In last week’s newsletter I mentioned that a piece I wrote about my favorite album, Saves the Day’s Through Being Cool, was going to run over the weekend as a part of the Donald P. McMahon Project, a music newsletter where one member every week writes about their favorite album. As promised, I’ve included that piece later on in the second half of this newsletter for those of you who haven’t seen it yet.
Neither Saves the Day nor that album are nostalgia for me — both are still in my regular musical rotation — but writing that piece did get me waxing nostalgic nonetheless. It got me thinking about how much I love and miss live music during this age of Covid, and also, how much I love writing about the stories behind every song, album, and concert.
So many extraordinary and/or surreal moments in my life have only happened because of music, and today, I wanted to tell you about one of them, the story of my first real concert and the endless odyssey that followed. I hope you can get a kick out of my stupidity — and there’s really nothing else to call it.
Technically, I went to my first concert when I was still in high school with a few older friends my parents really trusted, but while it did instill a deep love of live music in me, I didn’t actually know or care about any of the bands playing that night; I just went because I loved music and never would have been allowed to go to a concert under any other circumstance at the time, so I figured I better jump on it. Instead, I consider my first real concert to be seeing blink-182, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! at the Disco play Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey PA in August 2009.
Blink is my best friend Dave’s favorite band, and this was their first tour since reuniting, so it was a big deal, and thus we made a big trip out of it, booking a hotel room and staying the night. The concert itself was wild. It poured and ruined the only pair of pants I brought with me (this will be important later); Panic! frontman Brendan Urie was visibly drunk and sauntering around stage like he didn’t have a care in the world, his voice cracking on high notes (though to be fair, those are some high notes); Fall Out Boy broke up a few months after this show, and the strain was visible on stage, with Pete Wentz at one point quite literally begging the crowd to like them. “I know we aren’t what you usually listen to, but I think if you would just listen and give us a chance, if you’d please just give us a chance, I think you’d really like us!” Three different times they said they were playing their last song before going right into another, and the crowd’s annoyance continued to rise until it became downright palpable, and I say this as someone who likes those early Fall Out Boy albums. I was waiting for people to start throwing tomatoes on stage.
I’ve seen blink-182 live three times (though, sadly, never got to see them before their first break-up), and this was easily the best of the three. The second had a lot of time taken up by middling Neighborhoods tracks (I like quite a bit of Neighborhoods, but not particularly the singles), while the third was after original member Tom DeLonge had left and been replaced by Matt Skiba, which was just depressing (the technical aspect was fine, but the soul — a.k.a. the tight five’s worth of ridiculous, profane jokes between each song — had completely vanished); this show, though, was the ideal line-up, reunited and in harmony, playing the hits from their classic years, with a crowd full of fans who hadn’t seen them for at least five years. I’m generally not a fan of big stadium shows with assigned seating, but this set had the energy of a 500 cap room.
The real story worth telling, though, begins with the end of the show. We’re hungry, but we’re soaked, so we go back to the hotel room to change clothes. It’s probably around 11:30PM at this point. As I mentioned, I only brought one pair of jeans with me, so I had to change into my pajama pants (flannel-checked, not even sweatpants, clearly and obviously pajamas) because I had nothing else dry to wear. The car seats, though, were still soaked, and I didn’t want to ruin the only other pair of pants I had — we still had to drive home, and get food as well, the next day! There was a fast food joint maybe about a 10 minute walk from the hotel, so we decide to walk there…thus sealing our fate.
In retrospect, we should have just taken some towels from the room and put them on the car seats, but it never even occurred to me. Oops.
So we walk up to the restaurant just as they’re locking the door, but they tell us there’s another place a couple blocks away that should be open, so we head down there. Uh-oh — they are, also, just locking their doors as soon as we walk up. This…becomes a pattern. We should have turned back and regrouped, but we were stubborn, and hungry. So we keep walking.
By the time we’ve walked maybe a mile and a half we hit a little dive bar right across the street from Hersheypark itself. I was 22 at the time and looked younger, and a group of rednecks outside made fun of us as we walked in, thinking we were underaged. I had my ID, but we were just looking for some food, and the kitchen was closed, so we kept walking. The bartender told us there was a 24 Hour Diner about 3 miles down the road that we couldn’t miss. Obviously, we should have turned back, or had the bartender call us a cab to either the diner or the hotel. Clearly, I had swallowed some dumb pills before heading out the door that morning. We decide to walk to the diner. The rednecks made fun of us again when we left.
Obviously, neither of us really understood how far three miles actually was, especially as we were nearing 1AM. Our hotel was in a much more inhabited area, but by this point we were essentially walking down a long stretch of highway with nothing but fields and an occasional farm house within sight. It was desolate. Time and the horizon seemed to stretch on endlessly in either direction. I kept waiting for Pyramid Head to jump out from behind a tree. It was 2009, so we both had cell phones, but only flip phones. There was no Uber or Lyft, no internet on our phones to Google a taxi number, and both of us would have rather walked until we died than call our parents for help.
Finally, I see a car, and as it gets close, I see that it’s a taxi. I essentially run out into the middle of the road to get the guy’s attention, and he agrees to give us a ride. Here, we’re faced with a moment of truth: do we go to the diner, or back to the hotel? Again — we’re stubborn, and we’re very, very hungry, so, of course, we make the wrong choice. We head to the diner, but I do at least think to write down the number on the side of the cab before he drives off.
Have you ever had one of those meals that, as you’re eating it, you swear that it’s the best meal you’ve ever had, that food has never tasted this good before and will never taste this good again, but as time passes, you realize that you were actually just so hungry that you could have eaten a shoe and thought the same? That was the meal we had at that diner (I think I ate pancakes).
