since I frustrated my good friend Denny with the indulgence of the song lyrics as headers, they are:
There’s a man who walks beside me, he is who I used to be - Jason Isbell, "Live Oak"
Pride is what you charge a proud man for having - Drive-By Truckers, "Shit Shots Count"
I saw taillights, last night, in a dream about my old life - The Gaslight Anthem, "The '59 Sound"
There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right - The Hold Steady, "Stuck Between Stations"
If we're near or far from out city by the sea-side / as long as we keep our stride, I believe we'll be fine - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, "Walking To Do"
Everywhere I go, I’m just trying to find the fastest way back home - Frank Turner "The Fastest Way Back Home"
The downtown club scene ain’t nothin’ like it used to be - Against Me! "Thrash Unreal"
You’ve been rolling solo, time to get down with the team. - UGK ft. Outkast "International Players Anthem"
The album that most defines my college years is Jimmy Eat World's Futures. The band did a tenth anniversary tour where they played the album front to back and it was my favorite concert I've ever been to.
Oh hell yeah Scott, I bought 20 pounds of pork butt three weeks ago after you posted your smoked pork recipe - been cooking it up in 5 pound increments since. Week 1: Smoked Pork. Week 2: Pork Carnitas Tacos. Week 3: Girlfriend yelled at me about not wanting to eat another damn ounce of pork.
Looks like week 4 is about to be Ssam burittos! How did you season the pork for this one? Anything special?
That's awesome! This was just my usual pork rub, since I was using leftovers out of the freezer from the one a few weeks ago, but I bet a garlic-and-soy-heavy approach would work well for this. There's so many other flavors going on, especially with the kimchi, that you can be pretty flexible.
Thanks Scott. And now that I've read the whole article instead of jumping to the comments to say something, that part about things shifting when you got your dog hit right at home. The Girlfriend and I moved in together in May, got a puppy in November... You know things have changed when instead of closing down the bar it's 11:30 and the phrase "We have to get home to the puppy" leaves your lips for the first time.
It's jarring at first. It's especially jarring when you realize you're one degree removed from "We have to get home to the kids". I think it's only natural to resist that change a bit - being in your mid-20's is fun! - but the first time you look around your living room at 10:00 PM on a Friday watching a movie with the pup curled up on your girlfriend's lap and you realize "Hey, this is pretty great too" is when it starts to settle in.
I have a few albums for a time and place. The one that feels just in line with this is Painkillers by Brian Fallon. I was just coming out of a time my best friend and I have taken to calling the Abyss. About a year before that I'd been kicked out of my first single apartment, I was depressed, and was in a job that stressed me to no end.
That summer after the album came out was when I suddenly decided that I would work 40 hours a week instead of 60 or 70 and if they decided to fire they could go for it. My work actually got better, I felt better about myself, and I felt like I knew what I was doing for the first time since college ended.
I played that album on repeat in the backyard of the house I was sharing with 3 pretty cool guys I met on Craigslist of all places, drinking beers and reading. It was that fall I met my now fiance and that album reminds me of when I got my shit together (mostly).
There are a whole lot of time-and-place albums in my life but none is as set as Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.
I had just finished high school and was working a completely fake office job (there was some summer student job grant I qualified for that gave them more than they gave me, so they didn't actually have enough work but hired me anyways). It quickly became apparent that any time I asked what I should do they'd find something in the backlog that didn't actually need to be done - I once spent two days updating the whole office's copy of regulatory books with the quarterly policy updates that get mailed going back 6 or 7 years, often replacing the pages i'd just put in the for previous quarter - when a lawyer admitted they don't actually use the books but go to the current policy online when needed.
So I started taking long walks through the neighbourhood. On those walks I'd do one of two things. I'd either call my long distance not-quite-girlfriend and talk or I'd listen to Neon Bible on my black and (RED) u2 iPod. I must have listened to Neon Bible dozens of times while 'working' that summer, and despite everything about that album not sounding like summer, I can't listen to it without being taken back to that time.
