On Beer, Friends, and Stone Temple Pilots

Sorry it's been a while guys.  I've been on a two week vacation between Handyfest and going to the beach.  How about a fun little blog to bring it all back?  I didn't proof read this and don't really want to cause it's not that good.  But hey it is something.

On Beer, Friends, and Stone Temple Pilots

            Monday night I found myself sitting inside of one of the handful of bars we have here in Florence.  I was sharing pitchers of beer with my good friend Trent and our other friend Justin was sitting beside us not drinking but still having a good time.  While we talked about NASCAR (Justin and myself) Led Zeppelin (Trent and I) and ‘Bama football (Trent and Justin listening to me tell them they were stupid for cheering for such a crappy team) a Stone Temple Pilots song came on the radio.

            “Who is this,” Trent asked me?

            “Stone Temple Pilots,” I said while Sour Girl came out of the bar speakers.  “Can you tell me the girl in the video?”

            “Sarah Michelle Geller, dude.”

            It was one of those moments where a small knowing and non-sexual smile was shared between the two of us.  As we talked more and more about STP I found out that Trent was nearly as big of a fan of them as I am.  And there in lies the story.

            It’s taken me years to be able to admit this but now that I’m twenty-four and feel somewhat comfortable in my own skin I can.  When I was in high school I ran track and cross country.

            Some folks might say “oh gee Justin why would you be embarrassed by that” and the answer is pretty much the same.  I lived in Georgia and last I checked Georgia was still in the south and everybody who is from the south knows only one sport really matters.  I’ll give you a hint: it’s not track or cross country.

            But as a senior I weighed 119 pounds.  So no matter how much my father wanted me to play football it was never going to happen.  Instead he was stuck with this skinny runner kid who was somewhat socially awkward and had a really bad mop top hair cut and wanted to fit in anyway that he could.

            One way I found that I could fit in and even stand out in those days was through the music I listened to.  My best friend in high school was this guy Ben.  Ben had an older brother who was in a pop-punk/emo band (it was the early 2000’s) and he had all these cd’s.  At the time Ben probably knew more about rock music than I did but part of the reason we were such good friends was A) we both ran and B) we both liked rock music that wasn’t on the radio.  We made mix CDs of bands like Lagwagon, NoFx, Alkaline Trio, and Brand New.  In some weird way we thought we were cool because we didn’t fit in with everybody else but rather listened to the Jimmy Eat World’s and Get Up Kid’s of the world.

            But we still liked rock music.  And that’s where Stone Temple Pilots come in.  Somewhere around my junior year of high school I bought the Stone Temple Pilots greatest hits CD which is a good investment if you want to know a lot about a band without investing in their full collection.  Ben and I would ride to and from practice and we wore that CD out.  I remember doing long runs in the afternoon at the beginning of the school year were we would be soaked to our bones with sweat while we hacked and coughed up our lungs from pollen and dust that littered the pine infested trails we ran on in those days.  And always after those workouts we would jump in the car and ride back to Ben’s place listening to something like “Interstate Love Song” or “Sex Like Thing.”  It was good times and helped to stall our awakening to the harsh truths that lay beyond High School.  Instead of worrying about colleges or work we worried about whether Stone Temple Pilots was better or worse than Everclear.

            Almost all of us have a soundtrack for our lives.  We’ll hear a song and instantly we are taken back to a place.  Some of us have songs that we feel describe our relationships while other songs may hold a specific memory attached to them.  Who knows what songs were playing when they had their first kiss, their first dance, or their first time?  Everybody remembers those things.  But for each of those there is the background music to the times in our lives when we were younger and more carefree.

            So as I sat in the bar in Florence, Alabama which is some four hours away from the town my friend Ben lives in I couldn’t help but think about those days.  We’d talk about how hot some of the girls were we ran with (if you ran with us you know which chicks they were) and how if we could quit “being such pussies” for one race all the things we’d accomplish.  And we do it with background noise from Chico and Robert in the backseat while STP blared through the speakers.

            But those days are gone.  Ben and I don’t see each other or speak to each other but maybe once or twice a year now and we sure as hell don’t have any memories involving any bands anymore.  But new friends and adventures always come along.  So while Trent and I poured another Yungling we once again engaged in that age old question of whether Stone Temple Pilots was better or worse than the Nirvana’s, Pearl Jam’s, and Alice in Chain’s out there and whether or not the band was better when Scott Weiland was on heroin or when he was sober.  And new memories were made over a soundtrack from the past.  Maybe these will be better or maybe they will be worse.  It’s always hard to replace old friends no matter how good the new ones may be.  But then again “Empire Strikes Back” is better than “New Hope.”