I don't know if I can say I was even a freshman yet. It was Sept. 1, 2003, and classes hadn't even begun. I hadn't met anyone except for the requisite awkward exchange with my roommate. But something compelled me, on my first weekend as a college student, to go on an adventure. I was marking off plenty of firsts: first time on the JHMI shuttle, first time on the MARC, first time in Washington D.C., first visit with my high-school-turned-college girlfriend in Georgetown, hell, even my first weekend with my own cell phone. Most importantly, it was my first real experience with the Dismemberment Plan.
I listened to so much emo then. I'm almost embarrassed to look at some old playlists. If the lead singer had wispy black hair that fell in front of his eyes and he whined emphatically about the enormity of his suburban pain, I was on board. I somehow lumped the D-Plan into that category: a colossal mistake. But at least I was interested enough to go see their last show ever. This was it; they were breaking up.
Apr. 27, 2007, is going to be a day of lasts. It's my last day of classes as a senior, possibly my last college class ever. It's my last Buttered Niblets show. I can't say definitively, but I'm guessing it will be the last party I have at my apartment. But the next day, after all those are over, I'm going to head to D.C. for another adventure. The Dismemberment Plan is reuniting for a benefit show, and I've got a ticket.
Thinking about all the parallels between the two shows, I feel like I'm living a clich8e. I watched the band break up after arriving as a freshman. I didn't know their catalog, I was terrified of getting lost in D.C., and I lost my new cell phone in a taxi. At the show, I hung in the back and couldn't sing along at all. Now I'm going to see them get back together less than three weeks from my graduation. I'm a seasoned fan, I know every song by heart and I intend to be right up front and belt out every one of them.
And I'm going to the show with my freshman-year (and current) roommate, the News-Letter's own humor columnist Matt Diamond. After our first awkward conversation, we discovered we were both huge D-Plan fans. Just about every car ride we've taken together has included a Dismemberment Plan sing-along.
It's the most appropriate ending for my Hopkins tenure. The D-Plan is responsible for so much of my musical education. At the top of the indie music scene (of which I believe myself to be a part), they have a bird's eye view of every fan and every band they've inspired, and they have the unique ability to excoriate these fans while making them dance at the same time.
In their lyrics and especially their sound, they go beyond the exclusive clique of underground music. They embrace what sounds good, straddling genres without judging. They can do pop, live drum and bass, dance and hip hop in the same breath as eerie minor key melodies, ballads and even punishing, fist-pounding rock riffs. They pull off incredible feats of musicianship and composition with subtlety. They are danceable but not gratuitous, talented but not flashy, perceptive but not self-important. They have a style all their own, at once poignant and playful.
And they're never above having fun. Travis Morrison sometimes unleashes a line or two that never fails to make me laugh out loud. There's Doin' the Standing Still, about the most popular dance step at indie rock shows, or Girl o' Clock, about a misunderstood attempt at flirtation. My favorite Morrison lyric has to come from Bra, a song filled with such bouncy nonsense that to try making sense out of it would be blasphemy. But at the end, Morrison provides this gem: Goin' down the Amazon in a light green '57 Chevy / Well, you think that's, um, kind of heavy? / Then you should read my poetry! / And I've been known to read it out LOUD! complete with a scream and a musical explosion on the last word. Oh, I can't explain it. Listen to it yourself. The City is one of the best songs of the past decade. Start there.
My music taste has changed so much over the past four years. I tried emo, I went the route of hipster rock and now, believe it or not, I listen to almost all metal and progressive rock and any fusion of the two. But the Dismemberment Plan has stayed with me the whole time. Their message is one of uncritical appreciation of music, a respect for the craft and everything that goes into transcending the silly concepts of scenes and genres. I'm barely the same person I was when I saw them in 2003, but I'm going to see them play to a sell-out crowd and feel like nothing's different at all. Except, this time, I'll hang onto my cell phone.
Zach d3 Goodman is a sports editor at the News-Letter. He is a senior International Studies and Writing Seminars major from Warren, N.J.
