I WAS 99x...

See, sometimes I promise a "Part 2" to a post and actually get around to writing it! (It was this or complain about the Radiohead pre-sale for Atlanta being over before I could buy some nice floor seats--this is a perk to having a "grown-up" job that I was not made aware of enough in High School. Probably because it's a tiny percent of people past regular college age--say 23 and up--that go to concerts outside of the occasional, lavish and expensive nostalgia tour de jour a la The Stones.)

96 Rock was actually the first radio station I ever wanted to turn a radio dial to growing up. I can't remember exactly how long ago this was--I was in elementary school--but it was before Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" took over the airwaves. I know that because I had 96 Rock on my parents' car's preset by that time. Didn't have any idea what the song was about, and probably took the title literally and thought the singer was a tad strange ("why would he want to have sugar poured on him? Won't that attract ants? Cool!") but damn it did rock hard.

But my loyalties would be tested soon after. Blame Tone Loc for that. I'm sure I heard Run DMC at some point, and I definitely remember L.L. Cool J's "I need love" (and even roller skated to it--yes readers, I was born when Jimmy Carter was president, in the 70s and when I realize stuff like this, I feel that age) but Tone Loc's "Wild Thing" was the first rap song I remember going nuts over. Throw in partial blame to MTV for this, as somehow, despite not having cable, I caught the video on MTV. The record scratching was what did it for me. I know this because about 7 years ago when my folks wanted to loan out their LP of The Jungle Book to own of my cousins to play for her kids, they discovered again the damage an aspiring ameteur record-scratcher can do to with a regular turntable and attempts at making "Big Beat Baloo".

(They don't look it, but they're B-Boys, makin' with the freak-freak.)

This was a problem for 96Rock and me. I suddenly liked rap (well, the sanitized, slow-flow rap getting airplay at the time). They didn't play rap. Enter Power 99.7.

They played rap, but they also played tons of other cool (to me at the time) stuff. I remember in particular a late 80s/early 90s Top 5 countdown that included Guns N' Roses and Sinead O'Connor. I also remember GnR's "Welcome to the Jungle" being the first song my folks didn't much like their young son really enjoying.

(I also highly recommend keeping his book away from young, impressionable youths.)

Then, about the same time as the Wayne's World soundtrack exposed a whole new generation to headbanging and the gloriousness that is Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" they started a nightly show called On The Edge with Will Pendarvis. It was beyond cool to me not only because of the music played, but hey, the DJ has the same first name as me! (Again, remember this is tail-end of elementary school/start of grade school me. I'm marginally more mature and grown-up now.)

Power 99 became 99X right as puberty hit me. Que the amateur psychologists with theories about how we could "change together" worked. And keep reading, because there may be something to that...

Seventh Grade was probably the year I first really started identifying with music, and defining myself by the bands I liked. I also got my first guitar then, and promptly went from being one of the smart kids to being the "hiding his smarts because he saw the smart kids get the shit kicked out of them and vainly trying to define himself as the edgy/arty musician/comic book artist-type". Without a love of music or playing guitar, I was just another skinny kid with braces and a burgeoning case of acne wondering when he'd get armpit hair.

With a love of music and playing guitar, all those things were still true, but I had something else to talk about. And when lunchroom discussions of how cool every track on Pearl Jam's Ten, or both Use Your Illusion albums ended, 99X was there to introduce new and cooler (or seemingly new and seemingly cooler) bands.

About a year later, I knew (at least in my head) I was kind of cool, because, thanks to 99X I listened to Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden, and that Danzig song "Mother", and Pearl Jam, and Nirvana was already too overhyped for me.

It was also entering the mid-90s, which is when 99X was really at their peak.

In Spring of '94 one of their DJs had traveled to Australia, either for vacation or to check out the Big Day Out festival there, I forget which. While there he heard a song called "Tomorrow" by a band of barely high school aged Aussie radio contest winners on Triple J (pretty much the Aussie equivalent of KROC, crossed with 99X at their peak, and still pretty cool today) called Silverchair.

(Given what I now know about Australian faunae, this little guy would probably kill you if you touched him barefoot.)

