Too often young people are pegged for having no awareness, care, or opinion as to what’s going on in our society today. Chords Will Cure says it’s time to stop forfeiting our voices.
Finally giving shows a reason to be function over fashion, Chords Will Cure is setting out to use music and knowledge to send help across Long Island, the country, and even the world. Dreamed up by Sam Fruner and Mike Antonucci, the invested team also includes Devin Passariello, Tim Vargas, and Joe Barcella, all of which have signed on with a common goal to raise money and promote the kind of public awareness that will eventually make changes in a corrupt society. Their plans to raise money highlight monthly concert ticket sales and original merchandise, which exists so far in t-shirts and bracelets that are equally stylish and affordable. Future fundraising plans include walk-a-thons, charity dinners, raffles, and contests. All of these again, are in effort to give kids the opportunity to get involved.
Rather than choosing one charity to call attention to, the CWC team has decided to take on four. “We decided to donate to 4 causes that we feel kids in the (music) scene would connect with the most.” says Passariello. Established as fully non-profit, CWC will benefit:
Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance; which prides itself on being the leading patient-directed organization, helping sufferers of the most prevalent mental illnesses pre-diagnosis, immediately following diagnosis, and when treatment isn’t working.
American Cancer Society; which is attributed for sending out hope on their way to finding a cure. Well known events include the highly successful Relay for Life and Strides Against Breast Cancer.
Global Aids Alliance; which sets out on the mission of halting global AIDS, especially reaching out to help poorer countries where the epidemic hits the hardest. They promote a hearty goal of achieving universal HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care in the coming year.
ASPCA; which dedicates itself to the prevention of animal cruelty throughout the United States. As the first humane organization in the Western Hemisphere, this organization works to pass laws, rescue abuse victims, and deliver resources to animal shelters nationwide.
Chords Will Cure is already receiving a tremendous amount of support from the Long Island music scene. Its avid supporters include bands like This Condition, Patent Pending, Score24, Chasing Fiction, Under Spinning Lights, Set In Color, Big City Lights, and Stereo Skyline. All of these bands and more have been booked for the organization’s first two shows, set for January 16th and February 27th 2010. In the nearer future, CWC is sponsoring ChristMOSH ’09 at the Vibe Lounge on December 20th, featuring Stereo Skyline and The Bigger Lights.
The organization’s personal investment to change is apparent as Passariello opens up; “For me, donating to the American Cancer Society was the first priority. I lost my mother this past May to cancer. Luckily I started this business with 4 of my really good friends, so they were obviously supportive when I mentioned the ACS.” Antonucci says likewise; “Devin’s mother was a huge motivation for why we wanted to do this, and I also lost my grandmother to cancer several years ago. There are people in my life who suffer from depression and bipolar disorder, so DBSA is really important to me and hits close to home.”
Chords Will Cure can be found on facebook, twitter, and myspace, all of which have been excellently designed by the talented Ashley Veltre. Visit www.chordswillcure.com for more information and for links to BigCartel.com to check out their merch, as well as PayPal.com to support by donation.
An end to suffering is near, and change fight-worthy. So speak up, get involved, and listen to the songs of an organization who wants to sing society into a bright and united future.
...Terica.
*Please re-blog this anywhere you can, and don't forget that Streetlight has officially move to http://streetlightdiaries.tumblr.com/
<3only.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
tell it to tumblr
To all my punks and their posses:
Streetlight Diaries is moving to tumblr! Please head over there promptly as a new TC blog is waiting to melt your face <3
http://streetlightdiaries.tumblr.com/
...TERICA!
Streetlight Diaries is moving to tumblr! Please head over there promptly as a new TC blog is waiting to melt your face <3
http://streetlightdiaries.tumblr.com/
...TERICA!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
You must cross your heart and kiss your elbow.
The truth is- no one can save a soul which does not want to be saved. We wait for salvation, but does it wait for us? Or does it move on to someone else, and do we miss our chance? I have never been a chorus girl so I refused to be immortalized as one. If I am just that to you, then wait outside. Tweet from there. Wait till you realize Dr. Seuss never rhymed with damaged. Break the rules, break the mold. Break your shoes, break the cold. I am no chorus girl.
Today I spent writing. And seeing if I wanted to heal. I did not. So I had a drink and played a game. Ohh! You all know how playing games is my favorite. So I asked a bunch of my readers, and another handful of friends, to text me a word -any word- so that I could write with it. Rules are I cannot stop writing until a page is filled and also that I cannot judge nor stop whatever comes to my mind. And so this is some of what you have given to me. To you. Don't expect to comprehend, don't expect it to make sense on first read, don't expect at all. Draw what you will, and then do come share it with me. Only, if you can stop tweeting that long.
ACHIEVEMENT- ashleigh
Achievement is in the eyes of the beholder. It is the will of the masquerader. What I do in life will not be measured in references or pounds, or dollars or damned relationships. No, what I do will be measured in faces and pages, conversations and moments. Achievement is on the shoulders of me, and therefore, you. What will you be measured in? Do you feel the need to be measured at all? Achievement seems to go hand in hand with judgement..by someone else. Yet I find my harshest critic cannot hurt me half as much as I do myself. Achievement is as big as a high award of esteem and honor, or as small as the point of this moving pen. It as medium as the lunch I have finally agreed to eat. Achievement is in the eye of the beholder. Hold me, and I will hold you.
INSANITY - melana
I find this predictable even in context. Especially in context. The word is void of creativity, of color, or correlation to anything but some dark and shallow past which is blamed for everything. I am clearly mad and not void of this word. Insanity can be cute; a coy reason for feeling or sounding out of place. Yet it can be ugly and boresome, because excuses are such. Insanity as an adjective doesn't interest me much, nor does it explain hardly anything much to me. It is not mysterious. Mysterious is interesting to me! Open-ended; a potentially colorful feast of my sole healthy habit for curiosity. Mystery is chanceful, glorious or impetuous of rot- the key word of course being 'or.' And shit, here I've gone and broken my rules of description and correlation for this game because I haven't written about the word but another word, and context. A context that quite clearly both bores and angers me with predicability. Yes, even anger bores me now. Shoo, context, or fly. At least flying would be worth my time. Insanity. Is just kind of old-fashioned. An disloyal faux fur covering the shoulders of a perfectly cute outfit.
BOTTLE - austin
A bottle is such of containment,
yet it makes me feel quite the opposite.
What say you, Bottle?
Art thou not hand nor foot? Nor keg nor twist-off?
That which we call a bottle by any other name would ring as sweet!
Oh- I so do like the word bottle,
how it rolls from my throat a mere word forth my day. Or your day.
How easily it can then be fandangled into a sort of funny British accent, and how my
lips smack before each recitation.
Oh sweetness, do contain me!
Do what you will, Bottle, to enwrap me in your glass, so strong but sheer-
transparent to the world my love for you with willing imprisonment by your realm.
Contain me, Bottle, else I shalt break you..
For every delicacy which cannot hold on must fall
from my shelf
in a glittery display of shard and surface.
Contain me, Bottle, else I consume you first.
DISAPPOINTMENT - LJ
Everywhere I tilt my head in this forsaken room is a picture of someone who has disappointed me. And they are, in fact, faces I love. So I think over to myself- is it really these people who have disappointed me, or is it the love. Is it I who has disappointed both? Could it be that we try so hard to be something worthy that we become nothing at all? Worthwhile is a small matter of someone else's comparisons, but worthy is a greater obstacle of our own. Because it is so often, isn't it?, that we feel disappointed in others when really, we are upset with ourselves for not making us worthy enough for them. What is good enough? There isn't anymore a published code of standards like there was in my adolescence, and I sense that maybe the intuition for perfection and the over-agility to please was not my idea in the first place. Perhaps I am more brainwashed than I think.
Disappointment promotes excuses often times, such as the following; I sent out the message for a bunch of you to participate in this game with me (because games, you know, are my favorite), and only less than half of you responded. If I am purposefully rational I say; he is probably driving, or sleeping, or working, or writing his Great Aunt Hans a thinking of you note. He's just- not thinking of me right now. Excuses freeze over disappointments to be heated up and dealt with another time. Now, what's your excuse for me?
These, just a few of what I drew from you. Some funny sort of sentences to make you think, and to make me loosen up. Mind you, these paragraphs are not addressed to the prescribed names, I just thought I might give credit to those vocab waiters who struck the most tangible words in my conscious tonight. The others to come. And of course, the night ends with Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of Ms. Soto's favorites, and a perhaps trite yet warmly lingering anecdote I scribbled initially in but a half-sleep this morning:
You will always owe somebody something,
but you will never owe anybody yourself.
Tera.
Today I spent writing. And seeing if I wanted to heal. I did not. So I had a drink and played a game. Ohh! You all know how playing games is my favorite. So I asked a bunch of my readers, and another handful of friends, to text me a word -any word- so that I could write with it. Rules are I cannot stop writing until a page is filled and also that I cannot judge nor stop whatever comes to my mind. And so this is some of what you have given to me. To you. Don't expect to comprehend, don't expect it to make sense on first read, don't expect at all. Draw what you will, and then do come share it with me. Only, if you can stop tweeting that long.
ACHIEVEMENT- ashleigh
Achievement is in the eyes of the beholder. It is the will of the masquerader. What I do in life will not be measured in references or pounds, or dollars or damned relationships. No, what I do will be measured in faces and pages, conversations and moments. Achievement is on the shoulders of me, and therefore, you. What will you be measured in? Do you feel the need to be measured at all? Achievement seems to go hand in hand with judgement..by someone else. Yet I find my harshest critic cannot hurt me half as much as I do myself. Achievement is as big as a high award of esteem and honor, or as small as the point of this moving pen. It as medium as the lunch I have finally agreed to eat. Achievement is in the eye of the beholder. Hold me, and I will hold you.
INSANITY - melana
I find this predictable even in context. Especially in context. The word is void of creativity, of color, or correlation to anything but some dark and shallow past which is blamed for everything. I am clearly mad and not void of this word. Insanity can be cute; a coy reason for feeling or sounding out of place. Yet it can be ugly and boresome, because excuses are such. Insanity as an adjective doesn't interest me much, nor does it explain hardly anything much to me. It is not mysterious. Mysterious is interesting to me! Open-ended; a potentially colorful feast of my sole healthy habit for curiosity. Mystery is chanceful, glorious or impetuous of rot- the key word of course being 'or.' And shit, here I've gone and broken my rules of description and correlation for this game because I haven't written about the word but another word, and context. A context that quite clearly both bores and angers me with predicability. Yes, even anger bores me now. Shoo, context, or fly. At least flying would be worth my time. Insanity. Is just kind of old-fashioned. An disloyal faux fur covering the shoulders of a perfectly cute outfit.
BOTTLE - austin
A bottle is such of containment,
yet it makes me feel quite the opposite.
What say you, Bottle?
Art thou not hand nor foot? Nor keg nor twist-off?
That which we call a bottle by any other name would ring as sweet!
Oh- I so do like the word bottle,
how it rolls from my throat a mere word forth my day. Or your day.
How easily it can then be fandangled into a sort of funny British accent, and how my
lips smack before each recitation.
Oh sweetness, do contain me!
Do what you will, Bottle, to enwrap me in your glass, so strong but sheer-
transparent to the world my love for you with willing imprisonment by your realm.
Contain me, Bottle, else I shalt break you..
For every delicacy which cannot hold on must fall
from my shelf
in a glittery display of shard and surface.
Contain me, Bottle, else I consume you first.
DISAPPOINTMENT - LJ
Everywhere I tilt my head in this forsaken room is a picture of someone who has disappointed me. And they are, in fact, faces I love. So I think over to myself- is it really these people who have disappointed me, or is it the love. Is it I who has disappointed both? Could it be that we try so hard to be something worthy that we become nothing at all? Worthwhile is a small matter of someone else's comparisons, but worthy is a greater obstacle of our own. Because it is so often, isn't it?, that we feel disappointed in others when really, we are upset with ourselves for not making us worthy enough for them. What is good enough? There isn't anymore a published code of standards like there was in my adolescence, and I sense that maybe the intuition for perfection and the over-agility to please was not my idea in the first place. Perhaps I am more brainwashed than I think.
Disappointment promotes excuses often times, such as the following; I sent out the message for a bunch of you to participate in this game with me (because games, you know, are my favorite), and only less than half of you responded. If I am purposefully rational I say; he is probably driving, or sleeping, or working, or writing his Great Aunt Hans a thinking of you note. He's just- not thinking of me right now. Excuses freeze over disappointments to be heated up and dealt with another time. Now, what's your excuse for me?
These, just a few of what I drew from you. Some funny sort of sentences to make you think, and to make me loosen up. Mind you, these paragraphs are not addressed to the prescribed names, I just thought I might give credit to those vocab waiters who struck the most tangible words in my conscious tonight. The others to come. And of course, the night ends with Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of Ms. Soto's favorites, and a perhaps trite yet warmly lingering anecdote I scribbled initially in but a half-sleep this morning:
You will always owe somebody something,
but you will never owe anybody yourself.
Tera.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
be careful of falling parachutes.
I sit outside a venue with "the group"- the one-stop, badass, don't ask us our jobs but we'll tell you every band we've ever been in...Long Island scene kids. They are mature enough to call each other immature, but not mature enough to trust their own friends. Nearly everyone I could ask company for is present, yet tonight I am unamused by most of them. Where does the anti-complacency end, or even falter? I sit here in a bitterly cold wind, comfortable in my surroundings and feeling lucky to know them all, but suddenly I feel that perhaps I've been just a little too much part of it all. It was brought to my attention that in the past I have given off the initial impression of a backstabber, a gossip artist. The latter I'm sure I am, but as I sit amongst people who jump ship like they've been sworn into the U.S. Coast Guard...I realize I hardly want to be considered the first.
A few long moments later I am out of the wind and leaning against the bar with Travis McGee, Tom Angenbroich, Rob Fox, and Pat Brown. The confusing simplicity of this line up strikes me again to feel lucky and I decide I'm ready to clear the air: I may know all of your secrets, but I would never try to hurt you with them. I couldn't. To everyone I have hurt- I'm sorry. It's not that I want to make trouble, call you out or give you a bad review. It's that I swore I'd tell the truth how ever I experienced it, and without the truth..this blog..well it's nothing but a bunch of glorified boys and a girl stuck in their world. The fact that your stories are real is what makes these words worth the time.
Last night I took a few long moments with 6 lighted globes and someone who thinks that maybe it's just time for me to forget. A while later I was carried home in disillusion; not knowing what I wanted to say or think, but being okay with doing neither just yet.
Then I had a dream.
I had a fever, then I had a dream- that I couldn't get home. And that you said you wouldn't hold my hands on Mondays. When I woke up I thought you were there. But it was only last night's 6 colors in my eyes. And as my fever broke so did the dawn, and I remembered that it was Thursday. So I reached- and hoped that the wind had not taken you away.
Something has changed as of this morning. Something is over and I am not sad. At times I write with a pen as sharp as your stabbing knifes. Other times I try to dull your blades with a confusing paragraph or made-up word. At all times, I find, the truth is the hardest of sentences to post. I can't compete with anyone. I won't. And if that means losing pieces of some of you, then well- I am constantly moving on. Moving past. And it is time to forget. We are all quite difficult to love, this "group," and I probably the hardest of us all. Yet our long moments have yet to written, and our anxieties...nothing more than a couple crunchy leafs blown in by a bitter wind.
Be careful of falling parachutes, it's only a matter of time before someone changes your life.
...Terica.
A few long moments later I am out of the wind and leaning against the bar with Travis McGee, Tom Angenbroich, Rob Fox, and Pat Brown. The confusing simplicity of this line up strikes me again to feel lucky and I decide I'm ready to clear the air: I may know all of your secrets, but I would never try to hurt you with them. I couldn't. To everyone I have hurt- I'm sorry. It's not that I want to make trouble, call you out or give you a bad review. It's that I swore I'd tell the truth how ever I experienced it, and without the truth..this blog..well it's nothing but a bunch of glorified boys and a girl stuck in their world. The fact that your stories are real is what makes these words worth the time.
Last night I took a few long moments with 6 lighted globes and someone who thinks that maybe it's just time for me to forget. A while later I was carried home in disillusion; not knowing what I wanted to say or think, but being okay with doing neither just yet.
Then I had a dream.
I had a fever, then I had a dream- that I couldn't get home. And that you said you wouldn't hold my hands on Mondays. When I woke up I thought you were there. But it was only last night's 6 colors in my eyes. And as my fever broke so did the dawn, and I remembered that it was Thursday. So I reached- and hoped that the wind had not taken you away.
Something has changed as of this morning. Something is over and I am not sad. At times I write with a pen as sharp as your stabbing knifes. Other times I try to dull your blades with a confusing paragraph or made-up word. At all times, I find, the truth is the hardest of sentences to post. I can't compete with anyone. I won't. And if that means losing pieces of some of you, then well- I am constantly moving on. Moving past. And it is time to forget. We are all quite difficult to love, this "group," and I probably the hardest of us all. Yet our long moments have yet to written, and our anxieties...nothing more than a couple crunchy leafs blown in by a bitter wind.
Be careful of falling parachutes, it's only a matter of time before someone changes your life.
...Terica.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
further untitled.
The truth is, I've been taught a lot.
The truth is, I can't tell you the truth.
The truth is, he's not right. But he's a hell of a lot closer to being so than I am.
The truth is...my perception is often altered and I write my own stories because none of you are good enough at telling me ones you make up.
The truth is. There are no certain truths.
I'm sorry.
pl
The truth is, I can't tell you the truth.
The truth is, he's not right. But he's a hell of a lot closer to being so than I am.
The truth is...my perception is often altered and I write my own stories because none of you are good enough at telling me ones you make up.
The truth is. There are no certain truths.
I'm sorry.
pl
untitled.
I hate you.
You think I love you but I don't. I don't because you don't love me, and that ship has way sailed. You guys are backstabbers, and manipulators. And you'll all spend the rest of the afternoon telling me I'm crazy and mouthy, that this is simply not true. But it is. And you were all meant for each other. I wanted to belong. But to friends who don't want me? You want to be written about yet...you treat me like shit. You treat each other like shit. I can't write about that. You make my not-job so hard. I couldn't bear to write what the Book really says. I couldn't bear to lose the people I've never had. So what am I gonna do? What am I gonna say, what am I not gonna say. I can't trust any of you and worst of all, you could care less. You are liars, and addicts. Viruses and heroes. You think I don't hate you. But I'm not so sure.
Today I'm sick. I'm in need. If you know of what, gimme a text. Otherwise, just let me know when your shows and practices are. I'll write about them. And don't worry, I won't tell anyone the kind of people you really are.
pl
You think I love you but I don't. I don't because you don't love me, and that ship has way sailed. You guys are backstabbers, and manipulators. And you'll all spend the rest of the afternoon telling me I'm crazy and mouthy, that this is simply not true. But it is. And you were all meant for each other. I wanted to belong. But to friends who don't want me? You want to be written about yet...you treat me like shit. You treat each other like shit. I can't write about that. You make my not-job so hard. I couldn't bear to write what the Book really says. I couldn't bear to lose the people I've never had. So what am I gonna do? What am I gonna say, what am I not gonna say. I can't trust any of you and worst of all, you could care less. You are liars, and addicts. Viruses and heroes. You think I don't hate you. But I'm not so sure.