O.A.R.'s "Stories of a Stranger" came out between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. They came to Syracuse on tour that fall and it was the first time I'd gotten to go to a concert without adult supervision--at that point in my life, I had never experienced anything like it. I try not to have "guilty pleasures" because fuck it, you know, like what you like, but I don't actively trumpet the fact that that album (and some of their live albums) still give me chills when I decide to dust them off and listen again. I wouldn't want to be 15 again but man, I *felt* things back then and occasionally I feel compelled to try to summon those feelings again.
Those twilight years of my 20's were heavily soundtracked by The Hold Steady, too. Fell in love with them from the first time I heard the piano on Stuck Between Stations, and had the joy of seeing them on that tour, in a tiny-ass, burning hot dive bar that's long since been replaced by a doucheplex. I ordered the last Lone Star longneck in the cooler that night. Best beer I've ever had.
And right as I got married and started realizing that people actually enjoyed me for me, instead of feeling like I needed to be a character from Craig Finn's imagination, High Violet came out...
I have so many answers to the album prompt, but I'll stick with the one you teased: The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound. I was in my late 20s, in law school, about to divorce the kind but increasingly less compatible man I married six weeks after turning 21 (not a great course of action! ask me how I know!). That record settled into my bone marrow. Even now, in the right mood, "I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my first wife, everybody leaves and I'd expect as much from you" can still cut me. I was still living in DC when they played the reunion shows that did the record top to bottom, and that catharsis was sustaining: jumping around and belting every word at the top of my lungs with a packed room full of people experiencing the same thing. I have tickets to the reunion tours of Rage Against the Machine and My Chemical Romance, for August and September respectively. The hope of reaching that catharsis again, at a moment where it's needed most, is dimming daily. Sigh...
God, I would've loved to see that reunion show. I listened to that album all summer the year it came out.
I think I'm forever doomed to miss Rage -- I had tickets to see them with the Beastie Boys the summer before college, and that was the tour they cancelled when they broke up.
I've been so mired in concert-going nostalgia lately that I spent much of last week on YouTube watching the headlining sets from Woodstock '99 -- Rage aside, mostly admittedly-terrible music that I loved in high school, and an event with obviously huge problems -- and they're pretty solid concert films, especially the Rage one.
I don't want to imply that I've always been bougie, but there was a point in grad school (which for most of my time was more a state of being than focused activity, doctoral programs are an amazing way to waste time) when pre-gaming meant "it's Saturday in the summer, let's think about somewhere to go that's not the grad student bar," so we'd have monster G&Ts in pint glasses (basically very very weak G&Ts, heavy on the tonic) for an hour or two. Net result: we were properly hydrated for the walk over to the grad student bar when we ran out of ideas of nicer places to go that wouldn't already be packed.
Although in the "what was I thinking" category there was the summer when we decided that chilled ouzo shots were a great way to cleanse the palate every couple of beers. 😬
I can't help but notice you didn't actually explicitly state how you enjoyed your "creamsicle" in the article. Was it actually kinda good, or was it just gross?
I enjoyed the diet orange soda, something I purchased specifically to replicate this drink, quite a bit. I'm not sure if the vanilla extract in lieu of vanilla vodka threw off the taste, or if I just don't like the taste of vodka in my drinks anymore because I'm not 25.
In the long run, do you think you came out ahead by pregaming? I'm guessing I ended up just about even. I'd head to the bar drunk enough to buy people drinks and slap down my credit card without thinking.
Last year I saw Coheed and Cambria in concert, who's first 2 albums I loved back in high school. I was devastated to learn that they are on album 8 or 9 and I only recognized like 4 songs out of the entire set. I dug out my 1st album t shirt for the show and probably had the oldest shirt in the entire venue.
