DWAR: Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance

DOG WALK ALBUM REVIEWS: where I walk the dog and listen to an entire album. my mind is free to wander, and I like reviewing shit. don’t expect these to be “good,” or even to totally make sense. sometimes I take notes while I walk, sometimes I don’t.

album: Thrice – The Artist in the Ambulance (2003)

I always used to listen to this album whenever I was experiencing professional strife. Thrice is good like that. this album has one of my favorite songs of all-time on it in “Stare at the Sun.” I know that because I actually ranked my top 50. it’s 12th. that project was really hard but fun. although it’s now more than a year old and the order looks wrong, which is the bitch of ranking things (songs) that are still being produced.

the song “Silhouette” is basically what it sounds like in my brain most of the time. it’s loud and chaotic but pretty clear and legible and all passionate and shit. this is probably why I listen to so much punk rock. it’s noise that’s finally matching the volume and pace of my own thoughts, which calms me down.

as I walk around this park I’m reminded of one part of Ferris Bueller that is completely full of shit. at the end Ferris is running right down the middle of the street, his dad comes up behind him and doesn’t realize it’s Ferris even though Ferris is like 3 feet from him. nonsense! I can spot my daughter at soccer practice from 200 yards away surrounded by girls of similar size and aesthetic just based solely on her features at roughly an inch tall and the way she runs. a father not immediately recognizing his teenage son running down the street means he’s either oblivious and rock stupid, or this moment is just poorly conceived by the filmmakers.

we as a country have pretty much abdicated the running of it to rich people, and this is fundamentally a mistake. rich people will never give a fuck about the greater good because that’s exactly what wealth buys. exclusivity. you get to insulate yourself from the concerns of common folk. why would they care about a beautiful park like this (except for real estate values, I guess) or the other things that a lot of people enjoy that a certain political persuasion looks at as a cost center? they can just piss off to their own country club where they don’t have interact socially with anyone from a different tax bracket. why would they want to pay twice? you already pay country club dues. why pay taxes too for inferior stuff?

therefore, when you elect super rich people, they will never act in the interest of the public because they assume their own concerns are the same shared by everyone else. they aren’t. but rich people will solve the problems facing them first and just assume everyone else will benefit, or just not care. either way, bad. this is why elections should be publicly funded.

in professional wrestling people are paid to win and others are paid to lose. I realized during this walk that this is true in life too. lawyers are paid to win. you’d never hire a lawyer who had a shitty losing record. doctors are paid to win. salesman are paid to win. you know who’s paid to lose? artists, athletes (they’re actually paid to do both, but most in a career will lose more than they win), teachers and PR people. my job in PR is not dissimilar from a pro wrestler who’s paid to lose. anyone who hires a PR firm is probably already losing, it’s the PR person’s job to make losing interesting and/or to steal a few victories if you can. Sami Zayn is a good wrestler to think about in this regard. poor teachers. they take so much shit for so little benefit and their victories are usually very small, incremental, and esoteric.

in the early ‘00s emo became the new glam metal. I texted that to my friend Jason, and he wrote back: “Dudes in makeup, complicated hair, riding the coattails of their cooler older brothers. Yeah that tracks. Well said, dude.” I had this thought during “Paper Tigers” where I also noted that parts of it sound nearly religious.

the bombast. the grandiosity. the costuming. Panic at the Disco might as well be fucking Poison. this is not meant pejoratively. I think this realization rules.

this Thrice album is one I can listen to all the way through with no skips. so good. and so fucking loud!

four stars.