Today I'm sick. I'm in need. If you know of what, gimme a text. Otherwise, just let me know when your shows and practices are. I'll write about them. And don't worry, I won't tell anyone the kind of people you really are.
pl
Thursday, November 5, 2009
We're crashing up, I'm falling again. Well the summer came, and then it swept us away.
Once again- no kids at Vibe. The Club Loaded boys don't wanna be here, I don't even wanna be here. There is a crowd of people one person deep at the bar. I can't even roll my eyes when I turn away from the stage because there are parents video taping and relatives saving seats for a band 5 years older than I. "He's a lyrical genius" a mother says. I smile and nod and walk away as quickly as possible. I'm pissed off today, sick of the local drama and sleepy from taking the fall for it. A singer smiles and snags me for a cigarette outside. Finally someone making a little sense in my world.
I'm here to see Hollywood Lies. To me they are boys from Warped Tour, the good faces that steadied my tour-wind summer. Now I realize I've missed them. I miss seeing the same different people every morning. I realize I'm starting to go stir crazy on this island in an stubborn scene with unreliable band boys. But I'm standing here freezing in runned tights and bleached hair trying to pretend it's all fine and trying to get lost in the tour coming through tonight.
Have you ever heard a band and been able to see the future? Every next kiss, every last night. Maybe it's cuz they're all cute. Maybe because it's cuz they're all hungover. Kings of the power stance and advocates of the head bang, City Lights is sure to make your guilty conscious smile. They sure surged out all that Long Island scene frustration that's been building up in me since the end of summer tours. I love the way their frontman handles the small crowd, allowing inside jokes with his tourmates (no doubt inklings of the bottom of previous night's bottles), but not totally forfeiting the set from lack of fans. Secret Secret Dino Club could leanr something from them. Plus their drummer seems to be just the right amount of everything. I start to like something about this place tonight.
And then. A Shakira intro. Nothing like a little Shakira to shake your saddness away. I've never seen Hollywood Lies play. I've never seen them do anything but cheer me up. So when I lifted my chin to watch their set, I didn't know what I'd end up writing...
His fingers have all the assests I love in a singer. And though he has a serious battle with the microphone stand, I can't stop watching him. He's clumsy onstage; getting his wires tangled, stubbing his toe on the rock box, and having a similar battle with the drum mic. When I ask he says it was the small stage, still I wonder if there's outside circumstances affecting him. His babyface tries to assue me so I let him have his secret. After all, I still keep mine from him.
Johnny..looks like he's ready to jump into a pick up game of hoops. But damn. If I'd have known he played like this I would've stepped aside in those Warped selling wars that made us friends. He is such a fun drummer to watch. No predictability in his live movement, great hair flips, and oo...one little stick drop. He laughs it off. Johnny Fuckin Barbas is a drummer you go see. Good Form.
It's not totally unpredicatble but they swiftly play a cover song, and Marc switches with Matt to play "Low" by Flo'Rida. The second I see a singer duck under the guitar strap, I forget all about the idiots making a mess of Long Island. Not only do these boys of summer semi-surprise me, but they sound sick doing it. Oh snap, Hollywood Lies.
Fast forward to this morning.
The smell of cologne and clean boys trails out of the bathroom and into where I sleep. Everything about it comforts me. Perhaps it is a reflection of the gender ratio I grew up with. Or maybe it's a reminder of the ex-boyfriends who were able to hold me calm. Regardless, my bedroom smells like boys and I wish there were some physicality attatched to it. Yet every morning I have their text messages, not them. Every gift is a curse and every blessing a heartache. I woke up this morning with a heartache and knew just which kind it was. Today things would be different, again. Loss of appetite, loss of singers, loss of lucky blue pen. So I reached for my phone and began to face it all, missing that same kind of different.
My lifestyle is so fleeting, unstable. It's what I bargained for, I knew what I was getting into- mostly. Live fast, die young. The first part I'm doing well, the second I'm still waiting on. I feel like I'll get struck and run over by a tour bus...oo, I hope it's the Maine's. Until then, everything and everyone floats away too quickly and frankly, I'm afraid to get lost in the stratosphere. I feel like it'd resemble some sort of airy purgatory with helium balloons everywhere and Kevin Bard's voice playing constantly. Don't let me go there! What I really want is to be held still for just one hour. I want someone to witness my existence the way I do theirs. But between tours and band meetings, other girls and twitter updates, my chosen family doesn't really have time to sit still with me. And I know this- I knew what I was getting into. So I am left here with this blog as my witness, casting confessions in effort to anchor myself down to something. Anything. My secret.
I lied to you when I said I never listened to your ep. I listened to it every dusk in the van trying to drown out that desert heat.
...Terica.
"Secrets" by: Hollywood Lies
note: both Cerney and Mess submitted quotes to be included in this blog. One I can post, one I can't. It is my creative decision to let your mind wander...
I'm here to see Hollywood Lies. To me they are boys from Warped Tour, the good faces that steadied my tour-wind summer. Now I realize I've missed them. I miss seeing the same different people every morning. I realize I'm starting to go stir crazy on this island in an stubborn scene with unreliable band boys. But I'm standing here freezing in runned tights and bleached hair trying to pretend it's all fine and trying to get lost in the tour coming through tonight.
Have you ever heard a band and been able to see the future? Every next kiss, every last night. Maybe it's cuz they're all cute. Maybe because it's cuz they're all hungover. Kings of the power stance and advocates of the head bang, City Lights is sure to make your guilty conscious smile. They sure surged out all that Long Island scene frustration that's been building up in me since the end of summer tours. I love the way their frontman handles the small crowd, allowing inside jokes with his tourmates (no doubt inklings of the bottom of previous night's bottles), but not totally forfeiting the set from lack of fans. Secret Secret Dino Club could leanr something from them. Plus their drummer seems to be just the right amount of everything. I start to like something about this place tonight.
And then. A Shakira intro. Nothing like a little Shakira to shake your saddness away. I've never seen Hollywood Lies play. I've never seen them do anything but cheer me up. So when I lifted my chin to watch their set, I didn't know what I'd end up writing...
His fingers have all the assests I love in a singer. And though he has a serious battle with the microphone stand, I can't stop watching him. He's clumsy onstage; getting his wires tangled, stubbing his toe on the rock box, and having a similar battle with the drum mic. When I ask he says it was the small stage, still I wonder if there's outside circumstances affecting him. His babyface tries to assue me so I let him have his secret. After all, I still keep mine from him.
Johnny..looks like he's ready to jump into a pick up game of hoops. But damn. If I'd have known he played like this I would've stepped aside in those Warped selling wars that made us friends. He is such a fun drummer to watch. No predictability in his live movement, great hair flips, and oo...one little stick drop. He laughs it off. Johnny Fuckin Barbas is a drummer you go see. Good Form.
It's not totally unpredicatble but they swiftly play a cover song, and Marc switches with Matt to play "Low" by Flo'Rida. The second I see a singer duck under the guitar strap, I forget all about the idiots making a mess of Long Island. Not only do these boys of summer semi-surprise me, but they sound sick doing it. Oh snap, Hollywood Lies.
Fast forward to this morning.
The smell of cologne and clean boys trails out of the bathroom and into where I sleep. Everything about it comforts me. Perhaps it is a reflection of the gender ratio I grew up with. Or maybe it's a reminder of the ex-boyfriends who were able to hold me calm. Regardless, my bedroom smells like boys and I wish there were some physicality attatched to it. Yet every morning I have their text messages, not them. Every gift is a curse and every blessing a heartache. I woke up this morning with a heartache and knew just which kind it was. Today things would be different, again. Loss of appetite, loss of singers, loss of lucky blue pen. So I reached for my phone and began to face it all, missing that same kind of different.
My lifestyle is so fleeting, unstable. It's what I bargained for, I knew what I was getting into- mostly. Live fast, die young. The first part I'm doing well, the second I'm still waiting on. I feel like I'll get struck and run over by a tour bus...oo, I hope it's the Maine's. Until then, everything and everyone floats away too quickly and frankly, I'm afraid to get lost in the stratosphere. I feel like it'd resemble some sort of airy purgatory with helium balloons everywhere and Kevin Bard's voice playing constantly. Don't let me go there! What I really want is to be held still for just one hour. I want someone to witness my existence the way I do theirs. But between tours and band meetings, other girls and twitter updates, my chosen family doesn't really have time to sit still with me. And I know this- I knew what I was getting into. So I am left here with this blog as my witness, casting confessions in effort to anchor myself down to something. Anything. My secret.
I lied to you when I said I never listened to your ep. I listened to it every dusk in the van trying to drown out that desert heat.
...Terica.
"Secrets" by: Hollywood Lies
note: both Cerney and Mess submitted quotes to be included in this blog. One I can post, one I can't. It is my creative decision to let your mind wander...
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Sexy vs. Skanky; Battle of the Facebook acoustic videos...
A darling little spin off of Cosmopolitan magazine's ever-indulgent column.
Sexy: letting us into your bedroom.
Skanky: letting us into your cave.
Sexy: asking us to listen.
Skanky: telling us to listen.
Sexy: making us watch you smile before you play.
Skanky: making us watch you drink before you play.
Sexy: rhyming about girls.
Skanky: rhyming about clouds?
Sexy: dressing differently for every video.
Skanky: dressing in your pajamas for every video.
Sexy: writing a song about the moment.
Skanky: writing a song that I could have sworn was a George Michael cover.
Skanky: not shaving.
Skanky: not shampooing. Lose-Lose.
Sexy: posting links to your tumblr.
Skanky: treating your facebook status like it is your tumblr.
Skanky: trying to get outsiders on your side.
Skankier: letting outsiders fight your battles.
Sexy: moving on.
Sexier: moving me.
Please check out this past week's creative wave on facebook.com and let me know which songs youu give a sexy thumbs up to ;)
...Terica.
Sexy: letting us into your bedroom.
Skanky: letting us into your cave.
Sexy: asking us to listen.
Skanky: telling us to listen.
Sexy: making us watch you smile before you play.
Skanky: making us watch you drink before you play.
Sexy: rhyming about girls.
Skanky: rhyming about clouds?
Sexy: dressing differently for every video.
Skanky: dressing in your pajamas for every video.
Sexy: writing a song about the moment.
Skanky: writing a song that I could have sworn was a George Michael cover.
Skanky: not shaving.
Skanky: not shampooing. Lose-Lose.
Sexy: posting links to your tumblr.
Skanky: treating your facebook status like it is your tumblr.
Skanky: trying to get outsiders on your side.
Skankier: letting outsiders fight your battles.
Sexy: moving on.
Sexier: moving me.
Please check out this past week's creative wave on facebook.com and let me know which songs youu give a sexy thumbs up to ;)
...Terica.
Monday, November 2, 2009
enjoy the fall.
How did I get here? We are in Wlkes-Barre, PA and there is a weird feeling in everything about this instant. We are here for Justin's show, Justin as Big City Lights. We brought him on account of the Big City Dissolvement that went on this past week. So much fighting, so little resolved. It's sad. A death is always sad somehow but, I guess their lights just weren't big enough. So Mess and I brought the Singer here and here we are beside a Pennsylvanian sidewalk, waiting for another door to open and hoping for the best.
He sits in my backseat instinctively pulling his fingers over strings, an acoustic sound to fill the moments we are passing by. This is how we always want it. No matter what he plays- cover or original- he still sounds like Justin which tonight, is just what it is. I'm not sure if I think or feel anything of it. I'm not sure if I've ever heard an acoustic guitar sound so...easy. Gentile. I feel like he's not really playing it, that it's playing itself. His quote, "Guitar's so weird."
How did he get here? A boy who has been Permanently everywhere, who has probably been through too much. How did he end up in my backseat? As he plays I let him chose my inspiration. I'd ask for a song, but whatever he picks is far closer to what I need to hear than any request I could submit. Plus I believe he knows the role he is playing right now as I try to write. He chooses an evenly tempoed melody- a whisper that neither ear nor enemy can deny, and I realize I have run out of adjectives for all of this. I stare at his fingers and I can see into his soul, but when I meet his eyes they seem to be asking me not to tell anyone. The song brings us to the chorus again and I am suddenly quite sad. I think there is a broken heart in my backseat. Broken fingers, no. But broken trust, maybe. Whatever it is, he's trying to hide it. He takes all my questions with a deep sigh, like it's very hard for him to answer. He says there is no secret. But I kinda think there is. There must be. He says the secret is there is no secret. But he pops a string while tuning inside the venue and I think somehow it's a sign he's lying. We laugh at the broken wire because he just can't catch a break. The Singer isn't all bad luck though. I find a string envelope under the stage left monitor, present it to him, and by some stroke of meant-to-be, it contains the very string he needs. I don't say it but the coincidental fate blows my mind. Later in the car, I notice a shiny glare from under the drivers' seat. It's the ring my parents bought me for my 21st birthday that I thought I'd lost months ago. I would have never been in the backseat if we hadn't dragged the Singer out to nowheres land to pull those fingers over strings. He's not bad luck, he's just...luck. Keep it or give it.
I wonder what year we are in. With this pre-show playlist I really feel like I'm not sure. It's cold in this venue and in my memory- it's having such a hard time settling on anything. Things get..more active, but less real. If that makes any sense. We play board games with the kids who came out to see Big City Lights; Mess somehow confuses a tooth and an appendix in her logic. We dance. We try to make Justin jete from one end of the room to the other. He doesn't do that exactly, but he constantly obliges in his signature strut and hip pop. We don't know what we're all doing here together but we are laughing. Mess and I get onstage to open for BigCityJustin. Did a little stand up comedy, a little hardcore intro, but I think our main staple was Dakota by Rocket. We will be moving it to close our set in all future gigs. Later than sooner it is Justin's turn to play. He hops onstage, embodying his blog-given name, and those fingers make the Singer fall into his songs.
"And maybe it's too late to turn around-"
The thing is...I would have driven him to Maui to play this little acoustic set. It's okay if we are all the way from home, if we have no money, if he doesn't need me the way I could possibly need him. Because this is beyond us, this story we are living out. And each of us are replaceable characters; the boy with the guitar and the girl with the smile. Yet this is our turn, and this page is my favorite. I will dog-ear the part when his necklace shines in the spotlight. I will doodle the name of this song and underline his favorite lyric. I have a lot of questions all the time, except when he's playing. Then it doesn't matter. And I'm the one sighing. When he gets offstage he is a herb again, just an anxious boy with a secret. That he'll never tell me. Maybe he tells us while he plays.
This place is cold. So much colder than it should be. This place is real. This sound guy is creepy, and I like him. He's, well, I don't what's in his head but I think at least physically, he's real. These 3 kids who drove an hour to see Big City Lights are fucking real. Effing real. I drove him 2 1/2 hours for these kids. I am the "gratefulest. Most grateful." He thinks he's bad at talking onstage, but he's probably the smoothest I've seen at it. It's least awkward when he's doing the talking. He laughs, and lets us laugh at him. We smile, and he smiles for us. He's real. Hm - whaddya know.
I wonder who the Singer really is. I wonder what he'll become. These lights cast red and purple shadows on this page though, colors too beautiful to see past anything beyond right now. I don't need these questions answered yet.
No stage diving. Means no quitting. That's why he's here. There are pages and pages of Book filled before these, 11 to be exact, all with the harsh details of how a Long Island band imploded this week. But that is just one of the many stories that will stay in here...for now. The aftermath, in my words and his songs, now that is for you. There is no quitting. If you truly believe, then I truly believe you can't quit. No option. No bridge. No broken strings.
My hair is dirty and my feet are cold. All I have right now is this pen, his fingers, and the 12 people in this room. That's real.
...Terica.
"Human Toy" by: the Singer
"Bad" by: Michael Jackson
He sits in my backseat instinctively pulling his fingers over strings, an acoustic sound to fill the moments we are passing by. This is how we always want it. No matter what he plays- cover or original- he still sounds like Justin which tonight, is just what it is. I'm not sure if I think or feel anything of it. I'm not sure if I've ever heard an acoustic guitar sound so...easy. Gentile. I feel like he's not really playing it, that it's playing itself. His quote, "Guitar's so weird."
How did he get here? A boy who has been Permanently everywhere, who has probably been through too much. How did he end up in my backseat? As he plays I let him chose my inspiration. I'd ask for a song, but whatever he picks is far closer to what I need to hear than any request I could submit. Plus I believe he knows the role he is playing right now as I try to write. He chooses an evenly tempoed melody- a whisper that neither ear nor enemy can deny, and I realize I have run out of adjectives for all of this. I stare at his fingers and I can see into his soul, but when I meet his eyes they seem to be asking me not to tell anyone. The song brings us to the chorus again and I am suddenly quite sad. I think there is a broken heart in my backseat. Broken fingers, no. But broken trust, maybe. Whatever it is, he's trying to hide it. He takes all my questions with a deep sigh, like it's very hard for him to answer. He says there is no secret. But I kinda think there is. There must be. He says the secret is there is no secret. But he pops a string while tuning inside the venue and I think somehow it's a sign he's lying. We laugh at the broken wire because he just can't catch a break. The Singer isn't all bad luck though. I find a string envelope under the stage left monitor, present it to him, and by some stroke of meant-to-be, it contains the very string he needs. I don't say it but the coincidental fate blows my mind. Later in the car, I notice a shiny glare from under the drivers' seat. It's the ring my parents bought me for my 21st birthday that I thought I'd lost months ago. I would have never been in the backseat if we hadn't dragged the Singer out to nowheres land to pull those fingers over strings. He's not bad luck, he's just...luck. Keep it or give it.
I wonder what year we are in. With this pre-show playlist I really feel like I'm not sure. It's cold in this venue and in my memory- it's having such a hard time settling on anything. Things get..more active, but less real. If that makes any sense. We play board games with the kids who came out to see Big City Lights; Mess somehow confuses a tooth and an appendix in her logic. We dance. We try to make Justin jete from one end of the room to the other. He doesn't do that exactly, but he constantly obliges in his signature strut and hip pop. We don't know what we're all doing here together but we are laughing. Mess and I get onstage to open for BigCityJustin. Did a little stand up comedy, a little hardcore intro, but I think our main staple was Dakota by Rocket. We will be moving it to close our set in all future gigs. Later than sooner it is Justin's turn to play. He hops onstage, embodying his blog-given name, and those fingers make the Singer fall into his songs.
"And maybe it's too late to turn around-"
The thing is...I would have driven him to Maui to play this little acoustic set. It's okay if we are all the way from home, if we have no money, if he doesn't need me the way I could possibly need him. Because this is beyond us, this story we are living out. And each of us are replaceable characters; the boy with the guitar and the girl with the smile. Yet this is our turn, and this page is my favorite. I will dog-ear the part when his necklace shines in the spotlight. I will doodle the name of this song and underline his favorite lyric. I have a lot of questions all the time, except when he's playing. Then it doesn't matter. And I'm the one sighing. When he gets offstage he is a herb again, just an anxious boy with a secret. That he'll never tell me. Maybe he tells us while he plays.
