Please Don 39;t Stop The Music Just Dance

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Norine Wiltshire

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:12:51 PM8/3/24

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This record is essentially the product of moving out of your house and into a creatively dismal area. While Forest Hills, Queens is a very safe area and I managed to snag a really nice apartment for a super low price it gets depressing to be surrounded by senior citizens, hasidic (sic?) jews and russians... I went my first month living here without seeing someone in their twenties, I went at least four months without seeing a single black person. All my friends seemed far away, I got very few visitors and I was too broke to even take the train to go out and visit people. That was the environment in which the album was written.

Now as far as how in was recorded, this was done in an apartment building which meant recording needed to take place during the day, before dinner time, before the kids were home. Unfortunately, the record was pushed back a lot because my computer kept breaking. Once I got everything back on track, I ended up having a new temp job which was sweet because I had some money but TOTALLY lame because I could now only record between 5:30 and 6:30 every day. It finally got finished, and I'm proud to say that only two or three of the vocal tracks were recorded outside the apartment (those were done in Chris Valentino's pracitce space, thanks Chris.) So as usual, all songs were recorded on a laptop by Jeff Rosenstock with pretty much one microphone. Steve Foote (Big D and the Kids Table), James Brown (Beret!), Rick Johnson and Brendan Jensen (Mustard Plug) were kind enough to lend a hand on some of the tracks. Thanks to those guys. And big thanks to Christine Mackie, my wonderful girlfriend who let me record parts of these songs on her computer while mine was broke! Long live the internet!

This song underwent a massive transformation. It was always meant to be the first song on the new album, but initially I was trying to write something that sounded like Supergrass's "Caught By The Fuzz"... a quick fuzzy pop song with fun melodies and no extra fat. It ended up sounding more like Green Day, until I heard the melody at the beginning of this song in my head while I was pumping gas after leaving a temporary job which I made my rent off of. I wrote it down while driving, almost crashed, went to an all you can drink wine party, drank too much, came upstairs, listened to a lot of Botch and decided that the song should not be fun and poppy but spastic and glorious. It was originally titled "Stylish Looks For The Young Professional" and is about how people my age have started to take career-oriented paths in their lives that I find pretty ridiculous and impressive at the same time. Either way, there are plenty of people my age who are competing for promotions in the world of work, and screwing people over and I feel that they can have whatever it is they're trying to gain by doing that and I'll just ignore them. This song is an obvious Wrangler Brutes and Mclusky ripoff.

HOORAY for the young professionals!
We'll stay out of your way. We will give you the world.
We will find an easy way to live life far away from you.
Give head. Get ahead. Play dirty, not fair.
Be a billionaire. Be a jillion... uh... aire.
But you'll all be same until you're old and unprofessional like me.

Okay. You're gonna have to work with me here. For a very brief period of time I was going to write a concept tape based on a "tape" I was going to "claim" to have found "on the beach" that was "left behind by a cruise shipafter it was shot down by a russian submarine in international waters during the cold war." Surprisingly, I decided this was a stupid idea (although i did tell people on last year's ska is dead that i would be writing a record about the tape) but I still had a few songs that I really liked from that tape (this, mpls pts. 3 & 4, grudge report and tell my boss 'i hate you.') So about Minneapolis... A lot of my favorite bands are from there and we were actually playing at my favorite band (Dillinger Four)'s club (The Triple Rock.) So finally playing there was a very exciting thing for me but due to overthinking and planning to "drink to relax" but then drinking so much that something very strange happened to me - everything in my head went from spinning and being confusing and whatever to EVERYTHING ABOUT MY LIFE BECOMING CLEARER THAN IT HAD EVER BEEN. And what was clear was that my life was a total joke. Did I kill myself? Wait 'til the sequel to see!!

You built this up your head. The pressure.
Relax, don't think too much 'cause you can't take this.
Well, I relaxed with liquor.
The pressure has gone away, but baby, I can't see shit.
It's not the same to me when falling on my face.
I finally drank myself to death.

I should be old enough to know (better better)
and I SHOULD be young enough to not take everything so seriously
SHOULD be smart enough to know that doing this is dangerous
this mixing anxious energy with drunk ferocious carelessness.
I finally drank myself to death.

