Foolish

Thursday night I went to see Superchunk play their 1994 album "Foolish" in its entirety in an acoustic set in a synagogue that has been converted to a concert venue (Murmrr Theater in Brooklyn) to mark the 25th anniversary of the release.  Foolish is arguably (sometimes I argue with myself) the greatest Superchunk album, and Superchunk is my favorite band of all-time so unsurprisingly, it was a magical performance, good enough to get me to blog after six months of ignoring my website (sorry!).  Mac and Jim Wilbur made several jokes about the quality of the lyrics and/or songs themselves on the latter part of the album and admittedly the songs at the end are not as good as the openers "The First Part" or "Driveway to Driveway" but those are among my favorite songs by any band ever so it's understandable.  And there is a wonderful nostalgia to hearing the album in its entirety, a reminder of a time 25 years ago when I was just discovering a band that would take its place not only among my favorite bands but as THE favorite of all time and it's an amazing feeling - to live with something that long and still be in love and get to experience that kind of joy all over again live.  Thank you, Superchunk.

Superchunk came into my life in a transition period for me (read, a really rough time).  I had just graduated college (Go Orange!) and was living (oddly for a Syracuse grad :) in Piscataway, NJ, right next to Rutgers.  My old college friends had begun to drift away and my job was boring and lame and draining as fuck and I was living alone for the first time in my life, a perfect time for loneliness and depression to drift in, particularly for someone coming to terms with their sexuality for the first time at a time (mid 90s) when that was far from acceptable in the worlds that I was living in.  And then I happened to catch "Hyper Enough" by a band called Superchunk on a channel called "MTV" which played music videos back in that ancient time 25 years ago, videos even by underground indie rock acts from Chapel Hill, NC, called Superchunk.  And I fell in love.  

"Hyper Enough" was off their 5th album, "Here's Where the Strings Come In," the 1995 followup to "Foolish" and it became my favorite album of that year.  Unfortunately because of the depression that wracked me in Piscataway and later after an unfortunate move further from civilization to Plainsboro NJ because that's the way to meet gay people, not to move closer to NYC (damn I was dumb)... but because of all that, "Strings" is an album filled with wonderful songs but when I listen to certain tracks ("Sunshine State" for some reason) they bring back these unfortunate memories, while the rest of the Superchunk catalog does not.  I picked up Foolish in that same Piscataway apartment (there were things back then called "CD"s and you would physically buy them and put them on "CD players" to listen to music and damn this post is making me feel old).  And that album led me to a 25 year fascination/appreciation with Mac, Laura, Wilbur, and Jon Wurster, the greatest band that ever lived.  A couple years later, in South Brunswick NJ, I wrote an entire novel ("Crash Site") that featured Superchunk song titles as chapter titles (fortunately that novel will never be released because it's really depressing and I'm fairly certain not any good).  But long story short, some nostalgia is good, some is really frightening, but looking back it all kind of blends together and much like Mac shuddering at some of the lyrics his 25 year old self wrote, I shudder at the writing I did back then, the thoughts I had at the time, but now on the other side (living across from NYC and in a 7-year relationship with a wonderful guy) it all kind of gets turned into positive memories that you don't want to relive but you don't want to forget.

I STILL HAVE BRIARS IN MY CLOTHES
AND DID I LAY YOU DOWN IN THOSE?
THE NAMES ON THE STONES WERE ALL ERASED
​AND I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU THAT I HAD CHASED...
​DRIVEWAY TO DRIVEWAY DRUNK.
WELL I DON'T REMEMBER THIS TOO WELL.
I'M GLAD I HAVE THE SCRAPES TO PROVE.
PROVE IT WAS ME WHO FELL.
BUT THE NAMES WERE ALL REMOVED, AND THE NAMES WERE ALL ERASED.