No one band is my life

While currently I am focusing on improving me, the long reading list started as a way of being better at helping the young people I was encountering. The ones who befriended me first did it because I liked their bands.

They loved those bands, plus others that I had never heard of before, and at a deeper level than I did, even as someone who has written hundreds of pages inspired by some of those bands. Reading Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michale Azerrad, seemed like an obvious fit.

It didn't go how I thought it would, but how often does it?

This book focused very much on specific bands, and I didn't like most of them that much. It made me happy that Sub Pop Records exists, but the biggest benefit was that it filled in some of the missing pieces in a different book I had read, Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo by Andy Greenwald. (That was valuable, but there will also be a lot of writing about that book eventually.)

"Our band could be your life" comes from a Minutemen song, "History Lesson Part 2". The lesson is the history of that band, and an important part of that history is the effect that other musicians (primarily seminal punk musicians) had on them. The song doesn't develop the thought that much, but I believe the point is that they want to have the same inspirational effect on someone else. They have, even if not on me.

For an understanding of music history, the book was really helpful. For an understanding of sad teens who love music, it wasn't particularly helpful, but I kind of did already know that part, and I learned more about it on my own.

I saw the movie Inside Out fairly recently. Inside Riley, Joy has learned the value of Disgust, Anger, and Fear, but still does not see the point of Sadness, which she learns throughout the course of the film. When you see Riley's parents' minds, all of the feelings are working together pretty harmoniously, having figured that out.

The adolescent developing brain has really intense emotions, and not enough life experience to have full perspective on them. When a song touches our feelings on an emotional level, that is huge.

We don't necessarily lose that in adulthood, but we usually get a lot more responsibility. That occupies our time and our mental energy, but that also often comes with some gratification. Ideally, we are doing things that matter. That's something we don't give teenagers often enough.

I just finished a book unrelated to the list, but one of the coauthors was the driving force behind Model United Nations for our school, and for many other extracurricular activities that helped participants understand the world better. I know I didn't appreciate it enough at the time, but also, I was working a lot of hours and doing a lot of other activities. Together they did enrich my life and keep me going at a time when I needed it.

(That book was Unfettered: A Philosophy of Education by James B. Barlow and Anil B. Naik.)

I still love music, and studying it and writing about it has been an enjoyable part of my life. The next post will be more about that. I am glad for the connections I have made.

I also wish many activities and responsibilities and discovery of abilities for friends, hopefully sooner rather than later. The creative artists who give us emotional boosts are important, but the listeners are important too. They also have something to give. The sooner they learn that, the better.