He got a hold of either their demo, or an EP, and started playing "Tomorrow" on 99X when he was back in the states. It blew up, and other songs from the EP (including "Blind" and "Acid Rain" neither of which made Frogstomp, and I paid some $20 to get on the imported four-song "Tomorrow" EP at Media Play or Tower Records). Not only was it a great moment of a DJ sharing some music he'd discovered and found cool, it hit me on another level: here was a band made up by kids only a year or two older than I was. They were on the radio, they had a major label album coming out, Daniel Johns was getting interviewed in guitar player. If he could do it: so could I! I hadn't been playing guitar for long, and wasn't yet ready to play anything like Pantera or Metallica, or copy Slash's guitar solos. But I could play Silverchair.

Silverchair and 99X combined forces to put together an Atlanta Big Day Out in fall of '94 as well: it was my second ever concert (I'd seen the odd bill of Candlebox opening for Metallica the summer before I started high school) and it was my first "festival show." In addition to Silverchair, we got to see The Ramones, it was the last tour appearance for Shannon Hoon and Blind Mellon, and I'm pretty sure some other cool bands were on the bill too.

It was also the first show where the fun and social experience of a large concert--and the joys of lawn seats--really hit me. I went with a group of about four kids, all of us freshmen, who would eventually get together and form a lousy garage band. But while wandering around the lawn we ran into a bunch of other familiar faces--including this older girl in my chemistry class I had a bit of a thing for, who I talked into sharing her beer with me--and even some of my old neighbors I hadn't seen in years. In the years since I was a mainstay at Big Day Outs, and would insist on lawn seats for almost any show at Lakewood.

Best time had at a Big Day Out: a rainy afternoon in the later 90s, in which my skinny ass, with lots of help, did a decent job in a large, muddy mosh pit to the unlikely musical backdrop of Poe, and later, the Replacements...followed by great sets from the headliners: Beck and 311. The whole thing probably cost all of $15 bucks.

Best line-up: While I dug that Beck/311 double bill, the best line-up I saw was years later, when Big Day Out moved back from the Conyers Horse Park to Lakewood--but with a locals only stage and side stage. They had David Ryan Harris's new (at the time) band Brand New Immortals, and my future buddies Left Front Tire on the local stage, Deftones and Incubus on the side stage, and Green Day and Stone Temple Pilots on the main stage.

The downside to that massive thing was I was struck by how it didn't feel as fun as the earlier big day outs. My group kept getting split up, and while I ran into some other familiar faces, the Huge Group Getting Together and Having Fun vibe ended for me with the 98 Big Day Out over in Conyers.

(And I was primarily in Conyers to see these guys play this song, which the the soundtrack to my picking which college to attend.)

And if I couldn't make it out to a show, or, my folks wouldn't let me (this happened more in the middle school years), or if I couldn't get time off from work, 99X broadcast a lot of these shows live (sometimes even with cursing, and without commercials.)

For years I treasured the two cassette tapes I recorded Pearl Jam's summer '94 show at the Fox Theater on. Years later, when they gathered a ton of bands (including Collective Soul and Marvelous 3) at the Atlanta Raceway for a huge show, I was able to at least hear on the radio the great cover of "I will follow" with Butch Walker and the dude from Eve 6 helping out Collective Soul on vocals. (By the way, I highly recommend all old-school fans head over to Marvieworld.com and check out the live audio they have of this, and other shows.)

(And in this photo, Mr. Walker gives a lesson in stage presence while Tobias Funke hides in the lower righthand corner.)

Every Sunday around 9 or 10 they'd have a Live X and we'd get at least an hour of live music from some cool band. And if I plugged my headphones in (so the folks couldn't hear) later on I could listen to the Pleasure Dome (and now we get back to the whole puberty thing). It was like a local version of the Dr. Drew show more or less. They had Yvonne Monet (who was best known for playing dance music on Saturday nights) and Dr. Roger Libby, and, as public school sex education was teaching me nothing beyond "when the teacher asks for any questions, it doesn't mean she'll actually answer any of them" it was this one radio show that helped me realize "wait, you won't go blind if you do that," and "wait, sex isn't necessarily bad or evil outside of marriage," and "wait, girls are horny too?"