This place is cold. So much colder than it should be. This place is real. This sound guy is creepy, and I like him. He's, well, I don't what's in his head but I think at least physically, he's real. These 3 kids who drove an hour to see Big City Lights are fucking real. Effing real. I drove him 2 1/2 hours for these kids. I am the "gratefulest. Most grateful." He thinks he's bad at talking onstage, but he's probably the smoothest I've seen at it. It's least awkward when he's doing the talking. He laughs, and lets us laugh at him. We smile, and he smiles for us. He's real. Hm - whaddya know.
I wonder who the Singer really is. I wonder what he'll become. These lights cast red and purple shadows on this page though, colors too beautiful to see past anything beyond right now. I don't need these questions answered yet.
No stage diving. Means no quitting. That's why he's here. There are pages and pages of Book filled before these, 11 to be exact, all with the harsh details of how a Long Island band imploded this week. But that is just one of the many stories that will stay in here...for now. The aftermath, in my words and his songs, now that is for you. There is no quitting. If you truly believe, then I truly believe you can't quit. No option. No bridge. No broken strings.
My hair is dirty and my feet are cold. All I have right now is this pen, his fingers, and the 12 people in this room. That's real.
...Terica.
"Human Toy" by: the Singer
"Bad" by: Michael Jackson
Saturday, October 24, 2009
"Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge"
I am being overly advised on the subject of boys. It seems as though I have 5 or 6 big brothers in the LI scene (bigger, not older) who are determined to look out for my best interest. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have submitted an opinion, however none of you will be taking home the grand prize of being right. Sorry. I know you've all seen the worst of each other and that you're only trying to look out for me...but let's do like we usually do; let me make a mistake, then you come over and play Dakota on your acoustics to make me smile and neverr say i told you so. Deal? :) Ok.
Tonight- sigh. I have written this sentence maybe 12 thousand times; Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge. It's been years now that I've been coming here, a few less years that I've been recognized here, and even a few less that my presence was requested. Yet in my scene, all roads lead home to Vibe. No, kids don't so much come in packs anymore, and yes, I have to repeat outfits all the time. But I had a lousy day with the situations mentioned above and I just wanted to be around a guitar. I wanted to be somewhere where no one could text me their opinions. I wanted to go to a home. Lucky for me, Dob tweets every 6 seconds and I was reminded of The Promise's show. So. Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge.
I chat with Dob outside. I get my bag checked by the bouncer. I fixed my hair in the mirror coming down the stairs and accept a black X on my right hand. How many times have I done all this? I go to the bathroom, because there is nothing else to do yet, and as I come out, I quite nearly smacked Travis McGee with the door. Ok, I've never done that before. Hi's are exchanged like it's not awkward that I hit him with a door and now he's staring into the girl's bathroom. Then I walk to sit at the bar shaking my head at how classic Ricky that was, and wonder how many awkward moments I've created at the Vibe Lounge.
This band on the show- Stay, from Massachusetts- has a bassist with a mess of curly hair and a singer who wears super form-fitting skinnies (cuz he's not lanky he actually has a form to fit) and spends a lot of the time singing on his tip toes. Now why does that sound familiar...
The Promise- promises to be always slightly unconventional. I mean there's not a skinny jean or Vans shoe in sight and the frontman wears a Beijing 2008 Olympic t-shirt. That's The Promise. Dobby's mic is pretty short, as are many of the songs. But the jumps he does with his bass get mad air and, in a post-set "interview" he tells me those leaps actually come completely natural to him. No practice. Believe it or not.
I think I love it when a musician asks me if I can hear his instrument from the audience. It's always the same charades; quick point to his guitar then to his ear, while mouthing the question. I wonder how many times I've been asked this in the Vibe Lounge.
I have my favorite parts about this place for sure. For one, getting asked said question. But I also like how the touring bands just sit and stare at the local circuses play. And how Travis and Cerney get bored and start using alternate voices to announce Loaded's upcoming shows. I like when the girls in the bathroom are complaining about how stupid a drummer or bassist is acting while they graffiti his band's name on the stall. That step by the merch tables. I like how when I look into the ceiling mirror above the front row I can see 12 thousand sets and smiles and times that have been awkwardly perfect for me here.
Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge. I had the lousiest day. I know everyone's just trying to help, but it's wearing me out. I got dressed and went to the same old venue with nothing but the promise of it feeling like home. I talked to Dob outside. I got my bag checked by the bouncer. I fixed my hair in the mirror coming down the stairs, and I accept a black X on my right hand. I didn't crack a real smile until somebody put on Mercy Mercedes in between bands. Then it felt like home.
Thanks for cheering me up guys.
...Terica.
"Shiver Me Timbers" by: Mercy Mercedes
(nov. 14th at TheVibeLounge with Between The Trees and Big City Lights)
Tonight- sigh. I have written this sentence maybe 12 thousand times; Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge. It's been years now that I've been coming here, a few less years that I've been recognized here, and even a few less that my presence was requested. Yet in my scene, all roads lead home to Vibe. No, kids don't so much come in packs anymore, and yes, I have to repeat outfits all the time. But I had a lousy day with the situations mentioned above and I just wanted to be around a guitar. I wanted to be somewhere where no one could text me their opinions. I wanted to go to a home. Lucky for me, Dob tweets every 6 seconds and I was reminded of The Promise's show. So. Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge.
I chat with Dob outside. I get my bag checked by the bouncer. I fixed my hair in the mirror coming down the stairs and accept a black X on my right hand. How many times have I done all this? I go to the bathroom, because there is nothing else to do yet, and as I come out, I quite nearly smacked Travis McGee with the door. Ok, I've never done that before. Hi's are exchanged like it's not awkward that I hit him with a door and now he's staring into the girl's bathroom. Then I walk to sit at the bar shaking my head at how classic Ricky that was, and wonder how many awkward moments I've created at the Vibe Lounge.
This band on the show- Stay, from Massachusetts- has a bassist with a mess of curly hair and a singer who wears super form-fitting skinnies (cuz he's not lanky he actually has a form to fit) and spends a lot of the time singing on his tip toes. Now why does that sound familiar...
The Promise- promises to be always slightly unconventional. I mean there's not a skinny jean or Vans shoe in sight and the frontman wears a Beijing 2008 Olympic t-shirt. That's The Promise. Dobby's mic is pretty short, as are many of the songs. But the jumps he does with his bass get mad air and, in a post-set "interview" he tells me those leaps actually come completely natural to him. No practice. Believe it or not.
I think I love it when a musician asks me if I can hear his instrument from the audience. It's always the same charades; quick point to his guitar then to his ear, while mouthing the question. I wonder how many times I've been asked this in the Vibe Lounge.
I have my favorite parts about this place for sure. For one, getting asked said question. But I also like how the touring bands just sit and stare at the local circuses play. And how Travis and Cerney get bored and start using alternate voices to announce Loaded's upcoming shows. I like when the girls in the bathroom are complaining about how stupid a drummer or bassist is acting while they graffiti his band's name on the stall. That step by the merch tables. I like how when I look into the ceiling mirror above the front row I can see 12 thousand sets and smiles and times that have been awkwardly perfect for me here.
Tonight I am at the Vibe Lounge. I had the lousiest day. I know everyone's just trying to help, but it's wearing me out. I got dressed and went to the same old venue with nothing but the promise of it feeling like home. I talked to Dob outside. I got my bag checked by the bouncer. I fixed my hair in the mirror coming down the stairs, and I accept a black X on my right hand. I didn't crack a real smile until somebody put on Mercy Mercedes in between bands. Then it felt like home.
Thanks for cheering me up guys.
...Terica.
"Shiver Me Timbers" by: Mercy Mercedes
(nov. 14th at TheVibeLounge with Between The Trees and Big City Lights)
Friday, October 23, 2009
you're what they're talkin about.
TimmyEPIC and I have had several conversations over why we love writing about the morning so much. I still don't know why. MatthewinColor says he can wake up and feel if it's going to be a writing day or not for him. I think it's mornings that Timmy and I wake up with 3 sentences already written that we notice, and it's those mornings that are, well, epic enough to be written about.
Every morning I wake up with a song in my head. Every morning I mumble "hola" to Candace as she walks back and forth getting ready for class. I must look ridiculous with blankets and blonde hair everywhere. Eyes still closed, I listen to what the dancers are complaining about in the kitchen- mostly teachers, mostly I always agree. By this time Nathen is singing out of my phone, because I'll set an alarm once in a month and never remember to turn it off. This is when I smile and open my eyes. 10 new text messages: Radio, Radio, tweet, tweet, Nate, Nik, tweet (shut up Dob), AndrePalmer, tweet, tweet. I roll over and the first thing I see is the Back To The Future picture Rob24 drew for me during Arts&Crafts time the other day. He says on Scene Street, USA, we will do Arts&Crafts and watch Elf every day. Next I see This Condition flyers, and I remember what I dreamt. I dreamt of a sacrifice, a kitten, a caterpllar, and an encore. I dreamt that everything was worth it.
I remember I get to go to Vibe tonight. I don't know who will be there or everybody who will be playing, but it excites me enough to free my legs from the covers and stand up. Today I don't fall. On the couch there's 10 minutes before the Golden Girls comes on, which is the official start of my day. I go to read the Singer's blog before I get coffee and before I start the TC mailing list.
But I don't get my coffee.
I sit there, everything quiet, still, and calm but my eyes. My eyes read his words and by the end one single tear falls, splashing loudly on the keyboard.
Please read it.
http://justinis.tumblr.com/
So far, if this was my last day, I would have made all the right choices. I would listen to The Maine and watch The Golden Girls and write a blog that didn't make sense until you guys read it. Sometime into the afternoon I would get dressed and go to Vibe, and I would smile no matter who was playing. Yet I supposed there is something I would be sure to do before I left..There are a handful of people who I should tell I love them. And you are one of them.
...Terica.
Can't Stop Won't Stop by: The Maine
Every morning I wake up with a song in my head. Every morning I mumble "hola" to Candace as she walks back and forth getting ready for class. I must look ridiculous with blankets and blonde hair everywhere. Eyes still closed, I listen to what the dancers are complaining about in the kitchen- mostly teachers, mostly I always agree. By this time Nathen is singing out of my phone, because I'll set an alarm once in a month and never remember to turn it off. This is when I smile and open my eyes. 10 new text messages: Radio, Radio, tweet, tweet, Nate, Nik, tweet (shut up Dob), AndrePalmer, tweet, tweet. I roll over and the first thing I see is the Back To The Future picture Rob24 drew for me during Arts&Crafts time the other day. He says on Scene Street, USA, we will do Arts&Crafts and watch Elf every day. Next I see This Condition flyers, and I remember what I dreamt. I dreamt of a sacrifice, a kitten, a caterpllar, and an encore. I dreamt that everything was worth it.
I remember I get to go to Vibe tonight. I don't know who will be there or everybody who will be playing, but it excites me enough to free my legs from the covers and stand up. Today I don't fall. On the couch there's 10 minutes before the Golden Girls comes on, which is the official start of my day. I go to read the Singer's blog before I get coffee and before I start the TC mailing list.
But I don't get my coffee.
I sit there, everything quiet, still, and calm but my eyes. My eyes read his words and by the end one single tear falls, splashing loudly on the keyboard.
Please read it.
http://justinis.tumblr.com/
So far, if this was my last day, I would have made all the right choices. I would listen to The Maine and watch The Golden Girls and write a blog that didn't make sense until you guys read it. Sometime into the afternoon I would get dressed and go to Vibe, and I would smile no matter who was playing. Yet I supposed there is something I would be sure to do before I left..There are a handful of people who I should tell I love them. And you are one of them.
...Terica.
Can't Stop Won't Stop by: The Maine
Thursday, October 22, 2009
back to the future
I am sick of loving things that don't love me back. These things, I'm sure, have no idea I feel this way. Some of them care. Some of them claim to care more than I comprehend. There is room for selfish in caring. Caring is not loving, not exactly. Some of them I have given my life to and still, they throw me out. They don't look back. Some of them I walk away from before they walk away from me. I am sick of being in love with things that leave me sitting in a corner or wondering if I said something wrong. I am sick of being in love with question marks. I don't want maybes.
I know the logical answer to this. I know I usually do the opposite of that. What I don't know is if my heart knows what it's talking about.
...Terica.
I know the logical answer to this. I know I usually do the opposite of that. What I don't know is if my heart knows what it's talking about.
...Terica.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Shh. Just go with it.
Pros and cons.
I fell asleep in my skinnies, scarf, winter coat, and shoes.
Pro: I can literally roll outta bed in the morning and get coffee.
Con: Someone put a chip in my heart the night before.
Bright and sunny October morning.
Pro: it's a bright and sunny October morning.
Con: I just rolled outta bed. omg, I can't see a thing.
Grabbed the first cd off my passenger seat.
Pro: I started singing!
Con: the cd was old and only Every Avenue would play, over and over.
*scratch those. Reverse them.
I clap at the end of songs which both the band and I have performed exceptionally.
Pro: the audience loves me.
Con: the person in the car next to me thinks I'm psycho.
Radio wakes up early.
Pro: our love lives start or continue before breakfast.
Con: our love lives start or continue before breakfast.
Tom the Builder e-mailed me last night.
Pro: got the new song I wanted!
Con: see #1.
Everyone uses Twitter, Facebook, and aim.
Pro: you know when people wake up, when they went to bed.
Con: see #1.
I'm at a loss for words this morning.
Pro: I'm prolly not gonna text you anything stupid.
Con: I'm prolly gonna text somebody else something stupid.
Summary (for those of you with short attention spans):
It's gorgeous outside even though staying up all night induces heavy shivering which leaves my body tired. But I got my coffee and listened to Every Avenue, which reminded me of the boy who did make me smile last night. I'm a bad singer, but I've got sweetheart friends that egg me on anyways. My day is open and unpredictable, where as yours, well you know at least one thing that won't happen.
"I heard the bad news, I heard all about you.
It's not what you did. It's just what you do."
...Terica.
"Trading Heartbeats"
I fell asleep in my skinnies, scarf, winter coat, and shoes.
Pro: I can literally roll outta bed in the morning and get coffee.
Con: Someone put a chip in my heart the night before.
Bright and sunny October morning.
Pro: it's a bright and sunny October morning.
Con: I just rolled outta bed. omg, I can't see a thing.
Grabbed the first cd off my passenger seat.
Pro: I started singing!
Con: the cd was old and only Every Avenue would play, over and over.
*scratch those. Reverse them.
I clap at the end of songs which both the band and I have performed exceptionally.
Pro: the audience loves me.
Con: the person in the car next to me thinks I'm psycho.
Radio wakes up early.
Pro: our love lives start or continue before breakfast.
Con: our love lives start or continue before breakfast.
Tom the Builder e-mailed me last night.
Pro: got the new song I wanted!
Con: see #1.
Everyone uses Twitter, Facebook, and aim.
Pro: you know when people wake up, when they went to bed.
Con: see #1.
I'm at a loss for words this morning.
Pro: I'm prolly not gonna text you anything stupid.
Con: I'm prolly gonna text somebody else something stupid.
Summary (for those of you with short attention spans):
It's gorgeous outside even though staying up all night induces heavy shivering which leaves my body tired. But I got my coffee and listened to Every Avenue, which reminded me of the boy who did make me smile last night. I'm a bad singer, but I've got sweetheart friends that egg me on anyways. My day is open and unpredictable, where as yours, well you know at least one thing that won't happen.
"I heard the bad news, I heard all about you.
It's not what you did. It's just what you do."
...Terica.
"Trading Heartbeats"
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
these hands are meant to hold.
So I think it's gonna be one of those days.
This was the first morning in weeks that I woke up on my own. Confused, I checked for text messages I didn't have. At first I thought it was nice, but I'm not so sure how I feel about it. I freed my legs from the covers to stand up with strength I didn't have. I forgot I had danced last night and fell right to the floor. My hernias are pissed. I got up to get dressed in peace that wasn't there. One of my roommates was screaming, shocker. So I threw on a scarf and left, while friends on my phone asked me for answers I didn't have.
I looked at the size of my wallet and bought plain coffee, drove home and dropped it all over myself. My hand were shaking. Anxiety. I sat down, letting the liquid scald me just to have a moment to breathe. Tears though, I don't have.
The only thing I have to eat are Eggos. So I made one and ate it with syrup that I don't have. I have water, and an Eggo, and a coffee stained leg. And patience.
I spent money I don't have on the Stereo show at Highline later. I don't know why. I don't have the heart to see them. I think this is gonna be one of those days, but at least I've got today right? There's a lot I don't have, but I have a lot to give..I'm just not sure it's anything you want.
...Terica.
"Move Along" by: All American Rejects
This was the first morning in weeks that I woke up on my own. Confused, I checked for text messages I didn't have. At first I thought it was nice, but I'm not so sure how I feel about it. I freed my legs from the covers to stand up with strength I didn't have. I forgot I had danced last night and fell right to the floor. My hernias are pissed. I got up to get dressed in peace that wasn't there. One of my roommates was screaming, shocker. So I threw on a scarf and left, while friends on my phone asked me for answers I didn't have.
I looked at the size of my wallet and bought plain coffee, drove home and dropped it all over myself. My hand were shaking. Anxiety. I sat down, letting the liquid scald me just to have a moment to breathe. Tears though, I don't have.
The only thing I have to eat are Eggos. So I made one and ate it with syrup that I don't have. I have water, and an Eggo, and a coffee stained leg. And patience.
I spent money I don't have on the Stereo show at Highline later. I don't know why. I don't have the heart to see them. I think this is gonna be one of those days, but at least I've got today right? There's a lot I don't have, but I have a lot to give..I'm just not sure it's anything you want.
...Terica.
"Move Along" by: All American Rejects
Monday, October 19, 2009
hey there it's good to see you again.
pa⋅tience
/ˈpeɪʃəns/
Show Spelled Pronunciation [pey-shuhns
See web results of patience
See images of patience
–noun
1. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.
...Terica.
/ˈpeɪʃəns/
Show Spelled Pronunciation [pey-shuhns
See web results of patience
See images of patience
–noun
1. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.
...Terica.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
we watch and wait and do nothing but sigh, and hope...
I am laying in my bed listening to cold rain tap up against my window. I know its cold because Radio already warned me in a text that it was. I wonder when I started sleeping with my cell phone on my pillow, and I wonder why by now it's not a boy there instead. But it was 3am when I reached a full inbox, so I don't wonder for long.
There are 4 or 5 vans full of the people I believe in most tooling around various parts of the country right now. Tour awake hours are different from home awake hours, and I don't mind that they consider me on their schedule. Therefore I am up texting every night, sending homemade hope thousands of miles down the line. I guess it's the scene form of pillow talk.
I slept more tonight then I usually do, having time to dream about one of the vans living along the highway. I woke up, losing how it ended, but the tense pain in my back must mean it wasn't well. My arm instinctively wiggled free of the blankets and I squinted to start answering the 4 new messages since last I was awake. I started sleeping with my phone on my pillow when they started sleeping in bunks on wheels.
Most readers think I hate tour, I've written it mainly as a thing of abandonment and loss. But the truth is, I would rather have 5 vans of the boys I love most scattered around the country making me worry at all hours of the night than have them safely in their Long Island beds. It's where they want to be, and where they should be. Plus I'll worry either way. And I can sleep when I'm old and have fully reaped the fiscal benefits of an entire season of VH1 Behind the Music.
