Constant Tinkerer V2.0

Written on Monday, September 23rd – took a few months to edit this one!

I’m sitting here in my hotel room holding my face in my hands, hot, salty tears running down my cheeks! You see, I’m in San Francisco for a work conference and yet I’m…sobbing? What?

By way of background I work for a computer company at this point, I’m nowhere near working for the music industry like I thought I’d be in college in 2008 or even earlier when I was playing all of those shows in high school with my ska band. And in fact this is one of the craziest incarnations of coming to San Fran for a work conference yet, because on Wednesday, I’m heading to Toronto for another conference work is sending me to, then spending the weekend there with my lovely wife and dog. So it’s going to be a week.

But I just came from August Hall a few blocks away and saw the most amazing concert. After arriving in town and scanning the apps to see what shows were playing while I’m here for work, I happened to come across the farewell tour of one of my favorite bands from growing up in high school and college happening this very 2nd evening of my work trip: TOKYO POLICE CLUB! Not only that, but the opener is yet another band that was on so many high school and college mix CDs: Born Ruffians!

I came over to the venue from our work taco dinner in the Mission 2 or 3 songs into the Born Ruffians set. Immediately they launched into some songs I knew like Little Garçon (so beautiful!) and Hummingbird (so energetic!) 

Suddenly, the memories came flooding back: I was a freshmen at NYU’s 3rd North dorm, a little garçon myself, listening to these new-to-me indie rock bands with my friends at NYU. I found myself transported back to Hoboken, New Jersey with my classmates Ian Devaney (now of Nation of Language fame) and Jen Lewis (now of Buzzfeed/chef’s kiss emoji creator/creative director fame), going to a tiny club across the river to see this little-known band from Toronto called Tokyo Police Club on the PATH train. I was already a big fan at the time, having stenciled their name onto my custom Vans with spray paint. 

After the show that night in Hoboken all of those years ago, which was awesome, we actually got to hang out with Tokyo Police Club for a bit as they loaded up the tour bus! Ian had played a show or two with these guys before or just knew them from wherever, I can’t remember. I got them to sign the Vans! I still have that pair of shoes somewhere – one side signed by Tally Hall, another favorite band of my youth, the other by Tokyo Police Club. I wore that pair until I’d completely worn it out.

“Thaaaaaat’s two-thoooouuu-sand-and-nine…”

as the band says in Citizens of Tomorrow, but we’re back here in 2024. I’m at August Hall in SF, Born Ruffians just wrapped up an awesome set, and TPC is about to go on. It’s a little after 9pm.

The set started off kinda slow with some songs from their newer albums – sorry guys, but I was waiting for my “Elephant Shell” and “A Lesson in Crime!” But things rapidly accelerated when 2 or 3 songs in, Dave Monks said “now we’re going to play some songs from Elephant Shell”! Sweet!

“Centennial” came rushing in with “Graves” following shortly after! A few more songs from that legendary album and we get to a beautiful acoustic set with a song that I had forgotten about for a while, but started tugging at my heart strings as Mr. Monks tugged at his guitar’s – “The Harrowing Adventures Of…” In retrospect, this is probably where the emotion started building, and I was really being pulled into the part of my brain where I’d been keeping all of these songs and lyrics, where I had stored…

The Harrowing Adventures Of….

….you and I, when we were captains of…

…submarines made of steel…

Think about it for a second. Re-read it. What a full story in so few words. So many of their songs have these really poignant little vignettes.

I glanced over after the acoustic set and saw a few folks standing there near the sound board that looked quite familiar. The sound engineer leans over to say hi to them and I realize it’s Born Ruffians! I get to say hello and say how excellent of a show they’d played. I mentioned to Maddy Wilde (keyboardist and guitarist of Born Ruffians) that I first became a fan in ~2008 after seeing them at the CMJ festival near NYU and I couldn’t believe I got to go to this show so many years later. It was so cool to realize the opening band was standing right next to me enjoying the set too!

After the acoustic set we get into a few more classic songs, “Citizens of Tomorrow”, “Be Good”, and others that just. rock. super. hard. The audience is loving it and eating up every bit. 

It seemed like at some point with “Cheer It On’ the show was over, since this is the eponymous TPC song (“when you’re standing there…TOKYO POLICE CLUB!”) but we got quite the encore!

Gerrymandering apparently makes me lose it

Argentina (Parts I, II, and III) was sick, always loved the song(s), and I thought they’d go out with it/end with it – it always felt like a set-closer of a song to me and we were already on the encore.  But then we got to the actual final song….Your English is Good….and this is where I really lost it for some reason. 

Tearing up a little bit as I get to even writing this part. I think the reason why is that looking back on it, this song actually got me through a lot of hard times when I was younger. It was in the rotation of songs I’d listen to when maybe things weren’t going my way, to cheer me up. I’d tap my feet along and always have a smile on my face by the time I got to those last chords. And it came into my life during a very formative time.

So weird because thinking of the lyrics, they’re all about gerrymandering, rigging elections, etc, but the song just evoked this crazy emotional response in me tonight that was wild! As it went on, I kinda danced into it more and more, playing the air guitar, drumming with my hands, etc, and about 2 minutes into it I realized but a single tear had fallen from my eye.

Then before I knew it, I was…kind of…sobbing! They got to that last “Oh, give us your vote, give us your vote!” and I really just lost it.

I walked out of the theater with tears streaming down my face, eager to get away from the crowd. I went to the show alone, I’m here for a work trip, this was totally random, I literally bought my ticket at the box office which I haven’t done in over a decade probably! I did not plan to do this at all! I almost didn’t go…

…and yet…

…I had the most excellent time, and this beautiful emotional connection back to when I first heard that song, and heard it again at that party with all my friends, and heard it again in my car on the way to DJ something in high school or college and cranked it up. When I heard it in the car on a road trip with my wife to Joshua Tree and we sang along for that brief stint we had in LA, when I got to connect with those past good times once again.

It hit me that every time we got to that part at the end, when the synths, guitars, and drums fade out to those last lyrics, I actually did feel a bit emotional, and even teared up a bit a few times when I’d listened. The end of the song is just really poignant for some reason. It always had been to me. But I’d never really let that built up emotion release over the years. It was just this little bit of “ah”-ness, just a little sigh, a little bit of that deep breath being released.

So when I saw the band singing and performing “Your English Is Good”, and emotions from high school and college rushed back, and Dave Monks had been talking about how it was ok to feel sad that the band was breaking up in between songs, that was a valid feeling, and I’m traveling between SF and Toronto and NY this week so I’m already a little stressed, and after the song, the band waved to such an adoring crowd that you could tell just respected the hell out of them, and they went out at that final show on their farewell tour with that beautiful Canadian niceness, waving….

…I just really came apart for a moment. And now I’m writing this in my hotel room after crying for a good 15 minutes. It was a good cry. Which at the age of 34, isn’t something that happens that often. But it feels good…

“Oh, give us your vote, give us your vote!”