Confessions of a Fanboy

Among the odd jobs I held in college was working for an answering service, 3rd shift, weekends. I used to wake tow truck drivers up in the dead of night to get them to go rescue stranded motorists or — and this actually happened more often — impound vehicles of suspected drunk drivers. There were some doctors who were clients, including brain surgeons. Something about an irresponsible college student making dick being responsible for getting message to brain surgeons bothered me.

Anyway, I had this job back around ‘99-00, which means in the pre-iPod days. I didn’t have a laptop and they didn’t have free wi-fi. I had to just… sit there… and wait in case the phone rang. Sometimes my girlfriend — now TheWifeToWhomI’mMarried — would call and keep me company for stretches of the night. Sometimes I’d bring school work, but reading only made me more tired than I already was at 3 or 4 in the morning. Mostly what I did was listen to an alternative rock radio station out of Birmingham and pace the room, trying to stay awake.

It was around that time that Vertical Horizon’s Everything You Want record was released and, of course, the title track from that song went on to become a #1 hit. This particular station in Birmingham was all over this song a lot sooner than most. They had it in heavy rotation and it didn’t take long for me to get hooked on it. Both TheGirlfriendToWhomI’mNowMarried and I really dug that song, and over the next two years she and I would see them in concert 4 times and collect the previous albums they recorded back in their indie days. When we first started dating, we had very different taste in music. She had a small collection of CDs and I hated all of them. Music was also a prism through which she learned a lot about me. She got to see me at my happiest and most excited when I’d stumble on to a great CD or song. She got to witness my tyrannical tendencies when she even considered changing the radio station or putting one of her CDs in when we were driving. She watched me deplete my meager funds and, if memory serves, might have made a crack about me having to work third shift at answering services to keep up my CD habit.

As I sit here and reflect on those times, I wonder if we didn’t like the band just a little bit more because they were someone we discovered “together.” For me, it was another new band to rave on about, but it was one she’d actually listen to without rolling her eyes or scrunching her face in disapproval. For her, it was a ticket into my world. I don’t know if the music aged poorly or if I just moved on because neither of us listen to them much anymore. Even now, I’m not sure if I like the music on its own merits or if this is all a pleasant nostalgia trip back to a different time in our lives. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Filed under: Music of the Moment