The sun is coming up, and while the last of my band boys gives into rest, I sit up and start working on the 11 pages of notes I took on Casari last night. I have until lunchtime to finish them, which is when I usually expect the next round of pillow talk texts.
...Tera.
"Everything'll Be Alright (Will's Lullaby)" by: Joshua Radin
There are 4 or 5 vans full of the people I believe in most tooling around various parts of the country right now. Tour awake hours are different from home awake hours, and I don't mind that they consider me on their schedule. Therefore I am up texting every night, sending homemade hope thousands of miles down the line. I guess it's the scene form of pillow talk.
I slept more tonight then I usually do, having time to dream about one of the vans living along the highway. I woke up, losing how it ended, but the tense pain in my back must mean it wasn't well. My arm instinctively wiggled free of the blankets and I squinted to start answering the 4 new messages since last I was awake. I started sleeping with my phone on my pillow when they started sleeping in bunks on wheels.
Most readers think I hate tour, I've written it mainly as a thing of abandonment and loss. But the truth is, I would rather have 5 vans of the boys I love most scattered around the country making me worry at all hours of the night than have them safely in their Long Island beds. It's where they want to be, and where they should be. Plus I'll worry either way. And I can sleep when I'm old and have fully reaped the fiscal benefits of an entire season of VH1 Behind the Music.
The sun is coming up, and while the last of my band boys gives into rest, I sit up and start working on the 11 pages of notes I took on Casari last night. I have until lunchtime to finish them, which is when I usually expect the next round of pillow talk texts.
...Tera.
"Everything'll Be Alright (Will's Lullaby)" by: Joshua Radin
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Remember when you said that you could save me?
I wanna trip and fall.
But when I do, I want to fall into somebody else.
Spending Wednesday night in the basement that is the Vibe Lounge yet again, I stand short next to MikeCondition, who has so graciously accompanied me on my excursion out of the depths of cyber space. I swear if tinnitus doesn't do me in, wonky eyesight will.
The boys of The Right Coast are scattered about the near-empty venue. The last time I saw them they were here in flip-flops and tanks in the dead of summer. Brandon Ehrgood's look had thrilled me then, but his set hadn't. Regardless, I stand next to this front man some 4 months later and get the same old rush. I consider that it's much like the feeling I had with Mr. Stereo AFTER he got signed or Nick Santino BEFORE I hung around him. Impressions and rumors tell me they are less than heroic, but my scene kid smiles are inevitable. Standing next to Brandon, it's probably not so much him that gives me smiles, but more so his hair and voice. I can be so predictable sometimes.
At set time the songs didn't impress me any more than they hadn't this summer. Sloppiness doesn't impress me. But there is something about The Right Coast that makes me very very sad. No. That lets me be very sad.
There is so much stress on the characters of this blog lately. Money and ultimatums, tour schedules and poor health. And all of us have our acts to cover up with; the fierce one, the happy one, the heartless one, the mysterious one. We rarely break down for anyone, we rarely even let each other see our weaknesses. Tonight it was the know-it-all one who nearly crashed my own facade.
Characteristically, he made a twisted comment before thinking over how it would sound to me. I was hit, but too stubborn in my act to lay down and accept the cut. I moved away and shamelessly watched the voice with the thrilling hair, soon finding myself in that predictable place with the same old rush.
Don't ever let anyone take your scene kid smile from you. I know how hard you have worked for just those few songs in a set. I know that it's probably the only place you feel safe, at home. Maybe it's the only place you feel it is okay to be sad in, the only time it's alright to drop your act. So don't let any ill-tongued motives take it away from you. Your slow motion moments are yours to make however big or small you want to remember them as.
That being said...
Dear Long Island kids,
Bands are going to stop touring through here if you don't all quit being a bunch of bitches. 40 faces for the local band, down to 7 for TRC, down to just me, Mike, and Travis for SSDC? Really? These bands want to play for you, get off your lazy asses and come out to their shows. Otherwise, I hope you'll be happy with a collective lame identity and no reasons to get away from your nagging parents.
Loooveeee, Terica.
Thaaat being said...
Dear Secret Secret Dino Club,
If you want kids to stay at your show, maybe don't treat them like you don't give a shit. Thanks.
Loooveeee, Terica.
I spent Wednesday night in a place I've spent maybe a thousand others. This venue would be so different in memory and experience if it ever rendered any cell phone service for me at all. But time stands still at the Vibe Lounge and all outside going ons must wait until after the rock show. I kind of like it that way. I feel, at home. When you're hear, you're hear. A touring drummer warms up behind us and I glance at MikeCondition. He rolls his eyes at my smile. I can be just so predictable sometimes.
Dear Long Island music scene,
Please stop giving up. I believe in you and you're making me look like an idiot. I wanna trip and fall into
Love.
...Terica.
"This Is Now" by: The Right Coast
But when I do, I want to fall into somebody else.
Spending Wednesday night in the basement that is the Vibe Lounge yet again, I stand short next to MikeCondition, who has so graciously accompanied me on my excursion out of the depths of cyber space. I swear if tinnitus doesn't do me in, wonky eyesight will.
The boys of The Right Coast are scattered about the near-empty venue. The last time I saw them they were here in flip-flops and tanks in the dead of summer. Brandon Ehrgood's look had thrilled me then, but his set hadn't. Regardless, I stand next to this front man some 4 months later and get the same old rush. I consider that it's much like the feeling I had with Mr. Stereo AFTER he got signed or Nick Santino BEFORE I hung around him. Impressions and rumors tell me they are less than heroic, but my scene kid smiles are inevitable. Standing next to Brandon, it's probably not so much him that gives me smiles, but more so his hair and voice. I can be so predictable sometimes.
At set time the songs didn't impress me any more than they hadn't this summer. Sloppiness doesn't impress me. But there is something about The Right Coast that makes me very very sad. No. That lets me be very sad.
There is so much stress on the characters of this blog lately. Money and ultimatums, tour schedules and poor health. And all of us have our acts to cover up with; the fierce one, the happy one, the heartless one, the mysterious one. We rarely break down for anyone, we rarely even let each other see our weaknesses. Tonight it was the know-it-all one who nearly crashed my own facade.
Characteristically, he made a twisted comment before thinking over how it would sound to me. I was hit, but too stubborn in my act to lay down and accept the cut. I moved away and shamelessly watched the voice with the thrilling hair, soon finding myself in that predictable place with the same old rush.
Don't ever let anyone take your scene kid smile from you. I know how hard you have worked for just those few songs in a set. I know that it's probably the only place you feel safe, at home. Maybe it's the only place you feel it is okay to be sad in, the only time it's alright to drop your act. So don't let any ill-tongued motives take it away from you. Your slow motion moments are yours to make however big or small you want to remember them as.
That being said...
Dear Long Island kids,
Bands are going to stop touring through here if you don't all quit being a bunch of bitches. 40 faces for the local band, down to 7 for TRC, down to just me, Mike, and Travis for SSDC? Really? These bands want to play for you, get off your lazy asses and come out to their shows. Otherwise, I hope you'll be happy with a collective lame identity and no reasons to get away from your nagging parents.
Loooveeee, Terica.
Thaaat being said...
Dear Secret Secret Dino Club,
If you want kids to stay at your show, maybe don't treat them like you don't give a shit. Thanks.
Loooveeee, Terica.
I spent Wednesday night in a place I've spent maybe a thousand others. This venue would be so different in memory and experience if it ever rendered any cell phone service for me at all. But time stands still at the Vibe Lounge and all outside going ons must wait until after the rock show. I kind of like it that way. I feel, at home. When you're hear, you're hear. A touring drummer warms up behind us and I glance at MikeCondition. He rolls his eyes at my smile. I can be just so predictable sometimes.
Dear Long Island music scene,
Please stop giving up. I believe in you and you're making me look like an idiot. I wanna trip and fall into
Love.
...Terica.
"This Is Now" by: The Right Coast
Monday, October 12, 2009
Oh, Dakota.
The maine thing we kings have learned while searching the city is to never shout never and to keep building that rocket to the moon. If you should find yourself at an all time low, hop in a cab and start again.
tomorrow A Rocket To The Moon's album "On Your Side" comes out. It is...well, you be the judge and let me know. <3 Terica
tomorrow A Rocket To The Moon's album "On Your Side" comes out. It is...well, you be the judge and let me know. <3 Terica
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Am I too dirty? Am I too flirty? Do you like what I like?
I'm avoiding the 2 things I actually have to be writing and watching Pats-Broncos instead. No, I do not want to talk about the Red Sox. In fact don't mention them to me until April, which is when I'll probably stop wanting to march J-Pap to the guillotine. Dammnit! My friends say I have anger issues, but I just don't see it. Anyways, a friend recently wrote a rather introductory tumblr of himself. I thought maybe I should do the same, so here's 20 things you may know about me, but probably don't.
1.) Hardly anyone calls me Erica. They call me Terica, short for Tericadactyl. Or Ricky, or just Rick. Or Ica, E-Mart, Casey, or Mikey. Fun fact; when I was 4 years old I wanted to be called Cindy and refused to answer to anything else. My mother got questioned on the premises of abduction after a hissy fit in Toys-R-Us. But it wasn't my fault, I was Cindy. Not Erica.
2.) I'm deeply addicted to coffee, though sometimes I quit long enough to give attention to the Captain.
3.) I've read To Kill A Mockingbird 6 times. It's my favorite.
4.) There are 4 bleecher seats from the old Fenway Park bolted into my parents' living room floor. They threw out a church pew to make room for them.
5.) I'm really bad at telling stories, audibly. There's really only one person who always pretends to listen anyways.
6.) I choreographed every song on Madonna's Immaculate Collection and performed them on my grandmother's porch the summer I was 6 years old. In September, my mom put me in dance classes.
7.) I am the friendliest psychopath you'll ever meet.
8.) As a toddler I had plenty of stuffed animals, but I carried around a baseball card of Jesse Barfield. I have no idea where I got it and he wasn't a Red Sox so idk why my dad let me keep it, but when I fell and skinned my knees I'd cry for "My Jesse."
9.) I always have holes in my tights. Nate says, never trust a girl with no holes in her tights.
10.) I say "Nate says" a lot.
11.) I have a secret obsession with Peter Cetera. OMg I love him.
12.) I was blue when I was born. Very blue. And I had a full head of spiky black hair that just wouldn't go any where's but up. My uncle coined me the Punk Rocker. My mom says it was foreshadowing.
13.) I fall in love easily. Radio lets me know when it's only a crush.
14.-15.) I like the color yellow and watching the same movies over and over again.
16.) I ask too many questions.
17.) I act out a lot too.
18.) When things get really bad, and I'm too confused, I run away. To Boston, my favorite place in the world and the only city I'll ever trust. I like the air, I like the cobblestone. I like walking Newbury Street on Saturday nights.
19.) I believe with my whole heart in things you think are ordinary.
20.) I once ran over my little brother with a go-cart. He was kinda mad at me.
Now you know me. Or at least it's a start.
...Terica.
"Grace Kelly" by: Mika
1.) Hardly anyone calls me Erica. They call me Terica, short for Tericadactyl. Or Ricky, or just Rick. Or Ica, E-Mart, Casey, or Mikey. Fun fact; when I was 4 years old I wanted to be called Cindy and refused to answer to anything else. My mother got questioned on the premises of abduction after a hissy fit in Toys-R-Us. But it wasn't my fault, I was Cindy. Not Erica.
2.) I'm deeply addicted to coffee, though sometimes I quit long enough to give attention to the Captain.
3.) I've read To Kill A Mockingbird 6 times. It's my favorite.
4.) There are 4 bleecher seats from the old Fenway Park bolted into my parents' living room floor. They threw out a church pew to make room for them.
5.) I'm really bad at telling stories, audibly. There's really only one person who always pretends to listen anyways.
6.) I choreographed every song on Madonna's Immaculate Collection and performed them on my grandmother's porch the summer I was 6 years old. In September, my mom put me in dance classes.
7.) I am the friendliest psychopath you'll ever meet.
8.) As a toddler I had plenty of stuffed animals, but I carried around a baseball card of Jesse Barfield. I have no idea where I got it and he wasn't a Red Sox so idk why my dad let me keep it, but when I fell and skinned my knees I'd cry for "My Jesse."
9.) I always have holes in my tights. Nate says, never trust a girl with no holes in her tights.
10.) I say "Nate says" a lot.
11.) I have a secret obsession with Peter Cetera. OMg I love him.
12.) I was blue when I was born. Very blue. And I had a full head of spiky black hair that just wouldn't go any where's but up. My uncle coined me the Punk Rocker. My mom says it was foreshadowing.
13.) I fall in love easily. Radio lets me know when it's only a crush.
14.-15.) I like the color yellow and watching the same movies over and over again.
16.) I ask too many questions.
17.) I act out a lot too.
18.) When things get really bad, and I'm too confused, I run away. To Boston, my favorite place in the world and the only city I'll ever trust. I like the air, I like the cobblestone. I like walking Newbury Street on Saturday nights.
19.) I believe with my whole heart in things you think are ordinary.
20.) I once ran over my little brother with a go-cart. He was kinda mad at me.
Now you know me. Or at least it's a start.
...Terica.
"Grace Kelly" by: Mika
Saturday, October 10, 2009
...And that's what I do it for
On a bad day, take a seat in Row 4 and let This Condition make you laugh till you cry. Works for me.
We're on our way to a show in New Jersey and first they fight about a smell. Who stepped in the death fruit that grows in Mike's front yard?! Not I, I know better. Touch them, kick them, or even look at them and you WILL instantly wreak of shit. Next they argue about Miley Cyrus' better looks: Does she look hott enough in the video for "Party in the USA" to make up for her cankles? The world may never agree. The first controversy I take part in is a discussion about Johnny Gomez of the Summer Set. I'll be damned if Nate gets his attentions too. It happens all the time in and out of venues. The boys I like...like to talk to Nate. Luckily, I adore him more than I ever will any of them. Mike says tonight I have to put up some pretty stiff competition if I want to have any chance. Thanks, bfg, you're so much help. I always thought I'd have to compete with the skinny gorgeous girls of the world, but my main concern is a saucy male singer.
"The brave may not live forever, but the scared do not live at all." It's paraphrased. I try my best to remember it when I'm somewhere where the Johnny Gomez's of the world are walking around. TJ, Rossi, and I were the lucky 3 taken to this free show in the quad at New Jersey Institute of Technology. This show - with the tour package of A Rocket To The Moon and The Summer Set - has capabilities. Possibilities, yes. Expectations, never. It's my secret to scene stamina. I'm excited, but chill. Composed.
I saw Nick Santino cross the street as our van strolled up for load in. I'd like to report that I took a deep breath and smiled smugly, totally keeping my cool...but that would be a complete lie. I fell off the seat in Row 4 and covered my mouth to filter the giggles.
What is it that makes us girls giggle over guys? Why do we spill over in smiles but still try to act all mysterious and sexy. Why don't they giggle over us? What do guys do when they have a crush? Do they write songs? The ones I know probably do. In basements and backseats of vans. Or U-Hauls.
After many occurrences; a stiff t-shirt, a wet green room, a loud kick drum, a disheartening comment, a cover song, 6 shout outs and a short circuit later, I was sitting on a park bench, side stage for A Rocket To The Moon's sound check and set. Those of you who have been living outside the parking lots of Long Island might have not heard me profess my adoration for Rocket, Nick, and especially their song Dakota, but they're definitely a favorite. You should just take my word for it and imagine the jitters as I watch them all from feet away. The new songs were sweet, the old ones sweeter, and as expected, a smile louder than any of the amplifiers. But no, not mine. Their lead singer's.
I did not talk to Nick Santino this evening. I ran into him, literally, and did keep up some worthy eye contact. But when I roped TJ into approaching Nick with me, I backed out of talking to him. Not many have seen the shy Terica and few expect me not to push boundaries. But tonight, one sight was enough.
The kids were gone and the vans were pulled around for load out. I watch Nick climb a grassy hill and tug at one huge road case. He pulled it past the bench I'd been sitting on and pushed off to ride it down the hill's sidewalk and across the quad. A certain Long Island band had me thinking that contracted musicians never lifted their own equipment. I smile to see a redhead with a red case. I smile to be mistaken. I guess he can make up his own words.
On the ride home, This Condition made me laugh to the point of tears. They sang "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan. Then they discussed her involvement in the animal cruelty commercial, claiming it was overly graphic and had ruined the song for them forever. First thing they agreed on all night.
What is it about boys that make me giggle? I don't know, but I'm sure when I finally figure it out, I'll be laughing from Row 4.
...Terica.
"She's Killing Me" by: A Rocket To The Moon
"The Boys You Do (Get Back At You)" by The Summer Set...just bc I cannot get it outta my head!
We're on our way to a show in New Jersey and first they fight about a smell. Who stepped in the death fruit that grows in Mike's front yard?! Not I, I know better. Touch them, kick them, or even look at them and you WILL instantly wreak of shit. Next they argue about Miley Cyrus' better looks: Does she look hott enough in the video for "Party in the USA" to make up for her cankles? The world may never agree. The first controversy I take part in is a discussion about Johnny Gomez of the Summer Set. I'll be damned if Nate gets his attentions too. It happens all the time in and out of venues. The boys I like...like to talk to Nate. Luckily, I adore him more than I ever will any of them. Mike says tonight I have to put up some pretty stiff competition if I want to have any chance. Thanks, bfg, you're so much help. I always thought I'd have to compete with the skinny gorgeous girls of the world, but my main concern is a saucy male singer.
"The brave may not live forever, but the scared do not live at all." It's paraphrased. I try my best to remember it when I'm somewhere where the Johnny Gomez's of the world are walking around. TJ, Rossi, and I were the lucky 3 taken to this free show in the quad at New Jersey Institute of Technology. This show - with the tour package of A Rocket To The Moon and The Summer Set - has capabilities. Possibilities, yes. Expectations, never. It's my secret to scene stamina. I'm excited, but chill. Composed.
I saw Nick Santino cross the street as our van strolled up for load in. I'd like to report that I took a deep breath and smiled smugly, totally keeping my cool...but that would be a complete lie. I fell off the seat in Row 4 and covered my mouth to filter the giggles.
What is it that makes us girls giggle over guys? Why do we spill over in smiles but still try to act all mysterious and sexy. Why don't they giggle over us? What do guys do when they have a crush? Do they write songs? The ones I know probably do. In basements and backseats of vans. Or U-Hauls.
After many occurrences; a stiff t-shirt, a wet green room, a loud kick drum, a disheartening comment, a cover song, 6 shout outs and a short circuit later, I was sitting on a park bench, side stage for A Rocket To The Moon's sound check and set. Those of you who have been living outside the parking lots of Long Island might have not heard me profess my adoration for Rocket, Nick, and especially their song Dakota, but they're definitely a favorite. You should just take my word for it and imagine the jitters as I watch them all from feet away. The new songs were sweet, the old ones sweeter, and as expected, a smile louder than any of the amplifiers. But no, not mine. Their lead singer's.
I did not talk to Nick Santino this evening. I ran into him, literally, and did keep up some worthy eye contact. But when I roped TJ into approaching Nick with me, I backed out of talking to him. Not many have seen the shy Terica and few expect me not to push boundaries. But tonight, one sight was enough.
