When I was a young girl of 12 or 13, I had myself an obsession.  It was the mid-nineties, so popular culture dictated that I be into Leonardo DiCaprio or one of the Lawrence brothers, but I couldn’t be bothered. Instead, this era ushered in a weird musical zeitgeist that I had no real business indulging in  –  grunge and angry women singer-songwriters. I’m not really sure what angst could have possibly erupted from my Mayberry-like West Michigan upbringing, but Lilith Fair and “Alternative Rock” seemed to hit the spot.

Of the bands to come out of that time, I lived and breathed the band Bush. If you’ve been around TYK for a while, you’ve read some gems from my diary that show the extent of my fixation on Bush and my obsessive infatuation with Gavin Rossdale. But very, very few people have read the eight-page concert manifesto I wrote after I saw them in concert in 1997. That, dear readers, is the piece de resistance of my fanaticism. You thought Jingle Jam 2003 was intense? WAIT FOR IT.

If you have some time to kill and want some chuckles, you can download the PDF here. For everyone else, here are some of my favorite highlights…

You guys, I legitimately thought I was going to marry Gavin Rossdale, and no one understood my love for him.

I THINK YOU GET THE IDEA.

Well, you probably aren’t aware of this, but Bush (at least Gavin and the drummer, Robin) released a new album and went on tour this fall. My BFF Katie and I decided to go to the Cincinnati show, and she SURPRISED ME with SOMETHING CRAZY: she got us on the list for the meet ‘n greet.

Remember Rex Manning Day in the movie Empire Records?

Katie gave me a pep talk about how NOT turn the Meet ‘n Greet into Rex Manning Day. You know - don’t gush to Gavin Rossdale about how much you loved him WHEN YOU WERE THIRTEEN - that just makes everybody feel old.

But you guys? I was so geeked to meet Gavin Rossdale I might as well have been clutching a copy of “Bop.” The meet ‘n greet was composed of around 20 people, and it was super contrived - you know, wait in line, stand here, here’s the picture they’ll sign, blah blah blah.

When we walked up to the table, while my heart was palpitating and I was sweating profusely, I must have looked pretty cool, because Gavin said to us, “Wow, you girls look great.” Wait, what?

Giggle.

Blush.

“You guys definitely win. You win the best looking award.”

We got together to take this picture and we were instructed to move closer together. “C’mon,” Rossdale said. “Let’s pretend like we like each other.” AND HE PULLED ME TO HIM AND THAT’S WHY MY FACE IS SAYING, “OMG, there is only a layer of jeans and jeggings between me and Gavin Rossdale’s junk.”

Also, can I just say…

It was like 1997 all over again.

Except now I have this awesome rack.

And Spanx.

Many people don’t know this, but I’ve been actually been blogging since November 2002. This was pre-Facebook, so the only people who were linked to my “journal” (on a now-ancient platform called Blurty) were high school and college friends in my AIM buddy list. (Remember those? Those were A Thing.)

Seventy percent of my Blurty entries were song lyrics, quizzes (”What is Your True Aura Color?”), and poorly crafted images with overlaid emo lyrics that are now all the rage of teens on Tumblr. There are a lot of **asterisks** and ~~misuses of the tilde ~~. Occasionally, you’ll find a paragraph of substance or an interesting glimpse into my life at what was then the “#1 Party School in the Nation,” but mainly I come across as a manic mess of a girly girl.  This is probably a prime example.

But the entry that has given me the most shit over the years has been the Jingle Jam 2003 post. The thing about documenting your life on the internet from age 19 is that it becomes both a touching pseudo-memoir and also the bane of your existence. The Jingle Jam post is, essentially, the portrait of a fangirl.  But for those who can’t get through the first paragraph (I surely can’t, anymore) let me spare you some secondhand embarrassment and sum it up: it is a detailed account of my after-party experience of a holiday show featuring Howie Day, Guster, Maroon 5, and Jason Mraz.  (Oh, and Jared the Subway guy is also involved.)

Sometime my Freshman year, my friend Lauren burned me a mix CD of music she liked, which included Maroon 5. This was at least a year before their first single dropped, so it’s probably the first instance I can think of where that hipstery, “Oh, I knew about them WAY before…” tendency presented itself.  At that time, Maroon 5 was “indie” to me, because apparently “indie” was any band that wasn’t Dave Matthews.

Anyway, my current circle of friends never let me forget about Jingle Jam. How could they not? Here are a couple excepts:

Last night, I went to Indianapolis to see Z99.5’s “Jingle Jam”…Hands down, one of the top five BEST nights of my life. I was just incredibly giddy with happiness, and it’s one of those random nights I’ll always remember . . .

JINGLE JAM ‘03: NEVER FORGET.

Maroon5 was my favorite act. I was introduced to them a year ago by my friend Lauren, and got the cd not so long ago. But live? Oh. My. God. Adam Levine, the lead singer is like this sexy little rock god, performs beautifully. The seats vibrated when they played. Award for Most Sex-Charged Set…

Gross.

…So afterwards, Em and I call Micah, the audio engineer for Mraz that we had met in Ball State on Halloween. He invites us over to their hotel, to the VIP After-show party. We got temporarily lost as we drove around Christmas-y decorated Indy, giggling about what the night would entail.

