bottom. But as with every stretch of sobriety, there is freedom at the finish line.

To break this grip and join the functioning ranks of People Who Made That Record Once, Mr. Stump, you only need to undergo one step. That’s eleven steps less than almost any other program! (We are nothing if not efficient.) It may take some time to fully inhabit this principle, but it’s important. So here it is: Be grateful for That Record.

That Record put you on the map and gave you privileges that you will enjoy for the rest of your life. The hatred may seem more unbearable at some points than others, but the love you will receive for it is immeasurable, and it is stronger than a chorus of boos or a mock Facebook profile. People will tell you how That Record saved their lives, scored their first kiss, soundtracked their wedding, or helped them love themselves a little bit more. If you ever get hit by a tow truck and wind up in a hospital for two months, you will receive literally hundreds of letters from perfect strangers who took time out of their day to write and mail physical letters just to tell you how much That Record means to them, and how you’ll always mean something to them for making it. You’ll get comped meals at restaurants, discounts at record stores, and career opportunities in almost any field you choose to pursue thanks to people who love That Record. And the residuals from That Record will help you buy a little something special for yourself every few months. This year, I think I’ll finally get an iPad.

What’s most important, however, is that you realize that not everyone gets to make That Record, and that there are thousands of boys and girls with guitars who would kill to be a flash in the pop-cultural pan instead of making records that no one will ever hear. (And when I say “no one,” I pretty much literally mean no one: Of the 98,000 albums released in 2009 that sold at least one copy, for example, a staggering 81,000 of those titles went on to sell less than 100 copies!) Think about this and accept it as something wonderful, no matter the unwanted side effects: What we have is special.

I’m ten years older than you now, Patrick, and I can tell you with confidence that it gets better. (Should we start a YouTube channel for this?) I went back to school. I actually managed to find a stable relationship. I’m living my pre-rock band dream of teaching at a New York City college. There is a good life waiting for People Who Made That Record Once, and while you may want to shrink away in your fingerless gloves now, you will inevitably come up for air. We’ll be here when you’re ready, and we’re looking forward to welcoming you at our next meeting.

"The Promise Ring’s zippiest, poppiest numbers predictably went over the best with this crowd. While..."

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:27:00 -0500

“The Promise Ring’s zippiest, poppiest numbers predictably went over the best with this crowd. While the ballad “Become One Anything One Time” from the polarizing 2002 swan song Wood/Water remains a very pretty would-be prom-night classic, it was received as a cue to hit the bar until something more upbeat came along. Clearly, even something of early ’00s vintage was too far out of the Nineties emo comfort zone on this night. (The audience even reacted enthusiastically to a Texas Is The Reason reference.)”

- Bizarrely, Rolling Stone seems surprised that the Promise Ring’s Milwaukee audience “even” reacted enthusiastically to a Texas is the Reason reference, perhaps forgetting that our bands were as attached to the hip as two bands could be — touring together, releasing a split 7-inch together, combining our line-ups for an impromptu Rolling Stones cover band called the Crossfire Hurricanes that mysteriously showed up after our shows — and that Milwaukee, being the smart and loyal town that it is, probably knows that. (Maybe the writer missed this week’s AV Club oral history?) Just saying.

It is an unspoken truth that many of us work hard to manipulate...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:51:00 -0500

It is an unspoken truth that many of us work hard to manipulate memory and rewrite ourselves with the hope that, someday, we’ll be remembered for that one “good” thing and not that one “bad” thing, because as much as we’re told that identity is layered and complex and certainly never all one thing or the other, we still bury our dead with the distinction of being Those Who Did No Wrong or Those Who Did No Right. But try as we might, the outcome is consistently leveled by chance: when the music stops, you just hope there’s a chair underneath you.

I’ll remember Whitney Houston for everything that she was, the good things and the bad things, and I won’t love her any less for falling than I did for her soaring. I’ll also remember her for writing songs that sounded jovial when the music played, but elicited pain a cappella. Like the way she exposed her midriff and simpered for the picture sleeve in spite of the fact that “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” seethes with the desperation of feeling unlovable, I too know how it feels when your packaging betrays the product. I’ll remember Whitney Houston most for showing me how to smile when you’ve never felt more alone.

This is, perhaps more than any other, an extra-gratuitous GPOY...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:08:00 -0500

This is, perhaps more than any other, an extra-gratuitous GPOY that Mike Dubin took last month. It is Wednesday after all.