The kids were gone and the vans were pulled around for load out. I watch Nick climb a grassy hill and tug at one huge road case. He pulled it past the bench I'd been sitting on and pushed off to ride it down the hill's sidewalk and across the quad. A certain Long Island band had me thinking that contracted musicians never lifted their own equipment. I smile to see a redhead with a red case. I smile to be mistaken. I guess he can make up his own words.
On the ride home, This Condition made me laugh to the point of tears. They sang "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan. Then they discussed her involvement in the animal cruelty commercial, claiming it was overly graphic and had ruined the song for them forever. First thing they agreed on all night.
What is it about boys that make me giggle? I don't know, but I'm sure when I finally figure it out, I'll be laughing from Row 4.
...Terica.
"She's Killing Me" by: A Rocket To The Moon
"The Boys You Do (Get Back At You)" by The Summer Set...just bc I cannot get it outta my head!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
my name in your book of, 'who's whos'
I'm working on weeding through the Book and a half I wrote on tour with This Condition this summer, but I'm quite distracted. I'd rather be cutting up clothes, or playing with hair dye. I'd rather not be nervous about tomorrow, and viscously reading about Sid and Nancy, Johnny R, DeeDee, Joey, Malcolm, and Vivienne. If you can say who all these people are, text me immediately and be my valentine. I'm sitting here distracted thinking of how I'd much rather have been in their era, beating the shit outta everybody who crossed me and doing things just to get a reaction. But instead I'm in this era, with tools obsessed with hooks over messages and twirpy drummers who run their mouths. If Johnny were here, he'd fix him. I sit here writing the secrets of anyone who crosses me and posting things just to get a reaction. Ok. So these eras are not completely different. But there was better style in theirs.
My current Book was abducted last night by two very brave personalities. I say brave because they're crazy if they think one of them won't be feeling repercussions. I'm not sure whether to get even with Matt for holding it, or like him for having the respect to give it back. Anthony was the original guilty party, snatching the Book from my bag while I innocently drew a picture of Matt 'wizarding'. (see @matthewincolor for reference) Someone's going to pay for the knot I eventually went to sleep with. In the end, I got the Book back by trading Matt the favor of turning on the air conditioner. Special thanks to MikeCondition for his urgent comparative skills (he told Matt the Book was like Pandora's box), BigCityJustin for being no help at all, and Nathen Frosting for not even answering his phone. Just remember what Mr. Rotten said, "Anger is an energy."
...Terica.
"I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" by: The Sex Pistols
My current Book was abducted last night by two very brave personalities. I say brave because they're crazy if they think one of them won't be feeling repercussions. I'm not sure whether to get even with Matt for holding it, or like him for having the respect to give it back. Anthony was the original guilty party, snatching the Book from my bag while I innocently drew a picture of Matt 'wizarding'. (see @matthewincolor for reference) Someone's going to pay for the knot I eventually went to sleep with. In the end, I got the Book back by trading Matt the favor of turning on the air conditioner. Special thanks to MikeCondition for his urgent comparative skills (he told Matt the Book was like Pandora's box), BigCityJustin for being no help at all, and Nathen Frosting for not even answering his phone. Just remember what Mr. Rotten said, "Anger is an energy."
...Terica.
"I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" by: The Sex Pistols
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
my lack of words and lack of better taste
So it's 5:35 am. I'm not at Matt Villani's. Instead I'm watching videos of my all my favorite Long Island boys, listening to their music and trying to decide whether I'm full of shit or not. The verdict has to be reached.
Something that's real. Hm.
I'm the kind of girl who hears a drop and runs out to driveway pavement to see if they came, just because they once promised they would.
The rain outside my window makes me miss them terribly. It pierces me in a numb way, if that makes any sense at all. And I can't do anything about it. I knew we'd only have a moment right from the start, but being expectant and being accustomed are two very different things. I'll never get used to people leaving me 5 boys at a time. I wish I'd lied, but I always wait for rain.
I'm the kind of girl with a ring in her ear, rather than on her finger.
So Mike I've been thinking, you should go back to just hitting the chord at the end of the first chorus, forget the rake. It has nothing to with the fact that you've never scored higher than a 7 in rake cleanliness, or that you make a really dumb face when it goes sour. I'm just sayin'. I think that detail would help me believe in the lyrics more, cuz with this noise in my head the only part I've heard lately is about the money and the miles.
I'm the kind of girl who talks about music when she's really just trying to get you to stay a little longer.
Someone asked me how I could write these things. How I could have the nerve to believe in a scene and its music, its musicians, and put words to their existence. My reality is that I have to go upstate to my hometown this weekend. There are grandmas staying in the hospital, mothers and cousins getting ready to check in. Brothers that haven't talked to me in weeks, and uncles that think I've lost my damn mind. There are ex-boyfriends waiting for answers that I just don't have to give and of course, there are no friends on account they gave up on my promises long ago. So let me ask you: why wouldn't I write about Long Island band boys? They're my favorite. Why not stay up till 6am listening to these songs if it makes 11:11 come sooner? I've been battling my head over what is and what is not good enough to write here because that someone needed to scream at me in order to make himself feel better. But I think he's the one who's actually full of shit. Go away, I'm busy picking petals out.
Something real at 6 in the morning? Ha, everything's real at this hour.
...Terica.
"Catastrophe" by: Big City Lights
Something that's real. Hm.
I'm the kind of girl who hears a drop and runs out to driveway pavement to see if they came, just because they once promised they would.
The rain outside my window makes me miss them terribly. It pierces me in a numb way, if that makes any sense at all. And I can't do anything about it. I knew we'd only have a moment right from the start, but being expectant and being accustomed are two very different things. I'll never get used to people leaving me 5 boys at a time. I wish I'd lied, but I always wait for rain.
I'm the kind of girl with a ring in her ear, rather than on her finger.
So Mike I've been thinking, you should go back to just hitting the chord at the end of the first chorus, forget the rake. It has nothing to with the fact that you've never scored higher than a 7 in rake cleanliness, or that you make a really dumb face when it goes sour. I'm just sayin'. I think that detail would help me believe in the lyrics more, cuz with this noise in my head the only part I've heard lately is about the money and the miles.
I'm the kind of girl who talks about music when she's really just trying to get you to stay a little longer.
Someone asked me how I could write these things. How I could have the nerve to believe in a scene and its music, its musicians, and put words to their existence. My reality is that I have to go upstate to my hometown this weekend. There are grandmas staying in the hospital, mothers and cousins getting ready to check in. Brothers that haven't talked to me in weeks, and uncles that think I've lost my damn mind. There are ex-boyfriends waiting for answers that I just don't have to give and of course, there are no friends on account they gave up on my promises long ago. So let me ask you: why wouldn't I write about Long Island band boys? They're my favorite. Why not stay up till 6am listening to these songs if it makes 11:11 come sooner? I've been battling my head over what is and what is not good enough to write here because that someone needed to scream at me in order to make himself feel better. But I think he's the one who's actually full of shit. Go away, I'm busy picking petals out.
Something real at 6 in the morning? Ha, everything's real at this hour.
...Terica.
"Catastrophe" by: Big City Lights
Saturday, October 3, 2009
[ fierce bitches.* ]
Friday afternoon I was sitting on a couch around the corner from Hot Topic in Roosevelt Field mall. I was waiting for a friend but, Jeffree Star got there first. Cheers, thrills, and shrills, came rising up out of the already brilliant line of his fans. The last time I saw that much glitter in one place I was going for gold at Dance Explosion All-States.
Connections are everything, dahling.
This Condition met the lovely JStar this summer at Warped Tour. Ask them for stories, I'm definitely not at liberty to repeat. With those experiences in the bag, the dauntless Stevie Keyes strolled up to Madame Star's bus and I dunno, just shot the breeze with the likes I suppose. When I met up with him inside, he handed over one free wristband from Miss Star and told me to do with it what I like. Now, I was honestly going to sell it. 5 bucks? 10? But a good pair of friends of mine convinced me otherwise. I was having a bad afternoon. I was standing sideline of this pinked out event still ditched and not having fun. So why not kick up a little glitter by my own standards? Let me tell you, I could not have done it without MeganDHTBA and JJ [fierce bitches.*]
*note: in return for taking in an orphaned outfit and making a diva out of me, Megan and JJ will from now on be proceeded by the applicable term "fierce bitches."
SO.
Where was I?
Oh right, Megan and JJ [fierce bitches.*]...
...let me stand in line with them. Why not use a free wristband? Why not get right in the action and report to my readers as a eye witness? There was only onee tiny problem.
I don't do well when meeting celebrities.
Pro athletes at the game, one thing. The Maine over a series of days, ok. Nate Smith one-on-one convo, not so much. Jeffree Star without Cyph? Oh hell no. I was mostly fine until we turned the corner and could actually see the front of Hot Topic. What am I doing? Is this really necessary? Do I have to talk? No, JJ [fierce bitch*] you just talk. NO! I AM NOT going to say I know Nathen! Wait. Is it he or she? NO! Megan [fierce bitch*] you CANNOT ask her. Him. Her?!?!
I was panicked. They were stressed. I was also almost awed to tears when Megan and JJ [fierce bitches*] said I could be in their picture with Jeffree. This Condition has the best and sweetest fans in the whole wide world. And space too. And, whatever is beyond space. The three of us watched as glam-ateers and chroma babies came out one after another with the same adoring face clenching their new most prized possession; an autographed Jeffree Star poster. We smiled at their cuteness. I marveled at their honesties. Then it was our turn to go in. And I choked on my own spit.
Yes, we got all got an autograph. We got a picture too. The celebrity was extremely chill and nice. But all you really need to know is that Jeffree Star is everything he promises to be. He's pretty much everything I wish I could promise to be, but am not so poignant in proving it. Jeffree has dyed hair, painted makeup, graffitied skin and a posed fierce identity. And people hate him for all of it. Yet the appeal to me lies immediately in the fact that he is so completely invented. That in all the fakeness, Miss Jeffree Star is one of the most real things I have ever witnessed kids screaming over. They love the opportunity to relate. Whether they actually do or not is another story. I am a sold fan to the About Me on the Jeffree Star myspace. I'm an even bigger fan of the strength it takes to be that bold and brash every single day. Plus.....you wishh you could pull off hair like that. Miss Jeffree Fucking Star.
...Ricky.
"Prisoner" by:...I mean, obviously.
Connections are everything, dahling.
This Condition met the lovely JStar this summer at Warped Tour. Ask them for stories, I'm definitely not at liberty to repeat. With those experiences in the bag, the dauntless Stevie Keyes strolled up to Madame Star's bus and I dunno, just shot the breeze with the likes I suppose. When I met up with him inside, he handed over one free wristband from Miss Star and told me to do with it what I like. Now, I was honestly going to sell it. 5 bucks? 10? But a good pair of friends of mine convinced me otherwise. I was having a bad afternoon. I was standing sideline of this pinked out event still ditched and not having fun. So why not kick up a little glitter by my own standards? Let me tell you, I could not have done it without MeganDHTBA and JJ [fierce bitches.*]
*note: in return for taking in an orphaned outfit and making a diva out of me, Megan and JJ will from now on be proceeded by the applicable term "fierce bitches."
SO.
Where was I?
Oh right, Megan and JJ [fierce bitches.*]...
...let me stand in line with them. Why not use a free wristband? Why not get right in the action and report to my readers as a eye witness? There was only onee tiny problem.
I don't do well when meeting celebrities.
Pro athletes at the game, one thing. The Maine over a series of days, ok. Nate Smith one-on-one convo, not so much. Jeffree Star without Cyph? Oh hell no. I was mostly fine until we turned the corner and could actually see the front of Hot Topic. What am I doing? Is this really necessary? Do I have to talk? No, JJ [fierce bitch*] you just talk. NO! I AM NOT going to say I know Nathen! Wait. Is it he or she? NO! Megan [fierce bitch*] you CANNOT ask her. Him. Her?!?!
I was panicked. They were stressed. I was also almost awed to tears when Megan and JJ [fierce bitches*] said I could be in their picture with Jeffree. This Condition has the best and sweetest fans in the whole wide world. And space too. And, whatever is beyond space. The three of us watched as glam-ateers and chroma babies came out one after another with the same adoring face clenching their new most prized possession; an autographed Jeffree Star poster. We smiled at their cuteness. I marveled at their honesties. Then it was our turn to go in. And I choked on my own spit.
Yes, we got all got an autograph. We got a picture too. The celebrity was extremely chill and nice. But all you really need to know is that Jeffree Star is everything he promises to be. He's pretty much everything I wish I could promise to be, but am not so poignant in proving it. Jeffree has dyed hair, painted makeup, graffitied skin and a posed fierce identity. And people hate him for all of it. Yet the appeal to me lies immediately in the fact that he is so completely invented. That in all the fakeness, Miss Jeffree Star is one of the most real things I have ever witnessed kids screaming over. They love the opportunity to relate. Whether they actually do or not is another story. I am a sold fan to the About Me on the Jeffree Star myspace. I'm an even bigger fan of the strength it takes to be that bold and brash every single day. Plus.....you wishh you could pull off hair like that. Miss Jeffree Fucking Star.
...Ricky.
"Prisoner" by:...I mean, obviously.
This could be the rush you're waiting for.
I woke up this morning when it was still dark out. I was about to roll over and go back to sleep when I realized it was near lunch and my hair was over my eyes. C'est la Scene.
Things. They never go as planned. In my extensive research I have found plans that go right in the beginning usually fall out in the end and plans that fail in the beginning...usually turn out great by bedtime. My Friday night, take 2.
Following the gallant JStar event, my arms and legs were heavy with disappointment. Not, of course, from any short comings of the mystifying mistress. No, my disappointment was in the fact that a few words from a head of pink and orange could make me feel better than my friends could. That I needed to fake a smile on a night with so many options like this. I made a phone call that knocked me farther down than I had been pre-signing line and soon my disappointment reached my eyes. I took my poster and I to the car.
One tragic text war and 5 very loud songs later I was parked outside Broadway mall. I was late but a mess. An unpresentable mess. Then, one new text message. An incentive. I fixed my makeup.
Inside there were 3 Grandma's making their presence known. In plush track suits and short cuts styled to a tee...they were pushing young scene jerks out of the way so they could see their grandson. I liked the grannys, they were badass. After talking to the guitarist I still don't understand whose Grandma was there and whose wasn't. But shawty in the black said she was wanted to see the drummer and I wasn't about to cross her. Yes, the kids were squinting and elderly were singing. I was at a Big City Lights show.
It was turning out to be BCL vs. The Fire Marshal as Hot Topic employees cut off capacity and turned people away at the door. I started to wonder if we were dealing with Broadway Mall or Ozone Entertainment when not even Mrs. BigCityJustin was allowed in. Good guys always win in the end though. At least in my blog they do. I would like to say that Big City Lights won over the dilemma with sweetly delivered smooth talk... but I kinda think they just decided to play 2 sets and everyone went along with it.
Their first set was enjoyable, despite yes, awkward quietness in the crowd and The Singer's babbling between song banter. It was cute, and I hardly think anyone minded. Except for MattInColor, who had to remind him to, "Playyy your songs!" I felt a small smile.
@thisisricky Right where I should be.
It didn't matter what they played (although Popular Demand is both mine and AntInColor's favorite). It didn't even really matter how they sounded. There were 4 boys and 4 instruments in front of me and there was a time when that alone would've fixed anything going on with me. When did I start underestimating the sight of a singer with a guitar? The scene girl came after the singer. Some might say.
My things for tonight aren't going as planned. I have a +1 to the Relient K show at the Donkey, but. I just can't seem to hold onto a 1. Yet I feel shows like this won't be around forever and hair like mine really shouldn't go to waste. So hurry up...get outta bed. Break the rules before something goes the way it's supposed to.
...Ricky.
"Turn The Knife" by: Big City Lights
Things. They never go as planned. In my extensive research I have found plans that go right in the beginning usually fall out in the end and plans that fail in the beginning...usually turn out great by bedtime. My Friday night, take 2.
Following the gallant JStar event, my arms and legs were heavy with disappointment. Not, of course, from any short comings of the mystifying mistress. No, my disappointment was in the fact that a few words from a head of pink and orange could make me feel better than my friends could. That I needed to fake a smile on a night with so many options like this. I made a phone call that knocked me farther down than I had been pre-signing line and soon my disappointment reached my eyes. I took my poster and I to the car.
One tragic text war and 5 very loud songs later I was parked outside Broadway mall. I was late but a mess. An unpresentable mess. Then, one new text message. An incentive. I fixed my makeup.
Inside there were 3 Grandma's making their presence known. In plush track suits and short cuts styled to a tee...they were pushing young scene jerks out of the way so they could see their grandson. I liked the grannys, they were badass. After talking to the guitarist I still don't understand whose Grandma was there and whose wasn't. But shawty in the black said she was wanted to see the drummer and I wasn't about to cross her. Yes, the kids were squinting and elderly were singing. I was at a Big City Lights show.
It was turning out to be BCL vs. The Fire Marshal as Hot Topic employees cut off capacity and turned people away at the door. I started to wonder if we were dealing with Broadway Mall or Ozone Entertainment when not even Mrs. BigCityJustin was allowed in. Good guys always win in the end though. At least in my blog they do. I would like to say that Big City Lights won over the dilemma with sweetly delivered smooth talk... but I kinda think they just decided to play 2 sets and everyone went along with it.
Their first set was enjoyable, despite yes, awkward quietness in the crowd and The Singer's babbling between song banter. It was cute, and I hardly think anyone minded. Except for MattInColor, who had to remind him to, "Playyy your songs!" I felt a small smile.
@thisisricky Right where I should be.
It didn't matter what they played (although Popular Demand is both mine and AntInColor's favorite). It didn't even really matter how they sounded. There were 4 boys and 4 instruments in front of me and there was a time when that alone would've fixed anything going on with me. When did I start underestimating the sight of a singer with a guitar? The scene girl came after the singer. Some might say.
My things for tonight aren't going as planned. I have a +1 to the Relient K show at the Donkey, but. I just can't seem to hold onto a 1. Yet I feel shows like this won't be around forever and hair like mine really shouldn't go to waste. So hurry up...get outta bed. Break the rules before something goes the way it's supposed to.
...Ricky.
"Turn The Knife" by: Big City Lights
Friday, October 2, 2009
there's a wine glass in the front hedge.
Dear Hiccups,
get out of Candace.
Loooovvvee,
Terica, AnthonyInColor, JustJoeyFox, NewKidChris, and Cando.
"As Long As You Love Me" by: Backstreet Boys
get out of Candace.
Loooovvvee,
Terica, AnthonyInColor, JustJoeyFox, NewKidChris, and Cando.
"As Long As You Love Me" by: Backstreet Boys
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Eh, Eh
Writing about this scene (whether you believe it exists or not) has made the magic die just a little for me. I see the same kinds of things every night and at times I'll admit I struggle to see the allurement that I once was so taken by. In converting from blogs to reviews I have found the need to write in unfringed truths and this has forced me to realize some of these bands just aren't that mind blowing. It is for this reason that I am taking this paragraph to formally announce my resignation from scene (yes, I said it again) writing.
