I don’t know what I expected out of this Summer…
It has been a full month and a half since college began for myself and many others, (I know some of you started “Weeks before that!” and blargleflargmlob!) and I wanted to write this piece many, many weeks ago but…
A. I never had a fully formed idea until now
and…
B. College, football on Sundays, and about eight more dental appointments than I wanted have gotten in the way of my ever writing this.
My point is, THIS JUST IN: College can pretty easily consume you and all of your hobbies to the point that you hold off on something way longer than you ever expected.
Anyways, I attended 13 (estimated) graduation parties this summer in what some people might think is insane or in a basic summary from what I’ve heard of my friends “It’s nice going to 2 or 3 but any more than that would be repetitive and torturous”. My thought going into the summer was “I’m going to look for a job and look for places to move to in Marshfield while going on a goodbye tour with friends via graduation parties that I could attend with my schedule”. Well, when you lose focus and (admittedly) get lazy on the whole “having an occupation” goal, your schedule gets a whole lot more open than you would expect.
Every weekend seemed to contain at least one graduation party, and I planned on attending at the very minimum 1 per day on events I was invited to. This plan was immediately smashed into pieces once I got so tired from all the sitting around of graduation day that I went straight home and took a nap (The beginning of my summer of slacking). I also suffered from the flu for a week in late June and would like to take this chance to apologize to those who held grad parties on the 22nd and 23rd of June as I would‘ve loved to have attended but simply could not stand for longer than three minutes thanks to a bad case of influenza.
You may be asking yourself at this point, so what? Why are you writing about this and why should I care? Answer: As many awkward moments of talking to random family members of friends I didn’t know too well occurred, there were even more occurrences of me discovering friend’s incredibly different backgrounds and meeting new people and growing bonds stronger than I thought possible with the most unexpected people. If I could recommend something to any of the graduating class this year, it would be the following…
Arrange something crazy and fun for your class to do on the last day
And
Go to as many graduation parties as you possibly can THAT you’re invited to, of course (Going to anything uninvited is creepy, awkward, and potentially illegal in some drastic cases).
This was easily, the best summer of my lifetime so far and it didn’t involve as much reminiscing as it did new memories to be made. I walked away from this Summer with a whole new landscape of people whom I call friends, whether that happened because of my being a social chameleon who gets along with everybody or because I’m just THAT awesome of a personality that everybody loves, it doesn’t matter. What matters is these are the memories we’ll be talking about ten years down the road at a class reunion or reminiscing upon once we run into each other at a bar. It is the best of times, It is the golden years, It’s something unpredictable, but in the end is right. I hope you had the time of your life.
(I stole that last bit from Green Day)
Next piece of business, I also attended the perfect event to wrap up my summer, The final (for now) Social Dregs/Modern Day Sellouts concert. All the classics from both bands previous concerts were dug up along with a few new song choices. All of the show was great but the final song choice was quite possibly the defining moment of my summer. Never before had Social Dregs tried covering MGMT’s “Kids” and when they announced that it was their final song of the night, I knew it was the perfect selection, not only because of my love for MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular album but because of the meaning behind that song and all the possible emotions it can bring out from the listener just by hearing it. It’s the perfect song from my middle-school years as it describes childhood and growing up and within that message and the tone of the song, could bring out happiness, sadness, and the need to get up and headbang even though it’s not a heavy rock song. It’s right up there with LCD Sound system’s “Someone Great” as the perfect emotions song. Thank you guys from both bands, for making that an awesome night of catching up with old friends and just overall, having a good time.
At the aforementioned concert, I acquired the Modern Day Sellouts album and since one of my favorite things to do recently is review albums (with no personal filter on twitter) that I listen to on Spotify, here’s a review of “Park The Car In Harvard Yard” by Modern Day Sellouts…
Click this to hear the album for yourself
First: I love the title of this album, it is perfection in every way.
Second: The title of every song is perfection, the casual buyer will look at the songs and go “Ooh! This looks interesting/fun” smart move on MDS’s part.
Track #1 “I’m A Vampire? I’m A Vampire!”: The song begins perfectly with a clip of Nicholas Cage screaming about his possible vampirism and breaks straight into a really good guitar riff to introduce a song. At 0:57 in, we hear voices. The voices of singer Ben Hogue, Mitch Ewald, and Alex Neeb. While the vocals don’t quite match up perfectly with the great backing music, it’s passable and the lyrics written combined with the back-up music make this song a solid 4/5 star track.
