Turn the Page: Is this Good-Bye to my Favorite Band?
(*NOTE: This post was written after I had heard some information that made me believe that the Offspring were going to call it quits. I guess this is one of those occasions where IT'S GREAT TO BE WRONG!!!)
"Pobably the most definitive American cult...the one which best represents freedom, individuality, bravery and innovation is rock and roll. Rock and roll comes closest to defining the American spirit, and those in the forefront of rock and roll are the most visible modern American pioneers. As Greil Marcus points out in Mystery Train, 'what links the greatest rock and roll careers is a volcanic ambition, a lust for more than anyone has a right to expect; in some cases, a refusal to know when to quit or even rest.'"
-from "Endless Winter: An Olympian's Journey" by cross country skier Luke Bodensteiner
---
The other day, while I was listening to X-96 here in Salt Lake City, I heard a very disturbing song. It went like this:
"Yesterday laughs, tomorrow cries.
Turn the page, wipe these eyes..."
It was my favorite band - the Offspring - and this song is going to be on their upcoming Greatest Hits album. Could it be? There's only one reason these guys would put out a Greatest Hits album: The Offspring are going away.
I always dreaded this day, but I knew the time would come when I could no longer wait and hope to hear new material from my favorite band. All good things must come to an end.
You have to understand what this band means to me. Without them, there would certainly have been no Incredible Rodansky Comeback. Hell, I might not have even survived my college years. I've mentioned before that I picked up their album Smash just before going to my last Junior Nationals without a coach. It was the first album I bought for myself.
By the time those two miserable weeks of racing in Minnesota were over, my life took a definite turn for the worse. My sport was wrenched from me by unscrupulous bastards, and I was forced to pick up the pieces of my life and go on to college.
Nobody around me understood what I was going through. Even the people I loved told me things like, "Snap out of it," and, "You're behaving like a spoiled brat," when I had trouble getting over the end of my skating career. I was made to feel like being blackballed from speedskating was my own fault: "If you really cared about your skating career, why did you write that letter?"
"Be a good Catholic girl."
"Turn the other cheek."
"Dedicate your entire life to curing the diseases of a society that has taken everything you love away from you."
Through it all, the Offspring were putting out songs that were always somehow relevant to my struggles, like when the album "Americana" came out, not long after the breaking of the Salt Lake Olympic Bribery Scandal story: Lies, hypocrisy, corruption, failure, disappointment, shattered dreams...Most of the time, during those worst years of my life, I literally had nowhere else to turn.
The summer after I graduated from high school, I came across the February 1995 issue of the Rolling Stone. My favorite guys were on the cover! And there was a long article about the band inside. It was there that I found out that frontman Bryan "Dexter" Holland had been a cross country runner and Valedictorian of his high school class, and was currently on leave of absence from a Ph.D. program in molecular biology at USC. Wow. No wonder his songs made so much sense to me.
And there it was -- Ph.D. candidacy, presented to me as a good kid's last chance to try and do what he loves. By the time you reach Ph.D. candidacy, you're far enough ahead of your cohort to prove that you've been responsible, but you're still not to old...to be a punk rocker; to be an athlete. But still, guilt can nag at a person who leaves biomedical research. "Waste of time, waste of time, waste of time...and while you're playing around, people are suffering and dying of AIDS and cancer...."
But there he was, throwing off society's expected role for him; being the only one in the whole world who could make me believe that my life -- the one I wanted to live--was also worth saving.
I almost got to meet Dexter at a DNA Recombination and Repair meeting held at USC while I was going to City of Hope. That is, my friends from Dr. Bailis's Recombination lab got to go to the meeting, but I was stuck in the tissue culture room setting up a retroviral oxidative mutagenesis assay. "Guess who was at the meeting?" my friends asked. "It should have been you instead of me," said my friend Michelle.
Well I guess that's just the WAY IT GOES. While I can fix a "near-miss" like what happened to me at the 2002 Olympic Trials just by sticking around for another 4 years, there is nothing I can do about the infamous DNA Repair Meeting. You can't "make" a chance like that for yourself. I simply missed out.
There were so many things I wanted to ask him: "Do you ever feel guilty about leaving science? How will you know when it's time to retire from punk? Do you think you'll ever go back to the lab?" It's not like I can just walk into Nitro Records and say, "Hi, Dexter. I missed the DNA Repair Meeting. Wanna go to Del Taco with me?"
But then there is this: "...Yesterday laughs, tomorrow cries..." Could it be that this man, whom I admire so much, looks towards his own future with dread?
It's just a song...just a song. I'll keep telling myself that.
----
This thing I am doing with my own life right now is so uncool-- it's so "Spandex and Metal." But the Olympics are still kind of a big deal, especially for a former Bribery Scandal Victim and biology student. Wherever I go, there I am...the world's biggest Offspring fan!
Thanks for all the songs. Thanks for saving my life. Thanks for making my world a better place. And for what it's worth, from one scientist to another, it wasn't a waste of time.
