October 7, 2025

i'm with the band

on being friends with people in bands

in my teens and early twenties, it was very normal for me to go to shows on a weekly basis, if not more often. i was friends with people in bands and i went to all their shows—at least, as many as i feasibly could. but for most of the last 23 years in los angeles, that part of my life has been gone. i can count all the shows i’ve been to since i moved, and that’s too much time for me to be able to keep track of in this little colander of a brain; it’s just not enough shows. 

a few years ago my husband got big on tiktok. not enormous, but like 22,000 followers big. he made a lot of friends over there (he’s since deactivated), among them a woman named nikki who is the frontman of a terrific local punk band, this is a revolver. 

now we go to shows. 

it’s alarmingly easy for us to stay in. blame age, blame the economy, blame burnout…whatever the cause, we don’t go out much. but we rally when this is a revolver has a show. (well, most of the time. we’ve skipped a few.)

saturday evening saw us driving to lincoln park (not that one) where we shared a sandwich (the lacy st) at our favorite deli and then walked through a haunted house for music and a short film festival in the back yard.

(we didn’t stay for the movies. we were so tired.)

i don’t think it’s a coincidence that i wrote a novel that is an ode to my years as a friend of the band after rediscovering what that’s like. i keep having to tell people that the mmmbop book is not rpf (real person fiction) and in fact isn’t about mmmbop or hanson at all, but is a made-up story about a one-hit wonder band who hated their hit song. i could just as easily have called it nineties that thing you do! (or perhaps r.e.m. if losing my religion had been their only hit, but probably not.)

because i had so many friends in bands in my teens, and because the main character jessica’s teenage years look an awful lot like mine (omg is it rpf if it’s autofiction??), the manuscript is full of homages to bands i knew in the nineties. but it’s also full of homages to bands i’ve loved since, because loving music isn’t loving a single thing; it’s loving a whole lot of things that look kind of similar.

xxoo
annika

p.s. sunday was one year since sweet baby ray died and we are all very sad this week. if you can, pet a cat today.