Back in MY Day: I Win

Alright then, let’s have a look at you.

Hmm . . . no. This won’t do. This won’t do at all!

Let’s get something straight: I know more than you. In my brain! I’ve been around longer, heard about (and committed to memory) more band names, perused more zines, skimmed more articles, looked at more photos, read more liner notes, and bought more records than you. CDs and tapes! Ok, well tapes, not exactly buying them, per se, but they were around. Oh, and this Internet of yours? I used Netscape Navigator 1.22. When it was new.

I’ve gone to more shows than you can count, in places whose names you wouldn’t recognize. You think it’s El Corazon? NO! It’s the Offramp, damn you. Half points if you said Graceland. RckCndy. I Spy. Velvet Elvis. Hi Score Arcade. OK Hotel. The Storeroom. I read about these places in The Rocket. I did shots of Aftershock with Spencer Moody and John Atkins at Local 46. Do any of those names even register as words? Well do they?

Ok, I get it. You were fourteen, and all your friends watched The OC, and suddenly you knew about Death Cab for Cutie. Let me tell you something: I saw them in ’00, at the Breakroom! You know it as Chop Suey, because, just in case you haven’t picked up on this yet, you’re younger than me. They were there with Carissa’s Wierd, whom I never liked, but I mention them anyway because everyone else inexplicably loved the hell out of them and now I can pretend to have liked them all along and therefore look cool! And they turned into Band of Horses, and I know you’re heard of them!

Ah yes, the classic Modest Mouse buffalo t-shirt. Take that off! You don’t have the right. If you weren’t personally hugged, and later punched in the neck, by Isaac Brock the day he signed the Epic deal, then you aren’t a real fan. BY DEFINITION. And if you didn’t stop liking them as soon as the ink dried, then you just don’t get it. Better a stranger than on a major! Something like that. I’m still working on it.

Here’s me in my real Modest Mouse shirt circa ‘99.

Notice it’s not blue. Notice it’s free of major label entanglements. Also technically it’s a Delusions shirt. Everyone knows it’s not cool to wear the shirt of the band you like! You wear the shirt of the band that opened that one time. Believe me, everyone ten years older than you knows it’s really a Modest Mouse shirt. Or a Built to Spill, if you just want to be obvious.

Now, I know some will claim to remember things like the Vogue, Squid Row, and Gorilla Gardens. These people are old old, though, like, gross old. Shun them.

And I win.