Track #2 “You’re Medicine, Jack”: This begins in a very much upbeat and fun mood. It’s difficult to understand the lyrics in the very beginning of this one as the drumming takes a lot of energy from Ben Hogue but overall, it’s danceable and upbeat and with some editing on the volume of Ben’s mic, could really be an elite MDS song. Overall, a 4/5. NOTE: I don’t do decimals like 4.5.
Track #3 “John Stamos”: I’ve never seen full house and therefore, don’t quite understand the cult appeal of John Stamos but I did watch him on ER and FUN STORYTIME!!!!: I saw him many years ago as a replacement member of The Beach Boys in concert at the Marshfield fair in one of the stranger and more unexpected moments of my life. On to the song, quiet voices? Angry voices? Is Ben in a fish tank? This intro is bizarre. WHAM! Loud voices! Ben begins yelling at me and I don’t like it at first but then realize it’s just music, not real life, so I adjust to it and it takes a few listens for the song to grow on you but you can tell that the band really worked long and hard on this song’s creation. The five minutes and fifty-three seconds are worth it in the end as there is some “Icky Thump”-type guitar playing near the middle of the song. The song is not a stand out for me which is a problem considering the album is only 27 minutes and this song takes up six minutes of the album but it would work on a longer album. 3/5 stars
Track #4 “Bolivian Chainsaw (ft. Magic Jeff)”: SPOILER ALERT: Magic Jeff is Alex Polivka in a wig. I know, how dare I ruin that for everyone. “Bolivian Chainsaw” begins with the volume on Ben Hogue perfect as he asks “What you doin’ to me?” to the female character the song is based on. Also a callback to the album title! “Park The Car In Harvard Yard” is brought up and placed at a point in the song where it makes sense. “Peaches” by The Presidents Of The United States Of America” is also mentioned in this fun song. An overall fun atmosphere is felt within the song and then at 2:50... OH DEAR GOD, WHAT THE HELL DIMENSION HAVE I STEPPED INTO!? To make a confusing situation simpler, it’s Magic Jeff (AKA: Alex Polivka in a wig with his voice modulated somehow) and I love that it switches up the album a little bit and catches the listener off guard. 4/5 (I was close to a 5 but I just can’t bring myself to do that, Magic Jeff knows what he did).
Track #5 “California Waiting”: I’ll admit it, I hadn’t heard this Kings Of Leon song until I heard the Modern Day Sellouts’ cover of the song and frankly, I don’t need to hear another version of this song. I still have yet to listen to “California Waiting” by Kings Of Leon, that’s how good MDS does this song. It’s actually even better in concert than it is on the album. I recommend seeing MDS in concert sometime if you can. 5/5
Track #6 “Wiz-Kid Floyd”: Hearing the beginning of this song, you expect some sort of mesh of Jimmy Eat World and the Foo Fighters. Once Ben begins singing, the song is automatically defined as a Modern Day Sellouts original which is something MDS does admirably in making songs that have their own individual influences but don’t quite sound like anything I’ve heard before. The song’s chorus here is the strongest on the album (Woah oh oh‘s always help. Just ask 2013 pop radio stations). There’s one problem with this song and that is one singer’s deep, off-beat “Oh oh‘s”. It distracts me throughout the song as a flaw. This eventually disappears but is the one thing that will stick in the listener’s brain no matter how many times they hear the song. The lyrics up to the “Woah Oh Oh’s” are also very nice on this song. 4/5.
Track #7 “Neeb’s Lullaby”: “Kids, I remember the day when Alex Neeb was in this band called Modern Day Sellouts and there was this song Neeb’s Lullaby that was just perfect.” The last song of “Park The Car In Harvard Yard” is a sad ending which makes it beautiful and perfect. The lyrics are excellent and Ben Hogue does his best job yet as lead singer when he‘s not focused on the drums. I’m being 100% honest when I say that I don’t know who might make it out of this band as a superstar but I think there’s truly a future in the music business for Alex Neeb. 5/5
-tears up, applauds self- I finally finished this.
Thank you for reading,
Andy Todd
No comments:
Post a Comment