Sunday Music: "Timebomb" By Old 97's

“No, no, you just don’t get it. Just try - yes, I know it’s country, but it’s not Froggy 101 country, it’s cool. Give it a chance, seriously.” - Me, too many times, 1996-2006

I’ve been trying to frame the Old 97’s since 1997 and it’s still hard. Pop-punk for outlaw country. Alt-country for cow-punkers. Texas for the rest of America. I don’t know.

Might be a high school thing. Maybe a 20-something thing too. The feeling of something inside you that’s capable of blowing you apart, and anyone and everybody around you too, and yet everybody is there, delicate, in some awareness of it, but balancing recklessness with deftness while hearing the same ticking and tocking.

High school is a good time to feel like you don’t have control over some of your emotions. The Old 97’s captured it. They grew on me from there too.

“I’ve got a timebomb, in my mind, mom / I hear it ticking but I don’t know why”

My outlaw country interests, like my Johnny Cash obsession coupled with my Hank/Waylon/Willie stuff, was regularly running into my punk interests, from Meat Puppets to Dead Milkmen, and then alt-rock adjacent albus from Uncle Tupelo and Whiskeytown and those Mike Ness solo records. Whatever the whiskey bottle version of a Molotov cocktail is. They were that.

“She's like a claymore, that's what she's there for / She's waiting 'round here to get blown apart”

The Old 97’s just manifested themselves in the ether. I’m looking back on the burnt orange CD cover and thinking about the army men cowboys aiming to shoot each other. I’m only now realizing they’re at the bottom of a beer aquarium or something. Hey, I was in high school, just because I’m singing all the whiskey songs doesn’t mean I’m drinking all the whiskey.

But, it resonated. And I kept coming back to it. Because of a balance I’m just starting to fully crack.

The emotions that feel like they can blow you up are still there inside of you.

If you want to make something that will resonate, you have to tap into an internal emotion that feels like it might detonate.

I’ve (mostly) matured past letting those emotions control me, but it doesn’t mean I can’t still harness some of their expulsion for propulsion. Music is a major (re)connector for me. TV, movies, and art in general do it too. They’re triggers. They’re forced reflections.

I’m bent on making these reflections meaningful. I don’t want them for pure nostalgia sake. I don’t want them for LinkedIn posts. I want them as reminders to feel, as reminders of my capacity for feeling, deeply.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been stuck on the Old 97’s again. Maybe that’s why I’m making playlists of them and Mike Ness and Uncle Tupelo too. Maybe that’s why I am writing about remembering old and felt emotions for their power, and not my normal mix of embarrassment, shame, and “why were you so stupid” self-talk when I mentally time travel to those years of my life.

Therapy taught me it was ok to feel. Yes, I had to learn that, as an adult. It’s not all just playing MacGyver and disconnecting detonators. Revisiting these songs is almost forcing me to revisit the timebombs at the core of what being alive felt like, just in a healthier way. An amazing wife and a bunch of best friends helps (a lot). If we lose the ability to feel strong emotions, what have we got?

It’s an exploration. It might blow up but it won’t go pop. But knowing it’s volatile, there’s a healthier signal inside of it.

I found this short interview and live version here. This is really cool. Hey Brad F., that looks like you with more hair?!

ps. one of the official signs I’m almost having too much of a good time as an adult is when I pull up this video on YouTube for the 1000th time. My wife can confirm this. Something like “Matt is Old 97s on that 90s TV show drunk” is an accurate description. I wasn’t a big Leno fan, but I was excited for this. Seeing them play it live, I remember thinking just how much they were the same as any of the countless pop-punk/emo bands I saw in that era. The nerd clothes. The way he looks up while he’s singing. We were all tapped in to something, it’s funny to look back.