Friday, June 10, 2011, 1:25 am
Failure by design*
The other night I had to wipe all the music from my iPod in order to restore it to working order, so I was sorting through and listening to all kids of pop-punk (for good or ill) I hadn’t heard in a while.
Hearing Fall Out Boy always takes me back to the period circa the 11th grade and the day we got our hands on “Take This to Your Grave.” Our band was playing a show in Tampa (our last show, it would turn out) and we stopped at a mall over there beforehand to kill time, as we were wont to do whether in Tampa or at home in Daytona. Acting a fool in malls was a time-honored tradition by then. So, naturally, we went into the Hot Topic store to make fun of the ridiculous products and people you’re guaranteed to find in one.
The store, at least back then, did have the redeeming quality of carrying relatively good music more up our alley, and this store had the new Fall Out Boy album. The band didn’t have much of a name by then, but it had come through Daytona not long before and everyone raved about the show (I missed it for some reason). Anyway, for my money, that was one of the best pop-punk albums to ever come out of that post-blink-182 definition of pop-punk. And, regardless of how douchey Pete Wentz has become, I dig those songs.
Listening to them the other night sparked something else from that time: staying up way too late working on Web design stuff. In those days, a friend and I had a website about the Florida scene that we never got off the ground, and we were always working on sites for our friends’ (or our own) bands.
So I started experimenting with a new design for this blog, drinking too much Gatorade for the late hour (the drink of choice used to be Mountain Dew — or Dewski in our parlance) and getting too little sleep. But I was inspired, and I like where I’m heading — a much better-flowing page and a more stripped-down, Tumblr-like layout. It took forever, though, to figure out how to get a footer to work in the design. I think I finally have it figured out, and I’m hoping to switch over soon.
Like it matters. What does matter is what the music I’m listening to these days (End of a Year, The Mountain Goats, etc.) will trigger in the years to come.
*A reference to the Brand New song.
Ugh, RECORD IS SO GOOD!