Yeah right.
Like I'd give some of you that kind of satisfaction. Nah, instead I'd just like to thank all my readers who have been getting in touch with me lately.
My readers are stellar! I've been finding that getting to know you guys is a whole new level of dynamic in the Streetlight endeavor. Let's see, mostly you like to tell me stories of band boys you've met (it totally IS cool that John O. took a walk with you!) and ask me questions about my hair (yes, I did razor blade it), my wardrobe choices (never function over 'fashion'), and who is single in the Long Island music bunch. (I always say anybody's got a shot!)
Still, what I like most about my readers specifically is your confidence and insight. It's so impressive and inspiring to me. I like that you come talk to me, wanna tell me what your favorite blog is and why. I ADORE that you make suggestions and wanna toss ideas around with me. It gets me out of the gutter a lot of us are feeling in these days. Right now I'm talking to AnthonyInColor about how none of us can afford gas to get to each other, to Rob24 about having too much time to think, and to NewKidChris about unbearable between-show boredom. Keep sending those messages, making those comments and stating your presence. You guys make this shit feel okay.
"Life's like a ballroom, if you'll pardon the metaphor. If you hear something you like, don't analyze it, just dance to it."
...Ricky.
Lady Gaga stuff. lol.
Yeah right.
Like I'd give some of you that kind of satisfaction. Nah, instead I'd just like to thank all my readers who have been getting in touch with me lately.
My readers are stellar! I've been finding that getting to know you guys is a whole new level of dynamic in the Streetlight endeavor. Let's see, mostly you like to tell me stories of band boys you've met (it totally IS cool that John O. took a walk with you!) and ask me questions about my hair (yes, I did razor blade it), my wardrobe choices (never function over 'fashion'), and who is single in the Long Island music bunch. (I always say anybody's got a shot!)
Still, what I like most about my readers specifically is your confidence and insight. It's so impressive and inspiring to me. I like that you come talk to me, wanna tell me what your favorite blog is and why. I ADORE that you make suggestions and wanna toss ideas around with me. It gets me out of the gutter a lot of us are feeling in these days. Right now I'm talking to AnthonyInColor about how none of us can afford gas to get to each other, to Rob24 about having too much time to think, and to NewKidChris about unbearable between-show boredom. Keep sending those messages, making those comments and stating your presence. You guys make this shit feel okay.
"Life's like a ballroom, if you'll pardon the metaphor. If you hear something you like, don't analyze it, just dance to it."
...Ricky.
Lady Gaga stuff. lol.
on golden pond, on golden pond- how!
I wish today was Mother's Day so that I could give my mama flowers and say I'm sorry for being so fricken weird.
I'm sorry for the time I ran over the pear tree with the go-cart. I'm sorry for the time I ran over Bobby with the go-cart. I'm sorry for when I climbed on the roof and broke into the house cuz I forgot my key. Why, you nearly had a heart attack when you saw the window screen out. I'm sorry for always wanting to be in Madison and never wanting to be in for dinner. I'm sorry for making you glue rhinestones in my hair and falsies on my eyes. I'm sorry for that time I faked you out and pretended to sprain my ankle. I thought it was funny. I'm sorry for laughing at things when they go wrong, I know you hate that. I'm sorry for trying to hide having a hard time from you, for going to school soo far away and for staying there after I was graduated. I'm sorry for dying my hair a bunch of different colors and for piercing my nose twice. I'm sorry for the black nail polish and loud My Chemical Romance. Sorry for the attitude. I wish it was Grandma's Day so she could be here to slap me around for ya. "Erica Ann, don't you ever tell your mother to shut up! ...oh for god sakes Kelly, SHUT UP!"
Tomorrow I'm goin to see my mama. To listen to her cackle at her own jokes and gossip about the family. To hear her say, "Oh god Erica...your hair..." I'm going home to have my mama yell at me for calling her mama and to hear her probably talk about Nate Cyphert all day.
Good god, I am just like my mother.
...Ricky.
"On Golden Pond anthem" by: Katherine Hepburn and Jane Fonda
I'm sorry for the time I ran over the pear tree with the go-cart. I'm sorry for the time I ran over Bobby with the go-cart. I'm sorry for when I climbed on the roof and broke into the house cuz I forgot my key. Why, you nearly had a heart attack when you saw the window screen out. I'm sorry for always wanting to be in Madison and never wanting to be in for dinner. I'm sorry for making you glue rhinestones in my hair and falsies on my eyes. I'm sorry for that time I faked you out and pretended to sprain my ankle. I thought it was funny. I'm sorry for laughing at things when they go wrong, I know you hate that. I'm sorry for trying to hide having a hard time from you, for going to school soo far away and for staying there after I was graduated. I'm sorry for dying my hair a bunch of different colors and for piercing my nose twice. I'm sorry for the black nail polish and loud My Chemical Romance. Sorry for the attitude. I wish it was Grandma's Day so she could be here to slap me around for ya. "Erica Ann, don't you ever tell your mother to shut up! ...oh for god sakes Kelly, SHUT UP!"
Tomorrow I'm goin to see my mama. To listen to her cackle at her own jokes and gossip about the family. To hear her say, "Oh god Erica...your hair..." I'm going home to have my mama yell at me for calling her mama and to hear her probably talk about Nate Cyphert all day.
Good god, I am just like my mother.
...Ricky.
"On Golden Pond anthem" by: Katherine Hepburn and Jane Fonda
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Forethought.
He closed his eyes as if keeping them open would be too much for the moment to bear. He was young, and perfect. I was dressed up, and inexplicably damned. It could have been the way the old songs hit my ears or the way he pronounced his "baby"s. It was most likely the pants he was wearing. Unsure as to whether he was for the better or worse this time, I realized I had lost myself months ago and it didn't really matter anyways. I smiled. He sang. She sighed.
Oh I am home.
Radio commented with me at Angels&Kings about the set of songs that made us feel we were so much younger. It made us feel like we were at a show after spending the day at that playground; me making fun of Kev's hair, Kev hitting on Radio, Radio being weirder than Andrebaby, Andrebaby defending Jaybird, Jaybird laughing at Rob's golf swing, Rob calming Matt down, Matt being sarcastically nasty to Lo, and Lo silently freaking out to me via text while sitting right next to all of us on those swings we loved so much. He pushed. I floated. She shook her head. I could tell a thousand stories about those days before Stereo hit the skyline. But I didn't have to tonight. Kevin sang them. In 6 syllables or less to the outro of Uptown Get Around, a song we used to know by another more drama-filled title. I am glad for the distinction. Those are times glazed by change and protected by cigarette smoke. Days when I lived on instinct lit up only by the streetlights that line Front Street on the way home from East Meadow. Yes, this blog is named for then.
...I had this drafted before the last blog went up. I thought it fair to post since it was a real record of my reactions and since it is so wildly different from my opinion of the Vibe show. I hope if you don't understand you at least enjoy, either in starry amusement or tasteful disgust. Love.
Ricky.
Oh I am home.
Radio commented with me at Angels&Kings about the set of songs that made us feel we were so much younger. It made us feel like we were at a show after spending the day at that playground; me making fun of Kev's hair, Kev hitting on Radio, Radio being weirder than Andrebaby, Andrebaby defending Jaybird, Jaybird laughing at Rob's golf swing, Rob calming Matt down, Matt being sarcastically nasty to Lo, and Lo silently freaking out to me via text while sitting right next to all of us on those swings we loved so much. He pushed. I floated. She shook her head. I could tell a thousand stories about those days before Stereo hit the skyline. But I didn't have to tonight. Kevin sang them. In 6 syllables or less to the outro of Uptown Get Around, a song we used to know by another more drama-filled title. I am glad for the distinction. Those are times glazed by change and protected by cigarette smoke. Days when I lived on instinct lit up only by the streetlights that line Front Street on the way home from East Meadow. Yes, this blog is named for then.
...I had this drafted before the last blog went up. I thought it fair to post since it was a real record of my reactions and since it is so wildly different from my opinion of the Vibe show. I hope if you don't understand you at least enjoy, either in starry amusement or tasteful disgust. Love.
Ricky.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
the broken promises that you were meant to tell
I'm sitting here eating cold macaroni and cheese hearing the dance teachers of my past scold me in my head. Never eat cheese. Never eat carbs more than once a day. Never eat. Go, jump again.
What are you willing to sacrifice to do what you love to do? Where will you draw the line on what you give up?
I had an interview to teach dance today that was...more typical than I had hoped it would be. Basically I'm perfect for the job if I change everything about myself now. If I go back to being the obedient, and might I add restricted, little star I used to be. But I'll never go back.
What are you willing to become to do what you love to do? Who will you draw a line across in order to surpass them?
I saw a show last night that was...too close to home for me. It started off very awkwardly, like no one knew what to do or how to act around the declared hometown heroes Stereo Skyline. I looked around at the lowered faces of my local band boys who'd come out to see the show and wondered whose heroes Stereo are, exactly. These are band boys I know each week to be brazen and cocky, to be full of life and scandal. Yet they were still last night, sitting tentatively on amps that would've been theirs and standing silently on the side of a stage this still is. It made me uneasy that they were relinquishing rights to this stage for even one night. It made me uneasy to see them uneasy. I linked eyes with the lead In Color constantly all evening. I like him knowing what I'm saying when I'm 20 feet away and not saying anything at all. We were in that place at the end of Front Street together once, we don't need words. "Talk later?" he laughs. "Always." I smirk. There's no reason not to enjoy this set, what's done is done and no one can change any of it. Then it's time.
The rest of the bands on the show you can read about in my review and at TheSceneLife.com. That's the honest, constructively critical version. This blog is the unplugged ep.
Girls are clutching posters of my former best friends. They're holding them to their chests like babies in a fire. I start to feel like I don't understand where I am or what's going on so my eyes search for something I know. Something I think I'll know.
I settle on watching 3 Stereos in the heavenly-lit hallway of Vibe Lounge. They move intangibly in time, time that my mind is slowing down on purpose with faulty admiration for the drummer, the bassist, and yes, that singer. But something's wrong here. They're just standing there. Why do they have time to act dreamy right now? Because they don't do a damn thing for themselves. Would they even know how to set up if they had to? Cal has been busting his ass since Mercy Mercedes said thank you and goodnight. Meanwhile, someone brings Brian his bass and Kevin his guitar. The straps are labeled "Bri" and "Kev" since someone else handles them. Rob only has 2 drumsticks to hold and yet, his shirt needs to be adjusted so he shoves the apparently cumbersome items at Andre, who has just walked in to watch the show as a friend. Perhaps the accessory-free box really is the ideal instrument for this glam guy. I walk away shaking my head and again tossing glances with Mr. In Color.
We stand in the dark and wait for somebody else to get our friends ready to play. There is too much pre-show. Too much hype. It makes me start to feel uncomfortable. We never get boys ready on the other side of a barrier and then rush them through to the stage while girls scream their heads off. We never do that. I realize I'm okay with moving on, with time progressing as long as it does it a million miles away from here. All of a sudden I want Stereo Skyline back on tour and gone from this place. I don't care when I'll see them next as long as they're happy and they're gone. There's too many cameras flashing right now. Too much hype.
The set begins and the screaming continues. Kevin's voice sounds...well, like he didn't get it out before it swallowed him. He throws his pick into the crowd and there's a very small brawl over it. My jaw drops and I just start laughing as a last resort, turning back to my band boys who are laughing as well. I calm down for the new song because its cute, it's a Kevin song, and I don't know the words or the context. I am grateful not to know cuz another old song and now it's me who's clutching my book. Holding it to my chest like a teddy bear during a nightmare. How can this be a nightmare? It is though. My face is contorted and there is hurt in my eyes as they fight to hold back the works. No longer is time slow in my mind, but rather it speeds around and around visions of every laugh and every smile and every night there ever was with this song before this. I pull my feet in underneath me and fade into the group of black and gray band boys, faces still and egos lowered.
There were moments of the set that soared. Goofs we laughed at, giggles we shared, glances I used to kill for. Choruses that no one could ever contract away from me. A song lives. It lives through heartbreaks and homecomings. It can survive record deals and management contracts. It can even see through bright lights and camera flashes. You can dress it up and fill it out but in the end, a year later, it's still a song. I can't say the same for the people who play it.
Afterwards, after all the pictures and autographs, after Andre stole a million things and stored them in my purse, I catch a glimpse of Kevin sitting on a roadcase outside. I try to slow time with my mind again. I concentrate. The air starts to haze but then- I can't. These stars are restricted. There was a time when they weren't, but now they have gone. A million miles away.
So is this what you really want? Because if it is, then I am happy for you. I am proud to call you my friend and even prouder to understand why you did what you did. Or what you're about to do. But if it isn't, if that pit in your stomach is not from cold macaroni and cheese, then what then hell are you doing? Go, jump again.
...Ricky.
"Better Beginnings Lead To Short-Handed Disasters" by: Stereo Skyline
What are you willing to sacrifice to do what you love to do? Where will you draw the line on what you give up?
I had an interview to teach dance today that was...more typical than I had hoped it would be. Basically I'm perfect for the job if I change everything about myself now. If I go back to being the obedient, and might I add restricted, little star I used to be. But I'll never go back.
What are you willing to become to do what you love to do? Who will you draw a line across in order to surpass them?
I saw a show last night that was...too close to home for me. It started off very awkwardly, like no one knew what to do or how to act around the declared hometown heroes Stereo Skyline. I looked around at the lowered faces of my local band boys who'd come out to see the show and wondered whose heroes Stereo are, exactly. These are band boys I know each week to be brazen and cocky, to be full of life and scandal. Yet they were still last night, sitting tentatively on amps that would've been theirs and standing silently on the side of a stage this still is. It made me uneasy that they were relinquishing rights to this stage for even one night. It made me uneasy to see them uneasy. I linked eyes with the lead In Color constantly all evening. I like him knowing what I'm saying when I'm 20 feet away and not saying anything at all. We were in that place at the end of Front Street together once, we don't need words. "Talk later?" he laughs. "Always." I smirk. There's no reason not to enjoy this set, what's done is done and no one can change any of it. Then it's time.
The rest of the bands on the show you can read about in my review and at TheSceneLife.com. That's the honest, constructively critical version. This blog is the unplugged ep.
Girls are clutching posters of my former best friends. They're holding them to their chests like babies in a fire. I start to feel like I don't understand where I am or what's going on so my eyes search for something I know. Something I think I'll know.
I settle on watching 3 Stereos in the heavenly-lit hallway of Vibe Lounge. They move intangibly in time, time that my mind is slowing down on purpose with faulty admiration for the drummer, the bassist, and yes, that singer. But something's wrong here. They're just standing there. Why do they have time to act dreamy right now? Because they don't do a damn thing for themselves. Would they even know how to set up if they had to? Cal has been busting his ass since Mercy Mercedes said thank you and goodnight. Meanwhile, someone brings Brian his bass and Kevin his guitar. The straps are labeled "Bri" and "Kev" since someone else handles them. Rob only has 2 drumsticks to hold and yet, his shirt needs to be adjusted so he shoves the apparently cumbersome items at Andre, who has just walked in to watch the show as a friend. Perhaps the accessory-free box really is the ideal instrument for this glam guy. I walk away shaking my head and again tossing glances with Mr. In Color.
We stand in the dark and wait for somebody else to get our friends ready to play. There is too much pre-show. Too much hype. It makes me start to feel uncomfortable. We never get boys ready on the other side of a barrier and then rush them through to the stage while girls scream their heads off. We never do that. I realize I'm okay with moving on, with time progressing as long as it does it a million miles away from here. All of a sudden I want Stereo Skyline back on tour and gone from this place. I don't care when I'll see them next as long as they're happy and they're gone. There's too many cameras flashing right now. Too much hype.
The set begins and the screaming continues. Kevin's voice sounds...well, like he didn't get it out before it swallowed him. He throws his pick into the crowd and there's a very small brawl over it. My jaw drops and I just start laughing as a last resort, turning back to my band boys who are laughing as well. I calm down for the new song because its cute, it's a Kevin song, and I don't know the words or the context. I am grateful not to know cuz another old song and now it's me who's clutching my book. Holding it to my chest like a teddy bear during a nightmare. How can this be a nightmare? It is though. My face is contorted and there is hurt in my eyes as they fight to hold back the works. No longer is time slow in my mind, but rather it speeds around and around visions of every laugh and every smile and every night there ever was with this song before this. I pull my feet in underneath me and fade into the group of black and gray band boys, faces still and egos lowered.
There were moments of the set that soared. Goofs we laughed at, giggles we shared, glances I used to kill for. Choruses that no one could ever contract away from me. A song lives. It lives through heartbreaks and homecomings. It can survive record deals and management contracts. It can even see through bright lights and camera flashes. You can dress it up and fill it out but in the end, a year later, it's still a song. I can't say the same for the people who play it.
Afterwards, after all the pictures and autographs, after Andre stole a million things and stored them in my purse, I catch a glimpse of Kevin sitting on a roadcase outside. I try to slow time with my mind again. I concentrate. The air starts to haze but then- I can't. These stars are restricted. There was a time when they weren't, but now they have gone. A million miles away.
So is this what you really want? Because if it is, then I am happy for you. I am proud to call you my friend and even prouder to understand why you did what you did. Or what you're about to do. But if it isn't, if that pit in your stomach is not from cold macaroni and cheese, then what then hell are you doing? Go, jump again.
...Ricky.
"Better Beginnings Lead To Short-Handed Disasters" by: Stereo Skyline
Sunday, September 13, 2009
just that little rush.
I used to love waking up on weekend mornings and listening to my mother muffle her phone conversations. She'd be shuffling around silently starting her day and kicking ass all before the sun rose. It was the same in the many hotels I found myself waking up in over the years; silent shuffles. She didn't want to wake her sleeping babe. But I used to lay there faking sleep, usually only 4 or 5 hours out of sequins and kohl, listening and wondering if she was telling secrets or not. Secrets are silent shuffles. Things that go on before the lights shine. In my experience there are 2 kinds of secrets: those that end up with 20 friends hiding behind sofas in a darkened apartments clutching balloons and wine glasses, and those that end up in broken hearts. Malice. Greed. Boredom.
A secret may be defined as that which is kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated or privileged. Haha. The precision of Webster makes me grin. It is decently known that my scene status operates highly around such secrets. I am often privileged to happenings before they hit the gossip waves or headlines. I guess that's because I write the headlines. Well...here's today's:
Secrets save the sellouts, sicken the scene.
Half of you are rolling your eyes because you think the Long Island music scene is dead and the other half is because you believe you are above it. I can assure you neither are true. In a darkened and cramped Broadway venue last night, a mob of revved up Patent Pending fans moshed my last lingering doubts away. Between confetti and crowd surfing, they shoved non-believers' faces into seeing the one thing that they control; their presence. We Are Here. Unfortunately, it was in this same setting that I learned of the next big bomb to hit my beloved scene. Yes, this information is recorded in the Book, but no it will not be posted here. Not yet. I have my sources, good and bad in their own respects. Negotiable and stubborn as well. Some of them have hearts, which gives me a gap to bargain with. The conditions of my knowledge were; I get told the secret as long as I swear not to do anything to stop it. If I do, the culprits get a Book. I flinched and agreed to it like an alcoholic shaking hands with the Captain. What I heard wore me out instantly. Not him, them, not again.