The glory days of 99X for me were a lot like the stories above: I slowly learned to be less of a conservative headcase, and got to rock out to some great music (plus some music that hasn't aged as well, but I can say I never saw Limp Bizkit live in my defense.)

I saw Silverchair and wanted to be them. I felt very cool seeing a local metal band called Sevendust tear up the local stage at Music Midtown before they'd blow up nationally. And I remember Butch Walker inviting 20,000 people to come by Smith's Olde Bar after he was done playing--and Butch and several hundred people doing just that (including yours truly.)
In short: 99X cared, 99X was worth listening to, 99x Rocked. And the will be missed.

Apparently "No Longer On The Air" Also Means "Everything Alternative."

Ok, so I've not exactly been the biggest supporter of Atlanta's "only alternative" station, 99X, in the recent past, but I didn't want to see the station totally disappear from the airwaves.

By the end of next week, if I turn to 99.7 on my car radio, I'll get the station formerly known as Q100, and the same crappy playlist.

Now, 99X's playlist of late has been pretty poor, and had been terrible for a while (though I am apparently in the minority at finding Fred Toucher's wannabe Howard Stern shtick tiresome, they did have Butch Walker in for great and hilarious in-studio appearances--particularly the morning Butch cleaned house on Rock-And-Roll Jeopardy--which is far better than much of what they've trotted out lately) but to kick the whole station off the air to compete with the the All T-Pain, All the Time stylings of 95.5 The Beat?

Well, let's break this down, pseudo-Julius Caesar-style: First I will bury 99X--or at least point out the many ways they went wrong--then transition into some things they didn't have control playing a factor. And then grab your hankies because there'll be some nostalgic praise for the "good ol' days."

First, let's go back to that morning show. Now maybe I'm alone in this, but when I turn to an FM station billed as playing music, what I most want to hear is: music. Politics? Well there's WSB and NPR for that. Sports? 680 The Fan and 790 the Zone have that covered. What I don't really give much of a crap about in the morning:
Whether or not Crash Clark contracted any number of sexual diseases from desperate women at American Pie.
Hearing some potentially abused-in-her-childhood wanna-be softcore porn starlet kiss up to Fred Toucher while desperate guys called into a half-ass version of the Dating Game.
Hearing clips and commentary from the crappy shows watched by the guy who sounded like Jimmy but was actually Jenner's wife.
Reading the headlines off TMZ.com and passing them off as "Celebrity Sleaze" in between what this past fall was near constant plugging for the website's pseudo-ET show on Fox.

I remember the original Morning X (the Barnes, Leslie, and Jimmy version) being better, but that could just be because it was years and years ago...and the Big Day Outs then were massively better. When you can see a show with Beck and 311 for under $20, you tend to care less when Barnes spends half an hour talking about his tennis game.

But overall...I'd like to just hear music in the morning. 95.5 does sort of grasp this concept, as the few times I've been bored enough by other stations on the dial they seem to almost always have music on. Downside: they seem to have a 10-songs maximum playlist and since summer at least 30% must have T-Pain involved in some way (it used to be Akon.)

But it's not as simple as "play more music, less talk." The playlist for 99X is probably the largest factor in their demise. It can't look good to either advertisers or listeners with any functioning memory when the promo announces "99X: NEW MUSIC" and then starts playing "Come as you are" (a song now over 15 years old) or something by The Cure (which in some cases would be more than two decades old.)

Trying to have it both ways playlist-wise seems to lead to death for rock stations in Atlanta. How do you play to the nostalgia for the music you started out on, and play new artists or new songs?

The easy answer is to blame Cumulus Media for being to hard-headed, compared to the relative open-mindness of Susquehana (the previous station owners). But the playlist started turning at least semi-sour long before Cumulus came along in 2005-2006. Remember, they were the station that kept playing Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit (and worse, Creed) long after most of the music-listening world realized what massive tools Durst and Scott Stapp were.

(By the way, I'm not doing all of this from memory--much of the info here is coming from the 99X Wikipedia page, which I highly recommend, if only to take a nice guided jog down memory lane.)

