Today is my 25th high school reunion. I've felt a whole bunch of conflicting emotions about this thing for weeks, but I must say that I'm now looking forward to this evening quite a bit. I reconnected with Caroline last night for the first time in 30 years. She's every bit the angel I hoped she'd be - gentle, kind, honest to a fault, and just a beautiful person inside and out. Meeting her after all this time made me feel like everything's gonna be ok tonight. It's a given that there's gonna be some assholes at this reunion, people I'm glad aren't in my life anymore, but I'll have my small handful of friends with me, the ones who love me and see the good in me, even when it's hard to do so, and they'll help me make it through in one piece. Tonight's song, which was originally recorded by Cheap Trick, is for all of us who were traumatized, to varying degrees, by such an intense, non-reality-based school. We made it, we survived, and in a lot of cases we've even prospered, sometimes against the odds. ...OK, this is starting to sound too ra-ra-sist-boom-ba now, so let me bring the focus back squarely to the music. It's interesting that some American power pop bands are so huge in Japan, whereas on the home front they've only managed to garner marginal attention at best. Shoes are one of those bands. I don't really understand why they weren't superstars here. I mean, they're just so good and do everything perfectly. When everything else seems so fucked up and dismal, they take me to a lovely place. They lift my spirits and make me understand that as long as I have guitars in my life, along with Molly, Polly's spirit, and a few great friends, along with some high harmonies here, some tambourines there, then I'm a very lucky dude who's got it pretty good...
PS - I think you'll really dig the added extra goodie at the front end of the video tonight. I've said it before but I just can't help repeating myself...these guys get me.
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