Where did the last twenty-five years go?
This past week, I celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of my move to California. Well, when I say "celebrated", it was more like I acknowledged it quietly. Thanks to good ol' Covid-19, my plans to drive up to Silicon Valley and hang with my first (and still) CA friends Paul and Steve got waylaid. So instead, I sipped some wine at home and listened to a couple of mid-90s playlists.
As my mind wandered back to that long week in 1995, I couldn't help but laugh at the insane amount of energy I spent getting from North Carolina to California. See, it was kind of important that I get to the Bay Area as quickly as possible, to lock down an apartment and get started at my new job. And when I got there, I was going to need a car. So I told myself: "Self, you've got to drive across the country. In three days."
Three days!
And so I did. The first day I drove for fifteen hours straight. (Minus gas and food stops, obviously.) I made it from the middle of North Carolina to the easternmost edge of Oklahoma, a trip of just about one thousand miles. The next day I was able to do the same thing in the same amount of time, getting from Oklahoma to Flagstaff, Arizona. And the final day, I powered through western Arizona, the deserts of southeastern California, several hundred miles of I-5 (the backbone of California), and the maze of highway interchanges in the Bay Area, to arrive at my destination in Berkeley. Three days, forty-two hours, and over 2700 miles.
That's a long trip, no matter how you slice it. But luckily I didn't make the trip alone. There was someone with me the entire way, someone who kept me company through forests and deserts and towns and cities. No, it wasn't God who was my co-pilot. My co-pilot was a god of a different kind, a member of my musical Holy Trinity. I made it from coast to coast thanks to the greatness of...
MATTHEW SWEET.
As the spring of 1995 kicked into gear, it was becoming pretty obvious to me and my coworker friends that our company was changing, and not for the better. This was my first job out of college, a gig that fell into my lap through a seemingly divine sequence of events. I'd spent almost five years (at that time, a good twenty percent of my life!) writing code for a cellular billing system. Sounds boring, huh? But I loved it.
The good times weren't meant to last, however. The company's culture began to go sour. Management was more concerned with looking good in press releases than they were in making smart business decisions. The mechanics of our work became insanely, unnecessarily complicated. And as a result, people started leaving. My friend Barry was the first to jump ship. His departure kicked open the floodgates, and soon the company was on the verge of losing half a dozen other ace employees, me among them.
My farewell gift to my friend Barry. He was a hero to us all.
I found myself standing at the big first crossroads of my life: I was ready to move on... but where would I go? What would I do? How would I do it? It was overwhelming. I'd spent five years getting settled into a groove... and now I was on the verge of tearing it all down and starting over. As Bill The Cat would say: ACK!
It was over dinner with my girlfriend at the time that the seeds for my next move were planted. The conversation drifted into revisiting a trip we'd taken the previous fall. Her cousin had gotten married in San Francisco in September, and we turned that visit into a week of travel around northern California. After spending a few days in San Francisco for the wedding, we then drove up to Napa, and then out to Yosemite, then back to SF for a fancy dinner before we jumped on the plane home. We crammed a lot of adventuring into a whirlwind nine days. It was an awesome trip, one of the best ever.
So there we were, reminiscing about how much we enjoyed being in the Bay Area... and we both casually floated the idea, "If we had such a good time in Northern California, why not move there and have another adventure?" It was kind of that simple. We liked being in the Bay Area... why not work there?
That became our plan. After she graduated with her teaching degree in June, we flew back out to the Bay Area, and proceeded to interview all up and down the Peninsula. For an entire week I was driving from tech company to tech company, while she scouted the schools in the various bigger cities. All that stressful jockeying around paid off, because after I got back, I received two decent offers and one fantastic offer. (Guess which one I accepted?...)
With my old job discarded and my new job secured, the path to California was wide open. There was one small snag, though: my girlfriend had to work a complete summer school session that she had agreed to months before. That meant I had to go out there first! Alone! The thinking was that I'd find us a place to live, start working at my new job, then fly back to North Carolina, pack both of our apartments into a truck, and drive everything cross-country to start our new lives. Whew. A headache to be sure, but a headache that could be handled.
