#NYR, the 80s, the 90s, going to shows (punk, ska-punk), cycling/modifying my track bike, getting tattoos, spending time with genuine people, making jewelry, watching frasier, visiting filming locations, rad nail art, graffiti (as an observer), dying my hair unnatural colours, ice cold coors light (bottles, plz), graphic design, eargesting music, warm coffee/iced lattes, #NYM, netflix (binging in general), punk stuff, horror, autumn, winter, making t-shirts, watching twin peaks, vinyl toys, bargain shopping, architecture, traveling, making memories, reading, replacing nostalgic relics, philanthropy (whenever possible), wordpress development and coding in general (PHP, XHTML, CSS, SCSS, jQuery)
as i was just closing down the kitchen on the first floor of my duplex, i was just humming a tune while loading the dishwasher. it took a second for me to realize what it was, but it was “battle hymn of the republic”. no idea where it came from in the year 2022, but my brain definitely stored it because of junior high school chorus practice.
so what’s notable about this? well, i sang that song with my junior high school chorus AT CARNEGIE HALL (in stern auditorium!).
yep, i sang at carnagie hall, lol. i find that shit so weird. it was also only because of the public school i was going to at the time. they allowed us into some program back in 95. for some, that is an absolute life and career goal. here my corny 14 year old ass was shuffling up onto this prestigious stage, honestly just a half-good alto, singing with her choir and got to do it without the practice, practice, practice…
i feel like that is some random ass shit for a non-musician or singer to have on their resume.
i remember walking up on this stage for both practice and for the performance. it felt insane and sort of indescribable to have that view in front of me. it doesn’t look big, and i can’t remember how big that room actually is, but i felt small as shit the two times we were there on that stage.
i remember our chorus teacher mrs. bart kept telling us to sing from our bellies and towards that circle in the middle of the ceiling where the lights are… and i did.
i have to find the program from that performance… i definitely still have it saved. i remember we sang “battle hymn of the republic” and my favorite beethoven song – “hallelujah” (christ on the mount of olives). i know that year we also did sister act songs, but i can’t remember if we did them there or not.
edit: i found the stagebill from an older post (and yes we DID do sister act)!
yesterday, my cousin sent us old movies from the 50s-80s from his parents’ house. it was the first time i’ve ever seen my maternal grandmother in motion. my grandfather, too, but i don’t really care so much about him. he was a terrible human to my aunts and uncle, i’ll leave it at that. seeing my grandma and all of my aunts in their youth… it killed me. my aunts were gorgeous! ♥ i was weeping. i miss my family so much.
once they started edging into the later 1980s, i was watching my aunts and their daughters, who are about 13-15 years older than me. i don’t know exactly how old they were at the time, but my gosh are our lives different. my cousin’s daughter was just a few months old in the one video i was watching, now she’s married with her own kid… and here i sit at age 40 with three shades of unnatural hair dye on my head, lol.
it’s just so odd how different generations are. my mother and her sisters weren’t preoccupied with the same bullshit as i am/was at her ages. sure, my mom was still dating into her 40s – an outcast among her sisters who were mainly married… but mom was younger, from NYC and hipper than the rest of her siblings. she was a rocker, an independent queens chick. i guess it rubbed off on me, as now that’s me… i would like to think that i’m not going to turn into my mother, though. she’s become a paranoid android, but i digress.
the reason i thought to post this was bc i have been under so much stress in the last few years. between moving back to bayside, where i never wanted to be again, losing my job, being in a relationship that’s faulty, getting older, the pandemic, health issues, strenuous friendships/relationships with friends and family, etc. – and i’ve gotten myself in such a weird rut. like, are these common 40 year old probs or just “jess can’t grow up” probs?
like i said, watching those movies – what were my family’s issues back then? i highly doubt it was any of the bullshit running through my brain. i just found out last year that my cousin’s husband is an alcoholic and always has been. they were dating when i was a toddler and he’s in most of my earliest memories. i had no idea… like, good for the adults for keeping issues under wraps for us kiddos, but i wonder what else was going on that i don’t know about, and how it compares to my current bullshit.
i keep sitting here just like “why at 40 am i CHOOSING to deal with the bullshit i am dealing with?”. i am better than this and i shouldn’t be dealing with any dumb ass issues that i was socially dealing with in my late 20s/early 30s. i don’t like how i’m currently feeling and i need to change it all.
bby’s first rave was in brooklyn one night. i have no idea where… i had been to day parties before this night, but i never really counted them as parties. they weren’t in the expected dark industrial settings or venues with lights and lasers. there wasn’t anything romantic about looking at your friends in daylight, bouncing around like goons. i didn’t get it until i finally got there.
i thought this one was going to be stressful. my on-again, off-again first girlfriend wanted to stab me that day (not literally, but probably literally). i guess we were off at the time, and we had planned to go together with our friends, but since she was all pissy with me, i just went with my bff javie’s boyfriend paul and my homegirl jersey becca (not to be confused with bronx becca). when we got there, there was a wait (hence the photo above, where i am looking angelic at the bottom). i think we were standing there freezing our asses off for like an hour. at one point, FOX news shows up interviewing people about RAVE CULTURE and i’m ducking trying to hide in case my mom is watching the news, lmao. i was old enough to be out, i think i was 18 at the time… but she was so dead against raves for some reason. drugs?
watching rue in euphoria is rough. she’s a freaking disaster area, and i constantly want to punch her in the face, but i don’t hate her. i know she’s just acting the way that she is bc she’s an addict, but i hate how manipulative that makes her, which makes me want to punch her in the face.
i saw this song live last night @ irving plaza, and i haven’t listened to or thought of it in like, almost twenty years. it’s like i almost suppressed it bc of association. it’s one of my favorite thursday songs. it gives me nostalgic frog in the throat…
this song reminds me of A TIME.
a person.
a dangerously hot boy with long hair, an infectious grin, delicious lips and (our) undeniable chemistry.
