Taking Inventory

They don’t warn you when you’re a cynical young bastard that some day you’ll be a sentimental old bastard, that the disdain for sentiment you wear as a shield will someday crumble and you’ll be capable of weeping at an unbidden memory, of feeling love for forgotten clothing or hair styles, of nostalgia for how women used to do their makeup. It isn’t about not changing or the illusion that things were better in the past – it’s the overwhelming memory of what your world was like when you were young, and the knowledge that time is, relatively, short.

Maybe they do warn you. A line from Mel Brooks, a toss-away in one of his 1000 Year Old Man bits, has always stuck with me: “We mock the things we are to become.” I always feared its truth, and now here I am.

I was, after all, a believer in progress, in improvement, in continual growth. I still am. (Of course, I needed to be, since so much went unlearned in my youth. Simple things like swimming lessons were a bridge too far for my family.) And being brought up not to have, certainly not to show, and for god’s sake never to talk about, any feelings, looking back always seemed like a weakness. So in my younger days I thought that looking back at the past with too much fondness was sad, even a little pathetic, because one should be trying to live one’s best life now, not 20 years ago. (There’s huge irony in this, yes, as I have always been fascinated by local history.)

But now I can say that I didn’t actually appreciate what sentimentality was, and wouldn’t have been able to understand it. It’s tenderness, it’s love, it’s opening up and allowing some part of your former self to come back for a minute, and yes, sometimes it can be overwhelming; it can make you stop for a moment, and let the wave wash over you.

There have been several waves of sentimentality lately, all tied to a foundation of my early adulthood, and it’s as much about me as it is about my life with the woman who became my wife, and the very building blocks of how we related to each other, the things we did together, the amazing experiences we had together in those early years. Things are reminding me of our common experiences, and how far back they go, and hitting me hard. Things as simple as Instagram posts of teens in the ’70s – looking at the fashions and recognizing ourselves in them – these are things that are filling me with reflection. Music is another – not the general popular music of the day, but specifically the music we heard as late teens, early 20s kids in Syracuse.

In a way this relates to the constant growth – after a lifetime of wanting to, I have finally become some kind of musician, and as a result I am always looking for songs I can (and want to) sing. For decades, one of my prized possessions was a self-released cassette tape by Syracuse band My Sin. Unfortunately lo-fi as the times dictated, recorded on a Tascam in someone’s living room, it nevertheless captured the amazing energy of one of our favorite bands and preserved the memories of some great songs.

One of those songs, an all-time favorite, is “Manifest Destiny,” with the epic line “I believe in love instead of manifest destiny.” You can’t go wrong with a lyric like that. And so I wanted to play it, was able (with help from Chordify) to work out the chords, but, despite the help of having multiple versions available (their producer/engineer posted a heap of their recordings for all to hear – you can find it here), there was a particular lyric that just escaped me, and I couldn’t figure out what to do at that point in the song. I thought of reaching out – there was an email link, old though it may have been – and just asking. A friend reinforced the idea, so I did, and thought this request would just go into the black hole of the internet. However! In just a few hours I got back a wonderful email from the keeper of the site, not only filling in the lyric but explaining how he always had to remind the singer to enunciate when recording.

He also sent me a YouTube link that I had failed to run across, from a 2014 reunion of Syracuse bands from that era, which featured Maura Kennedy (of The Kennedys) doing an amazing performance of “Manifest Destiny,” backed by Gary Frenay and Artie Lenin of The Flashcubes and Screen Test – and boy, did this rendition capture some of that energy we used to experience back in ’79, ’80, ’81, when the music was so FUN. Give a listen:

Watching that really hit me in the feels, as the kids say.

And then, just a week or so after that exchange, THE band of the day, The Flashcubes, put out an epic release.

It’s likely that in every city, in every music scene, in every era, there’s a band that you’re just sure is going to break big. In Syracuse, at that time, it was The Flashcubes. They were so good, had such great energy, such fun songwriting, and always put on such a great show. They ran with other bands that did “make it,” and if the right gatekeeper had given them the blessing, they’d be a household name. Among power pop fans nationally, they really do hold a certain legendary status to this day. And though they didn’t break big, they’re still working musicians, which is very cool.

The recordings they put out back then were good, but done locally at a time when quality recording was really the province of studios and bands with serious financial backing, and as much as I love their official releases (all singles and, after they became Screen Test, an EP), they don’t really capture what seeing this band was like.

A little while back, their Facebook page (because they are all still active in the music scene, which is great) announced that they would be releasing a recording made live at the Firebarn in May 1979. That was almost precisely the moment when I discovered The Flashcubes, probably at a show at the legendary Jabberwocky, a venue I could spend a week writing about. I don’t think I had yet ventured to the Firebarn when this show took place, but it wasn’t long after that I discovered it and it quickly became my second favorite venue in the city. So, weren’t at this particular show, but we were at shows that were essentially exactly this show. The CD came out this week, and I got a digital copy through iTunes, and . . .

I am really feeling that nostalgic wave. Because this is REALLY what it was like to be 19, to go out and bop all night to these incredible bands, dancing all night with my wonderful girlfriend, to have not a real care in the world. The calories we would burn on that dance floor! When the Jab would finally empty out and we’d spill out into the cool night air, there’d be a trek down the hill to Zorba’s, a sandwich shop that was yes, quite open at 2 AM, and get the most incredible turkey sandwich ever, oven-roasted and with an insanely tasty sauce, and we’d tackle half of it before going to sleep . . . then wake up the next morning at the crack of noon and go do it again. We knew how lucky we were to be part of that whole scene, to have the ability to chase our favorite bands around town and just have the time of our lives.

I’m stunned by the selections on this set, because it’s pretty much an ideal Flashcubes set. Their great raving originals are mixed with covers that were so fun, and really defined what I wanted to hear. If they didn’t do “I Wanna Be With You,” they would do “When You Walk In The Room.” If they didn’t close with “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” they’d close with “Money (That’s What I Want),” to which my roommate Danny and I would dance and scream like madmen.

Listening to this record – the natural arc of a show, the progression as, really, they just get tighter and tighter, and the whole thing winds up to that exciting crescendo – it just makes me so in love with who we were, how we were, what we got to do. It was a very sweet little life, and I got to share it with the best person I’ve ever known. I’m so lucky that I’m still with someone who was there then, someone who gets it, who knows what it was like. And that feeling – that love for who we were – that’s sentimentality. It’s having tenderness for my young self, our young selves – an overwhelming affection.

Life did get complicated, as life does. I still beat myself up over choices made decades ago, over allowing myself to go down certain paths, over doing things that hurt others and presented me as way less than my best self. But hearing this amazing moment in time, I’m reminded that, in addition to everything else, we were dumb goofy kids having fun. And what fun we had. Deepest thanks to the bands that were part of that, and particularly The Flashcubes for finding this wonderful old tape and getting it out into the world.