Looking back now, I'm not sure how we made it through - not all of us, but most.

Sometimes I look back on what bands have gotten me where I am today musically. Usually, those thoughts bring me back to my pre-driver's license years of 1995-1996. At the time I was in to straight-up-Lookout! Records-era pop punk. I was spinning Screeching Weasel and The Queers and The Mr. T Experience and The Hi-Fives and dutch rolling my jeans over my Chucks or combat boots and wearing a choke collar around my neck held in place with a diaper-sized safety pin. Then I found the Bosstones.

The first song I can remember hearing was "Where'd You Go?" on WBRU. The next day, I asked one of the guys I worked with if he had ever heard of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. He looked at me like I was a retard, pulled out his CD book, (remember carrying those bad boys around? Wait, I still do...) and popped in Devil's Night Out for me. I loved it. I never listened to bands with horns before (save for my parents spinning Chicago records during their infrequent housecleaning sessions). I loved it. I went out and bought Ska-Core, The Devil, And More, which was the EP with "Someday I Suppose" and a couple covers and live tracks. (Incidentally, I would later work with one of the guys who engineered this record. I learned later that this gentleman destroyed Donny Wahlberg's record on the Pac-Man machine at Normandy Studios during the recording of Hangin' Tough. Apparently, Donny was not pleased.) I was hooked.

I stayed with them for the rest of their tenure - through the highest high with Let's Face It (which received an honorable mention in my All Time Desert Island Top 5 Flawless Records post a few months ago) to the utter disappointment and critical failure that was Pay Attention (Incidentally, I'm one of the seven people on the planet that celebrated this record) and their swan song, aptly named A Jacknife To A Swan.

And then they announced they were breaking up. Joe Gittleman was busy with the ill-fated Avoid One Thing. Sirois joined up with Nate Albert's new project, The Street Dogs. Ben Carr (who worked with my mom at Starbucks, incidentally) wanted to spend more time with his family, and Dicky, obviously, moved to L.A. to announce for Jimmy Kimmel. I went to their last Providence show, which was also the last show I ever attended at old Lupo's, and remember just going absolutely ape-shit. I knew that it was the last I would ever see of them, and a coversation a few weeks later with Joe The Kid validated this. One thing was for certain - a big part of my formative musical identity was gone.

Years later (or 4 months ago) I would name the Bosstones as one of the 5 bands from 1990 on that I would love to see re-united.

And then today, I received a bulletin from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones official MySpace page:

ATTENTION!!!
AT 12:00PM EST THERE WILL BE A MAJOR BOSSTONES ANNOUNCEMENT MADE ON WBCN IN BOSTON. YOU CAN ALSO LISTEN LIVE @ WBCN.COM

"No way." I thought. "NO WAY." In lolcat. "NOWAI!!" And then an hour later:

WWW.BOSSTONESMUSIC.COM

Needless to say, I'm ecstatic. It's been over four years since I have seen these guys on stage. And apparently that was long enough. The Bosstones are back, if only for a few select dates. For me, it's like being a kid again - it just brings me back to a simpler time in my life when I had to worry about curfews and being caught smoking and praying to god that my dad's old VW was going to make it up the icy hill to school. And I can't fucking wait.

EDIT: From my "reunited" journal: "Those were the sweatiest, smokiest, drunkest shows I've ever been to, and what I wouldn't give to see them play just one more time..." Still true.