i don’t regret any of it, but i definitely would have done things differently. i wanted him to be more than just my *in between people* person. the curse of horrible timing, my allegiance to someone else, my jealousy for his infatuation with someone else, feeling inadequate and getting in my own way, unfortunate mutual “friends”, impatience, being in my 20s and being an idiot… the one time i actually COULD be with him, i chose the wrong person instead of him.
maybe if he’d just forced his way into that window, but you know, a summer tour for his band. oh well, we’ll never know.
when the people you love get lost in the shuffle when you leave, you leave nothing but broken hearts
at the end of the day, the person i chose instead opened many doors to things i love today. i guess everything happens for a reason.
i just watched that “street gang: how we got to sesame street” movie and cried my eyeballs out. partly for nostalgia, but all the people who died</3 it’s heartbreaking.
on a serious note – what a revolutionary show. for kids, for adults, for learning, for laughs and so much sticks with you. it’s crazy that even today, i can reference stuff from sesame street into my daily life, too.
i love that i’m 40 and i still absolutely melt whenever i see grover. he’s so stinking cute and STILL hilarious bc it’s all written by adults. the talent was amazing, what a time they started it, what an amazing cast and staff, etc.
anyways, while i was watching this movie, one of my idiotic thoughts was about a time i referenced sesame street IRL as an adult.
picture it: maspeth, queens… winter, some time between the years 2000-2002, nighttime. raver tiff and i decide to go roll on e at dave and beaker’s house one night. only dave was home at the time, and once that guy started spinning records, he was in his own little world.
tiff and i were in the backyard, sitting on the front steps of the guest house type structure they lived in talking, laughing, rolling. we were sitting near beaker’s bedroom window and we were tripping so hard we thought these specific looking sticks near his window were chicken feet? we convinced ourselves he was sacrificing chickens. for what? who knows? it was ridiculous.
i really thought i invented self-care when i was a teenager.
one afternoon when i was like 16-18 years old, i was in my old bedroom and no one was home. i decided i needed to relax and wanted to take a bath to chill out. i thought i was a genius for figuring out the combination of putting on relaxing music, using my bath pearls, lighting my gap dream candle and soaking my dumb little life’s teenage cares away.
the internet didn’t tell you to do these things back then. it really just dawned on me one day that the collection of these things all at once would really help me mentally.
i thought of this today because i am going to see genesis live tonight (a bucketlist band for me! ♥). i remember my playlist consisted of phil, genesis, gloria estefan among other sad, romantic artists.
anyways, i couldn’t help but peek at the setlist for this tour, and for some dumb ass reason, they decided not to include “in too deep” or “hold on my heart”, which breaks my heart. those are top 5 genesis songs for me.
the only saving grace is that i paid less to see them at the new UBS arena vs. sky high prices at the garden. while i would have loved to have seen my philly boo under my favorite ceiling, i just couldn’t get through the queue, and even if i did, i couldn’t justify the pricing.
my best friend sophie – i get a kick out of her. i’ve known her since i was like 5 or 6, but we moved away and i didn’t see her again until junior high school, when we became buddies again. there aren’t many times of the day where she’s not integrated into my life, whether it’s looking at a certain time on the clock, something in the house, a song playing, something i’m drinking or eating, etc. and there’s always some memory attached to it. we’ve had plenty of ups and downs over the years, but we’re still here 30 years later, still being naughty little goons.
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she’s my friend, she’s my alibi my accessory to the crime a bond that will never die until the end of time! – the bouncing souls
* * *
one of my favorite memories was the first time i ever snuck out of a house (sophie’s). we were 13 going on 14, and i was sleeping over, and of course… looking to do bad things. i guess we were talking to carlos on the phone or on AOL or something, and we decided we were going to go sneak out and hang out with him and his older brother. they didn’t live far from sophie’s house, so we only had to walk a few blocks, but it was a saturday night and very dangerous because my mom was out on the prowl.
mom was probably situated at bridie’s, her favorite irish pub over in flushing (RIP) or donovan’s in bayside (also RIP), so i probably had nothing to worry about when we left the house, but who knows? either way, 10 or 11 PM was a risky time for us to be out and about when my mom had a social life.
sophie’s bedroom was in the basement, and she had one of those right at the ceiling, 3′ x 1′ sized windows that slid open to the side. if i tried to get out of that window now, i’d probably get stuck. at that age, we popped right through.
i remember we were crouching down all of 18th ave and then 149th street, ducking behind cars while looking out for my mother’s silver, mercury station wagon. it was nerve-racking but exhilarating (oh, youth)! we made it over to carlos’s apartment and we waited outside. carlos’s older brother had a car, so we were all gonna go somewhere outside of whitestone. we decided on a park… but which park?
out comes some kid sean from school that was friends with carlos, to my surprise. i had a class with him (ms. koester’s class – i don’t remember what it was, though), so i knew him, too. he went to elementary school with sophie, so she knew him too. funny enough, he ended up being one of my long term boyfriend’s best friends a decade later, but i digress.
we hop into the car and get to the park across from bayside high school. i don’t know where cool spots to hang out are at this point, as i am still a 14 year old nerd. i am outside, without parents, in a park, after dark, and i feel like a baddy.
this is also dangerous territory, as it’s near donovan’s and my mother could pass by and see us if she took back streets vs. driving down franny lew or northern.
i don’t remember anyone else being at the park, and we were just hanging out on the benches. the guys are drinking and sophie and i decline. we were already drinking at that age, so i don’t know why we didn’t that night, other than the fact that i guess we were nervous about what we were doing.