We had no idea.

I think this stemmed from that MTV show, “Diary”? Where the celebrity would always say in the intro: “You THINK you know - but you have NO IDEA.”

…I did meet the lead singer for Maroon 5, who was pretty cool, but toward the end seemed pretty bored/tired by the whole party thing. Transitioning into my tipsy stage by this point, we talked about how this wasn’t a true party because there was no music and how I was pissed because there was no dancing. (I’m sure Adam Levine was impressed by this. God I am such a dork.)

At least I was a little self-aware. I’m trying to picture what I was wearing this night, but I guarantee I was wearing a choker necklace (despite the fact that they had gone extinct by ‘97), bootleg jeans, and a fake tan. WHY DIDN’T YOU RAVISH ME, ADAM LEVINE?

Now, eight years later, I find myself about to attend another Maroon 5 show. You might be asking yourself, “Why, Jenn? And how? With your snooty music opinions, and the knowledge that TRAIN is co-headlining?”

Well, Bess and I were supposed to see Janet Jackson last night at the Indiana State Fair, but she cancelled. Super bummed, we decided we’d go to the fair anyway and eat our feelings, replacing Janet with meat on a stick and fried kool-aid. Unfortunately, Bess had to work late, so we missed out. Womp, womp. She mentioned she could get free tickets to the Maroon 5 show at Conseco. So why not, I guess. Janet was supposed to be my birthday concert, but I’ll see Adam Levine slink around for the sake of nostalgia.

This morning, Matt asked what I ended up gorging on at the fair:

“We didn’t GO because BESS had to WORK LATE. So I had a SALAD, which I’m pretty sure is the opposite of FRIED THINGS. But we’re ironically going to the Maroon 5 concert tonight?”

“I think this worked out for the best,” he said. “You don’t hate yourself today, and you get to see Adam Levine pretend to be relevant.”

But c’mon. We all know that while I’m rolling my eyes behind my big, judgey Ray Bans that inside me there is a 20-year old girl in a choker and bootleg jeans, ~*fah-REAKING OUT. *~

What I really wanted to do was play the French Horn.

I don’t know how a child of six or seven manages to fixate on the idea of playing a particular musical instrument. I don’t know if I saw it on Sesame Street, or if a character from Punky Brewster played the French horn. Either way, I was obsessed with it. It’s weird, but considering the kind of adult I grew into (see last night’s post about purchasing a ukulele), no one should be surprised.

My parents took me to the Grand Rapids Symphony a lot when I was little. One evening they had an “instrument petting zoo” in the lobby, where you could walk up to the musicians and test drive their instruments. (O HAI, GERMS!) I remember walking up to the lady with the French horn. “This is my destiny, lady, I got this,” my little self thought. She explained how to buzz your lips into the mouthpiece. I took a deep breath, put my mouth to the brass, and…Pffffft. Nothing. “Fuck your horn, lady!” I snarled. Just kidding. I was seven.

I then approached the guy with the clarinet. I played a note. The note was “E.” “Rad,” I thought (because it was 1991 and that was something we said back then). A few days later, my mother asked nonchalantly, “Do you want to play the clarinet?” And I was like, “Okay?” because, why not, I had nothing else to do.

In third grade, I started taking lessons from an old gentleman named Mr. Emerson. When I say old, I mean Mr. Emerson was the band director of my dad’s high school, WHEN MY DAD WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. But he was kind and patient as I honked my way through Hot Cross Buns. Mr. Emerson would look at the scales I scribbled out, remarking, “Your notes! They’re so fat and happy.” When I got visibly bored playing classics, he brought out a book of Elvis tunes and let me play from that. Despite all this, I decided to quit after the first year — to which my mother said, “How about you give it just more year. After that, if you don’t like it, you can quit.”

I didn’t quit for another 8 years. (MOMS, how do they work?!)

And I was good, for a while. But somewhere, atop my throne as first chair in my high school’s highest band, playing music stopped being fun. It got ridiculously competitive, and I just wanted to play some Benny Goodman and call it a night, man. I packed my clarinet up in the summer of 2000, only breaking it out on a handful of occasions. . . .until now.

[An aside: I was inspired by the weirdest source. A few years ago I was watching "Cathouse" on HBO - you know, the one about the Moonlight Bunny Ranch? One of the girls plays the French horn. Like, in between banging dudes for money, she sequesters herself in a corner and busts out an etude or two. She said it was relaxing and kept her mind sharp, or something. "I should be more like this prostitute," I thought.]

So on my way home from work last Wednesday, I stopped by a music shop on the eastside and bought the thinnest clarinet reed possible. I smiled as I put the clarinet together; I imagine this is what it feels like to lock together the pieces of an old, familiar gun.

I took a breath, blew into the mouthpiece, and awaited the rich, sultry tones of my yesteryears.

Instead, I heard a goose, dying a violent death.

Yep. I sucked. So back to Hot Cross Buns.

THIS CHICK KNOWS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT:

I like how she runs this video like it’s a lounge act. “Aaaand that’s my interpretation of Hot Cross Buns, everybody. Remember to tip your waitresses.” Julia, if you’re reading this, please do a mic drop in your next video.