Bomb the Music Industry! - “Syke! Life is Awesome!”

‘Cause if I wasn’t a fat kid in high school, I would have never listened to punk rock.
And if I knew how to throw a football, I would have never played any music.
And if never got my heart broken, I would sing “blah blah fucking nothing.”
And if you didn’t fuck my ex-girlfriend, I would still owe you three-thousand dollars.
And if I never lived in that van I wouldn’t have met Chris or Steve or James, Alex or Middagh.
And if I never worked in a basement I would have never quit my job.
And if I had a big emo band or dropped out of college, I would have never met you, man

I don’t really remember the first time I heard this song, but I know that it happened around this time of year back in 2005. It’s a song that’s stuck with me ever since, though. Musically, it’s everything that I love about BTMI!. It’s constantly changing, unafraid to do something different, loud and noisy and never too serious to make a joke (even if the joke just makes you want to cry). Lyrically, it’s a theme I’ve always appreciated. I have a lot of trouble trusting happy songs, but I imagine that so does Jeff Rosenstock, and I think that’s why I like this one so much.

The first time I saw Bomb the Music Industry!, it was September of 2007, and I was in Brooklyn for an Against Me! show. Despite that it was the first post-New Wave U.S. tour, it was probably the last chance I was ever going to get to see one of my favorite bands in a 500-person venue, so I was excited. Unfortunately, what ended up happening was the bouncer wouldn’t let Pilot and I into the show because we were drinking 40’s on the sidewalk outside the venue. We had heard earlier that BTMI! were playing just a couple of stops away on the L, so we sold our tickets to some kids who got sold out for thirty bucks, which we spent on more beer at the bodega. When we got there, it was like a revelation. I had been to a million house shows before that, but I hadn’t seen a single one in New york since I had moved up there. It was in the backyard of Sealab 187, there were $1 cans of King Cobra for sale in the back, and maybe 50 people there total. I got stupid drunk, and Sean McCabe didn’t try to punch me every time I tried to sing into his microphone, and after the show, I threw up on the L train, and Pilot left me on the floor in the subway station for like 20 minutes while she walked up to the street to find a McDonalds.

But If I had gotten what I really wanted that night, I never would have seen BTMI!, and who knows, maybe I still wouldn’t even have seen them by today, and that’s what this song is all about. Shitty things happen to everyone all the time, and you almost never get what you want out of life, but if the bad things didn’t happen, you’d miss out on a lot of the great things. The closing salvo to this song (quoted above) is one of the truest things I’ve ever heard. Being 23 and kind of hating everything and using my college degree to work in a retail job and being in a band that doesn’t make any money and having a drinking problem, it all sucks. I wouldn’t rather those things were different in my life, though. In a lot of ways, I’m a masochist, because i like doing things that are terrible for me so that i have something to write about, but I guess that’s the silver lining.

I’m Nick, and I’m going to be helming this blog for the next month. I hope you enjoy it. Happy November!