"Don't try to make no sense of this scene,
It's just between Carolina and Me,
And we keep changin'
Anyway."
~High, Tabitha's Secret


When I'm done heaving and hawing and being utterly frustrated, for the moment, with something he agrees with me totally on, he sighs, relieved, because I'm just what he needed. He needed me to get riled up and totally insane, he needed me to rant and rave. I can hear his smile over the phone, and I ask him, what?

"I just love you, that's all."

Yeah. That about sums it up.

We talk about music, life, other's people's problems (how no one in the world but the two of us really have any), and we decide that when we've both inevitably screwed up our lives, we'll be together then, we'll deserve each other then, and who else could put up with us? Once I've lost Zack and he's lost his girl (and his sanity), then we'll go back to the way it was in seventh grade-- complete co-dependence and social hermitry. When the world has ended, when the bomb has dropped, when we have nothing.

I'll still have Jeremey.



The great thing about someone who's just really fucked with you over the years, and I mean really screwed you up, is when you've lived through it, you really get a sense of what you can weather for this person. People always thought it was totally naive puppy love that kept me waiting for him all those times he was gone, but it was more than that-- he and I, we have something. It's simple.

And what's simpler is that it's grown with time. There's this incredible comfort of history and sentiment.

We're like the recent seasons of the Simpson's, based almost entirely on references to earlier episodes and self-satirizing remarks. Except, we don't suck.

So when he asked me to update, well, how could I say no?

--

So I told him I'd let him know what songs from Tabitha's Secret he should listen to, what line to look out for, what in each makes them really good-- he'd listened to them years before and never appreciated them, and he's been holding onto the CD's without listening. They're not the easiest band to like, but if you get into it, there are some incredible lines hidden in the some of the less popular tracks, and in certain cases, musicianship (?) that match the skill in any of the MB20 albums.

And if you don't know that Tabitha's Secret was the band most of the members of Matchbox Twenty were in pre-dating Yourself or Someone Like You, well then, I guess you haven't been through very many of my musical lectures.


I'm gonna start with Swing, from Don't Play with Matches, because this is one of the strongest musically. It starts out with just Rob's Voice and the guitar, then the key moments when the other instruments come into the song-- the first island of snare and cymbals bringing just a foreshadowing of energy before it goes back into the accoustic-- then the base starts to bring in strength, and it just builds until it's surrounding you, and Rob's incredible voice is just another instrument in this fusion of sound-- basic, with only the guitar, base, and drums, but overwhelming, a fight and a victory, so subtly that you I almost forbid you to listen without a set of headphones and closed eyes.

The lyrics in this are appropriately understated, at least to me-- there aren't any brilliant lines, there's a lot of repitition, but if it gets to you the way it's supposed to, the words come to you like subliminal messages-- set your balance, keep you head down, watch your anger, boy-- and maybe, if you get to know it and love it the way I do, they come out of your mouth idly, as your whole body is taken over by the beat and the waves of the sound.


Ahhh, it's good. It's difficult to choose, but I think this is my favorite.


Unkind-- Oh, Jeremey, this is very you.

Very different musically-- you can tell, just by the way Rob's singing, that this one is supposed to about the lyrics, and I would say it's maybe a little strained in places, because of this-- some cliches, sort of emo, truth be told. Still-- it's the way the song builds, the mood changes, the feelings emerge-- it goes from sad to accusatory to frustrated, all the great aftermath of a great relationship. This song takes place in a room where two people don't quite know where to go, what they are, what they're supposed to be at this point in their relationship. They're become increasingly different people and struggling with their feelings for each other as they ebb and wane-- come to think of, there's someone other than you, Jeremey, that this one reminds me of a great deal more.

"So bring it on, baby, what you getting into?
I swear that once it was the little things that mattered, but it all seems true to you.
Say the hell with my name, say the hell with my picture.
But swear for the one time you needed me around to be around,
Well, I'm around right now.

And here I'll stand like it matters.
Only once gets through, then gets scattered by the rain.
But pain gives me the right to be unkind."


I think this is one of those songs that really shows off Rob's ability to appeal on a very personal level-- this song is not universal, I don't think, and few people could really love it-- with the exception of the line "Pain gives me the right to be unkind", this is about a very specific situation, or, rather, a hundred very specific situations to a hundred different people. But no two people will really get the same thing out of this.

Come to think about it, this song might not be one you'd like, particularly-- maybe I wrote about this one for me.

The songs I really want to get around to discussing are Paint Me Blue, High, and a few off of the Live Album that I can't locate, though I know This is Not a Love Song is indispensible, though it'd take me a while to locate that-- Give the two I've already talked about and the two I just mentioned a listen, and I'll get around to commentary on those last two later.


And hey to everyone reading this who's not Jeremey! (All two of you)

"I guess I've changed but, yeah, couldn’t you
Given all we've been through? Well,
Heaven knows I've been around, and around."
~TS, And Around