Oh my god, this has been the Longest. Week. Ever. EVER. I think that these shorter days are making me feel really rushed and perhaps kinda bummed out. Thankfully, today has been creeping towards awesome and I'm feeling amped on the weekend. So what do I do this evening to really shake this hellish week? This might sound crazy, but I started with a run. I live in a nice neighborhood and it's all fall-y and pretty and good people are out walking their dogs and being polite and smiling. I'm glad they're my neighbors, ya know? Community. Sure, it might be lame, but exercise makes me happy and is a great way to either boost me up for getting bad or digging me out of hungover self-pity.
But I'm not writing about the exercise; I'm writing about what I listened to while exercising: The Gaslight Anthem. My brother got me into this band about a month ago, and holy shit, where have they been all my life?! It's so awesome! It's like if The Boss and The Hold Steady had a rock and roll baby, and The Old 97s and maybe Small Brown Bike and the cast of The Outsiders were the sometimes-present older cousins from out of town.
The Gaslight Anthem is super artful, fist-pump-inspiring rock about the people and Jersey and booze and getting into trouble and old-timey items described in modern ways. My fave song is the title track, '59 Sound, with the simple (but so applicable to my blog) chorus: "young boys, young girls ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night." Repeat several times and it only becomes more rad.
It would seem like a young-ish band with such a clear Springsteen influence would be destined for contrived lameness, but that isn't the case here. It just fucking rules. And much like my fave band, The HS, this album, much like my little jogs, works equally well for getting ready to live hard and trying to want to live again.
And unrelated but hilarious to me: when I was copying the myspace link, their songs started up, meanwhile my iTunes had moved onto George Harrison's "I've got my mind set on you," so it became an accidentally awesome mash-up. Just sayin'.
Have fun tonight, guys! FRIDAY WOOOO!!!
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