The Good Ol’ Days: Part III
I remember a time, not too long ago, when my friends and I used to pile into giant vans with ten other people, a band and equipment and just went to shows around the southeast. We didn’t stop to pee or stretch, we just rode out to the venues to check in, see and support our friends. My eighteenth birthday was just like that, but with a smaller group and a shorter ride.
I was with some of my closest friends and Shoot the Bull. We were all angry at their drummer for flaking on the day of the show for the last time. We loaded the cars and headed up to Swayze’s in Marietta. We helped load-in at the venue and then went to B-Dubs for some food. While I was in the bathroom, trapped on the throne, Arch, the founder of the Gravedigger, the bassist of Shoot the Bull Marc, and a good friend of mine, Eric "Morton Salt" Tippett, burst into the bathroom and began singing ‘Happy Birthday’ as loud as they could. I had the pleasure of walking out of the bathroom to see an entire restaurant staring at me. I didn’t care. I was with my friends, I had just turned eighteen and I was about to watch some good bands throw down.
The Good Ol’ Days, Part II
Tell me if you remember this: it’s Friday night and you are getting ready for a concert; hit the shower, throw on your favorite band tee, your concert-going Chucks, and make sure you’ve got ten bucks in your wallet plus some change for a couple energy drinks (you’re gonna need them in the mosh pit). You try your hardest to ignore the scene kids and the two-steppers as you make your way to the front and center stage as the first band starts to set up and repeat their “CHECK, CHECK!!” screams for the sound guy. The band starts playing and you can’t take your eyes off of the stage until the intensity builds up your adrenaline to where you can’t hold your rightfully deserved spot any longer. Your Red Bull starts kickin’ in and you feel like the crowd needs to move. You start the first mosh pit of the night. Elbows get thrown, bodies get flung, being pushed left and right as the music takes your breath away.
The Good Ol’ Days, Part I
I was talking to my sister the other day and she told me “tell them what it used to be like, don’t just tell them what is wrong with the scene, remind them of the good ol’ days.” I don’t want to do that. Mainly because I wasn’t there in the good ol’ days; I wasn’t around when underground music was a nation-wide thing, but I was in Atlanta in the mid 2000s, when all those emo bands you heard on Purevolume were still underground; when you could listen to My Chemical Romance and say “you’ll never hear this on MTV.” I wasn’t tight with Mastodon or Norma Jean or anything like that, but I did know a lot of kids, and went to a lot of local shows.
That was when people played to have fun, and going to see them was fun. We used to all pile up in our friend’s big van standing room only, but still kind of bent over because the van wasn’t big enough to really stand all the way up in and we drove all over town to The Rescued shows. Every show was an adventure, and it was so much fun.
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