(THE park)
i guess we stayed there for a while and then we went back to carlos’s house. i ended up making out with carlos for hours with sean sleeping next to us and i think sophie ended up in another room with the brother making out. we didn’t leave their house until sunrise. we got dropped off on the corner and walked up the block. sophie’s nosy ass godmother who lived across the street, caught us sneaking back in that morning.
i don’t remember if sophie’s mom ever told my mom about that story, but soph def got grounded, lol. soon after that, we also got in trouble because sophie’s mom was cleaning soph’s room and found pictures from a developed roll of film we had from around the same time. carlos’s brother was over the house and in her room in the pictures.
the night she found the pics, sophie and i were over our friend’s house and then went to my house, and her mom came slamming on my mom’s front door and ripped sophie out of the house and dragged her home.
oh dear satan, this is torture. dan, how could you make me so divisive against myself?! this is so fucking tough because both of those albums were two of the first albums that i ever purchased on my own, while i was coming of age into my own music. both of those albums are tied to so many memories and feelings.
it’s kind of tough to choose also because they are two very different albums and styles of music. when weezer came out, i remember the nerd-core looking initial emos started w the grandpa/dad sweaters, buddy holly framed glasses and airwalks and shit – they weren’t really dressing the same as the green day folks, who then turned into your typical/probably rancid, souls and nofx fans. of course a lot of us listened to both, but i feel like especially in school at the time, you were either one or the other.
i went with the blue album.
i fucking love dookie… but for me, the blue album is a weird, dark, emotional and magical trip. when i hear the intro cords to “only in dreams”, my heart swells up like the grinch’s. that album just feels like a comfortable hug with a blanket or something (i sound like such a weirdo, lol).
i recently realized that i hadn’t listened to dookie fully in a really long time, so i threw it on while i was taking a shower one night and was just like “wow, this is still just so good”. i realize that’s not a very elaborative review, lol. i mean, of course the two MAIN hits are good (#4 and #7), but the rest of that album is really just so fucking good. they were/are so talented and while of course that album is adored, i still find the other tracks underrated. i feel like since green day became GREEN DAY 2.0, normal people only listen to 4 and 7 and MAYBE “when i come around”, but the entire thing front to back is just perfect and seamless popular “punk”.
i especially love “she”, and “coming clean” is my favorite song on dookie, if anyone gives a flying fuck.
there aren’t many albums that i recall listening to for the first time, but the blue album is one of them. i still have the receipt for the cassette and own it in four different formats! it just made me feel a way. ♥
anyways, you can vote if you’d like to… there are 15 hours left on this poll:
my uncle bob died this morning (not of covid – i feel like it’s just the default thing you need to point out nowadays). he’s the only uncle i’ve ever known – the other one died as a child in an accident. my mother had two brothers and six sisters.
growing up, i had my queens aunts and two upstate aunts/uncle. whenever school was out, we were usually upstate – summer vacation, winter break, spring break, etc. – fishkill, beacon, wappingers and poughkeepsie were my home away from home. we mainly stayed with my aunts, but we’d pop over to my uncle’s for swimming, since he had a big pool.
in the early 80s, he spent more time coming downstate to see us, but towards the late 80s, it kind of dwindled. not sure why, as he didn’t have grand children really until i was in JHS, but whatever. it didn’t make a difference, we saw him enough while we were upstate.
i know people don’t believe me when i say that i remember things from when i was like 2 years old, but i do. i actually remember my 2nd birthday party in my mom’s small apartment in flushing. i remember uncle bobby was coming down for the party – she kept telling me that or it was brought up multiple times during the day in conversation. i specifically remember getting a cabbage patch kids baby carrier as a gift at that party. i can remember broken visuals from the party, too. it’s just my first memory of uncle bobby.
although i wasn’t as close to him as i was to most of my aunts, he was still a person that you just picked up where you left off. he was always trying to get you on a good path, always checked in about how you were doing in school, talked about your future, always gave wise advice. he was funny, sweet, a dedicated family man who didn’t deserve to die with the ailments he obtained towards the end. the damn universe handed him a plate of health shit.
at the end of the day, uncle probably contributed to some of his health isues from smoking for years… if you’re a smoker, please try to stop. my uncle had pulmonary fibrosis, among other issues. no one should go out like that.
i can’t believe both he and my aunt judy both died this year. it’s just so overwhelming thinking about the fact that i only have two aunts left and that my mother is only 1 of 3 siblings left. time is going too fast and my family is dropping like flies… i hate it. it also doesn’t help that it happened during this never ending pandemic. like, i’m so burnt out – i don’t want to deal with anymore death.
when we all started working from home last year, i started saving over $300 per month towards my commute into midtown. i paid off my credit card and starting saving money, so i figured i’d splurge a little here and there. so i finally caved and bought myself a dumb little ice cream cone vase from jonathan adler, last september. i had my eyes on it for years, and i just never had the funds to justify spending almost $100 on a vase not even 8″ tall. so finally i did, and then knew exactly what i wanted inside of it… marigolds.
unfortunately for me, by the time i figured out that i wanted marigolds, they were out of season for purchase and it was wayyyyy too late to plant them. it was around september/october and i was like “well duh, of course my autumn obsessed ass wants orange flowers NOW…“. then i realized why i like them around that time of year.
when i was in kindergarten, they took my class for a walk in the fall one afternoon. i remember it was cold out, and i remember we only went across the street, along 147th st. i remember our teacher was telling us to look at things, smell things, touch things, etc., and i remember seeing marigolds on a house between 15th and 16th aves. i loved how it looked different from other flowers. i didn’t pick it, but i do remember smelling it and i guess being the first flower i remember smelling, it just always stuck with me. whenever i smell them, it takes me right back to that moment in 1985.
i loved 1985/86 so much. maybe that’s why i hold that smell so close to my heart/memories. i was only 4, so i was ignorant to the bullshit going on with my mom and my sister’s (rich/drunk) father… but at that time, we lived in a huge house, at some point my aunt carol moved into the basement apartment, so i got to hang out with her all the time, my huge family all still got along, i had every 80s toy you could think of, my life consisted of taking long car rides with mom and listen to 80s music all day, we had a summer house in the hamptons… life was good, before life was no longer good.
ffwd to june 2021: i remembered to plant marigolds this year! i asked my landlady if i could plant some in the backyard this year, and she said “of course!”. i went out and bought like 3 or 4 packs and planted them baddies. i wasn’t taking progress pictures, but the pic on the right is when they were starting to come in. MY LITTLE BBYS!
i’ve filled my little vase three times this year, but left them alone and thriving in the garden for the most part. the span i planted all of the seedlings was like 5/6 feet wide, so there were so many at peak bloom.
it was a joy to have them all summer during this shite/never ending pandemic.
kerrang mag asks us nerds our musical opinions every few days on the gram. i thought maybe it’d be cool to feature the questions/my opinions here… it’s better than listening to me complain about things, lol.
