99.9% of all Sad Horns posts are about pop punk

On my fifteenth birthday my two best friends surprised me with tickets to a Sum41/Alkaline Trio/Blink 182 concert. As youth just embarking on what would blossom into a lifetime of avid music listening/mosh pitting, I felt like I had died and been brought to my own personal pop punk heaven. At that ripe young age, bands like Saves The Day, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, and anyone signed to Vagrant Records understood me in a way that no one else, especially my parents, ever could. These bands sung about the feelings that I had everyday: I hate everyone, but I kind of want them to like me; when will that cute skater boy ask me out?; I still think farting is kind of funny; and I just want to wear checkered vans and Dickies.

By the time I got to college, pop punk had been officially uncool for at least two years (probably longer), and it was time to move on to bigger and better things. The kids at school were listening to hip new bands like Joanna Newsom, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Devendra Banhart. These bands were a distant cry from Deja Entendu, and I quickly learned that if I wanted to make friends in the new grown-up college scene, I better delete those old pop punk bands off my itunes faster than you could say “heart is on the floor.”

So I kicked my pop punk life aside, and embraced the way more fashionable and sophisticated indie music craze sweeping college dorm rooms everywhere. But nary a day passed during which I did not miss my old true blue staples.

It really wasn’t until I moved into a little blue house on May Avenue that I was finally able to embrace my deep and unflagging love for pop punk once again. Saves The Day played the Catalyst on the first night of classes winter quarter; the show was everything I had hoped it would be and more. In high school, the only time I saw Saves The Day perform was as the opening band for Blink 182 at the cavernous Madison Square Garden. Our seats were so far away that we had to watch the band on the giant TV monitors, and to add insult to injury, they only played songs from their then newest album, Stay What You Are. I felt utterly betrayed. Didn’t they know that I had both their other albums as well as a few other bootleg tracks downloaded from Napster?

When I finally saw Saves The Day take the stage that magical night so many years later, the dreams I had once had as a young pop punker were finally realized. Not only did the band play every single one of my favorite songs (including a few tracks from their 1998 Can’t Slow Down), but we actually even ended up meeting up with them at the Red Room later on and sharing a few beers and a few awkward jokes about economics.

Does pop punk still hold a special place in my heart? Of course. It will always be the music of my youth, the music that made me feel alive and like it was a good idea to dye streaks of my hair pink. And when that fateful day does come when I must shuffle off this mortal coil, my final wish will be that they play Dude Ranch at my funeral.