Album: Boys And Girls in America
Year: 2006
Boys and girls in America.
I’m sure I’m conflating a bunch of different memories into a single moment, but I still have a memory of the first night I felt part of the Fresno Tower scene. It was a warm summer evening in 1985, and it was at the Wild Blue.
Boys and girls in America.
I don’t recall who was playing: it coulda been Aqua Bob or The Wayne Foundation or Western Chapter or somebody else. It doesn’t really matter, because there was as much going on outside as there was inside.
Boys and girls in America.
And by “as much” of course, I meant that there were a lot of college girls hanging around outside, not old enough to get in. Some of them I’d met at CSUF, others I hadn’t. All of whom were smart and interesting and — maybe not on that first night — were coming to the realization that maybe us boys and girls were all becoming part of something bigger, even if we couldn’t define exactly what that was.
Boys and girls in America.
But in the meantime, let’s walk over to Mayfair market across the street and get some beer so we could sit on the warm asphalt and talk.
Boys and girls in America.
When Craig Finn referenced Jack Kerouac for the title of this album — and made it a refrain in this song — he was drawing a line straight through decades of American youth, creating scene and spitting white noise for a time, and then watching it all disintegrate over time, because that’s the only possible outcome.
Boys and girls in America.
Of course, you don’t know that on the first night. Instead, you’re completely overwhelmed by the sea of possibilities, and want it to last forever just so you can experience every single one.
But of course that sea narrows down to a trickle.
Boys and girls in America.
And I think that’s what the slow, piano-driven ballad, “First Night,” is about: about coming to terms with that inevitability. And while the details of the song are different than the details of my life, the feeling it evokes is utterly spot-on.
Holly’s inconsolable
Unhinged and uncontrollable
Because we can’t get as high as we got
On that first night
So I watched our scene coalesce, climax and crash within the space of several years, and then got the hell out of town because I didn’t know what else to do, but have always wondered who I would have been if I hadn’t.
Boys and girls in America.
“First Night” performed live
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