Restless Leg Syndrome

“Can you believe these new girls? None of them use birth control, and they eat all the steak! I mean, they don’t even know what it is to be a fan. You know, to truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band… so much that it hurts.”

-The immortal words of “Almost Famous”

I blame Cameron Crowe for making me believe that if I wanted to be a music journalist like his young wide-eyed protagonist William Miller, I too could find myself on tour with a ”mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom,” writing 1,000 word cover stories for Rolling Stone (and getting paid for it) and conveniently picking up Lester Bangs as a willing mentor. Myths! All myths. Especially because Lester Bangs is dead. But there is an aspect to “Almost Famous” that still rings true: The struggle to separate one’s undying love for a band from the need to take yourself seriously as a journalist. (No matter how many professors tell you A&E isn’t real journalism.)

As Ms. Penny Lane once said, “If you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends…” Well, today, your iTunes store, but whatever. Work with me here.

The “relationships” I’ve built with my favorite bands have lasted longer than most of the romantic relationships I’ve had. (Is that sad?) I’ve turned to the wisdom of Craig Finn from the Hold Steady in times of trouble, and he always provides me with some damn good advice. When I feel like things couldn’t be worse than they are right now, “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” reminds me that while, “It burns to be broke and hurts to be heartbroken, always being both must be a drag,” and as I yell along furiously, I feel better. I mean, jeez, at least I don’t etch things like “Jesus lived and died for all your sins” into my neck. (Though I have at times considered tattooing “Damn right I’ll rise again” into my lower back, but the urge is usually gone by dawn).

“Your Little Hoodrat Friend” by The Hold Steady on Separation Sunday

Or when I can’t imagine another day of the mortal melodramatic turmoil that is my current situation, I turn to Mr. John Darnielle, the Mountain Goat, and listen to him scream, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me!” Because, goddammit, I will.

(This video of Craig Finn joining Darnielle on stage at a recent Mountain Goats show in New York. Witness Finn in his Happy Baby Potato-head glory)

There are more nuggets of immensely comforting wisdom to be found: When my legs feel restless, I listen to “Idiot Heart” by Sunset Rubdown. Spencer Krug will rightfully tell me to “stay away from open windows and put the telephone down” as I move my idiot body around. Recently, The Kills, who are admittedly less prolific than the above three artists, have been my best friends. In moments of rage and madness, or simply room cleaning, I can scream out of tune with Alison Mosshart about how “There’s only so much you can lose before we both collide.” And obviously, when she’s singing about her “little tornado, her little hurricane,” she’s singing about me.

“Idiot Heart” by Sunset Rubdown on Dragonslayer

I will defend almost anything the bands with whom I have a distinguished relationship do, often blindly. When the newest Hold Steady album Heaven is Whenever came out to only mediocre reviews, I mulled it over for a while, then decided it didn’t matter because “The Weekenders” had the line, “The theme of the party was the industrial age, and you came in dressed like a trainwreck.” And now that the new Kills album Blood Pressures isn’t getting as rave reviews as their previous (incredible) Midnight Boom or No Wow, I refuse to write it off. (“Satellite,” “Heart Is A Beating Drum” and “DNA” are good. Don’t mess with me.)

“DNA” by  The Kills on Blood Pressures 

My point is, “Almost Famous” may have instilled some absurd expectations of what being a music writer would be like, but it also makes a vital point that music journalists should keep in mind: Loving music “so much that it hurts” is an affliction that both leads us to being able to write about music passionately and often, but also makes it hard to write anything bad about the bands you love most. And this is dangerous.

As I’ve learned in my trade school (journalism school, that is), there are often topics that journalists just won’t touch because they cannot approach them with an objective eye. I think music journalists have to approach things that way too. Although neither The Hold Steady or The Kills new albums in question are that bad, even if they were, I fear it would be hard for me to say so. Much like in “Almost Famous,” a music journalist must dance the line between indulging their passion for music and not praising bands as gods. (If you’ve seen the movie as many times as I have, you look for the true lessons there – young William gets in trouble with both the band and Rolling Stone; the band thinking he sold them down the river as Jason Lee screams, “I SOUND LIKE A DICK!”; the magazine thinking he wrote the article as a fan, not a critic.)

This means in the future, when I hopefully actually employed and getting paid to rant about music, I will try to not write about the bands I hold nearest to my heart. I make this statement now, and though I will want to go back on them in the mythical world of payment for words, I will not do it.

Because I’m a grown up. And I have self-control. And amble space to doodle the names of rock stars in my notebook, where no one can see.