Beach Slang

Punks in a Disco Bar

Beach Slang – Punks in a Disco Bar

The thing about taking time off is that it’s so hard to get back into the swing of things once you return to your regular every day. We took a vacation to visit my mother-in-law right after school ended in mid-June and I feel like I’ve been catching up ever since.

We don’t have internet access at my mother-in-law’s place and that’s actually a nice break in some ways. Getting away from the US political scene was especially relaxing. I had every intention to use the couple of days I took off after we returned from Europe to do some stuff around the house and figured I could ease my way back into my usual habits. But the never ending string of bad news sidelined me. I got swept up trying to follow all of the latest shifts and turns in the Brexit fiasco, our own election debacle, then all the tragedies happening every day, too many to even recount. In such a landscape, it felt frivolous to spend time writing about music.

This past Monday, however, was my long-awaited to chance to see Beach Slang. The band hasn’t been together all that long but it’s been a bit rocky here and there and I didn’t want to risk missing them. The way 2016 has been going, I feel like going to see bands play live has taken on a new urgency. Not just because we’re losing legends at an alarming rate but also because there are so few moments lately that help to remind me that it’s not all gloom and doom.

We were a small crowd relegated to the small bar at the back of the venue but the band didn’t let that stop them from delivering a great, loud, boisterous set. It was just what I needed. I left the club feeling happy, actually happy, for the first time in what seemed like weeks. I think it’s safe to say that we’re in for many more miserable days before this year is over so I am going to take the good ones when I can get them.

Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas

Beach Slang – Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas

Thanks to a random retweet I caught today, I have been checking out Beach Slang. I love the title of their forthcoming album, The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us. Pretty great.

The other day This Is My Jam, a music site I took part in, announced that it would be closing up shop. I first got the word from a Facebook post that a friend made, a friend I know from another music site that folded a year or two earlier (sniff! R.I.P. Turntable.fm). And I found that site through a friend I’d made on another music site that’s still in existence but a shell of its former self.

A lot of my friends aren’t really into music. I have a hard time understanding how they can have such a passive relationship with music and they have a hard time understanding why I get so excited about it. We have other things in common and they’re nice people that I like a lot. But there’s something about people who get the same high from music that I do. It’s how it makes us feel, or maybe it’s more accurate to say, it’s how the music expresses what we feel. The thing is already there. Music just gives it shape. When words aren’t enough, that’s where music comes in and fills those holes.

The things I do to find people who feel like I do? I go to shows by myself, I hang out on music sites with unstable futures, I follow total strangers on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. I write about how my life has been influenced by music in hopes that other people who have that same passion will recognize me as coming from the same place and say hello.