“tell us the three best songs by linkin park”09/09/21
runaway, in the end, numb
***
yeah, i actually liked linkin park. not that i dislike them now, i just don’t actively listen to them on a daily basis. i totally don’t mind when they’re on. i know linkin park came out in the 90s, but when that whole nu-metal thing spawned in the early 2000s, linkin park was already there but soared at that same time as the other bands.
i remember the first time my sister and i saw “one step closer” debut on MTV… we were like “wow, wtf was that?” it was a rock band with a dude on turntables, what on earth?!
i never actively followed them, but i dug around for other songs/albums i like. i guess i like their early stuff, hybrid/meteora, but yeah, those are my favorite three.
as a kid growing up in the 90s, physical concert tickets was the default vs. doing will call. i regret doing any will calls, tbh. at the time it was like “wow, less to worry about!”, but now i can’t savor in those memories physically in my hands.
it’s crazy to think that i used to buy concert tickets at rite aid (maybe it was eckerd at the time). my how times have changed, now it’s a free for all with bots, website timeouts and legit having panic attacks, worrying about mere microseconds of fucking up on timing.
i was trying to buy tickets to see genesis this winter, and ticketmaster actually had the balls to post outright before you purchased tickets, that they don’t offer physical box office purchasing the first day of when tickets go on sale anymore. what in the actual fuck?! that is the one time you were GUARANTEED to get tickets to whatever you were pining for, bc you got your ass out of bed and down to the box office, unlike the internet slugs.
it’s unreal what ticketmaster has become. i wish we could all boycott it, but i digress…
the other night, i was putting away my stub/bracelet from rancid from last weekend in my show tickets storage box, and i decided to organize my tickets by year. then i thought it might be a rad idea to start posting a pic of the stub, about the show, and add any images that i took from the show associated with the concert mentioned. i’ll have to keep the images of myself and friends on IG only bc it’s private. here on my site, i usually don’t add pictures of myself anymore bc of privacy reasons (le sigh). i think it’d be a cool thing to document, though.
the first like, 5 tickets i have are barely even legible anymore, bc i used to keep them in my plastic sanrio planners in high school and they rubbed together and damaged the front of the tickets. you can still read them for the most part, whether it be the name of the tour, the venue or the date, so i at least can reference wtf the stub was for… i also scribbled some notes on them (in my horrendous adolescent handwriting).
without further ado… my first 10 concert experiences:
years ago, i dated a dude whose brother and best friend were obsessed with glassjaw… i soon also became obsessed with glassjaw, and kept following along with other projects that came about via the extremely talented lead singer, daryl.
one of his musical projects ended up being a band called head automatica. i was fucking THRILLED about this in particular, because this mixed up genre of a band was absolutely right up my alley. i am extremely into new wave/80s/dance/electro anything, so this new band fit right into my repertoire of musical interests. like, so right up my alley that it even featured tim armstrong (a dude from one of my favorite punk bands, rancid) on a pop dance track. what in the actual fuck?! (but it worked…)
i grew up in the 80s and have always loved new wave (especially the weird, left of center shit), i love synthy pop dance stuff, i came into various types of punk on my own and went to raves in the 90s. i feel like head automatica sounded like pieces of all of those things. it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what they sound like. i listen to all different types of music/bands and i don’t even know who to compare HA to. when it came out, i guess you could call it some type of indie pop rock, because it (thankfully) wasn’t main stream enough to be straight up pop music, not that daryl would have allowed that shit anyway… that was a genre we kind of what we kept shoving all types of “myspace bands” and indie into at the time.
so now that i’ve professed my love, i am here to profess my frustration.
i was looking around some archived bookmarks i have in my browser and came across this, which i had forgotten about:
first off: i didn’t take this video – it’s just on youtube… but i was at this show at blender theater, and i did get to witness this IRL and it was glorious. i remember while this was happening, i was instantly like “this is going to be my favorite song off of this new album”, and proceeded to shake my fat ass in the crowd.
secondly: this song, nor the album it’s on were ever released. they were performing songs off of the 3rd album live, soon before they were going to release it. it was named “swan damage”.
i googled what i could about the release of that album, and came across a few things and articles regarding swan damage. tl;dr: daryl wanted his projects off of the label they were on, and unfortunately that also affected the album. he talks about it MAYBE being leaked someday, doesn’t say who or how… just kind of eludes to it. unfortunately though, it seems as if he’s put all of this behind him. as a fan waiting for this stuff, well, that selfishly hurts.
to me, head automatica feels like “well, it’s better to have loved and lost”. like, thank you universe for letting us experience it, but we should just be grateful we had it at all? uh, we could still have swan damage probably/maybe/who knows/i dunno/please just do this one last thing.
i dunno how that’s fair, but still we devoted fans still follow DP’s moves and punish ourselves, lol.
