I’ve got to come clean here. When I went to see Unwritten Law (also NOFX, Lagwagon, Limp, and an assortment of other bands) at Boreal Ski Resort in 1998, it was the first concert I’d been to since the New Kids on the Block came to Arco Arena in 1991. Ironically, my companions at the punk show where the same companions who made the NKOTB concert possible six years prior. (Yes, my infinitely cooler cousin Lindsay and her surprisingly relevant mother made many-a-thing possible for me in my youth.) But as a falsely punkish, impressionable, tough-guy-snowboarding-wannabe-badass-self-indulged 8th grader, I didn’t dare spill those beans to my aunt or cousin between sets as we tried our best to skank and stomp and dance on a frozen parking lot in clunky snowboard boots. After all, I had a make-believe reputation to maintain. It seemed like the conversation about my journey through live music was better left for another time.
Hello, time.
My immersion into larger, more-established-in-our-fake-punk-attempts-to-find-ourselves circles during my freshmen year of high school made it easier to ignore my musical past. Along with another ski resort season pass, more access to music, and actual credibility among a solid base of snowboarding buddies, my secret remained safe.
I realized the need to take a good, long look at Unwritten Law when I found the band featured in the first snowboarding film I ever purchased. The band had a polished cut of “Harmonic” in 1998’s insanely huge Mack Dawg Productions film Decade. Not long after, when a free UL demo CD from the Boreal show resurfaced in a friend’s car, I felt compelled to wrap my arms around this San Diego band. I regarded my subsequent purchase of their self-titled album as one of the best investments made during my high school years.
I embraced these guys, backtracking through Blue Room and Oz Factor, then letting the band carry me in college for a while with Elva and Here’s to the Mourning. The ride included a show at The Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz in which Russo, drunk, shirtless, and substance-weary, asked to see (and saw) a pair of underage tits in exchange for some song requests. I left the show with a bass pick and a bruise after fighting over a relinquished drumstick—not to mention an odd taste in my mouth about a band I’d spent so much time with—but I had something more substantial to ground me.
For me, it started and ended with their self-titled CD. I played it for four years straight in high school. I couldn’t put the songs on mix tapes because there were too many good tracks to justify a cut. I wanted it on when I was on, near, or approaching the snow. Eventually, my college roommates and I used three songs from the album in our locally infamous Time for Nothing video, an hour-long collection of clips and scenes that stands as the most legitimate college transcript ever constructed.
Unfortunately, Here’s to the Mourning ultimately ended the affair. It wasn’t so much that I felt over it, but that Russo himself did. I couldn’t find the cathartic experience that self titled provided. And as the music and the band melded into a backdrop of the central coast and the CSUMB experience, I lost the connective magnetism of the music. And today, if “Cailin” or “Holiday” comes across the old KyPod shuffle, I reach for a desire to keep it playing. My mind searches for scenes from Time for Nothing, or reaches back for an antic from Decade, or seeks out a giant booter or rail from those slushy afternoon sessions in the park at Sierra at Tahoe. All of that seems so far away though; the musical bridge has lost its grip on either plot of land it spans.
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