Oh, and something, something about if a tree falls…nobody around…does it make a sound? Non-sequitur: life is busy and words have already been spilled about jobs and kids and mortgages and anxiety and drinking and everything else taking up the valuable time that used to be resolutely devoted to crate hunting and song searching for the next album or track that could make it all okay. Strike that – that could make it bearable. Endurable.
So, now what? I was listening to a hardcore podcast a few years back and, god bless them, they ran through some new tracks to check out and low-and-behold a shining, pop-gem emerged from the speakers. An affiliation with the HC scene that is above my paygrade led that track “City of Silence” by Big School to find its way onto that virtual mixtape. I stopped the podcast after hearing and quickly hit the back 15-seconds button 8 times to listen to it again. And then again. After centering myself, I prepared my mind/heart to be let down. This must have been a one-off. Some star burning bright that fizzles out upon entry. I navigated to the streaming world and found all the output thus far by these lads. Year One comp, Mint LP and the (at the time) recently released It’s Really Real. It was no accident. It was no 90’s radio one-hit-wonder. It was just wonderful.
…and then I fell. I tumbled crush first into a warm tonic of sound that is dreamy but meaningful. Its affirming how once again, a simple chord progression and the right words can hit you in the gut so hard. Since that moment, Big School has been in constant rotation in me and my friend’s lives. And this is more than just a toss them on and then toss it out type of relationship. We are committed. We made promises. We maybe are even going steady. We see a future with Big School that might include a white picket fence and promises we’ll try not to break. How can that happen at this stage in my life? How can you get a break from the jobs and the kids and the mortgages to find that flicker in the spark of your youth still in your gut down to your toes? I will never ceased to be amazed how the right band, much like the right person, can casually stroll into your life and turn it all upside down. Now I spend my nights with headphones on taking shots of Big School and chasing them with daydreams of you. And it all seems so right and goes down too easy.
The world is not fair. Of course – fair rarely enters into adult life. The streaming music world has a way of reducing countless hours of songwriting and practice sessions and studio time and empty shows played at VFW halls into a number of monthly listeners. As if the raw number somehow matters. It belies what’s going on in those monthly listeners’ butterfly-filled stomachs. Did this band, regardless of the number, make an indelible impact in those modest listeners lives, such that, they will never be the same? There is this quote from the film As Good as it Gets where Jack Nicholson’s character is trying to give a world class compliment to his complicated sweetheart Helen Hunt and he says, “I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do… I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive.” I can’t think of a better way to say that some bands are like this. If you understand what I mean then you understand everything.
…and so, Big School, just know…if a tree falls…forest…sound…just know that, yes, we are out here and we are listening and we hear it.
XOXO