The show was still fun, especially as i now realize there probably won't be any concerts this summer at all
since I frustrated my good friend Denny with the indulgence of the song lyrics as headers, they are:
There’s a man who walks beside me, he is who I used to be - Jason Isbell, "Live Oak"
Pride is what you charge a proud man for having - Drive-By Truckers, "Shit Shots Count"
I saw taillights, last night, in a dream about my old life - The Gaslight Anthem, "The '59 Sound"
There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right - The Hold Steady, "Stuck Between Stations"
If we're near or far from out city by the sea-side / as long as we keep our stride, I believe we'll be fine - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, "Walking To Do"
Everywhere I go, I’m just trying to find the fastest way back home - Frank Turner "The Fastest Way Back Home"
The downtown club scene ain’t nothin’ like it used to be - Against Me! "Thrash Unreal"
You’ve been rolling solo, time to get down with the team. - UGK ft. Outkast "International Players Anthem"
The album that most defines my college years is Jimmy Eat World's Futures. The band did a tenth anniversary tour where they played the album front to back and it was my favorite concert I've ever been to.
ahhh I love that album
Oh hell yeah Scott, I bought 20 pounds of pork butt three weeks ago after you posted your smoked pork recipe - been cooking it up in 5 pound increments since. Week 1: Smoked Pork. Week 2: Pork Carnitas Tacos. Week 3: Girlfriend yelled at me about not wanting to eat another damn ounce of pork.
Looks like week 4 is about to be Ssam burittos! How did you season the pork for this one? Anything special?
That's awesome! This was just my usual pork rub, since I was using leftovers out of the freezer from the one a few weeks ago, but I bet a garlic-and-soy-heavy approach would work well for this. There's so many other flavors going on, especially with the kimchi, that you can be pretty flexible.
Thanks Scott. And now that I've read the whole article instead of jumping to the comments to say something, that part about things shifting when you got your dog hit right at home. The Girlfriend and I moved in together in May, got a puppy in November... You know things have changed when instead of closing down the bar it's 11:30 and the phrase "We have to get home to the puppy" leaves your lips for the first time.
It's jarring at first. It's especially jarring when you realize you're one degree removed from "We have to get home to the kids". I think it's only natural to resist that change a bit - being in your mid-20's is fun! - but the first time you look around your living room at 10:00 PM on a Friday watching a movie with the pup curled up on your girlfriend's lap and you realize "Hey, this is pretty great too" is when it starts to settle in.
Absolutely, and beautifully well-said. It was the first time it felt like there was a *home* instead of just a place we kept our stuff.
garlic, ginger, orange and chilis.. maybe some brown sugar would be an excellent little twist on it.
cookbook rec: The Flavor Bible - it's 300+ pages of what flavors go with what flavors.
Ooh good rec, I'll check it out.
I have a few albums for a time and place. The one that feels just in line with this is Painkillers by Brian Fallon. I was just coming out of a time my best friend and I have taken to calling the Abyss. About a year before that I'd been kicked out of my first single apartment, I was depressed, and was in a job that stressed me to no end.
That summer after the album came out was when I suddenly decided that I would work 40 hours a week instead of 60 or 70 and if they decided to fire they could go for it. My work actually got better, I felt better about myself, and I felt like I knew what I was doing for the first time since college ended.
I played that album on repeat in the backyard of the house I was sharing with 3 pretty cool guys I met on Craigslist of all places, drinking beers and reading. It was that fall I met my now fiance and that album reminds me of when I got my shit together (mostly).
There are a whole lot of time-and-place albums in my life but none is as set as Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.
I had just finished high school and was working a completely fake office job (there was some summer student job grant I qualified for that gave them more than they gave me, so they didn't actually have enough work but hired me anyways). It quickly became apparent that any time I asked what I should do they'd find something in the backlog that didn't actually need to be done - I once spent two days updating the whole office's copy of regulatory books with the quarterly policy updates that get mailed going back 6 or 7 years, often replacing the pages i'd just put in the for previous quarter - when a lawyer admitted they don't actually use the books but go to the current policy online when needed.
So I started taking long walks through the neighbourhood. On those walks I'd do one of two things. I'd either call my long distance not-quite-girlfriend and talk or I'd listen to Neon Bible on my black and (RED) u2 iPod. I must have listened to Neon Bible dozens of times while 'working' that summer, and despite everything about that album not sounding like summer, I can't listen to it without being taken back to that time.
God, this whole story is so relatable to pointless internships I had.
O.A.R.'s "Stories of a Stranger" came out between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. They came to Syracuse on tour that fall and it was the first time I'd gotten to go to a concert without adult supervision--at that point in my life, I had never experienced anything like it. I try not to have "guilty pleasures" because fuck it, you know, like what you like, but I don't actively trumpet the fact that that album (and some of their live albums) still give me chills when I decide to dust them off and listen again. I wouldn't want to be 15 again but man, I *felt* things back then and occasionally I feel compelled to try to summon those feelings again.
