TITLE: "Why I Drink"
ARTIST: The Candy Snatchers
ALBUM: The Candy Snatchers
RELEASE DATE: 1996
February 1997: I live in a great apartment I can barely afford on East 12th street with a really high fuck-off ceiling. I'm working insane hours at TIME Magazine and spending most of my paltry earnings on compact discs, beer and live rock n' roll. Most of the latter two are soaked up at fine establishments like The Continental, CBGB, Brownie's, Coney Island High and Tramps, regularly seeing bands like Firewater, Skeleton Key, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Unband, Nashville Pussy, The Upper Crust and The Candy Snatchers. I'm destroying my liver, my hearing and my circadian rhythms. Myself and most of my friends are single. There is a picture of me from this era (see above), earnest of epaulet and ill-advised of side burn, emphatically air-guitaring with a ridiculous glare on my face. Life is good.
February 2008: I'm married to a spectacular woman and have two equally spectacular children. Many of my friends are also now married and most have since moved away. I had to sell that great apartment on 12th street, but managed to find a more suitable apartment nearby on East 9th street. I'm out of a job after being downsized by MTV News and spending most of my time looking to re-insert myself into the workforce. The Continental doesn't host live music anymore. CBGB is gone and gutted. Brownie's is long gone and now just another bar for NYU students. Coney Island High was closed, torn down and now a soulless condo stands in its former footprint. Tramps seems like it's been gone forever and the space it once occupied is now some velvet rope hip hop lounge. Most of this doesn't matter anyway as I rarely get out to see live music anymore, and I now have Tinnitus permanently screaming in my right ear. Life is still good, but there are challenges at hand that seemed inconceivable in February of 1997.
This Friday night, however, I'm off to Brooklyn to visit a snippet of my distant post-youth as I catch The Candy Snatchers performing their first show back here in New York City in over two years (see show info below). There will be rocking and -- o yea verily -- there will probably be drinking, but now I'll be wearing ear-plugs and behaving myself. That's the plan, anyway.
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