Perhaps 99X's problem is merely synecdochic of larger problems--in the major label music industry, and in so-called "modern rock" radio in particular. Overall, the trends in album sales across the board point down. Music execs would be best served to quickly forget those heady days of the late 90s/early 2000s when a #1 release would move enough copies to be certified platinum after one week's time. Now if you can sell 30,000 copies of an artist's new CD in a week: welcome to the Billboard Top 10. Now the potential reasons for this (blame piracy--no blame the recession--no blame the fact that many of the CDs released and hyped just aren't that good) deserve there own post, so I won't get into them further. But people are buying less CDs, and in particular, there haven't been any real new "rock" artists to break through at all in the past few years.

Disagree? Well take a look at the current Modern Rock charts. A good 3/4ths of that list is artists who were around when I was in college (dating myself note: I'm class of 2003--so five years ago) and standbys like the Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been around for even longer. The list of "new rock" grows slimmer still when you realize that some of these bands are just leftovers of late-90s acts (Angels and Airwaves and +44 are remnants of Blink 182.) Maybe the likes of Pitchfork's favorites and "blog bands" are too esoteric (or in the case of some blog bands, just plain shitty) to play on the air. But why did Modest Mouse suddenly get radio airplay 4 years ago and I've never heard 99X play The Arcade Fire? What chance does an "alternative" station have when the OC soundtracks were far more eclectic and interesting? And most of these songs can't be dismissed on bad production values or length either. Songs I'd classify as "alternative" that I thing should be on a radio somewhere right now, off the top of my head:
Athlete - "Airport Disco" (Coldplay if they remembered how to occasionally rock out, and were a lot sexier, musically.)
Augie March - "One Crowded Hour" (it was the song of the year for Triple J in Australia and their musical tastes aren't that different from our own.)
Dredg - "Zebraskin"
Devin Townsend Band - "Vampira" (well, really better around halloween).
The Bastard Suns - "My Pint"
Groove Stain - "With You" (gotta give props to some neglected local rock bands...99X should've played more Trances Arc and Second Shift as well.)
Dragonforce - "through fire and flames" (thousands of Guitar Hero 3 fans would like it anway.)
Butch Walker - and song of "The Rise and Fall Of..." off 1969's website, or the demos off his myspace. 99X and The Marvelous 3 used to be like this, and unlike the station, Butch is still kicking it as hard as he ever did.
Pure Reason Revolution - "Nimos and Tambos" killer male-female harmonies

Anything by Ryan Adams or Rilo Kiley (sorry, was cheating a bit and scanning my iTunes list...but the I can't recall either being played on 99X, and for that matter I don't remember hearing Damien Rice since Cumulus bought the station and ended the iPod weekends.)

In short: it looks to me (and the folks at Idolator) that modern rock is dying as it breaks no new artists, ticks off listeners looking for something new by going down the nostalgia road, and generally limiting its potentially vast playlist for the same ready-made mix of Foo Fighters and VH1-Classic approved tracks off Nirvana's Nevermind. Maybe the "internet only" 99x will learn something from this.

(And now I look up and see things are getting a bit unwieldy here, so come back later for the happy and nostalgic part 2.)

10 Songs (and counting) that do bad things to socks

Ryan requested this as "5 songs that rocked your socks off" then proceeded to double the amount (and venture into territory that I think exists far beyond the boundaries of straight "rock"...and I'm going to follow his lead on this.)

The catch: these are in no particular order and aren't quite my "favorite" songs, but rather songs I'm amazed by, influenced by, wish I could write/play/sing, or played a huge part in my life.

10. Fuel - "Shimmer". I first heard this song in the spring of 1998. I was a senior in college, with acceptance letters from UGA and Colorado, and couldn't decide where to go. Musically, the song's hardly groundbreaking: pretty harmonically simple, E minor-keyed alterna-rock, albiet with a surprisingly middle-easter influenced chorus (you don't expect the G# to show up) and some nice strings. But it was catchy as hell, and the song played more than any other while I was picking schools (and yes, the line in the bridge about "too far away" was one I'd come to sing along with often when I eventually decided I didn't want to be 1,000 miles away from friends, family, and the girl I had a crush on.

