"we had the greatest expectations"

Today when I came home from work, hands totally full of bags and carriers and all other assorted nonsense, there was a big old box on my front step. I knew immediately what was in the box, so I ran up the steps to the porch and juggled everything enough to get the mail and my crap into my house.

I hurried up to put everything else away, opened the letter that I received, and then fought with the box to get it open so that I could get to the contents.

I was not disappointed.

It is the weirdest thing to realize that a new band has taken over that number one spot on your "favorite bands" roster. For me, I am amazed at how quickly The Gaslight Anthem climbed the ladder. A few years ago I heard "High Lonesome" on a mix CD that a friend made me, and I took to it because it had a Counting Crows reference in it, but I kind of left them alone after that. But then I heard the song again on WXPN, and decided I needed the album.

But I didn't really fully get on board with Gaslight until last year, when one of the amazon pages (France, maybe?) previewed their newest album, Handwritten, and I just fell in love. The single that they had been playing ("Here Comes My Man") had already garnered my full attention, but the 30 second clips from the rest of the tracks had me longing, and I hadn't felt that way about music in a really long time. I knew I had found something special.

There are very few bands for which I would drive an hour and half north, just to simply sit on a bench outside a venue to listen. Gaslight is among royalty for me.

So, then, it stood to reason that I should absolutely drop an unnecessary amount of money on a (very beautifully packaged) boxed set of 45's put out by the band, just because I could.

I am 2/3 of the way through the nine records, and I am very pleased with my purchase. There are some acoustic B-sides (and we all know that I'm a "sucker for anything acoustic") and a few other little gems that make me very glad to own this box.

The only problem I have with the whole thing is that my record crates are full now, and I have no where to store them when they aren't on the turntable. :)



(If you are interested in seeing what is in the box, or even what it looks like, here is my vine video.)