* * *
listen, daryl, you sexy bastid, if you ever see this post… please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please (zing!) release the kraken. swan damage does NOT feel old to the people that have been waiting for years now. we haven’t heard it over and over again. this song above, i don’t know what the actual lyrics are bc it’s a bit fuzzy. i want primo quality… i would like to see this in front of me again, when we can go to shows and dance my ass off. the few swan damage tracks you did play during that era sounded so mature in the HA archive. as aforementioned, HA wasn’t like most bands out there. you did what you wanted. i KNOW who inspires you musically (squeeze, elvis costello, the jam, etc.), and i feel like you were finally applying it to this project. don’t get me wrong, i love “beating heart baby”, and fuck the label for wanting 10 of it… but that wasn’t my favorite track. “the razor”, “laughing at you” and “cannibal girl” are probably my favorites, alongside the song above. i don’t even know what it’s called… but i’m sure the mastered version would have been in my top 3, sir.
* * *
it’s so hard being a fan of daryl’s, bc while he’s a musician, he’s also a CREATIVE human being. he moves fluidly between or onto new projects, and for us greedy fans that want more of something, we get the brunt of it and get impatient. as a glassjaw fan, we had to wait 9 years for new EPs and 15 years for a full album.
on the other side of the token, i actually feel guilty having these feelings. it’s not my business to get pissy about having expectations, i guess. it just sucks that he was just kind of over it, when i felt like he was finding himself in such a great, creative place. i feel like a label and it’s expectations killed this shit for all of us.
as for side projects, house of blow, head automatica, SPORTS, color film (bad saint… i melt. ♥)… they’re all so good! i guess as fans we just have to cherish what we get blessed with by him and just be happy with it.
* * *
i got to meet daryl at an album release party via some rapper i used to know. not only did he perform there that night, but we were all in VIP, so once i was drunk enough to actually utter words to him, i thanked him. it was all i wanted to do, honestly, bc you know that whole “never meet your heroes” expectations thing… i was at a loss for many words, but he was sweet when i said that to him, and i hope he knew how much i actually meant it.
we chit chatted about nonsense i’m sure. at that very moment, i was schlepping vinyl records in milk crates for a mutual connection DJ friend, who had also performed there that night. i remember him thanking me for knowing all the words to the house of blow songs (i’m guessing he saw me in the crowd singing along) and then asked me if he could hug me (obviously i said yes, and i remember that his leather jacket was so damn stiff, that it was hard to get a good one, but i still got one ♥).
anyways, my point is… i don’t know if musicians really understand just how much music touches people, but hopefully when we tell them “thank you”, even if that’s all we can get out of our star struck mouths, they understand what we mean. music has always been a massive part of my life, and while i’m not a very emotional person, music always overwhelms me. it powers me, it helps me, it makes me emotional… music is magical.
to have another chapter of head automatica would be amazing for us fans… just putting it out there. maybe our other mutual connection that works at the shitty label will find a way to um, *cough*leak*cough* release it.
i feel like maybe some people wouldn’t pin me for a fan of this song, but it’s one of my faves. in fact, i’ve been building a list of my top 100 faves throughout my entire life since last year, and this will definitely be on it. it’s a sentimental one for me. when TRL first came about, i used to go over to my twin friends’ house and we would watch the whole countdown, and it was about the same time when this came out. this was on there for what seems like forever. just brings me right back to my senior year.
it was a bittersweet lil era… a tough time. i had just broken up with randolph, i was spending more time with new/old friends because i was kind of fighting with sophie, my friends just started going to raves which was changing our dynamic (before i started going), so it was kind of synced up to a transitional time, i suppose. it’s also just a good fuckin 90s pop song.
i mean, if this year fucking deserves to come in with a biden bang, this is def a way to do it. i’m glad gregg and co. aggreed to it… this makes my 2021 hear very happy already, just with them playing the inauguration.
there are just some songs that grab my cold ass heart and squeezes so hard that tears well up in my eyes and i get emotionally overwhelmed. i really need to start a top 100 songs of all time list (maybe i’ll do it in 2021…), but here’s one of them:
this is one of those songs that make me miss the early 90s so much, i could just cry.
it is marie/mountainview.
it is coming of age.
it is me in my bedroom in whitestone – playing super nintendo, listening to z100, being creative or whatever it is my junior high school ass was doing.
as a kid: i hated it because it meant school was starting again, but was also hyped because it was my birthday (this def meant a trip to toysRus in douglaston and/or new toys to tear open via presents).
as a teenager: i hated it because it meant school was starting again, i’d have to deal with bullies and bullshit, my summer upstate was ending BUT it was near my birthday, so i could score new clothes/sneakers with the segue that it was my bday as well as needing new school clothes.
as a 20-something year old: i loved it because i was no longer in school, i was just working. if i wasn’t hanging out with jeff, christina and our friends would take late night drives around the ‘hood or random ass trips upstate just to go to hot topic (before it was big, don’t judge me). i was just living without a care in the world, and it was just a lovely reminder that autumn and halloween were near… until september 11th happened.
since 2001: i love it because it means we finally got TF out of summer and it’s coming up on my favorite seasons and holidays of the year, but then i see the memorial lights. those lights make me feel like that day all over again, and i cry.
i’ve honestly forced myself to do things on my birthday since that year. i put in effort like 5 times since then. once when i lived with my friend roommate/old friend christina (we had a ridiculous/epic house party), when i turned 25 my ex brought me to florida/disney for a few days, when i was dating sceave we rented out the knights of columbus bc our bdays were a few days apart and for my 30th bday, my sister/bf and bff threw me a big shebang at holiday cocktail lounge with a ton of my friends. every other year the only thing i do is get dinner with my sister and mom. we used to have the whole cake tradition at my mom’s house, but one year i finally broke down and told her i didn’t want my traditional strawberry shortcake anymore. i think it put a damper on bday celebrations. most bdays are a blur since my aunt necie passed away. she was the only other birthday constant.