(*NOTE: This post was written after I had heard some information that made me believe that the Offspring were going to call it quits. I guess this is one of those occasions where IT'S GREAT TO BE WRONG!!!)
"Pobably the most definitive American cult...the one which best represents freedom, individuality, bravery and innovation is rock and roll. Rock and roll comes closest to defining the American spirit, and those in the forefront of rock and roll are the most visible modern American pioneers. As Greil Marcus points out in Mystery Train, 'what links the greatest rock and roll careers is a volcanic ambition, a lust for more than anyone has a right to expect; in some cases, a refusal to know when to quit or even rest.'"
-from "Endless Winter: An Olympian's Journey" by cross country skier Luke Bodensteiner
---
The other day, while I was listening to X-96 here in Salt Lake City, I heard a very disturbing song. It went like this:
"Yesterday laughs, tomorrow cries.
Turn the page, wipe these eyes..."
It was my favorite band - the Offspring - and this song is going to be on their upcoming Greatest Hits album. Could it be? There's only one reason these guys would put out a Greatest Hits album: The Offspring are going away.
I always dreaded this day, but I knew the time would come when I could no longer wait and hope to hear new material from my favorite band. All good things must come to an end.
You have to understand what this band means to me. Without them, there would certainly have been no Incredible Rodansky Comeback. Hell, I might not have even survived my college years. I've mentioned before that I picked up their album Smash just before going to my last Junior Nationals without a coach. It was the first album I bought for myself.
By the time those two miserable weeks of racing in Minnesota were over, my life took a definite turn for the worse. My sport was wrenched from me by unscrupulous bastards, and I was forced to pick up the pieces of my life and go on to college.
Nobody around me understood what I was going through. Even the people I loved told me things like, "Snap out of it," and, "You're behaving like a spoiled brat," when I had trouble getting over the end of my skating career. I was made to feel like being blackballed from speedskating was my own fault: "If you really cared about your skating career, why did you write that letter?"
"Be a good Catholic girl."
"Turn the other cheek."
"Dedicate your entire life to curing the diseases of a society that has taken everything you love away from you."
Through it all, the Offspring were putting out songs that were always somehow relevant to my struggles, like when the album "Americana" came out, not long after the breaking of the Salt Lake Olympic Bribery Scandal story: Lies, hypocrisy, corruption, failure, disappointment, shattered dreams...Most of the time, during those worst years of my life, I literally had nowhere else to turn.
The summer after I graduated from high school, I came across the February 1995 issue of the Rolling Stone. My favorite guys were on the cover! And there was a long article about the band inside. It was there that I found out that frontman Bryan "Dexter" Holland had been a cross country runner and Valedictorian of his high school class, and was currently on leave of absence from a Ph.D. program in molecular biology at USC. Wow. No wonder his songs made so much sense to me.
And there it was -- Ph.D. candidacy, presented to me as a good kid's last chance to try and do what he loves. By the time you reach Ph.D. candidacy, you're far enough ahead of your cohort to prove that you've been responsible, but you're still not to old...to be a punk rocker; to be an athlete. But still, guilt can nag at a person who leaves biomedical research. "Waste of time, waste of time, waste of time...and while you're playing around, people are suffering and dying of AIDS and cancer...."
But there he was, throwing off society's expected role for him; being the only one in the whole world who could make me believe that my life -- the one I wanted to live--was also worth saving.
I almost got to meet Dexter at a DNA Recombination and Repair meeting held at USC while I was going to City of Hope. That is, my friends from Dr. Bailis's Recombination lab got to go to the meeting, but I was stuck in the tissue culture room setting up a retroviral oxidative mutagenesis assay. "Guess who was at the meeting?" my friends asked. "It should have been you instead of me," said my friend Michelle.
Well I guess that's just the WAY IT GOES. While I can fix a "near-miss" like what happened to me at the 2002 Olympic Trials just by sticking around for another 4 years, there is nothing I can do about the infamous DNA Repair Meeting. You can't "make" a chance like that for yourself. I simply missed out.
There were so many things I wanted to ask him: "Do you ever feel guilty about leaving science? How will you know when it's time to retire from punk? Do you think you'll ever go back to the lab?" It's not like I can just walk into Nitro Records and say, "Hi, Dexter. I missed the DNA Repair Meeting. Wanna go to Del Taco with me?"
But then there is this: "...Yesterday laughs, tomorrow cries..." Could it be that this man, whom I admire so much, looks towards his own future with dread?
It's just a song...just a song. I'll keep telling myself that.
----
This thing I am doing with my own life right now is so uncool-- it's so "Spandex and Metal." But the Olympics are still kind of a big deal, especially for a former Bribery Scandal Victim and biology student. Wherever I go, there I am...the world's biggest Offspring fan!
Thanks for all the songs. Thanks for saving my life. Thanks for making my world a better place. And for what it's worth, from one scientist to another, it wasn't a waste of time.
posted by Eva at 10:11 AM
<< Home