At Taste of Chaos 2006, My Chemical Romance was headlining, while a smaller, unknown band from my town opened for them. This band was full of these idiots I knew from elementary school who were always really rude and spit a lot (THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER).
In line at Taste of Chaos (to which I arrived at 7am to get a good spot in the crowd for MCR), this band hereby known as StoryTold, were going around to girls with a video camera and saying the following:
“Who wants a backstage pass? All you have to do is take of your shirt and do 10 jumping jacks. My Chemical Romance is going to see the video and you’ll get to meet them!”
I wanted to barf. I was 18 and livid that they would take advantage of girls this way. I didn’t do it, obviously, but there were a few girls who did.
They added a stipulation later, and that was that you had to be 18 to do it.
COME ON.
Later, during MCR’s set, Gerard came out and said, “If you ever see shitty ass rock dudes in shitty ass rock bands asking you to show them your tits for a backstage pass, I want you to spit right in their fucking face and yell FUCK YOU!”
This moment was just one of the reasons why I respected this band so much. They were just cool dudes who didn’t care about the whole groupie thing, and also smart dudes who knew that their fans were mostly teenage girls and didn’t take advantage of that.
But my FAVORITE thing was about all of this is the fact that that moment was featured on Life on the Murder Scene (beginning at 0:38 in this YouTube video), the MCR DVD that accompanied Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
So fuck StoryTold forever, because now everyone knows they’re dicks.
Sophomore year of high school, I started hanging out with nerds. And by nerds, I mean the girls who did musical theater. I had always wanted to do the ND musicals but was so afraid of getting rejected that I never did. But thanks to a fascist journalism teacher who always said that my “Unofficial Month of John Cusack” articles featuring reviews of my favorite JC movies were inappropriate for a school newspaper, I ditched her regime and auditioned for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was an all ladies production and I scored the role of The Baker, got my first laugh on stage, and bah ha ha, I caught the bug.
That’s not the point though. Since then, my musical theater friends and I would have Tony’s viewing parties and dress up like our favorite musical characters. For the first viewing party I went to, I dressed up as Elphaba from Wicked. For graduation, Addi and I sang “For Good” from at Bacc Mass. The first musical I ever saw on Broadway was Wicked. I was really into that musical.
One night, sophomore year at USF, I watched like, 300 videos of Idina Menzel singing “Defying Gravity” and I knew that if I wanted to be on Broadway, I had to take singing lessons. I scoured Craigslist for singing teachers and came across one where the instructor would teach you rock, jazz, AND musical theater. ALL THREE FOR PRETTY KINDA CHEAP. I signed up for an appointment after my Ethics class (which sucked, but everything at USF sucks, so whatever) and brought sheet music from the musical known as Wicked.
The lessons were to be held at an apartment in between Haight/Ashbury and the Hayes Valley. I had no idea how to get around. I was still a sophomore and I tended to go home on weekends to avoid the parties that were happening in the dorms because, of course, I was straight edge (sXe). I felt so intimidated by the people who lived in the dorms who drank beer and had weird haircuts. I didn’t know what to call them, but they were very, very cool. In the end, I will say that they were my first glimpse into hipsterdom, which will forever make me feel uncomfortable, so I think my fears of them were valid and I did well by keeping away.
The point is, I got lost. I took the wrong bus, had to walk up a giant hill right by that park where the picnic from the opening credits of Full House were filmed, and I arrived at my appointment super sweaty and slightly frustrated.
But my instructor was SO COOL that I forgot how cranky I was. She was thin and had big buns in her hair, decorated with flowers. She had this very cool jazzy, 1950s vibe about her, even though she had on a black T-shirt and jeans. She took me into the room where our lessons were to be held and I was floored with how much vinyl she had. She wasn’t like those hipsters in my dorms who bragged about their vinyl, and yet couldn’t really make the needle sit on the record properly, resulting in scratches and swearing. She just happened to be a person who had vinyl and was really interested in knowing why I wanted to sing songs from Wicked.
“Because I want to be on Broadway. And I want to transfer out of USF and go to Tisch.”