9-11 just doesn’t get any easier. i didn’t lose anyone in the towers… but i did lose a piece of my city that day. i gained fear, sadness and the city lost its umph. anyone living here at the time will have a story – even if it’s not a directly linked story to anyone in the towers, there are just so many things tied to it. emotions, how they got stuck somewhere, how they couldn’t get in touch with a loved one, etc. – it affected us all in some way.
they were testing the tribute in light last night, and through my middle window in the dining room, it was just a straight shot ahead beaming up to the sky. it just brings me right back.
anyways, september.
it usually means cooler weather, i can wear pants and hoodies again, i usually go upstate to share my bday with my cousins (3 of us have bdays within days of each other, and one i share a bday with, actually) and hockey is starting aka the only thing i really want to do is go to a pre-season game w my friends, but i can’t do any of that this year bc of covid.
in 2020: i don’t plan on doing too much… i do have a tattoo appointment at 1PM, but we are still stuck in covidland. this year, there is no pre-season hockey in september, in fact, it’s still the post-season because WE ARE IN THE ACTUAL FUCKING TWILIGHT ZONE. wtf even is baseball this year? i can’t go out to eat or drink (i’m not doing that outside shit on bell or in manhattan/bk/etc, chill)… my mother lives upstate and she also has RA, so i don’t even think she should chance coming down here and being around any of us, just in case we’re asymptomatic… and my sister is in LA and not flying out at all this year.
so yeah, this one is extra depressing aside from a new tattoo and cool weather.
oh, and i’ll get to cut my bangs in again soon! 🙂
no more sweaty weather bullshit, woo!
with this annoying ass covid pandemic going on, i realized recently that i really have been through a lot as a new yorker. not only do i have my own personal shit to deal with (family, friends, LIFE), but i have to deal with the times a changin’, technology a changin’, my city constantly a changin’, not being able to afford things, and then there’s the BIG bullshit.
my heart, my nerves, my soul, it aches… i am fucking tired. either i’m training to deal for survival of any type of bullshit, or living here all of these years has shaved off 20 years of my life expectancy. what i do know, is that all of this bullshit and the mildly technological time i grew up in gave me GREAT patience.
the point of this post was bc i was thinking about the last times NYC has had to deal with crazy shit, and i made a list from memory. keep in mind, half of these happened when there were no cellphones, either:
…people born in 1980’s have lived in 4 decades, 2 centuries and 2 millennia.
that shit is trippy AF.
i find it surreal that i lived through: corded rotary phones and touch tone landline phones (and i can remember what certain phone numbers sounded like – mostly my family and close friends), answering machines, flip phones, beepers, vinyl records when they were still contemporary, cassette tapes, vhs tapes, CDs, DVDs (which i still don’t find to be obsolete yet…), dial-up internet, AOL, myspace, aim, CRT tv sets, film cameras, camcorders, etc. and now all of that stuff is obsolete.
i also think having all of those things made me a very patient person.
did people from the 30s feel like this in the 70s? were people born in the 50s feeling like this in the 90s?
01/01/10 – i moved into my first apartment by myself. it was glorious.
i was still working down in dumbo at edit, i went to ranger games on the regs – sometimes multiple times per week, i was getting closer with my sister again, i hung out all the time with lauren, jen, jes and erica the most, i was being a miserable schlep bc of a guy, i went to shows all the time, i had hair down to my waist (it was when i really started dying it more), i was freelancing a lot, oscy was 5 years old, i twitpic’d more than i blogged, i flickr’d even more… i took my first instagram pic in november of 2010.
this new, exciting time gave me a lot of creativity, but towards the end of that year things became a bit stressful. as aforementioned in a recent post, i should try not to romanticize this era in my life that much. as much as i now appreciate my tiny, CHEAP apartment that i had on my own… it was just one room. my bed was in the same room as my kitchen. it was at a time i was truly lost emotionally, and eventually that year, i lost the job that i loved very much. i wasn’t dating anyone for quite a while, and i was very lonely in a place where i barely knew anyone.
i was so glad to NOT be living anywhere near what i considered to be home (northeast queens).
* * *
12/14/19 – i currently live near where i grew up… aka home… aka where i never wanted to be again (by desire/suggestion of my current boyfriend).
i currently work in the hell hole that is midtown, near radio city (mind you, it’s fucking christmas time at the moment), luckily i’m at a company i really enjoy, they renovated madison square garden so now ranger tickets are too expensive to go on a regular basis – in fact, i MAYBE get to 3 games a year now, i see lauren here and there now (her work schedule/location of where she lives) – i purposely don’t speak to the three other gals that took up most of my life in the earlier part of the decade, i have been dating someone for multiple years now and we’re living together, i still go to shows – but fucking bands keep playing festivals and i could give a rats ass about going to a fucking festival, my hair is almost down to my waist again (heck yes, still dyed weird colours), i freelance sometimes but squarespace and wix are the cheaper alternative and i don’t argue it, oscy is going to be 15 this year (EW!), twitpic doesn’t exist anymore, i rarely blog and i definitely don’t do it on an open, personal level (thank you online stalker fatty), flickr has sucked asshole for a long time now, and IG – don’t even get me started.
my sister lives in LA and my mother moved upstate this year…
i feel family lonely.
my mother has stressed me out SO fucking badly throughout this decade, but most of all this year. it’s seriously shaving years off of my nerves.
time warner (i refuse to acknowledge that dumb new company name) decided to start advertising that they’ll soon be streaming “mad about you”. if you don’t know what it is, it’s a 90s comedy sitcom about a married couple living in NYC, dealing with day to day life situations. i loved the show when it was on back in the day, but whenever i hear the damn theme song now, i get all PTSD about it.
