A Bowl of Stupid

I'm going to keep putting up music videos on a daily basis for as long as I can find ones I find worth posting. When I end up posting about the midget from "Safety Dance," I give full permission to my hosting company to pull this site. In the meantime, let the montage continue, especially given today's nasty weather (well, for Miami, anyway).

I remember the first time I heard of this band. I had heard of “emo” bands but I’d never really thought about what type of music that encompassed. I think it was a pejorative term used by kids younger that I (I say this because the girl I was dating in Central California in the late 1990's had told me of the term, and she was much, much, younger than me).

Anyway, the first time I heard of these guys was actually with this song. It was several years ago, right after I had just moved to where I’m living now. I had just moved out of my old place, where I had been living with another ex-girlfriend. I had acted in a way which, at the time, seemed to be the right thing to do. But now, in retrospect, I realize I acted absolutely horrid – and for which I'm probably still paying by way of bad karma.

I was returning home on an early Saturday morning after a long night out, which in Miami is fairly customary. I’m not exactly sure where and with whom I had gone out, but chances are, given the time frame, chances are that I had been out with my friend Oscar and his ex-girlfriend, Shyra, and some other friends at the Shoreclub, after which we had likely stopped off to get something to eat at 4:30 a.m. from Cheeseburger Baby.

Upon returning home, I adjourned to my bedroom where, at the time, I still had a TV and cable hooked up. I turned on the TV and was scouting around for something to watch while falling asleep. I gravitated towards MTV2, thinking there may be some late night videos that would do the trick.

Instead, I turned it on right when an entire crowd of people were singing – shouting – along with this band, which I had never heard of before; singing of lying and cheating and heartbreak, all issues of which I was myself desperately trying to resolve at the time.

I felt alone and left out, as if I should have heard of this band years ago and I should have been in the room singing along with the rest of these kindred souls, who apparently knew exactly what I was going through at the time. The whole time period, and what I was experiencing, was entirely new to me and I had no-one to whom I could relate entirely. No one who understood my situation.

I was absolutely mesmerized.

I watched the entire show, until 5:30 in the morning. Then I lay awake for some time baffled that I had never heard of the group before.

Immediately upon waking the next morning/afternoon, I went out and bought the CD bearing the songs I had heard the night before. I listened, and listened again. And while the CD itself is good, it lacked the feel of the moment from the night before. And I was saddened even more. Because I knew that, regardless of having stumbled onto a great performance in the early morning one day in late August, I was still alone with my thoughts.

I didn’t really intend this post to be a sad story and I don’t want to end it on a melancholy note, since I really do have fond memories of that entire period despite what I was going through at the time. And the night, which I obviously sharply recall, eventually helped me deal my issues at the time.

And I think it's still a good song, despite what type of music genre they call it, "emo" or otherwise.

Dashboard Confessional - Unplugged

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