So that meant I'd be driving from coast to coast... in my 1987 hatchback Honda Civic
Ahhhh, the Mirth Mo… Wait a minute. I used that lame joke already. Dammit.
This was my first car ever. Right before I started my first job, I bought it used for $6000. I'd popped for new fabric upholstery, installed a decent tape deck, and put new tires on it. For five years, this vehicle was my companion for all sorts of adventures. I loved this little car. But it had one big drawback: the A/C was post-factory. It had been installed by the previous owner, and it never worked right. I mean, it turned on, but it didn't cool down the car after the temperature hit a certain point. In the brutal East Coast summers, it was never comfortable.
And now I was going to drive it across country. In July. Through the hottest states in the country.
I knew I was going to have to make this trip as entertaining as possible, to distract myself from the buckets of sweat that would be pooling up under me as I zipped down sunny I-40. I got a small cooler, for holding drinks and snacks. I bought a new pair of sunglasses to replace the cheap freebies I'd been wearing for years. And I spent days transferring my entire CD collection onto cassette tapes. Remember, I installed a tape deck, not a CD player, because at the time combo CD/tape units were kind of expensive, and I barely had enough money to make my downpayment. I wound up with several dozen cassettes stuffed into a vinyl carrying case. Enough music to last a thousand cross-country trips. I was ready.
On a warm July Sunday morning, armed with all my travel gear, the car packed with as many clothes as I could cram into it, and my bike strapped to its flimsy rack, I hit the road. Watching my friends and family and girlfriend and old neighborhood recede in the rear-view mirror was emotional and surreal, much more so than I was expecting. But a couple of minutes later I was merging onto the highway... and I was off. There was no turning back. I was twenty-nine years old, and I was leaving everything I knew to start the next chapter of my life. It was enervating. It was terrifying. It was exciting.
Over three and a half days of driving, you'd think I would have powered through a good chunk of my cassette library. But... I didn't. Somewhere near the Tennessee border, I got it in my head that I wanted to ditch my "listen to everything in alphabetical order" dictate, and pop in something that had been working its way into my brain for months. I wanted to hear what was becoming one of my favorite songs ever. I wanted to listen to "Sick Of Myself", the first single from 100% Fun, the new Matthew Sweet album.
Let me get this off my chest: I. LOVE. MATTHEW. SWEET. Over the last several years he has vaulted into the pantheon of my Favorite Musicians. I own every single album, as well as several demo and rarities collections. But back then, I was still getting to know him and his work.
I discovered Matthew completely by accident. Back in late 1991, MTV and Nickelodeon put together a contest to win a job working on Ren & Stimpy. A chance to draw cartoons for a living? Hell yes! The thing was, I didn't have cable, so one Sunday night I invited myself over to my friends' apartment to watch MTV, in order to copy down the address and whatever rules there might be. As the time was approaching for the announcement, my attention was caught by a video that featured almost nothing but anime. What the heck was this? The song underneath the visuals was propulsive, guitar-driven, energetic... it was awesome. As it came to an end, the familiar MTV credit slug in the corner told me what I'd just seen: "Girlfriend", from the album of the same name, by some guy I'd never heard of before, a young indie rocker named Matthew Sweet.
I liked the song, but I was so distracted with other stuff in my life at the time that it didn't really stick. And then with his 1993 follow up, Altered Beast, Matthew put aside the scrappiness of Girlfriend and instead flirted with a darker, dirtier sound. I will admit freely that, at the time, I didn't like it. I was still a child of the synthesizer and pop era, so something murky and rock-y like Altered Beast went right over my head.
But then in early 1995, I was over at my friend Burt's rented house, playing some basketball with him and his housemates. As I recall he had his stereo going, but I'm not sure if we were listening to the radio, or if he was shuffling through a stack of CDs. All I know is that, while I was taking a break, I heard this amazing opening guitar riff, followed by three minutes of indie pop perfection. The drums were clear and powerful. The hook was astounding. And the lyrics were so simple that they were brilliant. I think I asked, dazedly, what the hell was that? Whatever medium we were listening to, Burt knew who the artist was: Matthew Sweet. And it wasn't long before I found myself walking out of the venerated BB's, Matthew's new CD 100% Fun in my hands and now a part of my collection.
