Potpourri: My Jeremy Enigk Weekend

There are times when you sit around and ask yourself questions like, am I getting old? When did I black out and miss all the latest trends in popular culture? Is that your finger? That’s what I was was asking myself when I received the phone call asking me if I wanted to go see Sunny Day Real Estate. I asked, “Who the heck is Sunny Day Real Estate?”

I know, I know. There are probably tens of millions of music fans out there that love Sunny Day Real Estate. Is it my fault that music took such a crappy ass turn during the mid nineties that I completely tuned out what turned into Emo to follow the best in Christian music? Remember, who was peaking during that era – Caedmon’s Call, dcTalk, Six Pence None The Richer and Jars of Clay just to name a few. There was even crazy talk that Christian music was – trend setting. Of course, the trend didn’t last. And there was such a future backlash that bands like Evanescence declined to say much more than their music was merely influenced by Christian themes and demanded that their albums be removed from the Christian Bookstores and outlets. But I digress…

You see, until last Saturday, as I was preparing to go to a concert that I was invited to, I had no idea who Sunny Day Real Estate was. No clue whatsoever. In fact, I thought that Sunny Day Real Estate was simply the first track off of Butch Walker’s “Letters” release a few years ago. Little did I know that this band actually had a following. Did I mention that I was actually a fan of Jeremy Enigk? This is sort of like listening to Mourning Widows or Nuno Bettencourt and saying, “I love this, you mean he was in a band before he went solo? What’s the name of that band? They must have been pretty bad to have broken up.” Hmmm…yeah, anyway. Everybody has their “One” – you know one stupid thing that they seem to be completely clueless about. Please let this be mine.

As the band started playing and I heard the room full of fans singing their guts out, I tried to figure out why there was a ten year music gap in my life where music had somehow slipped down the black hole of trendiness and pushed me dangerously close to the label “out of touch.” As one fan screamed (over and over again), “Play Waffle!” I wanted to know why he liked a song about breakfast. The band never played “Waffle” by the way. And I spent much of the night reading about them on my G1 – looking for Wikipedia quick answers as the band played on.

Now don’t get me wrong. Sunny Day was great. And I’m told that they sort of birthed what became the Emo trend. The trend that boasts bad unfinished haircuts, brooding children that all wish they were Edward from the Twilight series and really really tight pants once reserved for women, but stolen by men. Somehow, I don’t feel bad that I missed that. Maybe I feel bad that I missed how music evolved a little. But that’s not what this is really about. What this is about is how it is entirely possible to miss trends in music…trends in rock, if you will, and still rediscover the greats. Or at least rediscover the trend setters in music to which much of the genre owe a tremendous debt. So I’m in. I’m a fan. I’m currently looking for other Sunny Day Real Estate albums. Maybe you should too.