I used to write song lyrics in the love letters I would write to my girlfriend senior year of high school.
The lyrics were never anything really important, they were from something like Blink 182's "Going Away To College," but I thought I was poet laureate of Northeast Philadelphia.
I miss doing that. But even if I had a girlfriend right now, I wouldn't write song lyrics -- especially something from Blink 182 -- in a note. Actually, now I don't even have the money to send a note.
I miss listening to bands like The Ataris and thinking that the lyrics were really important. I miss the short time when pop-punk was just about to blow up, and I was in on it early.
The Starting Line fills that void in my life quite nicely. They remind me of high school even more than the actual bands I listened to at the time.
Why? Well, let's compare me and The Starting Line.
The Starting Line: They met because of one of the band member's AOL profiles, they're from suburban Philadelphia and they have lyrics like "We got older/ But we're still young/ We never grew out of this feeling that we won't give up."
Me: My girlfriend and I used to change our AOL profiles every day ("Marital Status: Never Let You Go"), I went to high school in suburban Philadelphia and, well,
I probably wrote a similar ballad my senior year.
The Starting Line are not a great band. They're not even a good band. But they bring me back to a time when reality TV was avoidable, when Dave Grohl wasn't in every fifth band and when the Eagles didn't toy with my emotions and instead just sucked the entire year.
I think I'm going to cry.
-- Daniel McQuade
