There is Hope, and You're the Proof

Had it gone the way I thought it would, there wouldn't be much in the way of year-end wrap-up.

Part of that is simply energy-based. For the better part of a week, illnesses ran through my household like a madman: first my daughters, then COVID-19 for myself and my wife. I won't belabor this point too much, but I saw eyebrowed tech dorkus Sam Altman slink onto Jim Fallon's Tonight Show set to talk about how he couldn't imagine raising his newborn without the wasteful "artificial intelligence" service ChatGPT. Well, we tended to sick 21-month-old twins in masks until they were healthy enough to return to daycare, keeping our distance and even sleeping in separate rooms to slow the spread as best we could—and we didn't so much as ask Siri anything. I don't even think we should have a billion dollars (no one should), but parenting while communicably sick yourself should net you at least $200,000, easy.

Anyway, there wasn't much of a plan to say anything about the year in culture from me because it didn't feel right. My extracurricular writing impulse has been at a low ebb for awhile; working freelance and part-time gigs for the last two years and the constant trying and failing to garner any substantially consistent employment in the behind-the-scenes areas of creative fields I used to be a part of has taken a toll. To be frank, at nearly 40, I'm on the brink of a personal crisis: is this something I want to do, still? Must I keep trying to prove myself to a managerial class who doesn't have the time of day for me and my 15-plus years of experience? Is it time to really find something "serious" outside of arts for the sake of my family, in a time of widespread underemployment and—let's face it—common hostility for the basic values I think should be part of a workplace or career?

These were all thoughts that sat with me Saturday night, when, after enough negative COVID tests throughout the week and much healthier children nestled in their cribs, I left the apartment meaningfully for the first time in eight days to see No Jersey play the first show since releasing their debut full-length MONDO COOL! (Telegraph Hill). No Jersey, as the title of their 2022 EP announced, is a band from New York City: rhythm guitarist Sam Paxton and bassist Dylan Roth are the singers and primary songwriters, Roth's childhood friend Julian Ames plays drums, and lead guitarist Henry Luzzatto rounds out the group (joining largely after the album was tracked, if I'm not mistaken).

Paxton, Roth and Ames have all played together for nearly a decade, working in a previous band together; there and here, they make cutting, punky power-pop influenced by everything from Green Day, Weezer and Blink-182 to PUP, The Menzingers, and Joyce Manor. They are also, crucially, some of the first friends I made in the year or so leading to my own move to New York more than a decade ago. (Roth's father ran my favorite record store in all of my native New Jersey—and I'm incredibly lucky to have my pick.)

With this in mind, my adoration for MONDO COOL! may be incredibly biased. When I hear songs like Roth's soaring socialist love song "You and Me and the Means of Production" or "Song for Shrimpie," a wish for his then-unborn son to not make the same geeky mistakes he felt he made in his youth, I know where they come from. Ditto Paxton's slacker anthem "Mexican Coke" or meditation on millennial aging "The Good Part" ("I'm too anxious to stress / I'm too cool to be chill / If the world doesn't kill me, then the planet sure will"). But here's the thing: even if I didn't know these guys, the songs would still haul some serious ass. They're thoughtful and tuneful, and MONDO COOL! has an effortlessness that belies the time spent hammering it into shape.

It's one thing for the songs that save your life to come from people you admire. It's another thing for them to come from a guy who you once sent a text about going to a party from Brooklyn to Queens in which "BK" was jokingly read as "Burger King," and several bits later, you show up to the party with a Whopper in a bag. Or from a guy who once put his whole day on hold just to hang out with you and your kids, just because you needed to see a friendly face. Or a guy who lights up the room whenever you see him at a bar with friends, whose cutting humor is as steady as his backbeats. But that's just the truth!

People come into your life in moments you don't expect, when you're a weird, misshapen piece of clay trying to figure out the answers. You make mistakes. You hurt people by accident. People hurt you by accident. You worry to excess about what people are thinking about you. You hold on to community like hell, because it's what everyone wants. You drift apart. You come back together. You find the right people. You find the right person. You get knocked down just before you set foot on the highest part of the mountain. Time, the annihilator, is always at your back foot. You whisper your wishes into the cold nights and wonder if your tap-dancing hard enough will make them come true. You may not get to write a book, but the "aaaaooo" one daughter makes when she hugs you and the way your other daughter's cackle makes her curls bounce is better than any manuscript you could turn in.

In No Jersey's last iteration, they built a great community of like-minded bands and local talent during the COVID-19 pandemic, playing videos and their own comedy sketches through Twitch streams that felt like old-school MTV. Everyone joined group chats to praise their pals. I pre-taped bits as a Max Headroom-style host called "The Gotta Have It Guy." (Don't ask. Not now.) My Bandcamp cart grew. Some of my favorite acts are ones I discovered on these streams. Nothing lasts forever, but I miss it. That's time for you, though.

Hearing these talented folks play these thrilling songs, elbow-to-elbow with other friends you haven't seen in a bit and wish you had a good reason why, was not unlike the head rush of those heady days. It's enough to make you think about the muse you chase, wrangle some thoughts into formation, impress on your readership to check out this music that moves you so—and rest up, because maybe this journey is still going places.