That was the goal. So we worked at some Broadway numbers. I mastered “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and “Waiting For Life” from Once On This Island. Then she brought up the fact that I had a good voice for rock. So I worked on “Oh, Darling!” and some punk songs from lady bands like Bratmobile and Sleater-Kinney, which were less about screaming but more about FEELINGS.
When I got home one night, I decided to Google my instructor. She was so cool and was a part of a jazz ensemble called The Cotton Tails, which made her even cooler.
I typed in her name: Karina Denike.
First, I saw her MySpace. Apparently, she’s been performing all around the world! I knew that she was from England and I had an idea that she had been married at some point, or at least had a different name. Then I saw that she had collaborated with Fat Wreck Chord artists.
Wait. What. NOFX? WHAT. WHAT?!?!?!?!
I was such a big fan of NOFX because of that guy I wrote about a few entries ago. The War on Errorism featured a duet with Fat Mike and Karina.
WHAT.
ALSO. She did a GREAT song from my favorite No Use For a Name album, Hard Rock Bottom. WHO WAS THIS LADY. SHE IS THE GIRL FROM THE SONG.
Turns out, Karina was in this band called the Dance Hall Crashers and they were a ska band that I am an idiot for not knowing, even though they’re given a shout out in that Blink 182 song, “Josie.” I DIDN’T PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER.
I sat at my HP laptop for hours, watching videos of DHC, live performances, and I thought, “Holy fuck. I’ve been having lessons with the real deal this entire time.” I was so stoked. I went back the next lesson and asked her what it was like to sing on a NOFX album and she said that “Mike is a good friend.” MIKE. SHE MEANT FAT MIKE. FUCKING HELL. I had tried to get an internship at Fat Wreck Chords and failed, and she’s his fucking friend. This was my first instance at knowing a famous person. Slightly famous. Famous to me. You get the picture.
Karina and I did way more lessons. She helped me with my two audition songs to get into NYU, one from Bat Boy and the other from Working. She hugged me, wished my luck, and I went and did the audition. The week after I got back from my first trip to New York, Karina organized a showcase for her students and I performed a song in front of real people for the first time. She was super supportive and really wanted us to get out there more, do open mics, start bands, etc. She also ran a song writing workshop on weekends, if you knew how to properly play an instrument.
I got into NYU. Not CAP21, but Stella Adler Studio of Acting, which I was super stoked with because MARLON BRANDO. I brought Karina flowers the day after I got my acceptance letter. I couldn’t have done it without her, really. She had so much confidence and so much talent that I felt like it would be a disservice to the both of us if I sucked at my audition. And I ruled. I RULED.
I moved away from San Francisco and headed to New York. I still took singing lessons, but they weren’t the same. Karina was too rad of a teacher and I was still too star-struck to believe that anyone but the singer from Dance Hall Crashers/my favorite Sinead O’Connor cover could be a good voice teacher.
I owe this lady a lot. So to repay her, sometimes I play this song over and over and over in my car and sing along, pretending I’m the coolest lady in San Francisco.
LiveJournal, December 19, 2003.
Sometimes when I read my old LiveJournal, I want to go back in time and hug myself.
I think the main reason I didn’t want to tell Sam that her milk carton looked like a house (LOLOLOL) was because Sam was one of the only juniors in my Spanish class who was nice to me. I was placed in Spanish III-Honors freshman year after I took a language placement test at ND and the girls in my class were all juniors. THEY COULD DRIVE. The only thing I could do was speak Spanish because my family is from Mexico. I was cheating the system and they knew it. And hated it. This was super intimidating.
The reason I decided I could trust Sam (very dramatic thinking) was because she had a Finch patch on her backpack. It said, “Perfection Through Silence,” which was one of my favorite lyrics from the What It Is To Burn album. We would talk about how hot we thought Nate Barcalow was but how terrible he was live at Live105’s BFD because he never faced the audience. Ever.
That year, we got Big Sisters through our homerooms. My big sister was this girl who was in Latinas Unidas and got super offended when I told her that I hadn’t joined that club. (“You have a responsibility to our people’s culture to join the club,” she had said. Jesus!!!)
