Living It Up

My summer after graduation was the stuff of comedies.  Parties everywhere, girls outnumbering each guy and doing body shots whenever necessary, and the constant stream of music.  I had once written Queens of the Stone Age off as little more than classic rock poseurs, practicioners of a long dead style.  My decadent and deliciously hedonistic summer would quickly change all of that for good.  In a matter of weeks following graduation, Go With The Flow, the driving second single of the band's 2002 release became my defacto anthem.  No longer was the white suburban supported rap genre that of my definition, the pulsing drums, the penetrating bass, and the combination of the punching guitar riffs and Josh Homme's falsetto voice lead to a rebirth of me.

Go With The Flow is in all essences, something balls out, a song for partying and cruising.  Beneath the Sabbath driven riffs and the Canned Heat vocals lies the very core of what I wanted from my life.  After the first chorus and part of the second verse, Josh Homme utters the line: "I want something good to die for/To make it beautiful to live".  The first time I gave notice to the song, I was enthralled.  I wanted nothing more than something worthy of life, and when the parties died out I began to search for it.  

 Car radios would blare this song once more on my journey to the beach and into my eventual maturing.  No longer was the hellion prowling among the world, late to rebel and indulge.  A misguided man came out of his shell and slowly settled into the steady grind of work and higher education.