Proud to be provincial

With great skepticism do I receive the contention that Bostonians must, by nature, complain about everything. We are, they say, miserable, stubborn people whose folding chairs will be pried from our cold dead hands in the parking spots we defend all winter. I’ve watched a few people stay a few years and then move to usually Brooklyn (runner-up: Portland, OR), blaming Boston for everything wrong with their lives and decreeing some borough the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Arriving there, and then complaining about all the same things. Perhaps it’s not me – maybe it’s you?

I’ll be here a decade next September, and by now I’ve amassed a pretty long list of reasons why I find Boston a great place to live. In addition to my affection for green space and attentive city services, Boston has struck me as resource-rich, goals attainable here. Patient, creative friends helped me not so long ago kick off a series of roller disco parties, and I had the pleasure of spending the past several months helping reelect a socially- and environmentally-forward mayor. I can’t walk five feet in my Hyde Square neighborhood without running into some delightful person I know on the way to one of dozens of nearly perfect local businesses, and the music scene has been friendly to the fledgling throes of my first-ever band. If I’m making Boston sound like Sesame Street, well, cut me some slack: I live in JP.

So, I’m happy here, and I resent the suggestions that living here means that I’m cowardly or complacent. I’ve heard these things. I know what I have, and I like it. With that in mind, I wrote the following song, which we’ve been playing out a bit and will have recorded soon enough. It captures my pride, and also what I intend to be a bit of playful curmudgeonliness, which is to say, ‘don’t let the door hit you,’ etc etc. And I can’t operate on the paucity of sleep I once could. This also heralds a new phase for Thick Shakes, one in which we play more than three notes per person. I think it’s a good move for everyone.

Writing about this here probably spares you the awkward between-song stage banter, by the way, not that the song is subtle by any means and requires a preface. More bands should blog, then.

>>>

Go Back to New York

I took a walk around Central Park
but baby, I’m still in the dark
’cause we also have the Law Olmstead
and I’ll be living here til I’m dead

Nothing’s quite as big
Nothing’s quite as cool
I can’t teach you anything you didn’t learn at school

Go back to New York (x3)

You still complain about the traffic snarls
but now you whine across the Hudson not the Charles
[x2; I need to write a second couplet here]

[bridge & chorus]

Daddy’s money always got you far
that’s why you worry ’bout the hours at the bar
But I still gotta earn what’s mine
Why don’t you go to bed on time?

Nothing’s quite as big
Nothing’s quite as cool
I can’t teach you anything you didn’t learn at NYU

Go back to New York [many times to end]