Drinking the Nostalgia Bathwater

Is it punk rock if you take off your shoes before jumping off a chair?

I’m not big on nostalgia culture. I don’t get super excited about reboots, or livid about women starring in Ghostbusters. I don’t miss the toys I had when I was growing up. I don’t need to find a can of Crystal Pepsi.

But for me, music is different. It gives experiences a bit more depth and grounds, making them a bit more likely to lodge somewhere in my brain. And the music I played years ago has taken up permanent residence in my bones.

Which is why, when I realized we were coming up on the 20th anniversary of releasing Burn Kate’s Big Rock Show, I felt the need to mark the occasion with a mini-reunion. So I reached out to the other two members of the band about doing an anniversary show.

Our bass player is living out in California, and politely demurred from this gathering. But our drummer Jon — or Monkey, as he was known 20 years ago — was in!

I don’t think we’d played the songs together in about 20 years, and it was amazing to see how quickly we all fell into familiar patterns once we got started. I struggled to keep pace on the fast songs, Josh crossed multiple lines of social decency, and Jon — ever the professional — kept us moving toward the next song.

We streamed the show via Facebook Live, and you can watch the recording on YouTube. For those who loved Burn Kate, I’m sure this was a delightful trip down memory lane.

But trips down memory lane aren’t really my thing, and I’m trying to square my love for these songs and for Burn Kate with my distaste for overt displays of nostalgia. I worry that I’ll cling to the past because the future asks more of me than I may be able to give. Or, that I fear I may not meet the moments yet to come, so instead I’ll stay locked into those I’ve already lived.

That’s why I love playing with Jersey Calling. There’s a familiarity from playing with Josh and Randy, but we’re not only reliving the past. When we regrouped in 2020, we started learning how to be a band again by tackling the new songs Josh was writing. We welcomed new members, and pushed ourselves to write about topics beyond drugs and pretty girls at parties.

And looking forward does not negate the great times we had playing Burn Kate shows, and the reunion show proved that for me. So I am trying to allow myself to revisit the past, to enjoy what I’ve done and how the friendships I’ve made and lost have shaped me and my music.