Also the superior soda to mix with vanilla vodka is diet root beer.
Those twilight years of my 20's were heavily soundtracked by The Hold Steady, too. Fell in love with them from the first time I heard the piano on Stuck Between Stations, and had the joy of seeing them on that tour, in a tiny-ass, burning hot dive bar that's long since been replaced by a doucheplex. I ordered the last Lone Star longneck in the cooler that night. Best beer I've ever had.
And right as I got married and started realizing that people actually enjoyed me for me, instead of feeling like I needed to be a character from Craig Finn's imagination, High Violet came out...
I'm sure age/timing plays in a lot, but THS's music is just *perfect* at capturing that time in one's life
The cocktail, and more specifically the note about guests mocking you then indulging themselves, put a giant smile on my face.
I have so many answers to the album prompt, but I'll stick with the one you teased: The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound. I was in my late 20s, in law school, about to divorce the kind but increasingly less compatible man I married six weeks after turning 21 (not a great course of action! ask me how I know!). That record settled into my bone marrow. Even now, in the right mood, "I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my first wife, everybody leaves and I'd expect as much from you" can still cut me. I was still living in DC when they played the reunion shows that did the record top to bottom, and that catharsis was sustaining: jumping around and belting every word at the top of my lungs with a packed room full of people experiencing the same thing. I have tickets to the reunion tours of Rage Against the Machine and My Chemical Romance, for August and September respectively. The hope of reaching that catharsis again, at a moment where it's needed most, is dimming daily. Sigh...
God, I would've loved to see that reunion show. I listened to that album all summer the year it came out.
I think I'm forever doomed to miss Rage -- I had tickets to see them with the Beastie Boys the summer before college, and that was the tour they cancelled when they broke up.
Same here. This was going to be my redemption for that. It really does feel cursed, doesn't it?
I've been so mired in concert-going nostalgia lately that I spent much of last week on YouTube watching the headlining sets from Woodstock '99 -- Rage aside, mostly admittedly-terrible music that I loved in high school, and an event with obviously huge problems -- and they're pretty solid concert films, especially the Rage one.
I don't want to imply that I've always been bougie, but there was a point in grad school (which for most of my time was more a state of being than focused activity, doctoral programs are an amazing way to waste time) when pre-gaming meant "it's Saturday in the summer, let's think about somewhere to go that's not the grad student bar," so we'd have monster G&Ts in pint glasses (basically very very weak G&Ts, heavy on the tonic) for an hour or two. Net result: we were properly hydrated for the walk over to the grad student bar when we ran out of ideas of nicer places to go that wouldn't already be packed.
Although in the "what was I thinking" category there was the summer when we decided that chilled ouzo shots were a great way to cleanse the palate every couple of beers. 😬
I can't help but notice you didn't actually explicitly state how you enjoyed your "creamsicle" in the article. Was it actually kinda good, or was it just gross?
I enjoyed the diet orange soda, something I purchased specifically to replicate this drink, quite a bit. I'm not sure if the vanilla extract in lieu of vanilla vodka threw off the taste, or if I just don't like the taste of vodka in my drinks anymore because I'm not 25.
Overall grade: B+ refreshment, C+ taste, A+ nostalgia
In the long run, do you think you came out ahead by pregaming? I'm guessing I ended up just about even. I'd head to the bar drunk enough to buy people drinks and slap down my credit card without thinking.
This is the thing, I was bad at planning. I almost certainly spent more by showing up at the bar feeling handsome and invincible.
end of college & the start of real life is a six year blur that happened 15+ years ago but still feels like last week.
extremely well put. it JUST HAPPENED.
Last year I saw Coheed and Cambria in concert, who's first 2 albums I loved back in high school. I was devastated to learn that they are on album 8 or 9 and I only recognized like 4 songs out of the entire set. I dug out my 1st album t shirt for the show and probably had the oldest shirt in the entire venue.
The show was still fun, especially as i now realize there probably won't be any concerts this summer at all