II. TRUE 'TIL COLLEGE
Get me a friend or a smoke or a hospital or a suicide pill.
Get me a million dollar record deal so I can end this charade.
I've been writing the same song over again, over again, over again.
Over and over and over and over again.

And it feels like heroin.
I just got addicted to demanding your attention for my trite repetition.
And I can't stop thinking about the first songs I ever wrote
Where I swore off alcohol 'cause I knew better.
And I can't stop feeling like that "straight edge" shit became a cult
But I'm kidding myself by believing that the bar scene is any better.

This is one of those songs that pretty much wrote itself initially. I wrote some of the words while on the last tour with Bomb the Music Industry! and getting used to playing smaller crowds and also being easily the oldest guy in the room. When you think too much and hang out with people after shows that are a different age group than you (older or younger), you start to wonder whether or not anyone could possibly care about your views or problems. That and you can't help but feel bad when someone offers you marijuana and you think that they're offering you money or food. So this song is about feeling out of touch with other people whether it's 'cause they're older, younger or just don't feel the same as you. Word.

There's a man tonight that I don't wanna meet.
Everyone's competing to be famous.
I don't even wanna be on a list of D-Rate celebrities.
I think I'd rather leave.
I've got my bag over my sleeve and my ticket out of town expires tonight.

Hey, would you like me if I stayed forever young?
Well, it sucks, but no one does.
Get used to staying out of touch with everyone you'll ever meet.
Continue feeling awkward in all social surroundings.

After playing a show in Pennsylvania with my old band, I had a panic attack. I drove home that night with a goal to get THE FUCK HOME as SOON AS POSSIBLE. That of course meant I got a speeding ticket, which I had to fight in court a year and a half later. The thing was, the cop didn't even remember that he gave me the ticket at 4 AM... he thought he had given it to me in the afternoon! So while I tried to object, the judge kept yelling at me and while driving to work straight from court in my girlfriend's car with no air conditioning I started thinking about life a lot; about stupid kids who throw trash all over the place, about metaphor of us longing for billboards on sunny days to provide us with shade, about how Fugazi, a band who is clearly revolutionary and far more important than anything I've ever done, even THEY sell records. I wrote a real sad song when I came home. Then I went to the Apple Store to meet someone and started playing the beginning of this song while waiting. Some dude told me it sounded good, so I decided "hey! why don't i make the dismal song a 90's alterna-pop song!" So that's this. Me trying to write a Hold Steady song basically and failing. Backup vocals by Rick Johnson and Brendan Jensen from Mustard Plug.

And when you stuff yourself into a suit and tie do you think the judge can see through the sweat as he gives you your fine for a post-panic attack speeding ticket on a 90 degree day in New York. And yeah, you're gonna drive home for three hours to work in a basement for tribute bands making posters to pay about a fifth of that price. It's just Staten Island traffic in teh summer. Oh!

That orange ball.
That burning orb of fire in the sky is gonna explode and we're all gonna die!
Except for the foolish few who will "think ahead" and drive their SUV's to their bomb shelters
Complain about air conditioning because "baby, we ain't got no more electricity."
They wanna rise when it's done, be a leader with a gun.
Be a leader of what? Like a hundred and one?
Well, fuck it, I'm gonna hang out on the rooftop when it comes.

'Cause when it's dark, it'll be night time, baby.
And I'll get my ass on up out of this mess.
The only stores that are open, baby.
They gonna sell beer, and they're gonna sell ice cream.
And we'll drink drink drink and get drunk drunk drunk
and we'll talk talk talk about how much fun we had, yeah, when
we were fuckin' the world.

Through the glares on our windshields, we can't see each others eyes, just McDonalds cups and wrappers that they're throwing at full speed. And yes, I long for a shadow. And yes, I always appreciate the irony that the only cool comfort that allows us to see is a goddamn billboard. Sing it with me.

A BILL BOARD IS THE ONLY THING PREVENTING US FROM BLINDLY CRASHING. And we'll never see a city not marred by advertisements, and we'll NEVER have a future not working for those companies, and it's sure as shit not getting better so we might as well accept it now, oh.