WHY YOU ASK?
tl;dr: my first boyfriend in high school (who i lost my v-card to) – i used to sleep over his house. i prob said i was sleeping somewhere else, but his parents were usually asleep early, so we’d hang out and fool around at night. that show would always be on for some reason, and we’d fall asleep together with it on in the background. apparently i wasn’t sexually adventurous or consistent enough, and he eventually left me for my “best friend” at the time. i have always associated that theme song with him and that small, horrible window of my life.
so when i was 16, it was the year of ball chain necklaces, kool-aid stained hair, airwalks, cool sk8r and pacific sunwear surfer shirts, jncos, etc. i had been in love with gavin rossdale for like, 3 years. bush was all the rage at that point. i wasn’t as musically versed as i am now, so of course, they were the greatest band EVARRRRRRRR…
my first concert ever was bush when i was in 10th grade, and i felt soooooooo cool pogoing at an alt rock show (lulz). that concert at madison square garden was actually the thing that brought me and my first love together. the first time i ever spoke to him, he was wearing a razorblade suitcase shirt and it was the topic of conversation that i used to get to him. for that, i will forever be thankful to bush, but i digress…
this afternoon, i stumbled upon a recent article talking about how fans hated the lyrics of sixteen stone and basically gavin was going on about his lyrics as artistic, magical and fluid and blah blah blah… my eyes rolled so hard.
over the years, people have always accused him of riding the coattails of gwen, and it always used to upset me to read that. she’s just in a different, incomparable category. she was in a pop band, she had a pop solo career apart from NxD, she was running two fashion lines, etc. – she was all over the place. in interviews, she used to say he didn’t love no doubt or her music. she made him sound very dismissive and she also mentioned that only he listens to dark/deep stuff, which is clearly the opposite of no doubt. those comments made it seem like he was unsupportive or jealous or something.
between her saying that and reading his interviews, he sounds like he’s got this weird ego where he thinks bush was this underrated, genius band or something. it’s kind of awkward. no offense to his talent, but bush had their moments, and then they did not. lots of did nots.
bush faded out over the years and didn’t stand the test of time (i’m not mentioning post-razorblade bush, bc i totally fell off the bandwagon – just the early stuff). in fact, i revisited razorblade suitcase today, and i sat here scratching my head as to how i ever liked it. sixteen stone is still good, despite the bad lyrics (i have always questioned wtf he’s ever talking about in songs, no matter how much i loved them), but the real gems are the b-sides.
i rarely listen to sixteen stone in its entirety. i REALLY have to be in a mood to listen to that type of music. that happens to me with lots of bands, but that is definitely an album i only pick up once a decade, but i do listen to individual tracks on a more frequent basis. “machinehead ” is an awesome song, still is in my mind. i could probably listen to “everything zen” and “little things” on a more frequent basis as well. honestly, i’ve always hit skip on “glycerine”, and i could live without it.
okay okay, i’m getting sidetracked… THE B-SIDES.
so if you’re a kevin smith fan, you probably know the aggressively grungey song snippet “bubbles” from the movie mallrats, even if you didn’t realize it was bush. i don’t remember what year i finally saw mallrats, but it was way before the internet was chock full of info as it is now, so i couldn’t find more info about it. i always knew that i heard gavin’s voice in that tiny song snippet, though. there was no b-sides or a single (that i can remember) released for it, and i don’t know why, but i didn’t think to buy the mallrats OST. it kind of just remained a mystery for a long time.
this afternoon is when i youtubed that mallrats bad boy (listen to it here), and while it’s VERY 90s, holy crap, that’s actually a good bush song. like, i would listen to it today on a regular basis. i went to see what it was on, and it says it was on a reissue of razorblade suitcase, along with 3 other songs – AND THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GOOD. i am sitting here in awe and confused as to why that they never released these on studio albums or as singles.
maybe they were *tOo CoMmeRciAL* for gavin or something? what a waste of singles that could have been doled out.
a confused, young girl in love is finally being exposed to her musical preferences that will set the tone for the rest of her life. a sexy brown boy, skateboard readily in hand, ball chain around neck with airwalks on is showing her what actual punk rock is. he shows her ska-punk as well, and she embraces it with open arms.
NO… punk rock is not green day (i still have a hard time calling green day punk, no matter if all of us 70s/80s babies came through that rite of passage or not), and 15 year old me is confused.
“BUT THEY HAVE BLUE AND GREEN HAIR…?” – her brain says
(still at that point, only actual rocker people had weird colour hair)
…he paves the way.
bands like rancid, goldfinger, bloodhound gang, no doubt, etc., but getting to the point here… NOFX.
the moment i heard “i heard they suck live!!”, i was hooked. the only exposure i had to punk that i can remember growing up was the ramones and green day (again, i thought it was straight up punk). while the ramones were definitely more punk than GD, this was different. this was faster, grosser and more vulgar. also: there were horns?!
i heard this live album before i heard the actual albums these songs came off of, and still to this day, the album versions don’t sound correct to me. this album is offensive as shit, but i always found it funny (ie: together in the sand, they talk about fucking your mother and then called her a hoe – i now know that slut shaming is wrong)
anyways, this album is going to be 25 next year (EW! plz kill me, i’m old), and i was thinking to myself about how fucking rad it would be if fat mike and the guys would do a 25 year anniversary show for it. i would be there in a heartbeat, with my beavis and butthead remote in hand (YES, I STILL HAVE MINE, AND YOU WILL ONLY UNDERSTAND IF YOU KNOW THIS ALBUM LIKE THE BACK OF YOUR HAND).
i made these absolutely ridiculous earrings yesterday (yep, from my actual 90s CD insert), which inspired me to listen to it while i straightened my glorious mane last night. in addition, it inspired me to post this. so, if fat mike + co., if you find this before 2020, please do this.
lastly:
picture it. times square, 2016…
jessica and two co-workers are on their way to see the gin blossoms live at bb kings (I KNOOOWWWW…. how un-punk of us, lol). we are in search of sustenance, when a co-worker suggests a restaurant that is too packed to even bother. as soon as we step out, a man with a messy, flacid, red mohawk steps in front of us. male co-worker and i look at each other at the same time, trying to hold in our energy and excitement. our female co-worker who is picking up on our energy is like “WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU 2?”.
