justingoodrich

Hailing from Baltimore, Maryland, Car Party blasted enthusiastically through the Sunday afternoon wall of heat at Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Middle East Club. One heavy hitter after the next, the band stuck tried and true to their well rehearsed, on-the-beat brand of pop-rock, never letting go of the flow, though never in danger of climaxing emotionally in any one direction or another. Touring in support of their latest four song EP High and Low Places, it is clear this band was born and bred in the veins of early 2000′s Warped Tour having done their homework, studying the text books of groups such as The Early November (who’s Ace Enders is featured on High and Low Places as producer and guest vocals on “Please Me”), Jimmy Eat World and Hot Rod Circuit. Standard and solid mid-tempo rock beats blended with lightly distorted, but still punchy guitars (brought to you by Taylor Hughes, Chris Martin and Jim Luparello), with a final layer of angst via the strong, high-register vocals of Michael Natzke to pull on your heartstrings just a little.

While the beat carried on and the music stayed strong for Car Party, lyrically and emotionally the tone seemed dead set on apathy. Hooks such as “Beg me to stay, done within an hour I don’t have all day. You aim to please me, but darling it ain’t so easy. I don’t want you to know that I want you to go” from the song “Please Me” fall in that awkward middle ground between not knowing whether to be assertive or upset, while other songs like the new single “Dollar Sign” proclaim that “You’re clinging on a dream and your losing time, so save your damn breathe and I won’t waste mine” come off as more complacent, making it clear that Car Party is so over you -or not over you. Either way, Car Party is ready, set, go radio blast to the moon, with the sky as their limit. For those of you young or still young at heart and who are happy to be a little bit sad, Car Party invites you along for the ride!

Written by Justin Goodrich for Infectious Magazine
http://www.infectiousmagazine.com/cplrc/
http://www.carpartyband.com

They say the most important thing in life is to take care of your mind. “Mess with a man’s body, but not his mind” I’ve heard once or twice as though implying a revelation of Confucius like proportions. And I must say…I’ve done a terrible job of keeping my mind clear.

I spend a great deal of time sleeping in my car, it’s not that I have nowhere else to sleep, it’s that I want to be as completely alone with me myself and the world as possible. At times I feel I need it, other times I think I deserve the solitary confinement. Every second is cause for panic in my mind. Try as I might to think one or two steps ahead of myself, ahead of the game, I wind up screwing up, making an ass of myself or worse doing nothing at all. Indecisiveness could easily tear me to shreds, alongside my lack of self confidence and self respect that make pro-action cause for deactivation on an ‘on-again, off-again, maybe I should or maybe I shouldn’t’ basis. Making decisions is difficult when you’re constantly discouraged.

Taking time to be alone is primitive and necessary. But I hate being alone. (masochist) I fill alone time with entertainment, noise, distractions or I merely talk to myself as though someone else were there (how sad is that?). I act and react to scenarios that exist only in my conscience and subconscious psyche throughout every act during my day, because I just can’t accept that any of this is real (what’s the difference between what I hate in reality and what I love in fiction? all of my feelings are just as real as the next, and the ones that aren’t out loud hurt me the most. who are you to tell me none of this is real?). I don’t accept the fact that someone so sentimental almost to a child like flaw, like myself or anyone else, should ever feel so broken and alone as I do when I come to the realization that most of the mental pain that I go through was obviously not only caused by people, places, things, situations, circumstances that I’ve been through, but the fact that I blame myself for everything be it my fault or otherwise. There’s nothing I don’t apologize for, and everything that doesn’t make me laugh breaks my heart. It’s always one end of the spectrum or the other. Sometimes at the same time, which is always fun. There are times I’d like to take the heart off my sleeve and put it in a chest, but I fear that it would take away from me what separates me from all the rest. (Does this make any sense?)   (I can’t even type free-form without rhyming and structuring as though it were a song…)

