we’re gonna build something…

Life has a very funny way of getting in the way of people living their lives. “It’s all part of living, even the bad parts,” we think, but all of these distractions often keep us from doing the things we really want to do. Now is a strange time to be a person. There are the everyday things in life that you deal with on a singular level: maybe you’re sick or you’re unloved or you’re not really sure where your life is headed. And then there’s the world around us: the economy is eleventy kinds of fucked, the race for president doesn’t really seem to bode well no matter the outcome, and we’re still doing a fairly decent job of making sure that the earth won’t be around for us to care about our grandchildren’s financial futures anyway.

It seems a bit bleak, when you think about it.

In all of that, there’s this little admission: I listen to Stay Positive every day.

This used to freak me out some, but now it’s a comfort; even the things that make me cringe about it are comforting, like the moment you realize that even the most gentlemanly of your guy friends will spit on the sidewalk now and again. It’s a comfort both on that personal level and on the national one, where if everything seems weird and wacky and out of place, we have to remember that that’s because things have always been that way. These bizarre characters that I can’t stop thinking about, Charlemagne and Holly and the like, are all watching as life gets in the way of living itself. Through it all, the working man’s theme: “We gotta stay positive.”

What scares me most about times like these is that the right kind of music has always and will always pop up when we need it. This is a record that is so damaged in itself, and yet so hopeful, that it makes perfect listening for the fall of 2008. What worries me about that is something that’s yet another favorite Hold Steady topic: the scene has changed.

Are we still smart enough in these times to be able to reach for our favorite records as an answer? Will we understand that now more than ever, we need to be able to spend the little money we have on songs that sound important and shows that bring us together and a sense of unity that we have forgotten because we have some paltry excuses about having grown up and gotten too old?

Normally, I’d say my answer to that question is no, but every day there’s some dude singing in my ear about how we gotta stay positive.

~ by 365holdsteady on October 20, 2008.