Boys of Summer
“Without music, life would be a mistake” — Nietzche
Nobody on the road,
Nobody on the beach.
I feel it in the air,
The summer’s out of reach.
Empty lake, empty streets,
The sun goes down alone.
I’m driving by your house
Don’t know you’re not home.
These lyrics resonate with me in a weird haunting like way. The first time I heard them was on a Now 14 CD — the first music I ever owned. I was given a CD player and the former CD from one of my best friends at the time — on the last day of summer before middle school started back-up.
I remember laying in my bunk bed — on the lower portion — with bulky headphones on, a CD player that made too much noise, under my camouflage bed-sheets. I listened to every single song from the beginning — really enjoying my first taste of what music sounded like to my brain and body that was just beginning to hit puberty. I liked it and could be a type of inflection point on where I went from not caring about music to becoming obsessed with it.
Then song 18 came on, The Boys of Summer — performed by The Ataris. A haunting feeling crept over me as I listened to the song. When it was over I played it again and again.
Music isn’t just a sound but a feeling that emulates with an individual during a certain period in one’s life. Most music will die off as time passes, with only a few songs that continue to evolve as one transcends through the variety stages of life. The music that doesn’t evolve usually bring pieces of time back for an individual when they listen — but that is it.
Boys of Summer is one of those songs that have evolved in time with me. When I was a rebel child the song produced a haunting feeling for me. Today, the song is still haunts me, but in a different way.
One example can be found in this line of the song…
“Out on the road today I saw a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac”
When I first heard these lyrics I had no idea what they meant by Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac. I thought they were implying a pirate flag or something else of the likes. Little would I know the rebel songs of Black Flag would fill my ears a few years later along with permanence of the logo on my skin.
A Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac is the epitome of a once rebel child who has sold their soul out to the corporate world. Black Flag, the hardcore punk band — against mainstream media, corporations and for destruction, chaos and anarchism. Throwing a Black Flag Sticker on a Cadillac, next to a Notre Dame MBA, is the perfect eulogy to what one once was.
It was only a few months later after I first heard Boys of Summer, when I heard the original Don Henley, Boys of Summer on the radio. I enjoyed it and still do, but not as much as the fire charged, energy filled Ataris song and the boyish rebel look of the now middle aged Kris Roe.
The song still haunts me as it did when I was a child, but in much different ways. I have evolved from the rebel punk to a more so, corporate job — where I spend my days shaking hands of the upper class and attending meetings that would make the rebel child in me sick. Maybe that child has died. Or maybe there is still a small rebel flame inside that has not been extinguished. One thing is true though — I have become the embodiment of a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.
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