The other day I could have sworn I was waking up in Phoenix. Something about the way I was laying when I woke up, the way the air was cool around my face but I could sense the humidity outside. That's what knowing a scene secret is like. Being safe at the moment but knowing the heat you're about to enter. It's complicated for me to know what to do. To protect my friends and the 'home' I love so dearly, or to just let it happen and write my headline. This Condition says stay out of it. Set In Color wants me as their partner. Score 24 is like a snow globe that people just love to shake. When I was little and wanted to go out and ride in the winter, my dad always told me to sleep on new fallen snow. If it's still there in the morning, you'll know what to do with it.
This morning I feel like I'm in Clarion. Chandler's whispering on the phone and it feels like it's ok to go back to sleep; someone else has things under control right now. There's time before the headlines have to go to press. There's a few more hours before I have to laden my lies with kohl and aerosol hairspray. In the meantime, I'm listening and trying to make the right calls right here beside you. No matter what I say I'll stay for a while.
....Ricky.
"We All Roll Along" by: The Maine
A secret may be defined as that which is kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated or privileged. Haha. The precision of Webster makes me grin. It is decently known that my scene status operates highly around such secrets. I am often privileged to happenings before they hit the gossip waves or headlines. I guess that's because I write the headlines. Well...here's today's:
Secrets save the sellouts, sicken the scene.
Half of you are rolling your eyes because you think the Long Island music scene is dead and the other half is because you believe you are above it. I can assure you neither are true. In a darkened and cramped Broadway venue last night, a mob of revved up Patent Pending fans moshed my last lingering doubts away. Between confetti and crowd surfing, they shoved non-believers' faces into seeing the one thing that they control; their presence. We Are Here. Unfortunately, it was in this same setting that I learned of the next big bomb to hit my beloved scene. Yes, this information is recorded in the Book, but no it will not be posted here. Not yet. I have my sources, good and bad in their own respects. Negotiable and stubborn as well. Some of them have hearts, which gives me a gap to bargain with. The conditions of my knowledge were; I get told the secret as long as I swear not to do anything to stop it. If I do, the culprits get a Book. I flinched and agreed to it like an alcoholic shaking hands with the Captain. What I heard wore me out instantly. Not him, them, not again.
The other day I could have sworn I was waking up in Phoenix. Something about the way I was laying when I woke up, the way the air was cool around my face but I could sense the humidity outside. That's what knowing a scene secret is like. Being safe at the moment but knowing the heat you're about to enter. It's complicated for me to know what to do. To protect my friends and the 'home' I love so dearly, or to just let it happen and write my headline. This Condition says stay out of it. Set In Color wants me as their partner. Score 24 is like a snow globe that people just love to shake. When I was little and wanted to go out and ride in the winter, my dad always told me to sleep on new fallen snow. If it's still there in the morning, you'll know what to do with it.
This morning I feel like I'm in Clarion. Chandler's whispering on the phone and it feels like it's ok to go back to sleep; someone else has things under control right now. There's time before the headlines have to go to press. There's a few more hours before I have to laden my lies with kohl and aerosol hairspray. In the meantime, I'm listening and trying to make the right calls right here beside you. No matter what I say I'll stay for a while.
....Ricky.
"We All Roll Along" by: The Maine
Thursday, September 3, 2009
now i'm hungover...
"Only promise me one thing; don't take me home till I'm drunk. Till I'm very drunk indeed."
Lovedrunk.
So yes, perhaps the new BoysLikeGirls does sound like Jon Bon Jovi in his "Have A Nice Day" days, but who's to say that this was any kind of dilemma or ordeal in the first place. And I do say..."oh shit." I just fell for another song I swore that I wouldn't. Boys, Erica, you're supposed to fall for real boys! Yet basically, I just think non-red fire engines are silly. You feel me?
If you can make any sense of this, then pull up a stool and I'll fix you a mix cuz this is what my head sounds like to me currently. What the hell am I talking about...I took myself on a ride to figure out just that.
I drove to a place that would make me acknowledge how far I've come. It was a place that took exactly an 1/8 of a tank to get to and a place I couldn't find back in the day to save the life of me. I'd never been so apprehensive and clueless before. It's a place next to something now familiar and far from being something I want to remember forever. Why is it, that I know so well how to get to the bad places? I am thrown when In Brooklyn and can be misplaced in East Meadow in a Heartbeat. The places of truer faith are harder to revisit.
Nothing has changed in the place I went to, I realized that almost instantly as I made the left hand turn. In the next instant I realized that neither would I have if I'd stayed still. I stayed still for long enough as it was. It set me on edge when a band from back in this day came on the stereo and I changed it quickly only to hear another one. I ducked behind the air freshener when I thought I saw the house dog and thought, geez, this is too close of an encounter with an infamously undemiseable past.
But because I'd been there I knew where the turn around was. And I left playing the Cab, Miley Cyrus, Hyland, and Mr. Drew. I knew by the sounds of the choruses that things had changed and I had progressed. While back then I jittered to find my way home at a disgusting hour in the morning, I can now hold that ice cream and steer with one hand at an anonymous mile per hour, leaving the other hand to dial duty and diva diction pointing. I actually sound just like Alex Gaskarth...y'all are just never around to hear it! Helena's my main squeeze. That's not changed.
A watched pot never boils. Well, maybe a conspired love never spills over with truth. Maybe it takes two to tango but only one fuck the whole thing up. Maybe there's a reason fire engines are most recognizably red. Maybe there isn't. Maybe there's a song for the confusing bullshit coming out of my head and through my fingers. Maybe Martin and the Boys aren't so "omg, are they serious?" after all. They are serious. These eyes are the exact opposite.
"She's a phony. But! She's a real phony."
We have all done things we don't want to do, we have all been people we don't want to be. But in this case, yes I do in fact think it reputable enough to go with a more dancey feel. I mean why the hell not.
...Ricky.
"Lovedrunk" by: BoysLikeGirls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUi5vWfRoY
Lovedrunk.
So yes, perhaps the new BoysLikeGirls does sound like Jon Bon Jovi in his "Have A Nice Day" days, but who's to say that this was any kind of dilemma or ordeal in the first place. And I do say..."oh shit." I just fell for another song I swore that I wouldn't. Boys, Erica, you're supposed to fall for real boys! Yet basically, I just think non-red fire engines are silly. You feel me?
If you can make any sense of this, then pull up a stool and I'll fix you a mix cuz this is what my head sounds like to me currently. What the hell am I talking about...I took myself on a ride to figure out just that.
I drove to a place that would make me acknowledge how far I've come. It was a place that took exactly an 1/8 of a tank to get to and a place I couldn't find back in the day to save the life of me. I'd never been so apprehensive and clueless before. It's a place next to something now familiar and far from being something I want to remember forever. Why is it, that I know so well how to get to the bad places? I am thrown when In Brooklyn and can be misplaced in East Meadow in a Heartbeat. The places of truer faith are harder to revisit.
Nothing has changed in the place I went to, I realized that almost instantly as I made the left hand turn. In the next instant I realized that neither would I have if I'd stayed still. I stayed still for long enough as it was. It set me on edge when a band from back in this day came on the stereo and I changed it quickly only to hear another one. I ducked behind the air freshener when I thought I saw the house dog and thought, geez, this is too close of an encounter with an infamously undemiseable past.
But because I'd been there I knew where the turn around was. And I left playing the Cab, Miley Cyrus, Hyland, and Mr. Drew. I knew by the sounds of the choruses that things had changed and I had progressed. While back then I jittered to find my way home at a disgusting hour in the morning, I can now hold that ice cream and steer with one hand at an anonymous mile per hour, leaving the other hand to dial duty and diva diction pointing. I actually sound just like Alex Gaskarth...y'all are just never around to hear it! Helena's my main squeeze. That's not changed.
A watched pot never boils. Well, maybe a conspired love never spills over with truth. Maybe it takes two to tango but only one fuck the whole thing up. Maybe there's a reason fire engines are most recognizably red. Maybe there isn't. Maybe there's a song for the confusing bullshit coming out of my head and through my fingers. Maybe Martin and the Boys aren't so "omg, are they serious?" after all. They are serious. These eyes are the exact opposite.
"She's a phony. But! She's a real phony."
We have all done things we don't want to do, we have all been people we don't want to be. But in this case, yes I do in fact think it reputable enough to go with a more dancey feel. I mean why the hell not.
...Ricky.
"Lovedrunk" by: BoysLikeGirls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUi5vWfRoY
Saturday, August 22, 2009
This is the part where you find out who you are.
And I say to myself, this is how the story ends.
I wake up in a car again, a concept Something Corporate predicted for me years ago. Nate wakes up too, in a fit of energy as everyone on this tour has become accustomed to, and before long we are driving down a long flat road sided with farms, arguing about scene boys and listening to the Maine. Yep, this is it.
I have chipped black nail polish and a faded Sharpie heart on my fingers. I have upwards of ten bracelets on my wrists and a “chrome” ring in my nose. A beater that’s a couple wears old and scene hair that looks the best when it goes a little unwashed. I wear a drummer’s watch even though he stopped texting me over a week ago. There are no boys for me but the 6 in this van and the 6 in the other, and I love them more than I could any random scene crush. Except maybe Kennedy Brock.
I think love isn’t about looking for the perfect someone. I think it’s about stumbling across someone who likes you for the dumb fuck you are. Maybe that’s just what I want to think. Maybe it doesn’t matter afterall. I’m finding a lot of things don’t matter. Nate says tour will do that to you. Material things don’t matter; yes… this includes bracelets and clothes. Showers don’t matter. Text messages and grudges don’t matter. Forever doesn’t really matter. Peanut butter filled pretzels though, they matter. Nate matters, although he’d like me to say he doesn’t. Money matters, however much I’d like it not to. I am at the end of something, I just can’t put my finger on it. Ends don’t matter anymore.
As always, I’d like to say I know exactly what to fill the last 2 pages of this Book with. Some sort of insight to tell of these times and keep all of you reading. But it’s not perfect wisdom, I realize, that I am looking for. It’s a scenario. I waited to fill these lines, and this is what I stumbled across…
There will always be a show, no matter how dead the scene becomes or how much the economy fucks over the touring bands. Enough traces will remain that there will always be a rock show. And the traces are as follows:
There will always be the local band that proves fun over sound can work in circumstance. There will always be that Minnesota band that delivers enough of both. That drummer who’s way too young to be talking to, but hits too hard to let get away. Woopsies? There will always be pretty cool girls in the front row, and girls pretty enough to sit on the sidelines. Maybe girlfriends, probably posers. There will always be that girl who wants to dance but has no rhythm whatsoever. Super scene kids that’ll grow out of it in a year or two, and newbies who are still too scrawny for even the skinniest skinnies. There will always be the touring musicians standing smug but supportive ¾’s of the way back in the crowd. I hope there will always be the kick ass parents in the back, probably wanting to fork their ears out but bringing their little punks out to the shows anyways. There will always be the epic onstage water bottle spray that slows time and speeds heartbeats, immortalizing that moment in that song eternally and selling another unsuspecting soul to the scene.
There will always be the worries. The pacing and fretting the crew does trying to come up with any gimmick to get their boys more vox in the monitors, more kids up front, more reassurance that yes, what they’re doing in worth believing in. I should pray every night that there will always be the exchange: smile to band boy, band boy to me. Obviously.
I am completely a scene junkie. Not born and self-bred. I will always love stick flips and high hats. I will always be able to see better in the dark and never be able hear you the first time you say something. I will always get embarrassed by between song banter and never by eye sex. I will never discriminate band boys by the instrument they play… I will take them all!
Score24 and This Condition will always each be one half of my heart in the summer that was 2009. We got piercings and slept in junkyards. We ate chicken salad and drooled over Kennedy Brock. Yes, we lost our merch guy on the Las Vegas strip. We hardly ever showered and never gave up. Cuz when it comes down to it, what really mattered was the 20-30 minutes every night when they battled feedback in the monitors. There will always be feedback in the monitors. And there will always, always be this.
“Is this Heaven?”
“No…it’s Iowa.”
...Terica.
"This City Is Contagious" by: the CAB
I wake up in a car again, a concept Something Corporate predicted for me years ago. Nate wakes up too, in a fit of energy as everyone on this tour has become accustomed to, and before long we are driving down a long flat road sided with farms, arguing about scene boys and listening to the Maine. Yep, this is it.
I have chipped black nail polish and a faded Sharpie heart on my fingers. I have upwards of ten bracelets on my wrists and a “chrome” ring in my nose. A beater that’s a couple wears old and scene hair that looks the best when it goes a little unwashed. I wear a drummer’s watch even though he stopped texting me over a week ago. There are no boys for me but the 6 in this van and the 6 in the other, and I love them more than I could any random scene crush. Except maybe Kennedy Brock.
I think love isn’t about looking for the perfect someone. I think it’s about stumbling across someone who likes you for the dumb fuck you are. Maybe that’s just what I want to think. Maybe it doesn’t matter afterall. I’m finding a lot of things don’t matter. Nate says tour will do that to you. Material things don’t matter; yes… this includes bracelets and clothes. Showers don’t matter. Text messages and grudges don’t matter. Forever doesn’t really matter. Peanut butter filled pretzels though, they matter. Nate matters, although he’d like me to say he doesn’t. Money matters, however much I’d like it not to. I am at the end of something, I just can’t put my finger on it. Ends don’t matter anymore.
As always, I’d like to say I know exactly what to fill the last 2 pages of this Book with. Some sort of insight to tell of these times and keep all of you reading. But it’s not perfect wisdom, I realize, that I am looking for. It’s a scenario. I waited to fill these lines, and this is what I stumbled across…
There will always be a show, no matter how dead the scene becomes or how much the economy fucks over the touring bands. Enough traces will remain that there will always be a rock show. And the traces are as follows:
There will always be the local band that proves fun over sound can work in circumstance. There will always be that Minnesota band that delivers enough of both. That drummer who’s way too young to be talking to, but hits too hard to let get away. Woopsies? There will always be pretty cool girls in the front row, and girls pretty enough to sit on the sidelines. Maybe girlfriends, probably posers. There will always be that girl who wants to dance but has no rhythm whatsoever. Super scene kids that’ll grow out of it in a year or two, and newbies who are still too scrawny for even the skinniest skinnies. There will always be the touring musicians standing smug but supportive ¾’s of the way back in the crowd. I hope there will always be the kick ass parents in the back, probably wanting to fork their ears out but bringing their little punks out to the shows anyways. There will always be the epic onstage water bottle spray that slows time and speeds heartbeats, immortalizing that moment in that song eternally and selling another unsuspecting soul to the scene.
There will always be the worries. The pacing and fretting the crew does trying to come up with any gimmick to get their boys more vox in the monitors, more kids up front, more reassurance that yes, what they’re doing in worth believing in. I should pray every night that there will always be the exchange: smile to band boy, band boy to me. Obviously.
I am completely a scene junkie. Not born and self-bred. I will always love stick flips and high hats. I will always be able to see better in the dark and never be able hear you the first time you say something. I will always get embarrassed by between song banter and never by eye sex. I will never discriminate band boys by the instrument they play… I will take them all!
Score24 and This Condition will always each be one half of my heart in the summer that was 2009. We got piercings and slept in junkyards. We ate chicken salad and drooled over Kennedy Brock. Yes, we lost our merch guy on the Las Vegas strip. We hardly ever showered and never gave up. Cuz when it comes down to it, what really mattered was the 20-30 minutes every night when they battled feedback in the monitors. There will always be feedback in the monitors. And there will always, always be this.
“Is this Heaven?”
“No…it’s Iowa.”
...Terica.
"This City Is Contagious" by: the CAB
Those skinny jeans I bought for you.
I look at Nate. He is so young. We stand in a Los Angeles open air mall, a little down time before the show tonight. Most of us are looking out at the timeless HOLLYWOOD letters that rest in California's grandiose hills, but not me. I’m looking at Nate.
He looks out over today while everyone else snaps cameras and sends picture messages. And he is still. His chin is closely shaven, though this thin scruff is the only thing about his face that proves to me he’s not just a boy. His jaw is closed, tranquil but firm. I consider if I know Nate’s expressions better than I know anyone else’s, better than I know my own. Because his eyes have been full all day and though I pretend to ponder over what’s on his mind, I could probably make a pretty good guess. It’s not one thing, it’s many. It’s a handful of things he can neither control nor change. But Nate’s the kind of poser that can handle that. He can twist them around and coat them with sugar. Like frosting.
I decide this expression this afternoon is him taking a break from poser-dom for a few seconds. A stern breath while everyone slips on without noticing his walls are down. Right now his eyes are bluer than that man-made river we saw in St. Louis. I wonder what he sees when he’s like this, when he’s looking at nothing at all. And I decide in this instance that youth, (however relative a term it may be,) is honest. I look at Nate. He is so young.
...Terica.
"Walls" by: All Time Low
He looks out over today while everyone else snaps cameras and sends picture messages. And he is still. His chin is closely shaven, though this thin scruff is the only thing about his face that proves to me he’s not just a boy. His jaw is closed, tranquil but firm. I consider if I know Nate’s expressions better than I know anyone else’s, better than I know my own. Because his eyes have been full all day and though I pretend to ponder over what’s on his mind, I could probably make a pretty good guess. It’s not one thing, it’s many. It’s a handful of things he can neither control nor change. But Nate’s the kind of poser that can handle that. He can twist them around and coat them with sugar. Like frosting.
I decide this expression this afternoon is him taking a break from poser-dom for a few seconds. A stern breath while everyone slips on without noticing his walls are down. Right now his eyes are bluer than that man-made river we saw in St. Louis. I wonder what he sees when he’s like this, when he’s looking at nothing at all. And I decide in this instance that youth, (however relative a term it may be,) is honest. I look at Nate. He is so young.
...Terica.
"Walls" by: All Time Low
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
When air is filled with dust and dying dreams....
Tour is...necessary. Completely. Because there isn't room for anything that's unnecessary. And tour in seeing. Seeing and believing, though, I'm holding off on narrating the believing aspect of it until I've seen enough. Hindsight is my favorite perception. Don't fret @justjoefox, I will post it eventually. But for now I breathe easy on the simple things...or should I say, the minor details; minuscule in general importance but brilliant in terms of my own amusement. Nate says most everything is amusing to my mind. I find he is pretty much correct. Today it is, yet again, the morning that intrigues me.
I wake up peacefully to a not-yet-hot Arizona horizon, mountains and cacti letting me know where we are. Everyone is still sleeping save for the driver and his copilot and I hop into Row 4 to give Mike more snoozing space. I'm sitting back here watching Nate and Tim casually converse, which for them means going at it over any minute thing they can find to debate over. I smile to myself, a fitting audience, to see Nate get all worked up over a point Timmy is trying to make. He grabs the pole in dramatic style and begins to bounce up in the driver's seat, obviously unable to contain himself. I know he's squirming for his chance to strike back. I'm quite awake, still I don't want to go up there and disrupt this stint of exchange between them. So I sit back and enjoy the subtle show, side-minding as to @thejohnset 's whereabouts and reciting The CAB lyrics on my silent lips.My feet are blatant with New Mexican dust. They amuse me as I wiggle them around in accordance with the same lyrics. Despite my hefty collection of bug bites from last night's venue, I inly itch to get up and dance. Woah oh oh, woah oh oh!
