And Consequently He Also Saved the Piña Colada Industry

I've never been a "bike guy" let alone a bike punk. This subculture has really flourished over the last decade or so and was something that I totally wiffed on because I didn't even learn how to ride a bike until last month. Once I learned, a friend graciously gave a bike to me, I rode it a bunch, went and got it all set up at a shop and now I guess I am a bike punk. I even have the rolled-up khaki shorts to go with it!

I must admit that a small part of me feels guilty that the bike will now take the place of my skateboard as my primary way of getting around. The divide between skaters and bikers isn't as strong as the former and rollerbladers, but I feel like it's still there to some degree. Is it possible to exist in both camps? I feel like yes, but this will be a new thing for me to navigate in the future.

While riding my bike to the bike this morning, the experience made me think of an anecdote that Dan Campbell told about the experience of writing The Upsides in which a formative moment for him happened while he was riding his bike through the city. Those sorts of bits of information always stick to me like Krazy Glue.

It made me reflect on that album and how singular my relationship is to it. I had such an obsessive draw to it after it came out and built it all into my personality so heavily. I had an "I'm not sad anymore" sign in my bedroom, had "I'm not sad anymore" written on my backpack, and had (still have) the "I'm not sad anymore" hoodie.

Note: I wonder constantly if this is the most valuable piece of merch I own. I was shocked when I looked at my discogs and discovered that my 1st pressing of The Upsides was my most valuable record by a landslide.

After that I never really got into the band's later stuff as much, though Surburbia did get some plays, and I quickly moved on from my interest in that sort of pop-punk. When I look back at the record now, I find the music, lyrics, and general message insanely corny, but I also have a deeply embedded nostalgic relationship with it that I can still fuck with it on some level. I think about how much I would make fun of a nasally pop-punk that centered a message of positivity above all else if they came out now. I think about how some of the jokey pop-culture reference aged like milk. I think about how truly embarrassed I am of some of the other stuff I liked at that time (I will never live down Four Year Strong).

It all makes for a strange relationship to the band in which I recognize that they are critically not very good and unbelievably corny in terms of punk and that I have to own that, but also that I have a real, emotional connection to the music and it did do very real, tangible things for me. Just look at this blog in 2010 for fuck sakes.

Maybe going through your posi phase is a necessary thing to do as a young person. I like to think that it taught me important lessons about keeping a level head and always looking for more perspective on things. I think it was also a way for me to ignore the world for a little bit in self-interest and only think about my own minuscule problems, which sucks.

All that said, this song is my favourite on the album and still bangs, so we can end on that.

 

I Left A Lot Of Blood In California

More than anything else, The Upsides is a record about fighting back. I felt like the past year left me and all of my friends defeated. Our early-twenties had beaten us down. We listened to sad songs and we watched sad movies and we talked about sad shit. It was like everyone looked at the rest of their lives and decided that now was the time to start being miserable. A lot of the lyrics for this record were written on my bike while I avoided traffic and bad parts of the city. Before we actually started writing songs, I had compiled a notebook full of the lines that I pulled from the fog my breath produced on all of my freezing, snowy morning bike rides. I had given up, and this was going to be a record about just that, and then, one day, I was riding my bike down 19th Street on the way to work and from the top of Callowhill, I could see that the fountain at Logan Circle had been turned on. Something clicked in my head and I guess it was because this meant it was Spring, or maybe it was just because it reminded me of happier times, but I decided then that it wasn't okay to be this defeated at twenty-three. A few months later the band moved into the house I was living in South Philly with my girlfriend and roommate. They slept on the floor of our living room and every day we would wake up and walk down into the 15-square foot basement to write songs. We spent a very long, very hot month between May and June surviving on freezie-pops and Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee alone. Everyone, literally and figuratively poured themselves into this record as we must have lost a collective ten pounds from sweat alone. My basement still smells terrible to this day. There were a few times when we walked upstairs after an argument and I didn't think we'd ever come back down because every song was that important to every one of us. The result is a record that we're all very proud of and that I think carries a very real message. The whole world wants you to be miserable. It wants you to put your head down, sigh to yourself and give up on being happy, and I know just as well as anyone that sometimes, giving up seems like the only option, but if you take one thing from this record, I hope it's this: Don't give those mother-fuckers an inch. Stand your ground every chance you get because everybody deserves a chance to be happy.

From The Wonder Years myspace: www.myspace.com/thewonderyearspa

I've got a lot to say lately. I guess I'll be writing more.