9. Pantera - "Cemetery Gates". My cousin Matt played this for me sometime between 7th and 8th grade. Prior to hearing it, Metallica was the be-all end-all in heaviness in my book, and Kirk Hammett was to my novice guitarist ears what Eric Clapton was to thousands decades prior: an inhuman, guitar-shredding deity. Then I heard the pinch harmonic-ladden riff that opens main portion of this tune. It was, at the time, the coolest shit I'd ever heard on a guitar, and worse, Dime's solo: sounded better than Hammett's (it would be only a year later when Matt would play a Dream Theater CD for me, really opening my ears to what badassery on guitar sounded like.) But my use of tiny, sharp, Dunlop Jazz III picks goes back to 92-93, and hearing that riff.

8. Marillion - "Invisible Man", "Interior Lulu", "Ocean Cloud" (tie). These are three late-Hogarth-era Marillion tracks all over 13 minutes in length. I picked all three rather than one because they each combined to teach me a lesson about lengthy rock songs: they need not be repetitive music with pages of lyrics (often great lyrically but boring as hell musically) a la Bob Dylan, or 2 minutes of vocals setting up 12 minute wankfest (such as several more recent Dream Theater songs.) Instead you get lyrical depth--a story about coping with the strangeness of life juxtaposed with lyrics that evoke the heartwrenching fear of being forgotten by the one you loved that was also at the core of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; a song about a 'strange little girl' that morphs into a metafictive rumination on using real life for inspiration in songs; and a story about the first man to cross the Atlantic ocean single-handedly--and music that can make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Imagine the bastard offspring of Pink Floyd and OK Computer/Bends-era Radiohead.

7. Stravinsky - "Rite of Spring". There were riots when it premeired, and not soley because of pre-existing political tensions. This ballet (yes, ballet) is some of the most brutal music in the western canon, and parts more than hold their own against the most brutal death metal. Sure you can trace metal to Sabbath and Led Zep, but the syncopated, odd-meter pounding here is a good root too. "Primal" gets tossed around a lot in discussions of it, but if you hear a good performance, you'll see why.

6. Marvelous 3 - "Every Monday". Modern pop songs don't get much better than this gem from Mr. Butch Walker. It was catchy as hell when I first heard it, and also set a light off over my head "oh, so that's what a great song is supposed to sound like" (background: I was listening to mostly instrumental rock and Dream Theater at the time). Also, the arrangment and production opened my ears: so many different guitar sounds/textures, all based on a simple descending chord progression. It's some of the catchiest and best three minutes out there.

5. John Coltrane - "My Favorite Things". And speaking of melodies, here's one I loathed growing up (fact: I'm not a big fan of most musicals, and I really loathed being roped into watching The Sound of Music on NBC or whatever as a lad.) Except Coltrane took the familar refrain, and...did an astounding number of things to it. Only on some of his late period, hourlong live performances did it seem to my ears like he lost the melody completely. It has probably taught me more as a soloist and improvisationalist than any other song.

4. Guns n' Roses - "Welcome to the Jungle". I don't know if my parents' parents rebelled against my mom and dad listening to the Beatles, but I know it happened to a lot of parents because I've watched entirely too much VH1. They didn't like Guns n' Roses though. And I got my first real taste of what rock and roll was really about. Sure, they'd had no problem little their little grade-schooler listen to 96Rock when it was Def Leppard or Bon Jovi...but Axl screeching "I wanna watch you bleed" and that other line about "serpentine" that I thought was about his weewee? No can do...so like any other kid GnR became the shit to me. And the sheer amp-you-the-fuck-up energy in the song's still there: even if I have to see a good GnR cover band to get it.

3. Jeff Buckley - "Hallelujah". Lately I've been working on singing and playing guitar at once. I'm not bad doing one at a time, but both would be better. I would LOVE to be able to pull this off, but know I'm light years away. I am not ashamed to admit I've cried listening to this song. Emo kids? Give it a listen: this is real emotion, real heartache, real pain...and real beauty. And plus, I figure if I could pull this off (and maybe Ryan Adams "Memories of you" or "wonderwall") I'd never be single again.

2. Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody". They don't write 'em like this anymore. Not that they really ever (outside of say, some other Queen songs, like "March of the Black Queen") wrote them like this before either. No band before or since has quite had the giant ape balls big enough to write a trptych song, with ballad, opera, and hard rock sections, and then release the whole thing as a single. The "opera" section alone probably has more key changes and complex harmonies than every other song on the "rock block" power hour combined. And a footnote: Freddie Mercury doesn't hit the high note, the drummer does. And the rumor that the tape was overdubbed so many times it was clear? That's true.

1. Faith No More - "Epic". Ok, I lied, there's one "favorite" here. Since I first saw the video this has been one of my favorite songs (and that was over a decade and a half ago). Prior to the 1990s, FNM mixed rap, rock, and funk--with cool harmony guitars and a gorgeous classical piano outro. In two years this song will be over 20 years old, but it still sounds fresher than 90% of modern rock radio.


So go to iTunes, buy these tracks if you haven't already, and share your favs...I'm stopping at 10 for now, but there's many I want to include, so this may be a weekly thing.

Arrested Development: More than just a sit-com or early 90s rap group...

"The world's gone mad
And I have lost touch
I shouldn't admit it
But I have.
It slipped away while I was distracted
I haven't changed
I swear I haven't changed
How did this happen? I didn't feel myself
Evaporating... "

--"The Invisible Man" - Marillion

I have a bit of a confession: I'm an only child, so it was years before I realized it was, shall-we-say not that normal, but I talk to myself sometimes. It's normally while I'm driving somewhere, but sometimes the old inner monologue spills out, like on one of those His/Her Story eps on Scrubs where JD gets out of his head. But there's a problem: in all these self-Socratic dia-monologues I neglected a really important question:

“So, are you really happy with your life overall, and where it might be going?”

(It was easier for them, they all worked at a hospital. Plus JD got to date Tara Reid before she went downhill, Mandy Moore, and Sarah Chalke, whose hotness is oft-underrated.)

If I wanted to get into self-psychoanalysis (which I think is probably somewhere between practicing moderate invasive surgery on oneself without going to med school and giving oneself a haircut) I might say I didn’t ask because deep down, I knew the answer, and I wouldn’t like it.

But late this month, I finally did ask the question, after kicking it around in various forms since early December, and I realized I’d also started wondering it in less coherent (more felt than thought) back this summer. It was the root cause of the funk.

Someone incredible came into my life in the fall, and it was great. But also, it was probably too great. If she’d had more flaws, or acted more indifferent, or even done something little like mentioning that she loved The Simple Life and thought Paris Hilton was misunderstood, deep down (and even that last point might not have been enough…I did end up taping Project Runway for her, but thankfully never had to watch it. And on an additional TV-related note, one I’m probably near 100% alone in, but I can’t seem to find any likeable characters on Grey’s. Maybe I’m making excuses since it’s on opposite Scrubs and The OC, and my DVR can only handle recording two shows at a time, but the hotness of Katherine Heigl alone can’t make me tune in.)

(Sure, she's easy on the eyes, but that didn't help me enjoy Bride of Chucky either...)

But the point is, what really wound up killing things between us is I stopped questioning whether I was happy with a low-paying, nothing-to-do-with-my-major day job (which had rejected me for a promotion) and a dwindling number of local friends (it’s mildly ironic that I moved back to Athens because almost all my friends were there and almost none were in Atlanta—now the opposite’s true). As much as I just sang her praises above, after about a month I was doing far worse. Sure, I kept some of the crazier notions to myself (exception: I did propose a trip to someplace tropical if I were to win the lottery, but that was crazy for the logistical unlikelihood of my winning more than anything) but I pretty quickly began at least making the transition from “crazy about you” to “annoying you.”

I claimed I didn’t push for committed relationship, and that was technically true…but I also was that guy that tried some form of communication daily, and pouted when I didn’t get a response. In other words, I wound up doing the same things that really annoyed me in prospective girlfriends. I don’t want to say I was needy, because “need” I still like to think is a bit much, but saying I was “wanty” doesn’t sound right either (perhaps because, as made-up words go, “wanty” leaves me wanting.)

(Do this and say "but I don't want a girlfriend" at best is sending brobdingnagianly mixed messages.)

By the time my car was wrecked, and my two buddies at work quit and got “let go” (leaving me with no one to talk to at work), I was blind to being “that guy” because at that point, I didn’t have anything else to immediately look forward to in life.