I’ve always enjoyed the stories that I’m left with in lieu of certain social situations, but what I find that bothers me the most is that what I think bothers people the most about me is that they can tell I’m never looking at them (have you ever noticed making eye contact with people is terrifying? it’s as though you’re being caught doing something wrong or you’re about to look into the soul of another person and that it’s irresponsible for you to be that intimate with someone you’re not going to take the time to get to know). I’m always far away in some distant place not too far outside where the grass was greener in some make believe time, waiting for the bullshit to come to an end so I can go back to being alone in my car. I just want to listen to music and feel. That’s all I really know how to do. And to be honest that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. But what kind of way is that to live? It seems so selfish to think that all I require to be happy is the freedom to just write. To roam, wander and write. There’s so much to do , so much to create, so many lives to be a part of. I’ve never felt that I belong or am meant to be in any one place or another for any extended period of time, but I hate change. I almost think that I force myself to be uncomfortable. As though my main purpose on this earth is to constantly endure moments of extraordinary angst so that I can document it and hope that it helps someone else in THEY’RE efforts of distracting themselves from themselves. It seems wrong, but so right. The only thing I want in life is to preserve myself in audio/visual manners so that every bit of honesty I could never express in our moments together can be relayed later in song. To catch you in those moments that you didn’t realize you were actually listening and had your guard down. (Sneaky, no?) Fact: I never tell people exactly how I feel. Bottle it till it explodes in passion, mentally unstable sure, but I’d rather passion then for a random moment of word-vomit interrupt what is or was a perfectly sound relationship/friendship. (Is that cowardly of me? Or heroic?) Love them or hate them, I keep the brunt of my feelings to myself in fear of swaying the already delicate balance that myself and that person have created. Who wants to hurt someone else just to get something off their chest?

The worst part about all of that is that lately life has been so hectic and constantly dancing on the razors edge, cutting your feet to the bone every step of the way hoping you get to the other side before your torn limb to limb (nightmares), that I sometimes (often) don’t trust myself to do the first thing that comes to mind. I second guess myself constantly and it kills me and it’s such a bad habit. I feel that I should be more conscious of what’s happening around me , but I feel as though that takes away from what would be nature in it’s most natural state and makes everything…forced. Au natural! I live to feel but I stop myself from getting attached to anything.

I would hate to be my girlfriend. Correction, I would hate to be whoever ends up dating me next (which given my current two year absence from affection I’d say it may not be for a long time). But really, I can’t handle me being alone with me. I’m a constant ball of nervous energy, excitable like a child but melodramatic in a ‘everything-means-too-much-to-me’ way. It’s either that I don’t care at all, or that I care too much. And often times I just can’t add everything up.

How many more panic attacks am I going to put myself through before I start listening to myself? How much worse / better can / will it get?

I look forward to every day being some greater success than the next. And the truth is I haven’t changed. I refine my social skills here and there to make the package of me seem more presentable and functional, but I really can’t be social without being calculating, I can’t be intimate without being sarcastic and self-depreciating. All I want is for everything to work out and for everyone to be happy, and to let the open road take me into it’s open arms.

I don’t long for fame. I long for the freedom that can be accessed when one retains money from succeeding greatly in some venture or another. I constantly fear that “if I died tomorrow, would I have just been a disappointment?” I want everyone to think “he really tried, he always spoke from his heart, he really cared but totally didn’t give a fuck” ya know, in a good way. I want to be the one who can solve everyone’s problems. I want to be everywhere all the time. I want to be everything for everyone. I would take a life of misery, or my life in general, if it would stop every tear from falling out of every child’s eyes, from every man and woman crippled inside as their loved ones die. I never expected a world where no darkness may fall, I just expected myself to take advantage of more of it. But I feel that even if I were to have a number one album and millions of dollars that I still wouldn’t be satisfied. It has nothing to do with monetary value…it has everything to do with emotional value and the fact that all of mine are bundled, jarbled and completely crossed within me.

Not so shockingly, while some of this got a real rise out of me and may have been what was on my mind at the time, it still only barely scratches the surface. Continue forth my wayward Son!

Seriously. I’ve never seen people (aka Italian side of the family who thinks I don’t eat enough) so happy to watch me smoke weed than when I make a run for the fridge. Mangia with the Ganja!

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