Man, what a revelation this album was. I know that Girlfriend is considered his masterpiece (and rightly so), but 100% Fun is my personal favorite. It's an album that delivers on the promise of its title. Songs like "Super Baby" and "Come To Love" are delicious slices of power pop. "We're The Same", with its honey-sweet harmony-laden chorus, chronicles the confusion that comes from someone to whom you feel so close dumping you for no reason. There are dark ruminations on life, like "Lost My Mind", easily one of the sludgiest songs in Matthew's discography. And the album ends with "Smog Moon", a melancholy farewell to a relationship that's heading for a slow, painful, inevitable end. 100% Fun gives the listener happiness and sadness, love and loss, joy and fury, all in equal measure.
But it's the opening track - the glorious, anthemic "Sick Of Myself" - that encompasses all of the album's themes in one concise, driving, frigging perfect pop package. The song is about being so bowled over by the person that you love, that you feel inadequate in their presence, angry at how you don't deserve them. Yet even though he's humbled by the power of his partner, Matthew still harbors a little bit of positivity, declaring "There's something in your eyes/That is keeping my hope alive". Matthew belts out the chorus in his trademarked layered vocal style, backed by his iconic rhythm guitar, Ric Menck's precise drumming, and inspired guitar gymnastics from Richard Lloyd. (Check out the multiple endings!) "Sick Of Myself" is, without a doubt, one of the greatest indie rock songs ever written.
So months later, only a few hours into a trip that was going to take me days... I was jonesing. I needed some Matthew Sweet. Rifling through my tape case, my Ark Of The Musical Covenant, I passed over Beastie Boys and Electric Light Orchestra and frente! and Liberty Horses... and pulled out 100% Fun. (By the way, for musical artists, I alphabetize based on the first letter of the first name. "Matthew Sweet" comes after "Liberty Horses" but before "New Order". Get over it. It's my system and it makes me happy.)
If I say that I listened to this one tape almost non-stop over the following three days, I'm sure you'll think I'm being hyperbolic. But I assure you, I'm not. I'd get to the end of the tape, I'd rewind, and I'd start it again. I would play certain songs two or three times over. I sang along until my throat was raspy. The second and third days on the road, I made sure I started my drive with "Sick Of Myself". And "Smog Moon" was playing as I got off the highway in Berkeley, coming to the end of my trip. Matthew Sweet didn't just make my cross-country adventure enjoyable, he made it... well, one hundred percent fun.
Is it ironic that this last photo of me before I left NC is a mutilated Polaroid? Or is it just sad? I’m on the fence.
Man, what a trip. (Literally and figuratively) I've spent almost half my life in California now. If I could go back in time and tell the me of spring 1995 that he'd be upending his entire world in a few short months, I'm sure he'd laugh his ass off. The enormity of what I accomplished to get from North Carolina to California just didn't seem like something the old me could pull off. But I did it. For the most part, it's worked out just fine. And if that isn't something to celebrate, I don't know what is.
My wife rolls her eyes at my "sense of occasion", or whatever you want to call it. Many of the events I acknowledge she's on board with, like our wedding anniversaries. But then some of them she doesn't get at all, like watching Batman on the thirtieth anniversary of its release. Nerd!
What can I say? I love celebrating all the stuff that matters to me. The passage of time is a weird experience, and it's something that all people share. It's just that everyone deals with it differently. To me, it's fascinating how short time seems when you're looking back over your shoulder. To think about everything that's happened since that week in July of 1995... it boggles the mind. Finding love. Losing my parents. Changing careers. JJ Abrams ruining Star Wars forever. It's been a busy and eventful two and a half decades, that's for sure.
What will the next twenty-five years bring? I have no idea. But hopefully it's something beautiful and true.
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and struggling amateur screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.