It's October, 1985. I Am On Mars

It’s October, 1985. I am on Mars

It is homecoming. Your best friend brings you over. I think you are pretty and I like your smile. You seem to think it is cute that I like the things I like. I am too nervous to make a move.

It is the beginning of October. My friend tells me that you like me. I am happy.

It is your best friend’s birthday. I can tell that something will happen. We sleep in the same bed and I kiss you for the first time. You drive me home and it is the best day I have had in a while.

It is October 26. I am watching Gravemaker play. I have to make a decision and I do.

It is Halloween. I expect what happens and I like it. We spend the next day together and I am very happy. I ask you something and you say no. I am still in a good mood. Carry On becomes our song.

It is mid November. I am very anxious. You do something for me that no one has done before. The next day I feel closer to you than anyone else. I am proud that people see you holding my hand.

It is the beginning of December. You surprise me and make me the happiest I have been in a long time. I am glad we stick out. I visit your house. I hope that this feeling lasts forever. I realize that this is what I want. I will remember this as the best time I have ever had.

It is mid December. I expect more of the same. You surprise me again. This time it confuses me. I do not know what to think. I think it will still last. Nothing With You becomes our song.

It is New Years Eve. It is the last time I will see you for six weeks. I drink too much and cannot appreciate our last night alone. I am disgraced. I cannot forgive myself.

It is early January. In the back of my mind I knew this was coming. I do not fully grasp what happens. I think it is not so bad.

It is mid January. It sinks in. I am depressed. I listen to our songs. They remind me of my favourite memories.

It is February 7. I feel like things are the same. I realize they are not. I feel depressed. The next day I feel worse.

It is late February. I realize there is no chance. I start to come to terms.

It is early March. I am excited to see you. I find out he is coming. I cannot come to terms. I do not know what to do.

It is mid March. I am depressed. I am very angry.

It is late March. I do not know what will happen. I hope for the best. I have learned to expect the worst.

Wide-Eyed

Treading water becomes hard sometimes.

You feel the water level creep up and up until it reaches the corners of your lips to destroy what you are.

You hear commentators say that a pitcher will "reach back" to put some more on an important pitch.

I "reach back" but get a handful of nothing.

So I make my last push and take solace in my sinking.

Across The Sea

I sometimes fear that these wounds will never close.

Stallone

Honestly, one of the best ways to deal with a shitty mood is to turn up your favourite hardcore to ten, and scream every fucking word.

Also I need to make a legit post and stop these one-liners.

yea

"when I thought it couldn't get much worse, life stabbed me in the back"

I think this sums me up pretty well

"...fuckin' no say in society. Man when I was fourteen all I cared about was dick jokes and NOFX."

Today

I feel like I've been sitting down my entire life. Today I'm standing up, for myself.

"Don't write yourself off yet"

Yea, I know I'm being emo

You that feeling when you just think "Man, this has already gotten old. I've had enough"?

That's basically how I've felt inside my head since I've been 17.

"The boy's no good. He's a hood."

Faction

It kind of sucks when you realize that you are the cause of all your own problems. It sucks even more when, after realizing this first point, that you haven’t been able to solve these problems. I know I’m being pretty emo, but whatever, this how I feel right now. I always complain, at least to myself, that I can never finish anything. But, seriously, whose fault is that but my own? I complain how when I have school work to do that I can never do or get motivated to do it on time, and then half-ass it three days after it’s due and hand in some crap that I’m better than. Well then I should stop watching videos of Reggie Miller on youtube, and focus on work. That is what my parents are going broke for. I don’t want to sound conceited here, but I like to think that I’m at least pretty smart. If I put any serious effort into something it usually turns out pretty well. I’m fully aware about this but then bitch about me doing a good enough job on something when I finish it. Well if I spent more time research and writing and less beating pokemon red then maybe it’d turn out better.

Sometimes I portray that I’m all about not selling myself short and stuff. I certainly feel that way after I finish listening to a Daggermouth or H2O record. I always tell myself that I’m going to change. This will be the time that I do a good job. It never is. I don’t know why I do this. Handing in crap and half-assing every aspect of my life makes me feel like shit inside. But I still do it every single time. When it comes down to it I just always feel like doing nothing will somehow make me forget about my problems/make them go away. Then when it gets too late, when it’s three days after that essay was due, when I’m asking my parents for money again, I finally get around to doing something. But it’s never enough.

