Summer's Over?

Shit, man. My last post kinda has me down, emotionally. I know it's not that big a deal to y'all (and I know exactly zero people actually saw that post and read it), but it's a big deal to me. Basically, my last post is ol' Joey here admitting that childhood is dead. This is it. We're adults, and it's permanent.

Which makes me think of the Hold Steady. This band is My Band. They've always been the band that is singing the songs we want to hear in our youth. Their entire catalogue is basically a narration of our teenage years.

In fact, my very first blog post was about the Hold Steady and their then-new album, Stay Positive. I would like to reprint that blog post, if you don't mind. Here it is:

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Look at this motherfucker:

Does he look like he should be the voice of my generation? Does he seem like the kind of guy that would know EXACTLY what a kid like me likes to do on a Friday night?

Okay, how about his bandmate:

This dude looks like he should be serenading the Lady and the Tramp as they eat their spaghetti. He looks like some kind of reject French pirate.

And yet... somehow these guys strike a chord in my life. Somehow they come up with these songs that could've been ripped from the history of our Burholme exploits.

Here's an excerpt from their song "Massive Nights":

"And everything was partying,
everyone was pretty,
and everyone was coming towards the center of the city.
The dance floor was crowded,
the bathrooms were worse.
We kissed in your car and we drank from your purse."

Good god! If I could only name the number of times any of this shit happens with my friends and me. It's like the typical weekend night for us. We all get drunk and congregate, it's crowded, people make out and people drink some more, and by fucking god, it's a MASSIVE NIGHT.

So it seems the Hold Steady is coming out with a much-anticipated new album, their follow up to perhaps on the greatest albums in my life as a teenager, Boys and Girls in America. It's called Stay Positive. Yeah, the title is corny, but man, I've been praying really hard that this album is another mind-blower (Remember, one time I prayed really, really hard that I'd win a Harry Potter book in a school contest, and I won; who says god doesn't answer frivolous prayers?).

In an ultimate act of cool, they put like half their album online for free already (I'll buy the full album tomorrow so I can listen to it on my bus trip to Maryland). So here it was. The moment of truth. How will it stack up? Check out the first track, "Constructive Summer":

"We're gonna lean this ladder
up against the water tower,
climb up to the top
and drink and talk
this summer."

Jesus Christ! How could Finn possibly know that Burholme's water tower is the center of our town? How could he know that this would be the perfect summer experience? How is it that at the beginning of my summer, Finn touches a nerve on the very first song?

As of the end of this post I've listened to the first half of the album once through, and I can already tell it's a masterpiece. It's littered again with those things I can relate to best, in these sixteen years I call "childhood": the drinking, the partying, that girl that fucked you over, and just hanging out with your friends trying to get by.

I love you, Hold Steady.

"We drink along in double time,
I drink too much, but we feel fine."

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Hey! That was a decent blog post. It was my first one, back on June 16, 2008, so I I guess I don't even mind if it's shitty. (Is it shitty? I don't know. I'm kinda drunk right now.)

But to tie it up with my last blog post, I'm kind of like Craig Finn. I think we had some great times during those Summers. I think we can have some better times during these summers coming up.

What matters is that we are all together, that we are taking advantage of every fucking opportunity that we can, that we are truly living life and carpe diem-ing and all that good stuff. The metaphor: we gotta lean that ladder up against the water tower, and GET HAMMERED!