As we’re waiting for our check, I call the taxi company, scared out of my wits because phone calls are, of course, the third circle of Hell. The dispatcher is stereotypically pissy and says that he’ll send a cab out, but that our area is a little out of their jurisdiction and it will take a while. I legitimately do not remember how long we waited for that cab, as the clock on my phone, by that point, looked like Wingdings to me. All I know is that, if we had kept waiting for that cab, we’d still be sitting on the stoop of that diner to this day.
There was a hotel across the street from the diner, so we run over to see if someone at the front desk can call us a cab. The hotel is clearly open and inhabited, the door is unlocked, all the lights are on in the lobby, but the place is abandoned. We wait, we ring the bell, we run around the lobby in circles screaming and hitting the wall, nobody comes. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever been that flabbergasted in my life. We could’ve had free run of the place.
We see a gas station back across the street, on the far end of the shopping center from the diner, and decide to give it a shot. As we’re crossing the street, a rat the size of a toddler crosses in the opposite direction. I think one of us sobbed.
As we get closer, we see a police car in the lot, and the cop casually strolls out of the station with a snack by the time we get there. As would be expected, the police are absolutely useless; we tell him our story and he refuses to give us a ride back for what felt like completely arbitrary reasons, but he does, eventually, after we refuse to leave him alone, call us a cab from a local company that shows up in about fifteen minutes, though I did have to stop the cab driver from taking the long way back to the hotel to run up the meter. I think it was about 5AM when we collapsed into bed, barely remembering that we had been to a concert.
From that day on, I’ve always packed an extra pair of pants on every trip.
AND NOW, THROUGH BEING COOL
(The following originally ran in Week 476 of the Donald P. McMahon Project)
Through Being Cool isn't the first Saves the Day album I ever heard, nor the one that necessarily means the most to me personally, but it is my favorite, the one I find myself returning to more than any other. Hell, it's the album I chose to ring in 2020 with (though, given the year thus far, perhaps I need to have a word with it). It's a bouncy summer road trip album, but also a reflective autumn album, spanning the gamut from upbeat pop-punk to driven hardcore to more somber, introspective emo. In short, Through Being Cool is a showcase of all the qualities that make Saves the Day my favorite band.
If I could sum this record up in one word, it would be "earnest." Singer/frontman/primary lyricist Chris Conley was 19 when Through Being Cool was released; he was a kid who grew up in the hardcore scene, releasing his second punk rock record, but still threw not one, but two references to his mom into the songs (one about going to her for advice, another just mentioning how much he missed her). That's the kind of man Conley is, one who is unconcerned with looking or being cool, who will honor his emotions above all else, delve deep into them for his songs, and bare them even when they're embarrassing or incredibly personal.
Throughout Through Being Cool Conley channels those emotions in a variety of interesting ways. Opening track "All-Star Me" kicks the album off, not only with a wave of rising guitar and cascading harmonies, but with a tale of nostalgia and regret, with that final line, "I wish I could have done things right," priming you for everything you're going to hear on the rest of the record. "Holly Hox, Forget Me Nots" opens with a painful breakup before rising above and transforming into a song of triumph (it also drops perhaps the album's most fun riff into the bridge). "You Vandal" goes big with the emotional metaphors, comparing the pain of being separated from a partner to gaping open wounds; likewise, "Rocks Tonic Juice Magic" transforms the animosity between two exes into a mythic, elemental feud ("You and I are like when fire and the ocean floor collide"). "Banned from the Back Porch" is an almost caustic track with intense guitar and vocals that are often closer to yelping than singing, yet it paints an incredibly relatable picture of teenage romance, of falling for someone from across the room at a party, complete with the album's most dreamy lines ("Oh, who is this? Where was she all those crazy years? Where was she when my heart couldn't take its beat?"). Through Being Cool finds its most powerful moments, though, in sadness: the melancholy "Third Engine" paints an aching picture of loneliness as the song's narrator makes the long journey to be with the one he loves (long before Facetime or even cell phones), while "The Last Lie I Told" slows down just enough to drop the line "I guess this is what it's like to be really down and holding out for something" over a steady, sad riff. Sometimes this album just tears my heart out, but when it does, it's because it reminds me of all those times I've felt those same emotions Conley has poured into these songs. It can be pure catharsis for me.
Even that title, Through Being Cool, is just so evocative. The title track itself begins as a revenge fantasy, with the bullied narrator finally confronting his tormentors -- he's through being cool because he's tired of putting up with their abuse -- but quickly changes gears as the narrator is stopped in his tracks by the beauty of the natural world around them, and realizes he can't stoop to their level ("your world is what you made it, and I don't want a part of it"). It's a moral victory that transforms "through being cool" into something else entirely, a rejection of popularity and superficial concerns and worldly desires. "My Sweet Fracture" (my favorite track -- just check out that bassline!) continues this theme when it drops the album's most iconic line: "I choose my company by the beating of their hearts, not the swelling of their heads." Thus, "through being cool" isn't just a rejection of superficial popularity, but an embracing of earnestness and sincerity and emotional openness. It's a perfect encapsulation of this band, this album, and the people who have come to love it.
And that fanbase is a big reason why I love both this band and this album so much. Emo music has always had a way of building communities via shared suffering, and Saves the Day fans are some of the most intelligent, witty, compassionate, and downright enthusiastic people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Through Being Cool is responsible for me meeting some of my best friends, and a big part of what bonds us together is the empathy, self-awareness, and honest emotional vulnerability we've taken away from it. Saves the Day wears their heart on their sleeve; Through Being Cool wears its heart on its sleeve; Saves the Day fans wear their hearts on their sleeves; I wear my heart on my sleeve. Honestly, this album means the world to me. I hope some of you can find something great in it too.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!