Life Soundtrack: West Bay Invitational

As you may have guessed, I was even more sensitive as an early 20-something than I am now. There was no shortage of reasons for me to brood and write. On many a Friday night when others were clubbing at Axis and Avalon on Landsdowne Street, I secured a spot at the end of the counter at my beloved Deli Haus. There, the punk rock servers took pity on me and neglected the minimum purchase rule and supplied me with a bottomless cup of Sumatra and emptied my overfilling ashtray. I would scratch away in my composition book -- notes from a broken-hearted good for nothing. Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and slap some sense into me --- "Get your ass to Avalon and get some!!!"

I was lonely, I was hungry and I was in a perpetual state of lovesickness. I laugh at it now, but hormones and malnutrition can really warp reality. While I eventually found friends and way down the road found real love that rendered everything before it silly, in those days, my only comfort came from one of two activities -- going to the movies or going to the Middle East or T.T. the Bear's to see my favorite indie bands (accompanied of course by a PBR allowance and a pack of rolling tobacco). And no band was more reflective of my angst than Jawbreaker, a three piece outfit out of the Bay Area -- the one not called Green Day. I remember seeing them before I ever heard them -- but the experience was life-changing. An overcrowded, sold-out house full of spiked hair, studs, chain wallets, Doc Martens and fishnet -- pogo-ing and screaming lyrics in unison as Blake belted out from the mainstage. Brisk two and three-minute songs supporting some hard-truth poetry. Tales of manic loneliness, bitter break-ups and celebratory hook-ups -- a mash-up of power chords and Beat literature. Many an evening, I would meet up with my fellow hometown friends, Bert and Leigh, to share a jug of Carlo Rossi, eat a giant slice from Little Steve's and listen to their vinyl copies of Bivouc and Dear You. Songs such as "Ache," "Jinx Removing," "Chesterfield King," "Kiss the Bottle" and "Sluttering" were sung out in terrible chorus renditions as we got progressively drunker. And I could not have been happier... in misery.

It could have been any song off of Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy -- but I'm selecting this one to exemplify the soundtrack of my heartbreaking college years. While some embraced Morissey's self-loathing crooning, I took to screaming out angry West Coast punk rock in the company of other lost souls smoking too much and kissing one too many shots of Kentucky straight.