Some guys
"Bitter Sweet Symphony", beavers, Frederick Douglass, Bright Eyes, free food, doubt
I remember one night I was leaving my friend Steven’s house and there was this guy walking down the street, belting “Bitter Sweet Symphony” at the top of his lungs. Fist bumping, pounding his chest, out of key singing the song with all his heart. I think about him all the time.
I remember a guy we met on tour who worked the door at a show nobody came to. He said his name was The General and he had a glow-in-the-dark Frederick Douglass skateboard. We were broke and hungry. He said, “I’ll get you some free food.” He took us to an open mic coffee shop. A guy who looked like Bright Eyes was moaning away on a guitar. There was all this food, like a potluck—mac and cheese, fried chicken, spinach artichoke dip. We piled up our plates and ate and watched this guy with bangs and dyed hair belt terrible song after terrible song. Fried chicken was good though.
I remember once sitting next to a guy at a bar in Jackson, Mississippi who told me his first job was blowing up beaver dams. “I was fourteen,” he said. “Didn’t know shit. We stuffed all the dynamite into the dams and the guy in charge told me to light the fuse. I did it. Then I said, ‘Now what?’ He said, ‘Run, motherfucker!’”
I remember the time my roommate Jason spent a whole afternoon shaving the end of a spatula with a knife sharpening. We kept asking him why he was doing that. He said, “Just you wait.” By nightfall, we’d had our drinks, and there he sat on the couch, working at the spatula. “She’s ready,” he said. We followed him outside. He held the spatula over his head like and axe, then sent it sailing right into a tree, where it stuck there, blade sunk into the bark. “Told y’all,” he said.
I remember when this guy I knew tried to sing “Bitter Sweet Symphony” at karaoke in Nashville. He forgot the words and sat back down. I said, “Hey man, the words are right there on the screen!” He said, “You sing it, I don’t have time for that shit.”
Once I was leaving a bar and I saw this guy walk up to a 4Runner full of people and say, “Can I get a ride? I know Delaney.” “Who’s Delaney?” said the driver. And he drove off. My friend chased the car, saying, “Y’all know Delaney!” He jumped on the running board of the car and tried to climb in through the passenger window. The car swerved, and he fell off, right onto the sidewalk. I went running up, asked him if he was okay. “None of them knew Delaney,” he said. “Who’s Delaney?” I said. He said, “Man, I don’t know.”
I remember a frat guy passing out at City Grocery. His friends apologized, carried him downstairs. I watched from the balcony as they grabbed him by the arms and legs, swung him back and forth a few times, heave-ho, then chucked him into the bed of a pickup truck. When they came back up for another round, we asked them about their friend. The guy with the red hair said, “He’ll keep.”
I remember driving late at night somewhere icy—Wyoming, Wisconsin?—and seeing a van stopped on the side of the road. I pulled over and asked if they needed help. The van was full of people, and an old lady was driving. She told me they had a flat. I got the tire iron and the spare out. The lugs were icy, and I tried to chip away at the them so I could change the tire. There were several guys in the van, but they didn’t get out to help. I chipped and chipped at the ice, but I couldn’t get the tire iron over the lugs. After a few minutes, a cop pulled over behind them. The old lady told me, “You need to leave, right now.” I just looked at her for a second, then I got back in my car and drove off. I have no idea what happened to them.
When it’s late at night and I have a long walk home, sometimes I put on “Bitter Sweet Symphony” and I think about that guy I saw singing it down the street. It makes me think about the time when I was a kid on a school trip to St. Louis, and somebody heard me talk and asked me if I was British. That floored me. To think I could be from somewhere else! I got obsessed with Britpop after that. I still think Graham Coxon is one of the greatest guitar players ever. But when I’m walking home at night, I never belt out “Bitter Sweet Symphony” at the top of my lungs. Whatever that guy had, I don’t have it.
Not yet, anyhow.
Joe Brainardcore
This is funny, man - enjoyed this.