Seeing as how I like to be ethnically ambiguous but I was also intimidated by showing off my Spanish skillz in Spanish3H, I decided joining that club was a bad idea. Don’t be too obvious about your Latina-ness, I thought. Plus, the other girls in it were SUPER terrifying and wore eyeliner as lip liner and I had been taught that those girls were bad news. I think my big sister’s name was Mayra, but I couldn’t be too sure because I lost contact with her after she got in a gang fight at one of our mixers and got kicked out of school. Yeesh.
Sam, my lovely emo Sam, took over Big Sister duties. She and I would see concerts together and I went to visit her at UC Santa Cruz when I was checking out prospective colleges. She got a boyfriend who looked like Josh Groban and she proceeded to tell me about how she lost her virginity to him and I started to get freaked out about college. Sam was great though, even if she told me too much information about her sex life to someone who had never even kissed a dude once.
We still talk all the time. She and Josh Groban used to visit me in San Francisco a lot when I went to USF and I think she’s in medical school now to be a neurosurgeon.
Imagine that. Your neurosurgeon listening to Finch before she goes to town on your brains. I kind of like that.
LiveJournal, December 14, 2003.
I am so upset about hitting my head on my locker, apparently.
I’m especially stoked that I had so much faith in these kids I knew and their band. Especially because I really wanted them to get famous (opening for Sugarcult) so that I could go to their shows and say I knew them. To be COOL, guys. To be COOL.
What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost? | Taking Back Sunday
Oh, God. Senior year of high school I listened to this album to and from Notre Dame, taking the long way home through Almaden so that I could listen to every song.
The Distillers - City of Angels
I spent most of my adolescence trying to look as dead as possible. Why?
Because I wanted to BE Brody Dalle. She was so fierce and didn’t give two fucks, always looked like a fashionable cadaver and, duh, lead girl in a band! Need I say more?
I also spent many an hour applying this brown MAC eyeshadow (now discontinued GODDAMN) under/around my eyes, along with heavy, heavy, heavy smokey black eyeliner. I was too fearful of wearing red lipstick in public though, so I saved my deepest reds for when I would lip sync to The Distillers, Paramore or No Doubt into my bathroom mirror, pouts a-blazin’.
But the thing I am most indebted to Brody FOREVER is that she introduced me to the most life-changing thing I have ever done to my own head: BANGS. I don’t even know how I discovered Brody, to be quite honest, but I remember downloading the “Drain The Blood” video from Kazaa and WOWOWOWOWOWOW. She had on these incredible stripe pants, her skin was so so so so so so pale (that’s when I decided I hated going outside, incidentally) and she had the blackest hair that I also needed in order to properly function as a faux-dead/punk rawk girl. I also really NEEDED those bangs.
(Cue Rancid’s “Ruby Soho”! Too soon? They’ve been divorced for so long! RELAX!)
I went to get one of those razor hair cuts from one of those reeeeally dirty and shady mall hair salons, followed by a trip to Sally’s Beauty Supply where I bought blue-black permanent hair dye which I would reapply to my very, very broken hair every 2 weeks.
Brody is the reason I had so many weird (read: AWESOME) hairstyles in high school. I bleached pieces of my hair, the most famous being the yellow triangle in my bangs and the two infamous neon yellow streaks for Winter Ball, for which Ms. Cohen said she finally had to “draw the line at my creativity.”
Brody was an incredible role model for me back then when Christina Aguilera was “Dirrty” and I don’t even remember what else was going on because I was too obsessed with taking MySpace-angle photos of myself on my flip phone in the bathroom.
To this day, I still have bangs. I’m pretty sure I’ll have bangs forever, thanks to Brody. Thank you, Brody, for helping me figure out that bangs are the best ever. OF ALL TIME.
Enjoy this trip down memory lane along with me, deal? Will you pet your bangs like I’m doing now? Okay, cool.
My Chemical Romance performed on Yo Gabba Gabba.
I FEEL SO MANY FEELINGS.
It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a [Fucking] Deathwish || My Chemical Romance
Most of the music that I listened to in high school I discovered myself through MySpace, LiveJournal, and last.fm but for about a year, I took what my friends listened to very seriously. Mostly, one boy in particular because he always had lyrics in his AIM profile that I found relevant to my own life as well. I would usually Google those lyrics, go to Rasputin in Campbell and buy whatever CD corresponded with those lyrics. This always led to a really big hit or miss with me, honestly, because a lot of the music he liked was shitty. Like Avenged Sevenfold. Ugh. The worst. Never could get into them.
