go back to the place we knew before, retrace our steps to the basement door
"i'll ask if the rain still makes you smile". A reflection on one of my life-long favorite bands, All Time Low, and a life full of patterns.
“Time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or will do, we will do over and over and over again—forever.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
In my 10th grade English class, my teacher, Mrs. Yurko, discussed this concept with me but in a much more digestible way. I can’t recall what brought up this conversation but I Think About It Still. In her class, I was often the first one done with assignments as a result of being excited about writing and wanting time to read. She saw this, as well as my incessant need to talk about music even though no one in my class seemed to know what I was talking about, and recommended that I start writing album reviews, so I did.
Well, slowly. After she mentioned that, I told her about an album that I was interested in writing about but I felt like my writing wasn’t good enough. Eventually, I wrote it and turned it into her along with my other assignments. From there, I would write reviews while sitting in my mom’s classroom after school and give her printed versions. Over that spring semester, there were less and less red marks on the pages and I began to stick the final copies into a purple folder, which I still have to this day.
I still find patterns in everything. Which is probably why my apartment is decorated in specific blocks of art work and I spend too much time redecorating it according to shapes and the ways things look when they’re placed next to each other. This also fuels my love for psychology and understanding why people do the things they do & how their past experiences has led them on to that path.
A recent pattern that I’ve found myself in is revisiting old music. The past few days, it’s been Baltimore’s own, All Time Low. I started listening to them some time back in 2010 or 2011 and became a huge fan after the release of Dirty Work which still holds up. I also tried to get my friend Danny into them that year, as seen above, and find my commentary hilarious. Can you tell you how passionate I was about this band and that I didn’t want to seem like I was being “too much”?
“Let this be a lesson to us all...
Round in circles, lets start over
Round in circles, lets start over”
There’s a lot I could say about this grainy ‘07 music video but the YouTube comments have that covered. I spent my Friday night watching their live stream, a full-band acoustic performance held in a venue somewhere in Nashville (coincidence, huh?). I’ve seen them live at least 5 or 6 times and watching that stream felt like the closest I could get to show a right now and the ever-moving live chat made it feel like I was back in middle school surrounded by fans who were just as excited as I was & still am.
To me, their newest release, Wake Up, Sunshine, almost sounds like a grown-up version of that 2011 record. It became my go-to album while quarantining at my parent’s house back in April and my favorite tracks are now landing in various playlists I’ve been making.
Back in 2015, they became the first band I photographed at the House of Blues in Orlando, which is full of memories I still hold dear & they became a band that my dad and I loved seeing together (and started my tradition of handing off my camera bag to someone after shooting so I can get in the crowd.)
All Time Low is still making music with the same lineup since their start as high schoolers. While they’ve grown out of the basement they formed in and into arenas (or at least their new & ongoing live streams for now), they’ll always hold a special space for me that’s now growing all over again. No matter what your own version of “basement noise” is, I hope you keep up with it too.
I am a Big Music Fan and excessive playlister. If you want to throw any funds my way, they’ll be donated to the Nashville Free Store (open every Saturday from 12pm-6pm CT) & Nashville Community Fridge (always open & regularly stocked) located at Drkmttr (the city’s only all-ages venue) here in, you guessed it, Nashville.