Uncut

Usually in my rants I endeavor to be ambiguous, to refrain from the use of names involved in my personal life which could be directly attributed to the source, however this time I aim to be specific. I have briefly mentioned my distaste for the band Stereo Skyline before, but never the given the full reason for such conviction.

If you are aware of this current mockery to the music industry you might be asking yourself why I even attempt to justify my disgust, surely their music and fabricated image does so on its own. But aside from the offense of polluting the world with generic and poorly played tunes while also fashioning bleach blond straightened emo hair as a standard, I have personal reasons. And no I will end that train of thought right there, it is not because I hooked up with any member, I do have some standards people. 

My personal vendetta against this band stems from early summer of last year on the Bamboozle road show. Last minute I decided to take my little sister to this festival as it was at Six Flags and we could go on rides as well as see bands from my youth like Simple Plan, Good Charlotte and Third Eye Blind. At the time I was working two jobs in an effort to save money for an apartment and having a very uneventful summer. The show happened to fall on a Thursday, the one day I was not required to work either job and would often spend in Harlem with my closest friends. The plan for the day was to see the show and enjoy rides till the park closed then head home from NJ and spend the night drinking in Harlem with the usual crowd.

I was aware Stereo Skyline was playing but was not concerned with seeing them perform. One advantage however was I knew their manager would be there, a friend and regular of my many drunken nights at Angels and Kings. Early on in the day I met up with him and had a beer on the Stereo bus, none of the members of the loathed band were there, but many of the other Angels and Kings regulars were, essentially, band boys from New Jersey. I spent most of the day with my sister, going on rides and watching the performances, soon the day was coming to a close. Towards the end of the day I received a text from my then complicated friend that he had made other plans instead of our weekly Thursday hang out, I was furious. As a confessed lush drinking only one night a week was difficult enough, but the thought of even that being taken away was just too much to bear. 

I then got an invite to come back onto the Stereo bus for some more drinks by their manager, I figured I had some time before my ride arrived and since my other plans fell through I jumped at the chance to drink for free. I gave my sister some money to get ice cream and wait for our ride while I ventured back to the bus located behind the Batman roller coaster. She was perfectly content to do this and had spent much of the day on her own anyway, being independent tends to run in the family. I experienced some difficulty in actually maneuvering back to the bus since the park was rapidly closing and I had no credentials to show, but managed to finagle my way back there anyway. The atmosphere aboard the bus was lively, everyone had returned was was busily guzzling down another carefree night on tour. I was given drinks right away but informed my company I would not be staying long since I still had a ride back to the city. At this their manager did protest, insisting I must stay and enjoy the festivities, promising he would find me a ride home, perhaps with some of our mutual friends who were in attendance and could drive me to the city or at least a train in NJ to get back. I pondered this for a moment and considered my alternative, a night of sobriety at home, immediately horrified by this thought I agreed to stay and informed my sister I wouldn’t take the ride back after all.

I contentedly continued to drink and socialize, at first I was one of only two females on the bus, the other was the girlfriend of one of the NJ band boys. Later on two other girls would arrive who were friends of the managers as well and were looking to party. At this point for the first time my friend attempted to organize my promised ride, he asked the twins who lived in the garden state not too far off from the city, but alas they were staying nearby at the girlfriends house. At this moment I felt a slight panic, that I would perhaps be stranded in a six flags parking lot. Then much to my relief he orchestrated an agreement with the girls who had newly arrived to drop me off at a train station on their way back to CT. I was perfectly satisfied with this, being notorious for ending up in strange places and always finding my way home I was sure this adventure would be no different, plus I was too tipsy at that point to have any real concerns. As it got later the girls decided they had better be off and I prepared to go with them. All of a sudden my friend and Kevin the singer of Stereo Skyline decided they wanted Wawa. The girls agreed to first drive to Wawa and back then begin the journey out of New Jersey, we all piled in the car. As we began to drive it became apparent that all the exits from the park were closed, unsure of how to get out the girl driving became slightly hysteric and drove back to the bus. Everyone got out of the car except for me, as far as I could see it made no difference if we went to Wawa or not I knew this was still the vehicle transporting me so I was quite happy to stay there until we hit the road again.

Still unnerved from the sense of being trapped in an amusement park I presume the girls began to feel less generous, at some point in their discussions with the band and my friend it was decided they would no longer drive me. I was perfectly unaware of this while tweeting away in the car, and it was not until one of the girls came back in and began profusely apologizing to me that I sensed something had gone awry in the plan. Still unable to get the hint I was then hit with the rude awakening of another blond pompous member opening the door of the car to say “Yeah, they’re not going to drive you, you should probably get out of the car.”

I don’t even think I responded to this with words, I quickly processed in my head just what was happening, drunk me decided I would not be with company I was not wanted in and I stormed off to take refuge under a tree in the distance. No one attempted to stop the young drunk girl wandering into the woods alone and I knew I could not count on them for any kind of assistance. I accepted my new life as a permanent carnie, living at six flags forever, I was so sure this would be my fate. Luckily before my situation would grow quite that dire, a miracle would happen. A good friend of mine and former member of the fantastic band The Years Gone By answered my drunken plea by phone, he happened to live not that far from six flags and after some time made the trip to rescue me. Even more fantastic than that he gave me a place to stay the night and even drove me into the city the next morning, in all honesty I do not know what would have become of me if he had not arrived.

The next morning I did receive a phone call from the manager to make sure I was still alive, but the concern meant little to me after what I had endured. It baffles me how these characters could abandon someone obviously intoxicated in an amusement park, without any attempt to provide a solution, what ever happened to humanity?

The real kicker of the story is thanks to the invention of twitter I was able to see those fuckers still made it to Wawa that night. It is a shame no one choked on their hoagie, but continued to live their conceited lives poisoning the integrity of the music industry.