Others start to stir. I have to treat Mike like a child. He wakes up complaining, ruining my perfect morning in his perfectly predictable way. He begins to torch the smoothness Nate and Timmy have going and I draw my line. I have to reel him back and ask him quietly but sternly to keep it to himself for one day. Then I show him where the last chocolate chip cookie is to seal the deal. We are not 5 years old, but whatever it takes in this confined space.
Timmy gets excited about everything (i.e.- state lines, urban legends, an iced soy latte.) Mike gets excited about nothing (i.e.- the fact that he's so young and talented and this far away from home.) I laugh thinking about the latest MyWetSocks blog as the morning unfolds according to its accounts. Anthony says good morning to everyone individually and Nicky sits up with a fro in the shape of the mountain to my left. I shake my head remembering Stevie singing Rocky Horror Picture Show tunes as he drove last night. The day has officially begun. I wonder how it would be to wake up in something still and luke warm. I decide I don't need it that way at all. TimmyEPIC tweets.
Ricky
"This City Is Contagious" by: The CAB
I wake up peacefully to a not-yet-hot Arizona horizon, mountains and cacti letting me know where we are. Everyone is still sleeping save for the driver and his copilot and I hop into Row 4 to give Mike more snoozing space. I'm sitting back here watching Nate and Tim casually converse, which for them means going at it over any minute thing they can find to debate over. I smile to myself, a fitting audience, to see Nate get all worked up over a point Timmy is trying to make. He grabs the pole in dramatic style and begins to bounce up in the driver's seat, obviously unable to contain himself. I know he's squirming for his chance to strike back. I'm quite awake, still I don't want to go up there and disrupt this stint of exchange between them. So I sit back and enjoy the subtle show, side-minding as to @thejohnset 's whereabouts and reciting The CAB lyrics on my silent lips.My feet are blatant with New Mexican dust. They amuse me as I wiggle them around in accordance with the same lyrics. Despite my hefty collection of bug bites from last night's venue, I inly itch to get up and dance. Woah oh oh, woah oh oh!
Others start to stir. I have to treat Mike like a child. He wakes up complaining, ruining my perfect morning in his perfectly predictable way. He begins to torch the smoothness Nate and Timmy have going and I draw my line. I have to reel him back and ask him quietly but sternly to keep it to himself for one day. Then I show him where the last chocolate chip cookie is to seal the deal. We are not 5 years old, but whatever it takes in this confined space.
Timmy gets excited about everything (i.e.- state lines, urban legends, an iced soy latte.) Mike gets excited about nothing (i.e.- the fact that he's so young and talented and this far away from home.) I laugh thinking about the latest MyWetSocks blog as the morning unfolds according to its accounts. Anthony says good morning to everyone individually and Nicky sits up with a fro in the shape of the mountain to my left. I shake my head remembering Stevie singing Rocky Horror Picture Show tunes as he drove last night. The day has officially begun. I wonder how it would be to wake up in something still and luke warm. I decide I don't need it that way at all. TimmyEPIC tweets.
Ricky
"This City Is Contagious" by: The CAB
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Just be.
I punched a wall.
That was stupid.
I walk back and forth to the mirror most days, yet every time I check it's still just me in the reflection. I've always been obsessed with mirrors. I thought if I could look at other people and see into there existence, then maybe I could understand my own in the looking glass. I've yet to make anything but fallible sense of me.
I think I'm to the point in all of this where I just get on my knees and beg for forgiveness. Which is exactly what I did...after I punched the wall. I wear this necklace around my neck, so obviously my most prized possession, featuring 2 charms of contrasting worth but equal value. One, a shamrock my cousin Kayla bought for me for two quarters at a garage sale in Rochester. We also bought peace sign and flower jewelry cuz we thought the 70's were cool that summer. Big mistake. The other charm is a pinky ring, which doesn't even fit my pinky, that belonged to my great great grandmother. It has been passed down from mother to first daughter for a good many generations. My grandmother, the greatest women to ever live in the history of women living, gave it to my eldest Aunt. Eldest, not oldest. Yes, there's a difference. My aunt didnt have any childer and thus, the scandal arose when she chose to give it to me, not the eldest niece and not the rightful heir. Still, I've worn this thing everywhere but onstage with me, when either my Mom or the most trustworthy techie in the joint wears it. I like that it has seen the good stuff and the bad stuff. Its like a family member in that way.
I always heard getting what you want isn't what it seems. I just didn't know it was true. Seems to me no luck is perfect luck, no wish comes with accurate karma. Dreams come true, they just aren't painted in the same colors you'd imagined. I think the smart people find a way to accept this. Afterall, isn't reality more exciting than a script?
And this is, the final lie. The ultimate lie. In order to get what I now need, I have to let so much wash away from me. Like a silk scarf into a river. Or a ring in the bottom of the drain.
The life of rebel is no afterparty. It's shit and dumb luck, bad luck and constant intensity. Mine is a continued history of brilliance, a smile as direct result of a laughable outspokenness. Yet every spotlight has its shadow. I have my lies, and secrets, my scapegoats and phony alibis. I wish it were an honest path to get to where I am, but nothing real is golden. It's a little bit silver. I have no bronze. Shit, who do you think I am?! There was a time in my life when all that matter was Bronze, Silver, and Gold. One got you the worst, disappointed silence I could ever imagine, one brought reprimand via boot camp, and the last got you, "Why isn't this Elite Gold?" Satisfaction was never the issue, it was how well you told the lie. I can't believe I grew up as an artist like that.
What's more important, lying in order to move on, or having an honest heart?
I won't make this about the past. I will do how I do and take a shot at answering the aforementioned question. How did this night become the enemy? It's over, it's over, it's over.
Just be.
I have never felt more here than I do in this moment. Never more alive, at least recently, and unattached to the mistakes I have been making for such a long time coming. Maybe forgiveness and faith are like milk and cookies, sun and summer, scarves and rivers.
..Ricky.
"Take My Hand" by: The Cab
That was stupid.
I walk back and forth to the mirror most days, yet every time I check it's still just me in the reflection. I've always been obsessed with mirrors. I thought if I could look at other people and see into there existence, then maybe I could understand my own in the looking glass. I've yet to make anything but fallible sense of me.
I think I'm to the point in all of this where I just get on my knees and beg for forgiveness. Which is exactly what I did...after I punched the wall. I wear this necklace around my neck, so obviously my most prized possession, featuring 2 charms of contrasting worth but equal value. One, a shamrock my cousin Kayla bought for me for two quarters at a garage sale in Rochester. We also bought peace sign and flower jewelry cuz we thought the 70's were cool that summer. Big mistake. The other charm is a pinky ring, which doesn't even fit my pinky, that belonged to my great great grandmother. It has been passed down from mother to first daughter for a good many generations. My grandmother, the greatest women to ever live in the history of women living, gave it to my eldest Aunt. Eldest, not oldest. Yes, there's a difference. My aunt didnt have any childer and thus, the scandal arose when she chose to give it to me, not the eldest niece and not the rightful heir. Still, I've worn this thing everywhere but onstage with me, when either my Mom or the most trustworthy techie in the joint wears it. I like that it has seen the good stuff and the bad stuff. Its like a family member in that way.
I always heard getting what you want isn't what it seems. I just didn't know it was true. Seems to me no luck is perfect luck, no wish comes with accurate karma. Dreams come true, they just aren't painted in the same colors you'd imagined. I think the smart people find a way to accept this. Afterall, isn't reality more exciting than a script?
And this is, the final lie. The ultimate lie. In order to get what I now need, I have to let so much wash away from me. Like a silk scarf into a river. Or a ring in the bottom of the drain.
The life of rebel is no afterparty. It's shit and dumb luck, bad luck and constant intensity. Mine is a continued history of brilliance, a smile as direct result of a laughable outspokenness. Yet every spotlight has its shadow. I have my lies, and secrets, my scapegoats and phony alibis. I wish it were an honest path to get to where I am, but nothing real is golden. It's a little bit silver. I have no bronze. Shit, who do you think I am?! There was a time in my life when all that matter was Bronze, Silver, and Gold. One got you the worst, disappointed silence I could ever imagine, one brought reprimand via boot camp, and the last got you, "Why isn't this Elite Gold?" Satisfaction was never the issue, it was how well you told the lie. I can't believe I grew up as an artist like that.
What's more important, lying in order to move on, or having an honest heart?
I won't make this about the past. I will do how I do and take a shot at answering the aforementioned question. How did this night become the enemy? It's over, it's over, it's over.
Just be.
I have never felt more here than I do in this moment. Never more alive, at least recently, and unattached to the mistakes I have been making for such a long time coming. Maybe forgiveness and faith are like milk and cookies, sun and summer, scarves and rivers.
..Ricky.
"Take My Hand" by: The Cab
Saturday, July 11, 2009
this.is.the ending of the beginning.
Girls don't get dressed up for boys, they get dressed for the other girls that are going to be there. I stand in this familiar stance before the full-length mirror in cute scene garb, trying to be critical of this 3rd outfit choice but I know I like what I see. There are a zillion variations on the little black dress and I have mastered them all. My repertoire is seriously fabulous. I laugh at my Nathenisms and grab a bright red sweater before trotting out to my car.
I have the new All Time Low cd in the passengers seat, but I would rather listen to Score 24's latest. What a sick little scene girl I am! The ride to Vibe is like it always is; heartbeatingly grueling but musically perfect. I love your clothes I love you sober! My least favorite part of any show is pulling in and walking up. Your insides are anxious to get settled in, but your outsides must be totally cool. Sunglasses are such a savior at this point. When I walk up today Sam Wore Black, Matt and Anthony In Color, and @ash_veltch are standing apart from the constant young obnoxious scene kids. Any doubt I have is shattered when Matt hollers acknowledgments of my presence. "Hug me damnit!" I feel more comfortable standing around outside this venue than I do in my own kitchen. If outside is the kitchen, downstairs is the living room, and the stage is the bedroom. Obviously.
Our little group fades away and Matt and I are left doing what we do. We trade secrets. It's business really. We figured out a long time ago we could help each other out, and what a beautifully educated friendship this could be. I don't mind that you can never really be sure what's fact and what's fiction from Matt's mouth. What he gives are tips, leads on juicy stories to come. Matt is just one of my (no longer) anonymous insiders. He makes a comment about how long I've known him and we smile on it for a second because it seems odd to realize. Scene time clocks twice as fast as real time. I love Matt similar to the way I love Kevin (which they both would kill me for saying if they ever read this.) It's a love sort of in respect for the past. Something must have happened back then in those early Stereo Skyline days with us- something that makes what's done, just done, and that makes me not so much mind Matt's lies or Kev's absence. Arnold Palmer and a Pack of 27's. Hospital lines.
There are a lot of shitty bands in this world. There are even more mildly decent ones that I just can't get into. We sit, cool kids behind the merch tables on brand new old couches in the recently painted Vibe Lounge and wait smugly for this fucking set to be over. Our postures suggest that we don't want to be bothered and our expressions confirm that we could give a fuck about your existence. I laugh as Matt sings in my ear, pointing out this band's blatant copy of Click 5 melodies. Ashley sarcastically picks on the singer's "sweet moves" and Genna straight up plugs her ears. We're the cool kids behind the merch tables, sitting smugly with Blackberrys and Jac Vanek bracelets to prove we are the It crowd and seriously, don't give a fuck.
Bride takes the stage and I put my notes away, half because I just want to take in every part of this last set and half because Matt, Sam, Mike, and Ant have already asked 3 times each what I'm gonna write tonight. The set starts off with Sean getting gang raped by a group of kids that recognize him from what school he went to. It's a school name I won't mention since he's apparently been trying to keep his alma mater a secret thus far. These are the same group of kids that will be at Sean's beckon command for the rest of the show. If he says clap, there isn't a hand that goes untempoed. If he says dance, there isn't a body that goes unmoshed. If he says keep throwing change, there isn't a nickel that goes unlaunched at the band. Yeah, that happened.
I think of all the things I could write about Sam, as he trashes around in front of a spotlight, illuminated with sweat and sheer energy. Or Mike, who's got the kids reaching out on bended knee for more bass. Yet all I can think of is how I've said before, I wish I could keep them like this. Let them skip all the bad shows and dead crowds, all the times the van is gonna break down and they're gonna run out of money. Let them just have this or better, constantly. I'm happy when the scene boys are happy, and looking at Tibby tonight makes me wonder if I should be happier about all of them being gone for the summer. It's what they want. "I tried I tried my best to keep us alive, but with each mile I drive another piece of us dies." Of course my 11:11 moment is glorious and I can't help but think I'd rather be here and work through a Stereo Skyline show any day.
Afterwards Devin is sarcastically annoyed with me for giving my honest opinion of how they sounded. If you want to be doted on in the Matt sex voice then ask one of the scene sluts at the top of the stairs what they thought, otherwise take what I give you. For the record though, Pray to the Porcelain God was my favorite, Sean is amusing no matter how he sounds, Sam's strokes were eh, okay, Devin gives this scene's most seamless stalls, and Mike... Mike could kick Cal Knapp's scrawny ass any time on the watch.
Outside on the the sidewalk behind the trailer I find myself simultaneously saying goodbye to Bride and writing the last page of the Book. As always I wonder what the next one will hold, and through my fears I hope that it will not out rule nights like this one. I look around and see things have changed; I'm not the girl loading the trailer to earn attention and despite what they may think, I'm not trying to get with anyone in the band. I have no sidekick anymore and in most outfits, I'm cool with that. I know where I belong, now I just have to move with it.
This Book has so many affectations; the chipped corners where it got dropped in the mosh pit, the bubbled back cover where Andre stuck youth medium marked masking tape. The "LOVE" on the front that symbolizes the scene at the time it was written. People recognize this book, I guess it's my job to make sure they recognize the next one too. This last page marks the end of the beginning for me, the personal close to stories that I will be uncovering slowly for you guys as the right rhetoric arises. I think it's appropriate to end the Book with a lyric, but which one? Ahh yes...
"And if you're counting on me to keep my head and heart high, I can't promise results but I can promise to try."
...Ricky.
what's your favorite LI/NYC scene song?
I have the new All Time Low cd in the passengers seat, but I would rather listen to Score 24's latest. What a sick little scene girl I am! The ride to Vibe is like it always is; heartbeatingly grueling but musically perfect. I love your clothes I love you sober! My least favorite part of any show is pulling in and walking up. Your insides are anxious to get settled in, but your outsides must be totally cool. Sunglasses are such a savior at this point. When I walk up today Sam Wore Black, Matt and Anthony In Color, and @ash_veltch are standing apart from the constant young obnoxious scene kids. Any doubt I have is shattered when Matt hollers acknowledgments of my presence. "Hug me damnit!" I feel more comfortable standing around outside this venue than I do in my own kitchen. If outside is the kitchen, downstairs is the living room, and the stage is the bedroom. Obviously.
Our little group fades away and Matt and I are left doing what we do. We trade secrets. It's business really. We figured out a long time ago we could help each other out, and what a beautifully educated friendship this could be. I don't mind that you can never really be sure what's fact and what's fiction from Matt's mouth. What he gives are tips, leads on juicy stories to come. Matt is just one of my (no longer) anonymous insiders. He makes a comment about how long I've known him and we smile on it for a second because it seems odd to realize. Scene time clocks twice as fast as real time. I love Matt similar to the way I love Kevin (which they both would kill me for saying if they ever read this.) It's a love sort of in respect for the past. Something must have happened back then in those early Stereo Skyline days with us- something that makes what's done, just done, and that makes me not so much mind Matt's lies or Kev's absence. Arnold Palmer and a Pack of 27's. Hospital lines.
There are a lot of shitty bands in this world. There are even more mildly decent ones that I just can't get into. We sit, cool kids behind the merch tables on brand new old couches in the recently painted Vibe Lounge and wait smugly for this fucking set to be over. Our postures suggest that we don't want to be bothered and our expressions confirm that we could give a fuck about your existence. I laugh as Matt sings in my ear, pointing out this band's blatant copy of Click 5 melodies. Ashley sarcastically picks on the singer's "sweet moves" and Genna straight up plugs her ears. We're the cool kids behind the merch tables, sitting smugly with Blackberrys and Jac Vanek bracelets to prove we are the It crowd and seriously, don't give a fuck.
Bride takes the stage and I put my notes away, half because I just want to take in every part of this last set and half because Matt, Sam, Mike, and Ant have already asked 3 times each what I'm gonna write tonight. The set starts off with Sean getting gang raped by a group of kids that recognize him from what school he went to. It's a school name I won't mention since he's apparently been trying to keep his alma mater a secret thus far. These are the same group of kids that will be at Sean's beckon command for the rest of the show. If he says clap, there isn't a hand that goes untempoed. If he says dance, there isn't a body that goes unmoshed. If he says keep throwing change, there isn't a nickel that goes unlaunched at the band. Yeah, that happened.
I think of all the things I could write about Sam, as he trashes around in front of a spotlight, illuminated with sweat and sheer energy. Or Mike, who's got the kids reaching out on bended knee for more bass. Yet all I can think of is how I've said before, I wish I could keep them like this. Let them skip all the bad shows and dead crowds, all the times the van is gonna break down and they're gonna run out of money. Let them just have this or better, constantly. I'm happy when the scene boys are happy, and looking at Tibby tonight makes me wonder if I should be happier about all of them being gone for the summer. It's what they want. "I tried I tried my best to keep us alive, but with each mile I drive another piece of us dies." Of course my 11:11 moment is glorious and I can't help but think I'd rather be here and work through a Stereo Skyline show any day.
Afterwards Devin is sarcastically annoyed with me for giving my honest opinion of how they sounded. If you want to be doted on in the Matt sex voice then ask one of the scene sluts at the top of the stairs what they thought, otherwise take what I give you. For the record though, Pray to the Porcelain God was my favorite, Sean is amusing no matter how he sounds, Sam's strokes were eh, okay, Devin gives this scene's most seamless stalls, and Mike... Mike could kick Cal Knapp's scrawny ass any time on the watch.
Outside on the the sidewalk behind the trailer I find myself simultaneously saying goodbye to Bride and writing the last page of the Book. As always I wonder what the next one will hold, and through my fears I hope that it will not out rule nights like this one. I look around and see things have changed; I'm not the girl loading the trailer to earn attention and despite what they may think, I'm not trying to get with anyone in the band. I have no sidekick anymore and in most outfits, I'm cool with that. I know where I belong, now I just have to move with it.
This Book has so many affectations; the chipped corners where it got dropped in the mosh pit, the bubbled back cover where Andre stuck youth medium marked masking tape. The "LOVE" on the front that symbolizes the scene at the time it was written. People recognize this book, I guess it's my job to make sure they recognize the next one too. This last page marks the end of the beginning for me, the personal close to stories that I will be uncovering slowly for you guys as the right rhetoric arises. I think it's appropriate to end the Book with a lyric, but which one? Ahh yes...
"And if you're counting on me to keep my head and heart high, I can't promise results but I can promise to try."
...Ricky.
what's your favorite LI/NYC scene song?
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