LET IT RIDE
record yet have, in retrospect, assigned this as the appropriate soundtrack. And I’m not special. Anyone who isn’t an absolute anti-socialite has had these kinds of markers in their lives, amazing experiences and awful decisions alike. That this song could re-ignite all of them at once speaks to its simple, delicate power. But for as long as our minds are with us, so are those moments, the great ones and the good ones and the ones we wish had never taken place. And at the end, either the end of a friendship or the end of the ride, there are probably some severe thoughts that can shake a person to the foundation. All those thoughts are so eloquently phrased by Adams as he brings the journey laid bare within this album to a close. Records can be replayed for as long as they’re in tact. They’re fleeting moments that come and go and only live on as shadows in our heads. It can’t be easy to see these things stack up at the end, looking back on everything that’s been, could have been and won’t ever be again. They’re all flashing little fragments of time that won’t come back.
that heartbreak is inevitable and necessary if we’re to feel anything beyond selfishness. “This afternoon with you was something like a letter The kind that someone writes but never sends” “Friends” isn’t a song about a lost love or missed opportunity, but is instead a simple rumination on the connections we make, how they disappear and how they’re essential for life to have added up to anything accomplished. The lost loves deliver the deepest, most memorable blows, for nothing but the simple fact that baring everything to someone, only to have them go, will leave a person feeling the emptiest. But relationships aren’t limited to boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses, and intimacy isn’t relegated solely to monogamy. There are a lot of important people in our lives who were the keys to happy memories and incredible moments and tragedy and triumph, if we’re lucky. But, like everything else, through no one’s fault but the mortality we’re given, it doesn’t last forever.
“And when we pass on I bet you miss your friends.”
EPILOGUE
M
ay 17, 2005, was a Tuesday and a bright, sunny day that served as one of the first signs that summer was on its way in Massachusetts, an early respite from rain and cool temperatures in the sweet spot before humidity and mosquitoes descend on New England. That day, I got in my car and drove from New Bedford to Boston, up Mass. Ave. and across Commonwealth to a parking lot near Boston University, parked, and walked over to the former Avalon Ballroom behind Fenway Park on Lansdowne Street. Ryan Adams was in town, on one of his early tours with the Cardinals. Cold Roses was two weeks old at that point and already felt like an important moment in Adams’ tumultuous career, and hearing those songs live was as exciting as anything I could’ve envisioned.
“And when you’re good to me It makes me blue because some day it’s gonna end…” I zoomed back to so many scattered flashes while I re-listened to this song for this project. I thought about people I’d met since this song was released, relationships come and gone, people who were hurt and those that inflicted the damage for reasons that likely were never malicious, some things that happened before I even heard this song, moments where I was no where near this www.staticandfeedback.com
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Aug. 2013