Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 179: Nate

Prompt: "A song that lacks closure"

Selected by Nate

"AND IM GONE"

Femtanyl

REACTOR EP, 2024

THE YEAR IN GILSON

Best Post: There's a lot of meat on the bone here; there's just an unreal amount of late-stage hair metal to start with, and there's the whole angle of him basically calling his shot on post 1 and keeping true to his word for the rest of the year, vis-à-vis his content. There was the time he became so close to a girl's dad that he sent him a CD through the mail like a civil war bride transported to the future, and the time he correctly fingered the perverse feeling of seeing a bunch of people getting loaded and thinking self-contentedly, "those jokers are doing it wrong." 

More than all that, though, I'd like to draw your attention to what an absolute heater Gilson was on, song-wise, for a good month-long stretch in the spring. Banger after banger after banger. Not a lot of people have the courage to jump from candy-ass power-pop, to sleezy joke rock, to perhaps the most moving and affecting vocal performance of the last century, to fucking Hot Water Music. But that's the Gilson experience; say what you will about the man, but he's got taste.

That said, he also found a strech in the middle that went "Medium Pace," "Pussy Crook," "Smooth Criminal," and "I Fuck my Horse." That he was allowed to blog after that stretch just shows that cancel culture is not real.

(Alright, also, Gils wrote beautifully about sobriety this year. Identifying the moment where he thought it was going to stick—and that moment colliding with something existential—was great storytelling and great writing. Ditto his fears about being a link in a chain, and being determined not to be. That was really great stuff, man, I felt really lucky to read it.)

All in, I think the best post, the most Gilson post of the year, was this relatively simple story that captures a lot of the man's essence: music, performance, fuckin' up and remaining good natured about it, fuckin' up but realizing it's not the end, that it doesn't have to be perfect. I would never tell you to find wisdom in the man who told you to "feel the music or I'll end you," but as far as mantras go, "just keep going" is as true and as useful as anything those philosophers would tell you. Words to live by.

Most Deranged Post: For a person who picked approximately 45 Adam Sandler songs, Gilson kept things much more sane than most. Still, you cannot blog without being a lunatic, and Gilson's cracks showed in a few spots, including:

• Reflecting on the twin evils of Weezer and Nick Sirianni
• Dude can't even start a Model-T, what the fuck
• A list of provocative and evocative phrases for jackin' one's dong
• Getting all worked up because people were being mean to Michael Jackson

The real stuff is the stuff that's just close enough to sane to make it's angles shine sharply, and Joe's rumination on the power of "rap" rhyming with "crap" during the Clinton-era was that for me.

An Incomplete List of Absolutely Whip-Ass Songs Selected by Gilson: "Farewell Transmission," "Fairyale of New York," "Lonely in a Limousine," "Asshole Pandemic," "Built This Pool," "Song for You," "Broken Leg Dog," "Best Clockmaker on Mars."    

One to re-visit: Thinking about the last time you didn't think about Trump really did a number on me.

In conclusion: Look, man, we'll probably be texting in the next day or two, so I don't want to get too maudlin or emotional here. Thanks for being here, thanks for sharing yourself. Thanks for putting me into so many of your posts, I'm glad we're still in each other's periphery. Most of all, thanks for Asskick (and for "Farewell Transmission").