Songs For Your Day

I miss a good basement show–the way we did it back in Brazil/Terre Haute, when we didn’t have much more than some beat up half cabs and beat up hearts.

It started with a small group of kids going to shows at The Basement Collective in Terre Haute, satelliting around a handful of bands: Canterbury Effect, Not Forgotten, Dead of Winter. It was at the Collective that our group met Under a Dying Sun on their way back to San Francisco, and started a friendship and tradition of summer shows, the last and most memorable of which happened the summer of 2002.

The Basement Collective had long since folded, and we were doing shows out of my friend Dustin’s basement; I had left Not Forgotten to play bass for Since Forever and Dustin had left Canterbury Effect and started another band, The Graveyard Heart.

It was the 3rd annual Summer’s Summary show, and what had once been 15-20 kids gathering at the Collective had become almost 100 trying to cram into Dustin’s small basement to see the all of the local mainstays and Under a Dying Sun as they passed through for the 3rd year running on the last leg of their summer tour back to SanFran.

There’s a smattering of images from the night I hope to never forget–the ceiling sweating, Shaye’s wonder at the quiet corn and the fireflies, everyone I loved so much at that time in my life in the same room shouting along to the same songs, the sting and shred in my throat, Konane a fuzz through the microphone speaking about how what we had there in that basement was something he’d never found anywhere else in all their touring.

It ended up being the last show Since Forever ever played, the last summer of Under a Dying Sun passing through, the last summer of a lot of things. It’s a strange sort of nostalgia looking back, one I could easily let myself grow sad over–wondering if I’ll ever feel anything like I felt in that basement again, thinking about how I still search for similar feelings–how I climb now to feel the rocks tear at the skin of my fingers like bass strings once did, how I still gather people around me who know and love the same anthems I used to shout, how I still sometimes go into my basement, simply because the smell, the way it smells like Dustin’s old basement.

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*Photo compliments of John Joh.