Monday, June 1, 2009

Old Memories and the journey from now to then

So for the first time in ages I've listened to the Ataris (the pop-punk/rock band). I don't know what compelled me to listen to them, but I did. For those of you who don't know, I some what credit them for getting me into most the bands I'm into now. I forgot how I orginally got into the Ataris, but for the longest time I wanted to see them and would always see when they were comining close to little old Holland, MI. They never really did, but I would pay attention to who they toured with, sometimes I like the bands, sometimes I didn't. During these inquiries into who they associated themselves with, I discovered a little label you may know as Fat Wreck. And inevitibly I fell in love with NOFX, No Use for a Name and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. And now I was following four bands, which led to the Epitaph bands and so on. But the Ataris have always been one of the first I "discovered" (after Blink 182 which I didn't so much discover as I did hear Whats My age again? over and over).

Eventually I saw them back in 2004 shortly before I moved to Lansing which is when I slightly soured to them. I had met up with my friends Ben, Brittany, Robert and later Jim (all whom I met off the Ataris Message Board...ha)(I had previously met Ben when his band played in GR) for the show. Brittany and Robert has been to a whole slew of the Ataris mid west shows and had met most the band and the crew and found out where there bus was which is where we headed after the show. And we pretty much got snubbed by the band. Mike, The bass player had already come and gone, Chris, the drummer stopped long enough to thank Ben for saying the show was good, Kris, the lead singer/gutarist walked by grumbling something, and then finally John, the other guitarist came out. He recognized Brittany and Rob and stopped to talk for a bit, and thanked us all for coming. Which made my night. I was bummed about the rest of the band and like I said, it kind of slightly soured the experience for me. Later I had found out that a few things had gone wrong that day and they were ALL just in a crummy mood. So for a while I was just kind of bleh. And things didn't get better when they released their nex cd. I didn't really like it as much and thats when I kind of stopped listening to them.

But today, I randomly decided to listen to them on my Ipod which brought me back to to that show almost 5 years ago. The Timmy back then was so clueless as to what he wanted to do or even what he had to do when he got there. Here we are 5 years later. The end of my college career is in sight and the options are plentiful from there. I have some ideas, I have some goals, but it goes to show how things can change. I'm happy with how things turned out. Part of me wishes I would've stuck with culinary school back in the day, but at the same time I don't think I was at the right time in my life to deal with at. With all the stuff I've dealt with since then like Aspergers and all the crashing and burning and more or less maturing, I think I'm much better prepared to deal with stuff now.

(on a bright note, word on the street is that the next Ataris CD is supposed to be a step back in the right direction.ha)

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