We Loved a Band

The guy next to me is going through it. He’s had a few drinks, sure, more than he or I realized, I think, until he falls into me a few minutes later when he stumbles out toward the bathrooms. But regardless of his level of inebriation, when I glance over at him, leaning forward in his seat while everyone around us stands, eyes closed, head bobbing slightly, I know he’s having a moment. Whatever this song means to him, meant to him at one time, it’s hitting him hard now. 

The couple in front of us in line met at a show in 2006. The guy next to me at the bar went to high school with the lead singer’s cousin. The group down the row once followed the band on a European tour in the early aughts. The dad wandering the aisle with his toddler, wearing matching “WITH LOVE WE WILL SURVIVE” t-shirts, is trying to convey something to his daughter that she can’t understand now but may grasp later in life. 

We are all here because we loved a band. 

There are millions and millions of bands and ostensibly somewhere there is someone who loves each and every one of them, even Nickelback and Florida Georgia Line and Culture Club. If I asked you who your favorite band is, maybe you have a go to answer right on the tip of your tongue. Or maybe you say, “Oh wow, there are so many” and then you rattle off a few names. Or maybe you answer but your answer doesn’t feel right even as you say it and a few minutes or hours later you feel the need to correct yourself; “Actually, my favorite band is…” 

And maybe you tell the truth when I ask you your favorite band. Or maybe you say something that feels safe because you’re not sure how I feel about your real favorite band. Or maybe you tell me your favorite mainstream band but your real favorite band is one you’re sure I’ve never heard of. 

I have loved and continue to love a lot of bands in my life. 

I am not now nor have I ever been cool or ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to music. I like to think I know a thing or two about a variety of bands and musicians, I’m very interested in music history, and I have somewhat eclectic taste (though lately it’s been boiled down to Dad Rock and Sad Girl Music more than anything else). But I’ve never been the guy who tells you all about this new little indie band you’ve never heard of and I usually roll my eyes at the folks who do. My favorite band of all-time is Nirvana. If I’m being totally honest, I think my favorite musician right now is Taylor Swift. I’m good with that. But there is something special about loving a band that no one else knows about. 

And yes, that sentiment has been poisoned by gatekeepers and losers and the guys who own the record store in Hi Fidelity; it has become something annoying at best and toxic at worst. But for every “I bet you’ve never even heard of this band” Guy or “Oh you like Band X, huh? Name five of their songs right now” Gal, there’s someone who holds a small band, a local band, an underdiscovered band, tightly, proudly, like they’ve unearthed some hidden treasure that’s only their own. This is especially true of the bands you discover in your youth. 

I grew up in the earliest stages of internet music, of Napster and downloading singles, of mix CDs (not tapes), and the CD burner on my family’s computer might’ve been my best friend. This was a great time for the burgeoning music scene in Dallas-Fort Worth. I know now that this was an era in which just about anyone with a guitar and a demo tape could find a record deal; the industry was handing out contracts like fliers on the windshields in a parking lot. But at the time and in the moment, it felt like my friends and I were a part of something. To see a show and then later hear that band on the radio, to see their names on the charts, even, was a kind of high; “I saw them when they were the fourth billed band at a 70 person club!” 

Flickerstick was one of my favorites from this scene. I’m not sure how many times I saw them over a three or four year period but “a handful of times” feels fair enough. Flickerstick existed somewhere between post-grunge alternative and pop punk, the two dominant forms of rock music at the time. I would put them in the “indie rock” genre now but I didn’t really have that terminology in the moment. Regardless, they were a little different from most of the other bands I listened to at the time and that’s part of what drew me to them so strongly. They had a great album, “Welcoming Home the Astronauts”, and a dynamic lead singer in Brandin Lea and their participation (and victory) in VH1’s “Bands on the Run” gave them a mainstream boost. They seemed destined to cement themselves as one of the faces of DFW music. 

Things didn’t work out that way, though. Most bands are a fragile, finite thing. Flickerstick was falling apart almost from the start and when their sophomore album, “Tarantula”, disappointed fans and the record label alike, the writing was on the wall. Wikipedia will tell you the band was together from 1997-2009 but in reality it was more like 2005 when guitarist Corey Kreig left the band. I don’t know exactly when I saw them last but I remember feeling let down as I walked out of the last show, knowing that this band, like so many others from my youth, was over.

A local band isn’t the same as a mainstream, big band. The big bands break up and retire only to reunite or unretire all the time. Elton John has been on his farewell tour for half a decade. The Eagles hated each other so much they vowed to only get back together when hell froze over…which is exactly what happened 14 years later. We are all holding out hope that one day Robert Plant and Jimmy Page will be able to be in the same room together for more than 20 minutes so we can finally get that last Led Zeppelin tour we so richly deserve despite all indications that this will not, in fact, ever happen. 

A small band, though, a local band, when they break up, the best you can hope for is a “for one night only” kind of thing years down the line. The demand is smaller, the money is lesser, the members leave music behind to sell insurance and raise families. When those bands die, they actually die.

When a band you love comes to an end, you have to either hold on tightly to the memory of the thing you loved or gradually let it go. I took the latter path with Flickerstick. There seemed no real chance for a reunion or a 2.0 version of the band. Eventually, I moved from listening to “Astronauts” in its entirety on a regular basis to catching a couple of my favorite songs (“Coke”, “Beautiful”, and “Direct Line to the Telepathic”) when they popped up on my iPod to never hearing their songs because of their absence from streaming platforms. When I migrated my meticulously crafted playlists to Spotify, discovering that Flickerstick wasn’t there caused me legitimate grief but was just the last step in the grieving process. The band was relegated to “hey remember when…” conversations with my best friend who, it turns out, was also a huge Flickerstick fan and who had been at many of the same shows as I had all those years ago. 

And then last year, a friend sent me a link to a small vinyl pressing of “Astronauts” a local record label was doing. The record had sold out and I’d missed it and I was devastated. (I ended up winning the very first copy of the pressing, signed by the band, in a raffle a few months later and it is the prize of my record collection.) But not too long after, old Flickerstick concert videos started popping up on YouTube. Then the albums arrived on Spotify. Then a pre-order for another pressing of the record. And then the “for one night only…” announcement I had hoped for arrived on Instagram. 

My aforementioned friend and I snapped up tickets to this Flickerstick reunion show as quickly as possible and now, here we sit (sit, not stand, because we are old now and general admission and pit tickets are for our younger selves). We are surrounded by a sea of late-thirtysomethings who are, like us, squinting to see the seat numbers in this dimly-lit venue. We are basically all wearing black t-shirts and Nike Killshots, the official concert uniform of our generation. We all have ear plugs, although they would’ve done us much more good back in our teens before Flickerstick and Bowling For Soup and The Nixons destroyed our earbuds. We are all, I realize as the opening chords to “Smile” kick in, here for a collective, cathartic experience, maybe even closure, on a simpler, easier era of our lives and the joy we got from something that for just a minute felt like our very own special thing. 

We are here because we loved a band.