(Yes, perhaps life would be different if I worked in a large office with an elevator where I could run into my boss's girlfriend's sister who looks similarly hot...)

A mantra of “it could be worse” can only go so far, so here I am now with a few realizations:

1. Moving back to Athens was a nice idea at the time, but I really do feel too old for this place. Sure it’s nice to know I could easily date attractive ladies who aren’t old enough to legally drink, but there’s not too much potential fun in that now. Instead there’s jealousy on my part that she gets to sleep in, anger when she complains about class, lectures on how horrible the real world is and how she should never, ever graduate from me, and it ends badly.
2. I stuck around after graduation partly for the wrong reasons, but mainly because I figured the extra year would help with grad school…some poor money management and employment choices ruined the whole application process though. I moved back with the same plan, but things kept coming up. I decided I wasn’t ready for grad school until I actually finished a book, which was a good move (I’m convinced they can spot the MFA candidates applying just so they don’t have to go to a day job any more.)
3. I neglected address the issue of how I’d support myself until I finished a book and either became famous, or went to get my Master’s. Oh I could look towards the future, but it was more issues of “I don’t have a date for New Year’s” or “oh no, my dateless Valentine’s Day streak will continue”, not “ok, can I stay at this job and be happy for another year or more?”
4. A good one, finally: perhaps, as I was initially wrong that there was nothing more than the dial and waiting tables/bartending in the spectrum of Athens jobs, I was likewise wrong about how an aspiring musician or writer must work a job unrelated at all to his dream field, or that it must be low-paying. Sure, William Gaddis probably wasn’t as happy doing fact-checking for the New Yorker as he was while writing, but it might not have been all bad either. My original rationales of: it’s only for a short time, and since it’s not taxing, my brain will be refreshed are both flawed. The “short time” argument probably ceased being accurate at least a year ago, maybe sooner, and far too often, my “non-taxing” day jobs have left me exhausted.
5. I’m quite picky in relationships, not picky at all with jobs. Part of this is because of the obvious point that if I’m single, no one will kick me out of my apartment or take my stuff away, but if I’m unemployed, those things could happen. But the fact that since graduating I’ve only worked one job that required a college degree (and it was temporary and part-time to boot) has caught up with me. Maybe it was some twisted, rebellious and overly-romanticized notion of the struggling artist, not committing to some money-grubbing “career.” Or maybe it was lazyness, and a stubborn insistence on not networking. Either way, it’s gotta change.
6. Last, but damn sure not least: I’m uncomfortable about the (small) amount of money I make currently. Part of this is related to #5 above, but it’s one that’s been lurking beneath the surface for years. I often would fall into the Wealth Envy Paradox: stating that anyone making substantially more than me couldn’t possibly be happy, to justify to myself having so little disposable income that I haven’t had a vacation since 2002. And for dating, it was easier to brand any women that had ever dated an older man as a gold-digger than say to myself “you know, if you had an actual salaried job, you could afford to get her more than mix CDs regularly, if she liked that sort of thing.”
7. The big one: I really, really, can’t keep going the way things are currently. I can’t be 28, living in Athens, clinging to hopes of winning the lottery, going to grad school “next year”, or a near-perfect potential girlfriend somehow magically making all my troubles go away. I’m going after the previously dreaded capital-letter Real Jobs, and they’re likely going to be in Atlanta. I’m not going to quit writing my book, and I’m not giving up on the band. But I have to give up settling for unfulfilling, low-paying day jobs, and weekends where I don’t go out if there’s not a concert I want to see (which I invariably go to alone), or a party where there’s occasionally a good chance I’ll either feel too old, or too single. Pretty much from 1998 until 2007 I’ve lived in Athens, but it’s time to move on and grow up.

(Joining the Blue Man Group however: not an option I'm considering.)

And yes, it’s scary as hell, and also means I have to admit that all my friends that gave me skeptical glances when I said I was moving back to Athens were right, and it means risking finding out whether it really is worse to try and fail than to not try at all yet again…but it also seems saner than convincing myself I’m John Cusack and she’ll make it all better, or that every Tuesday might be my last day at work because this is the day my number comes up.

Wish me luck.