The stuff I did like through that music discovery method included The Bouncing Souls, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, The Centerfolds (RIP), The Early November, Saosin (with Anthony Green, my hero), From First to Last (LOLOLOL) and a lot of Drive Thru/Epitaph Records bands, among many others.
My favorite find was My Chemical Romance. The lyrics in his profile were from “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville”:
Late dawns and early sunsets, just like my favorite scenes
Then holding hands and life was perfect, just like up on the screen
And the whole time while always giving
Counting your face among the living
I was like, yes! This is relevant! I hold hands! I watch movies! I’m among the living! Also, I think this is about vampires?! That intrigued me and also scared the hell out of me. So I went to Rasputin to get I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, which I thought was the fucking coolest album name of all of the album names.
Soon thereafter, the band released Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which became the Quintessential Nadia Album of Her Teenage Life. Seriously. Ask my mom.
MCR brought a lot to my life besides a really weird interest in vampires, making myself look dead with pink and brown eyeshadow around my eyes and wearing all-black, which I still do to this day (which led to someone in my friend’s film class to call me “The Goth Girl” after watching a short I was in. But it’s cool!!). MCR told me that it was okay to be different and to feel weird about myself at a time when I felt my most weirdest. Basically, they told me to embrace it because you never know what you’ll get out of that. They told me all this before Lady Gaga ever did. So I was okay then and I’m okay now.
Beauty In The Breakdown - The Scene Aesthetic
This is the first song I ever heard at college. My new friend Theresa, who was a MySpace celebrity at the time, introduced me to this awesome band, as well as other less emo, more indie-type bands.
Her kindness kind of saved me because this kid Jim (who is still my friend now but basically I hated his guts in ‘06) would make fun of me for wearing Saosin and MCR shirts in our Drama 1 class. After I could mention a “good” band or two, he would leave me alone. If I could go back in time and tell 18-year-old Nadia that what band you like doesn’t really matter anyway and that she should keep wearing her Saosin zip up hoodie without worry, I would. I really, really would.
Anyway, Theresa and I had met on Facebook (before, when it was just for college students) and were both intimidated by each other’s online presence. I was intimidated because she had an incredible mullet that was dyed in fun, wild and cheetah print type colors and had over 1,000 friends on MySpace. She said she was intimidated by me because I seemed “really cool,” which is less specific but I don’t see how she could have been intimidated except for maybe I had a picture of myself with liberty spikes as my profile picture?
We decided to meet outside the Gleeson Library at USF IRL. I was SO nervous but we became insta-friends!
Theresa and I were inseparable for quite a long time. We ended up hanging out in the caf for most of our time together, people-watching and giving other kids at school nick names. Favorites include, “White Trash Kid” (Jay), “Punk Rock Boy,” “Kevin Federline, but with a Julius Caesar Haircut,” and “Beans.”
The most important of the groups of kids we nicknamed were “The Super Squad.” They were a group of super dreamy hipster boys who ended up being our really close friends towards the end of college. But at the start of it all, we were like, whoooooa these guys have disheveled hair and a demeanor of nonchalance we could only dream of having. We want to be their gee effs. I guess we had never seen hipsters before because we thought their flannel shirts and super tight pants were THE SHIT and therefore had to become a part of their posse.
It didn’t really happen for me, since I transferred pretty early on in the college years and I still remained pretty uncool until just about when I graduated. But Theresa moved on to be super awesome, living off campus for our sophomore year and having Taco Tuesday gatherings at her apartment that I considered too far and dangerous for me to walk to, but was really only like, 3 blocks from my dorm.
The point is, this song reminds me of how much Theresa meant to me at a time when I was so scared to walk across campus alone to my all-girl’s dorm and when I thought everything was 100% more dramatic than it really was.
She did admit that she listened to A LOT of Senses Fail, Something Corporate and some other hardcore, so I didn’t feel as uncool when that kid made fun of me in class. If Theresa liked it too, then it must be super cool. He was the one who was out of the loop.
New Taking Back Sunday video for “You Got Me,” which is my favey song on the album.
Not ashamed.