we walk behind the mohawked man for half a block and i’m like “do we say hi?”, and he’s like “um, yes”, but does nothing, so i go for it. i flag him down and ask for a picture. mind you, aside from my hair, we do NOT look like a pair of punks. we had just come from work, so he’s probably like “why do these people want a pic with me?”. i wound up saying “hey mike!”, so i guess he put two and two together and obliges the pic and then chats us up with some small talk. i’m star struck because i always am, and my adrenaline filled ass actually asks him where he’s off to. :facepalm:
“nostalgia… it’s delicate, but potent. (teddy told me that) in greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound”. it’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. this device isn’t a spaceship. it’s a time machine. it goes backwards, forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. it’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel.” – don draper
whenever i listen to certain music or watch certain shows or movies, i get into such a funk. the quote above is so accurate that it nearly made me cry.
i’ve been lucky enough not to have lost many family members or friends throughout my life (yet), but i am awful with change, and that applies to so many areas of my life. actually, i should rephrase that: i haven’t lost many family members or friends to death, most specifically. i have lost friends and i’ve had falling outs with family. family stuff has been repaired, but some friendships just fade away, i pushed away or life happens kind of deals. there aren’t many people that i truly miss that are no longer in my life… but the ones who i do miss this way, it kills me.
this was inspired by the last post with all of that 90s goodness. when i hear those songs, my little time machine brain goes right back to 1995-2003ish. i can’t help but want to drown myself in that era of my life. i miss the vibe of the 90s generally, although i’d never want to go back to that time because of the life wounds and heartache that it gave me. either way, those songs really make me miss my friend randolph so very much.
he’s the one who taught me graphic design and how to code… he was fated to be one of my most important life peeps.
he was my first love and ended up being one of my best friends even after he broke my heart into a million pieces (i was a teenager, it was dramatic…). i even ended up working for him for a while and we’ve always stayed in touch until he moved away to dubai. while he was here in NYC, i took the time i could have had with him for granted and only saw him a few times a year, if that.
whenever i hear any 90s songs that were top 100 or whatever (ie: this song – not that i necessarily love it (i don’t)), they bring me right back to being 16 and waiting for a table at applebee’s at our local shopping mall. it dawns on me that i want to give him a big ol stu-hug and hear his infectious laugh, and i can’t… he’s no longer in the same borough, or just a train ride or two away, he’s 6,825 miles away. 🙁
he’s someone i can pick back up with after not seeing each other for two years like it was yesterday… i miss him and his friendship so much sometimes i could just burst.
♥ this came out the summer of my senior year of high school… takes me right back. a little bit of heartbreak, a lot of nostalgia.
i remember when i got this at bay terrace (i think the music store at the time was coconuts). my mom took us and i put it on in the car on my disc man and instantly fell in love. as soon as i heard the opening of this song, i knew it was going to be one of the best. ♥
everyone keeps posting albums on instagram, uhhhhh i think their most influential albums or some shit (lol, clearly i’m paying attention on social media). i’m guessing that means coming of age albums. i don’t post shit like that on instagram, i actually still just post actual photos (unless it’s the occasional reminder post to follow my mobile wallpapers account so that you can see when i post new ones), so i figured i’d do something like that here.
instead of most influential, i’ll do the first 10 full albums that i can remember from childhood (which are honestly still in regular/heavy rotation even today)… thank you, mom ♥
she’d drive around day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year with these albums on repeat, and they’re part of me i’ll never be able to shake. these songs are always in my weekly/monthly playlist that i shuffle through.
i have to be honest – i never really pay attention to the R&R HoF inductions, but of course i cared this year bc the cars were finally inducted! i can’t believe it took so long for them to get there.
watching this induction was wonderfully overwhelming, as the cars are one of my faaaaaaaaaaavorite bands ever. brandon flowers got to do it, and his love for the cars was pouring out of him while speaking… it was great. i can’t believe it took him that long to get to know who they were. brandon and i were born in the same year, just three months apart. it’s kind of funny how that happened. he discovered the cars while i was discovering all of the alt bands of the 90s, including weezer (funny enough someone in =w= played WITH the cars during the ceremony)…
i got lucky and i had young/rad people around me in the 80s the shoved all of that current music at the time in my face at a young age. my mother was a huge cars fan, and my cousins mary and jimmy were teenagers at that time and used to let me watch the heartbeat city VHS tape with them. i vividly remember being SO confused bc of ric walking on water during “magic” and i thought it was magic. i remember thinking about how cool/naughty the video for “hello again” was, and i love that i was a warhol fan before i didn’t even know who warhol was. panorama is probably not one of the cars most popular songs, but it’s one of my favorites, and the video was always one of my favorites.
i am so happy for them. during their speeches, they thanked us fans. it made me wonder if they even know how many “young” fans they know they actually have. i read in an article a few years back that ric ocasek didn’t want to tour for many reasons, but one of them was that he thought a younger audience wouldn’t exist. i got inspired to write him a hand-written letter soon after i read that, BEGGING him to tour for us one last time… i have no idea if he ever got the letter, and i highly doubt it’ll ever happen. if it ever did, it would definitely help fill my cold, black heart and make my measly little life a little more complete. music is one of the only things that really makes me feel emotion in life, and it’s a big part of my social life. when my favorite bands won’t tour anymore, life = over.
today is record store day! i mean, there aren’t very many places to really buy records anymore around here… barnes & noble had records, but there are none in queens anymore. there’s one comic booky store in roosevelt field that has them, but who knows if steve wants to get up and go out there today. ANYWAYS, i got to thinking this morning. i have that ridiculous crosley everyone and their mama has, and it B L O W S. it sounds awful, and i need a better record player. i know i could just buy a technics and some speakers and call it a day, butttttttttt then i come across this gem:
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand i’m dying, bc of course i can’t find it online *ANYWHERE*. it’s a vintage sears stereo from the 80’s and it was like, made for me. #DYINGGGGGG
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