Well here we go, this time I change for the better. I’ll stop dragging my ass and take responsibility for my actions.

Probably not, but at least writing this makes me feel a little better about myself.

“So strike a match, and hope it lasts. Here’s to following your own way.”

yea

I need a girlfriend.

There's A Problem

It’s always hard to see something that you care about a lot become a shadow of what it once was. This is definitely happening to a certain subgenre of punk music right now.

Right now my favourite genre is pop-punk/melodic hardcore stuff. You know like Lifetime, Bigwig, ALL, Strike Anywhere, etc., etc. This definitely wasn’t always the case. I went through my adolescence as a ska kid (not saying I hate ska, still listen to it all the time, and Less Than Jake is still my favourite band), and would even go to lengths to say how hardcore sucked. Granted a lot of bands considered to be “big hardcore” bands at the time really sucked, and focused on throwing in breakdowns and sour notes than any type of message. So when did this metamorphosis of ska to hardcore happen? Around the end of high-school and it was pretty much all because of one band.

I saw Set Your Goals open for Less Than Jake in the fall of 2006. I thought it was pretty cool that they had like pop-punk parts and the hardcore parts, but honestly just didn’t think that much of it. I showed them to a friend because I thought he would like them, and ended up downloading a few songs off their purevolume for free, because whatever they were free. I gradually started to listen to them more. After seeing them headline a show I became a full-fledged fan. Another thing really got me at the show. That was the crowd interaction and the energy of a “hardcore” show. There was basically no divide between the crowd and band. The two singers spent all of their time at the front, giving the crowd the microphone as much as they used it. The crowd was extremely into the music. I was used to kids dancing at shows, and a bit of a pit. Here the focus was on singing along and screaming every word of the lyrics as loud as you could. This was really got to me. Lyrics have always been my favourite part of music. I don’t really care if a band isn’t breaking new ground musically if their song-writers really know what they are doing. Case in point, this band. They wear their influences on their sleeve. It’s not hard to draw comparisons to Gorilla Biscuits, Lifetime, or for sure New Found Glory. But the band’s lyrics and message make it sound fresh.

Naturally after this I did everything I could to find other bands that were like this. The first one was actually a really small band from Florida called From Me To You who are broken up now, I’m pretty sure, but you should still check them out. Naturally I found bands like Four Year Strong, rekindled my love for New Found Glory, and came around to Lifetime after being told to get into them for a while. From it was a spider web effect, every new band I found led to other new bands and I was getting entrenched in a new scene. Suddenly the breakdowns, break-neck tempos, punishing riffs, and lack of any vocal finesse whatsoever of “true” hardcore started to appeal to me a lot more.

Set Your Goals and Four Year Strong began to gradually blow up, which I could have seen coming. Of course when bands get bigger they influence new bands to form and this is where I get to the main point of this ramble, the degradation of the whole pop-punk/hardcore genre.

The hardcore scene has always had a sixth sense of smelling bullshit on kids from a mile away, and some of these bands just reek of it. Five jocks from San Diego singing “welcome to the west coast, where we’re holding it down” just doesn’t have the same effect as, say Ari singing “I’m desperate tonight and I just wanna fight” in Turnpike Gates. There’s getting to be too many bands like City Lights, who more concerned with wearing sweet v-necks and having some lame ass un-needed breakdown than actual substance.

Granted, there are many new bands that also rule and stay true to principles. The Wonder Years are unashamedly poppy, have a synth player but still stay true to hardcore principles and play faster than any band I’ve heard recently. They got invited to play the Bamboozle but dropped off, saying that playing a large corporate festival would be against the reasons the originally started the band. I’m sure any one of the cookie-cutter poppy but still with some double kicks lead singer wearing a new era hat backwards neon album covered bands would have sold their souls to play that festival. But that is what separates the people who want to play music form the people who want to be in bands, if you get what I’m saying. It’s not about getting recognized or looking cool on stage; it’s about expressing yourself in a positive way.

Put down that Every Avenue album, and pick up a Living With Lions one.