365 project "summer of 1978, my sister and i in the backseat just wait..."

94.

artist:five iron frenzy
album:our newest album ever

during my first year of college, the communication department was undergoing some massive renovations, and our radio station moved from a hole in the fourth floor that i barely remember to a closet on the third floor that i became well acquainted with. I'm not sure why i don't remember much of my first semester, I'm wondering if we had to shadow for the entire semester, or if we weren't allowed to start until late, or what, so if one of my fellow WC students from that time reads this and remembers, please fill me in.

at any rate, i remember being in that little closet on the third floor, looking around at the music selection in front of me and not even knowing where to begin. i had always thought of myself to be on top of the music scene, but here i was facing two walls filled of bands that i had never, ever heard of in my entire life. it was overwhelming in a way that id never found myself overwhelmed before. i needed to pick something to play, as dead air on a radio station isn't good for business, so i just started grabbing CDs by the appearance of the spines and picking songs from those CDs based on what was either marked as "safe to play" or "good track" or just whatever sounded good to me if the whole CD was deemed safe.

one of those CDs that i pulled from the wall was our newest album ever by a band id never heard of, five iron frenzy. looking at the back of the disk, i saw a mark next to a song called "suckerpunch" so i decided id have a go at it. this was the beginning of something that, even looking back on, i cannot fully grasp. is it sane to say that ones first great love affair was with a band? because i think that describes my relationship with this band.

i ended up playing a song from this disk during every show i jockeyed that semester. when i got home that summer, i bought that CD, as well as whatever else i could find by this band. i transferred colleges, but my love for this band went with me. i went to see them in concert, and it opened my eyes to bands like relient k, the oc supertones, the insyderz, and the w's.  i was fully in love with CCM.

sometime in 2002, during my senior year of college, the band announced that they would be embarking on their last tour ever, and that after that, they would be breaking up for good. i was devastated. this band had become such an important band in my life that i just didn't know what i was going to do with myself. this may seem a bit psychotic, but if you love music the way that i love music, you'll understand how big of a deal this really was to me. my college roommates were too busy doing drugs to listen to my rambling about this band, and most of the friends i had made at MU that would have cared were no longer around. i didn't know what to do.

so i went to frenzyboard. i had been there off and on before all of this, but never really felt the need to stick around. but now was the time...i needed support and when i logged on, i saw that there were a whole bunch of other people that felt the same way i did. this was the right place for me to go to reach out and talk about the band...and as it turned out, anything else that was going on in my life.

the band has long since broken up, and my presence on the board is lurker at best, but most of the people i talk to and the adventures I've taken in the last 8 years have been thanks to this band and that board. it sounds corny and i know that, but this band really is more than just music to me. they will always be part of who i am.