Absolutely nothing’s changed
December 29th, 2006
So there are trillions of songs about Christmas, but I can only think of two pop/rock songs about New Year’s, the famous one being U2’s “New Year’s Day” and the not-so-famous one being the Dismemberment Plan’s “The Ice of Boston”. (Apparently, there is a song by Death Cab for Cutie called “The New Year”, but I don’t have much interest in it, as seeking it out would be a violation of my irrational scorn for Death Cab and Bright Eyes and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I’ll explain this later.)
In my love-hate relationship with U2 (equally reciprocated by the band, I’m guessing), I tend to feel like they have always been a little too sincere, but if you actually read the lyrics to “New Year’s Day” you realize that it’s pretty cynical. “Nothing changes,” Bono sighs. “Though I want to be with you night and day, nothing changes on New Year’s Day.” And there is the nice bit about how “we are told this is a golden age, and gold is the reason for the wars we wage.” Good stuff, generally (especially rhyming “day” and “Day”), though I certainly am right sick of this song.
The sentiment is actually not far off from what the D-Plan were going for in “The Ice of Boston”. I used to listen to live shows of the Plan pretty often — they were plentiful on the internet circa 2000 and I didn’t use to have any of their CDs. So I got used to live versions of this song, and I think the studio version is pretty weak in comparison. Trolling around youtube this morning I found a couple copies of it, including this one that is pretty decent (though mostly missing the bass):
At the bottom of this page I’ll also give a live mp3 and the lyrics. This song is very easy to understand and very easy to relate to. I have had a few New Year’s Eves like that.
Not this year, though. In all, it’s been a decent year.
I was so completely exhausted a couple weeks ago, after a grueling end to my semester, with no prospects of a real vacation or anything. But things have been okay since then. My Christmas was surprisingly refreshing, a genuinely nice one. I was so not looking forward to Christmas, I wasn’t in the spirit at all, but I had a good time with family and that was all I had hoped for. I put a handful of pictures on flickr.
For the upcoming New Year, I don’t really have any resolutions. I never do, actually. This is one of my problems in life, not being resolute enough. My life has been gradually getting more fun and more productive since it ground to a halt when I moved back from Poland a couple years ago. It’s kind of like I went down an amazing and awesome detour for a long time, from 2002 to 2004, and then I hit an apparent dead end. And my choices were to either keep going straight into dubious terrain, or to back up, and I didn’t do either one, but instead swerved off the road to the left, trying to pick up the highway somewhere further ahead than I was when I branched off. And now I’m somewhere close to where I would have been if I had never gone off the path, and it was a bumpy ride but an interesting one. I don’t know if it was the sensible thing to do, but I am not really interested in sensibility. Some of those side paths are starting to look tempting again…
Getting old is not so bad. In 2007 I will turn 30, and I guess I’m okay with that. I guess for New Year’s I can resolve to turn 30 with a bang, making the most out of the shreds of youth I have left. It’s sort of exciting. Maybe nothing changes on New Year’s Day, but I don’t really want things to change that much, at least not in my personal life.
Blech. I can’t end the year on that note. How about a quick reference to “Auld Lang Syne”? Wikipedia gives us this final verse, which is pretty rad:
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
And gies a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
for auld lang syne.
Translated into modern English as:
And there’s a hand my trusty friend !
And give us a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.
Take a right gude-willie-waught, amigos and amigas. Happy New Year. And check out the Plan song below:
“The Ice of Boston” · The Dismemberment Plan · live in Seattle, 2/26/2000
Listen to this song:
yeah here’s to another goddamn new year
and outside 2 million drunk Bostonians are getting ready to sing Auld Lang Syne out of tune
i sit there and raise a cheer
looking at the clouds, orange with celebration
i wonder if you’re out there…
hey the ice of Boston is muddy
and reflects no light in the day or night
and i slip on it every time
pop open the third bottle of bubbly
yeah and i take that bottle of champagne,
go into the kitchen,
stand in front of the kitchen window,
and i take all my clothes off
i take that bottle of champagne and i pour in on my head
and i feel it cascade through my hair and across my chest
and the phone rings, and it’s my mother
and she says, “Hi honey, how’s Boston?”
and i stand there all alone on new year’s eve
butt naked, drenched in champagne
looking at a bunch of strangers
looking at them looking at me
looking at them and i say,
“I’m fine mom! How’s Washington?”
hey the ice of Boston is muddy
and reflects no light in the day or night
and i slip on it every time
so i guess the party line is i followed you up here
but i don’t know about that
mainly because knowing about that would involve
knowing about some pathetic, ridiculous, and absolutely true things about myself
that i’d rather not admit to right now
i woke up at 3 a.m. with the radio on
that Gladys Knight and the Pips song on
about how she’d rather live in his world with him than live in her own world alone
and i laid there, head spinning, trying to fall asleep
and i thought to myself,
“Oh Gladys girl, I love you, but oh, get a life!”
hey the ice of Boston is muddy
and reflects no light in the day or night
and i slip on it every time
More recently: The year in rock | Previously: Addicted to the sound
Tags: holidays, life, music, new year's
I’d completely overlooked this D-Plan song as I was attempting to throw together a last-minute New Year’s mix. I resorted to typing semi-tangential words into iTunes to see what songs came up (“year,” “midnight,” “champagne”). It was not really a success.
But I did have fun realizing that there is the Mountain Goats song “This Year” and an Uncle Tupelo song named “That Year.” I think they go well together.
BTW, don’t be so hard on DCFC … despite their strange MTV/hearthrob status (since when did 9 year olds want to sing along about following their loved one “into the dark”?), they can write and perform some great songs.
gerhard – i just found this post today and this part
…And my choices were to either keep going straight into dubious terrain, or to back up, and I didn’t do either one, but instead swerved off the road to the left, trying to pick up the highway somewhere further ahead than I was when I branched off. And now I’m somewhere close to where I would have been if I had never gone off the path, and it was a bumpy ride but an interesting one. I don’t know if it was the sensible thing to do, but I am not really interested in sensibility…
is just so awesome and i just keep reading it over and over. it so accurately describes your journey the last couple of years, and it’s so wonderful that you traveling down a path you find decent, because i remember (although probably never quite grasped fully since i was distracted with my own detours and destinations). i am right there now, having to decide between turning around, taking some exit up the road, or heading straight and hoping there’s a gas station somewhere up ahead where i will play the winning lotto ticket. but right now i’m pulled off on the side of the road with my hazards on pretending i’m doing something productive.
as you know this is the year i too turn 30. i think our joint new year’s resolution should be to celebrate one of our birthdays together in person, don’t you?
if i could somehow edit my comment, i would’ve written
…it’s so wonderful that you are now traveling down a path you find decent, because i remember (although probably never quite grasped fully since i was distracted with my own detours and destinations) when you felt like you weren’t. but now i’m right where you were, having to decide between