283/365: BUCKLE UP EVERYONE, TIME TO GET SAPPY AND EMO FOR A HOT MINUTE: Every pop-punk fan has "their" band. The band that they know every word of every song, useless trivia facts, backstory and history for. The band they spend all their money from their summer job on merch for. The band that they just connect with, because they truly feel like the band tells their story. For me, Good Charlotte is that band. I saw a Simple Plan concert back in 2005 at the Utica Aud, and they were playing with these four guys from Maryland who I'd heard of but never listened to. That night I actually enjoyed GC's performance even more than SP, who I had originally come to see. I bought their second album, The Young and the Hopeless, and listened to it damn near every day. Every time I went for a car ride, I would grab my CD player, some headphones, and that album. And when my CD player finally busted I burned the album onto a mini disk and kept listening to it on there. It got to the point where I knew all the words, all the harmonies, down to the ORDER of the songs. It's been a love affair ever since. All the records, all the videos, all the appearances, all the side projects. I've been with them through just about their entire career. I can't explain why I love them so much, I just do. I used to cut their pictures out of magazines and hang them up on the ceiling above my bed in my room. I'd decorate my school binders with their posters. I learned calligraphy for the specific purpose of doodling their trademark "GC" anywhere I could. I'm pretty sure I ruined a pair of jeans decorating them in ballpoint pen with the guys' names. (Sorry, mom.) And in high school sometimes people would give me a hard time about how they weren't "really punk", or how "[band name here] is better", or how "they look like a bunch of girls/fags/tools", and it used to bother me because I felt so connected to this music and these people. But whether you love Good Charlotte or you've never heard of them, maybe you can at least appreciate the place they have in my heart. (Cntd. in comments.) #365DaysofBoston #LiveFromNY
