Dollar beer and punk nostalgia

Monday nights at Delilah’s, dollar beers, punk rock nostalgia. That’s a description of some my favorite times from my twenties when I lived in Chicago. It’s also the first line of a great song by the great band The Methadones. I had the Methadones on the other night while washing dishes and that song came on and I got all wistful for that time, texted some friends about it, the text a sober version of one of those drunken ‘I love you man’ moments.

My first time there I walked in, saw the sign that said one dollar American beer, walked up to the bartender and said “what’s the dollar beer thing?” “American beer.” “What, like Budweiser?” “No, American.” He held up a can. American was the name of the beer. It was watery. I’m sure it would make a great shower beer. For a buck a can I could buy rounds for my friends even when I was unemployed.

We went there most Mondays. It was punk rock night, with a DJ. The music was great. I loved my friends. I wasn’t in love with my life otherwise, but Monday nights were awesome. Sometimes we’d stack the empties up on the table in towers. We called it beer-jenga and whoever knocked them over had to buy the next round. We’d chat with the bouncer. Usually I’d end up around the corner at the taco place drunkenly trying my Spanish as I ordered food. I thought of that as the song played.

I saw the Methadones lots of times in Chicago at multiple venues. Any time they played that we knew about, we went. One time my wife and one of my dear friends and I went to see them on the day I had been laid off again. The singer said “this song’s called TV World, it’s about being laid off,” and it was like he dedicated it to me. It was a bit like in a line in an Alkaline Trio song, “somehow the singer told the Fireside exactly how I feel.” After my wife and I left Chicago for Minneapolis we largely left live local music behind, but we always went to see our Chicago bands when they came through at the Triple Rock and every time we’d miss Chicago and the life we’d left. Sometimes the punk rock nostalgia is a thing you celebrate with people you love who share it, but sometimes it’s a thing that weighs on you. “I wanna bury the past… I don’t want to hear about old days, what are we doing today?” says, if my memory serves, an old Lawrence Arms song. (Ohhhh the Lawrence Arms… I am at this moment so heavy with wistfulness.)

Sometimes members of the Methadones would be there at Delilah’s, and later in Minneapolis at the Triple Rock, and I’d buy them a beer and rave about how much I loved their band then feel self-conscious. I’d felt such a strong sense of connection to their songs (that’s something I think about a lot, the weird asymmetry of certain kinds of art, where the artist creates an object that articulates an experience and a feeling for the viewer/listener/reader in a way that feels like an intense two-way connection but really that connection is a one way street; it feels like really knowing someone, and maybe we do really know artists due to this, but in ordinary life when we really know someone we generally expect, I think, that the knowing is mutual, that the other person also knows us too, and that’s not at all what goes on with art, generally speaking; I think this is part of why people are sometimes inappropriate with artists, like gushy and crashing through boundaries and social norms, it seems weird but maybe it’s a normal kind of mistake to make under the circumstances) and that feeling of connection made me want to tell them, and yet at the same time to me they were larger than life. Among other things the singer had been in Screeching Weasel and Sludgeworth. He was like a legend to me. So I’d get drunk, rave at them, get self-conscious, apologize, and somewhere in there buy them a drink.

I thought of all that as well as the song played and it all got to be a bit much so when the song ended I put on something new. I think for my whole life I have never been particularly comfortable with my life at any given moment. I think I am more comfortable - I feel like a hippie saying this, but the phrase ‘more at peace’ is apt here - with my life at this point, compared to any time previously in my life. I like who I am well enough, I have areas in my life where I’m doing well enough at things I care well enough about to where I have a sense of identity and competence. I totally adore my kids. The line on the graph is sloping upwards. But I’m not totally comfortable. I feel old and it feels like it happened fast. I miss some of the old things from the old days when I was young, like getting drunk occasionally, but much more so musical stuff - seeing live music, playing live music, knowing about current music, stuff like that. It’s okay, on balance I wouldn’t trade, I’m just saying music remains important to me and I haven’t fully found a way yet to live the musical part of my life. It’ll work out, I’ll figure it out eventually or circumstances will change or both, but I think part of figuring that out, or at least part of feeling more okay with not yet having done so, means letting go of some of that nostalgia, or at least watching for how it plays out. It can’t be good times gone all the time, is what I’m saying.

So the song ended and I felt kinda sad, texted my friends, then put on the Thunderroads. They’re a band I got into recently, in this phase of my life, and I got to see them in Chicago over the summer when I happened to be there randomly and they happened to be there randomly while on a short U.S. tour. I went with two dear old show-going friends, and it was like old times but not in the bad nostalgic way, it was new times just as good as the old times. And the band fucking tore the fucking roof off. The opening bands (Dinos Boys and Mama) were great too, I want to buy their stuff when I get the time and money. So in the kitchen I put on the Thunderroads and listened to them rip it up - that guitar sound! those rock singer stylings! the shouted “GO!”s and “COME ON!”s and “ROCK AND ROLL!”s!, this stuff is like cake, it’s like coffee and donuts, it’s like bacon, it’s a beer and a shot, just like the best thing ever - and I got over feeling sad for no longer being where I used to be and instead I felt really good about being here now and about eventually being somewhere else later.

(Later while doing the dishes I was craving New Order, who I have decided, are like Joy Division in that they, I have decided, are hit or miss. But when they hit, holy fuck, it’s so good. So I’ma listen to a lot more New Order too.)