Welcome to the Hotel California

In early 2004 I went through a phase of "B" punk bands. Not second-rate - literally, bands with names that started with "B". Finally putting aside my extensive Blink-182 collection, in short order I discovered Boys Night Out, Boysetsfire, Blindside, and eventually even Bad Religion (though I never quite made it to Black Flag). I'm not sure how I found out about Blindside, but I remember sitting on an RT transit car blasting my brand-new copy of "About a Burning Fire" in my crappy Discman, and thinking I'd just discovered the greatest band in the world.

As these things go, I've grown older and come to prefer music a little more layered than stuff that abides by a furious catchy riff with screaming vocals. It's not that I don't love screaming - I just find that the music tends to be a little shallow. Bad Religion, especially (and punk fans can insert some kind of terrible sacrilege joke here), I find extremely repetitive. While Boysetsfire remain an old fave, Blindside is another one of the many artists from my youth who have all but disappeared from my radar. They put out a record after AABF which cut back on the screaming I loved so much, and after awhile even that came to feel extremely one-note.

Anyway, this track is from that definitive album - definitive in that it was the first one I discovered, at least. And it has Billy Corgan in it! While I'm not a huge Pumpkins fan, he did do the soundtrack for Spun, which is pretty much the best drug movie in history aside from Requiem for a Dream. So even though I don't think I could listen to the record three times on repeat like I did that cold clammy spring afternoon in March 2004, I still remember somewhere deep inside the exhilaration I once felt, and get chills when I queue up the odd Blindside track. They're just...fun.

All that was a very long segue into mentioning that in about 14 hours I'll be boarding a flight to Los Angeles on my way, eventually, to Angel Stadium of Anahiem. There, barring injury, I'll get my first glimpse of Vernon Wells in a red uniform. My father and I have been doing this for a decade this year, and we're up to almost half of the big league parks - 15 for me, 14 for him, since he hasn't been to Safeco yet. Last year we sat through this debacle in sweltering $200 bleacher seats at Yankee Stadium in July, so I'm hoping this year's game will prove a little more worthwhile. I should be posting a few photographs and a summary of my game experience sometime this weekend, provided we don't get rained out. 

(And, hey, the Eagles/the Angels...same thing, more or less, no?)