Featured Essay: Punk Rock May Not Have Saved My Life, But Jeff Rosenstock Helped Me To Improve It

by Kory Adams

It looked like he had peed his pants. My guy was up there in salmon short shorts and an N95 mask, totally covered in sweat, and it had all pooled in such a particular way that his crotch and pretty much crotch only was completely soaked. As always with Jeff, it was one of the best shows I’d ever been to. And I was there because of The Pandemic! Or, I was there because I was in a weird ska band in high school. Or maybe actually it all happened because I collect vinyl. Maybe I’m not going to worry about the true chronology of the situation and just try to tell a good story.

I think I kinda hated the first song I heard by Jeff Rosenstock. “I’m Terrorfied!!” was on a comp called Ska Is Dead that I bought at a Mustard Plug/Streetlight Manifesto show at a vet’s hall in Palmdale, California circa 2007– which I now realize Jeff might have been present for since I think he sometimes played for Mustard Plug back then. Jeff’s band at the time, Bomb The Music Industry!, was pretty different from my typical listening. Harsh and frenetic, screaming at the top of his lungs, suddenly changing time signatures, feel, or genre; I hadn’t really matured enough as a musician to appreciate his work until I dove more into punk and weirdo music (college 2010, basically). 

Around 2011 a friend and I got together with our hard drives to swap music and she had the album Adults!!!: Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!!!!! This time, it clicked with me. I heard him scream “these days, FUCK I’m tired, I used to be an awesome listener” and I was hooked through to the last track, where he’s screaming about agoraphobia. For like 14 years he’s been there for me, singing about his mistakes, shame, heartache, and wins. He pins his heart right there on his sleeve but then gives his titles completely bonkers names based on inside jokes or a reference to a reference to a reference to one of the lines in the song, or something he was thinking about while writing the song but didn’t actually include. Always joking around, even when it’s kind of serious. It seems to me that he’s always writing what would be the most fun thing to play within any song, and that vibe is just extremely my shit. When I’d bring him up, I’d describe him as “one of my favorite guys” because what he does for me extends beyond musicianship or lyricism, although his lyrics do cut me wide open. He made a commitment to do this band the way he wanted, according to his own ethics, and it totally worked out! Is he a musician? A poet? An artist? All of these things and more? Idk man, but he’s my fuckin guy.

A few years after college I had a kinda good job and I happened to see an ad for Vinyl Me, Please. I subscribed for a while, and at some point their store directed me to Aaron Carnes’ In Defense Of Ska, which I bought because Jeff did the foreword. By the time it arrived, I had transitioned into a kinda bad job. For two years I dug ditches, did some framing and a lot of demolition, and I gave myself a big scar on my pointer finger when an angle grinder leapt from my hand. I was coming home completely filthy and completely miserable. I was drinking more than kind of a lot to soothe my muscles and avoid reckoning with the fact that the only job I could land absolutely did not require my costly college degree. 

One night I saw that Jeff had a show coming up. I’m not even sure I knew before this point that he had a solo project, so I was stoked. I bought tickets, but then when the night of the show came I just felt so tired and depressed after work that I didn’t want to go. I’d heard he lived in LA so I convinced myself that there would be loads of other shows and I could just sit this one out. Catch the next one, stay home drinking. 

Ha ha.

Very soon after that, The Pandemic hit. I was considered an essential worker and just about every time that shovel hit dirt I thought about that show and how there may not be shows ever again. Jeff could die, I could die, any of my friends could die, and the world of music may never be open to me in the same way. 

I’d like to say that this is the point where I totally changed my shit up, but naw. I didn’t quit drinking every night and bothering all my friends until well after the lockdowns were lifted, after I drunkenly got kicked out of an Andy Shauf show, after one of my oldest friends cut me out of their life for being a drunken little shit, and after my partner had a serious conversation with me about my drinking.

That dose of reality and that shame was what I needed to change. Then I actually did get my shit together– I’m not sober, but I don’t drink like a maniac anymore. And I remembered I had this book. So I followed the author on twitter. Then Jeff. Then the Ska Punk International record label. And then The Marijuana Brass, who played one of the first shows I went to after the pandemic. It was a house show,something I had let myself kind of move away from— which I realized was wack. So I started reintegrating into the scene. I saw Carnes post something about his book on twitter, like “come on guys, I can’t get every band that matters in here.” A light clicked on in my head: Of course he can’t. But I can try. 

I decided that I’d get every ska band I saw to sign the book. I figured if I was in a band and someone asked me to sign this book, I think I’d feel pretty cool knowing that I might be on the same page as Streetlight Manifesto (who I got to sign on the chapter on the fourth wave, because I’m kind of a prick), or if I was on the same page as a band from Osaka, Japan (check out The Chorizo Vibes, they rock hard). It would solidify for me that I was a part of something, and maybe make me feel like what I was doing– at whatever skill-level– actually mattered. Which, of course, it does! And it would make the book into something like a living document, constantly cataloging the scene as it moves and grows. And it would keep me going to shows.

So I brought the book to one of the next shows I went to. It was a big thing by Concrete Jungle Entertainment. They had lined up Steady 45’s, Out of Control Army, Catbite, Steadians, and a load of others. The first people I saw there were El Homie from The Marijuana Brass and Dev, aka Ska Morph Suit Dude. I’d seen Dev at some other shows; he sometimes wears a full-body, checker-patterned suit and stays in the pit all night. They’re like a minor legend and a real-life cryptid, respectively, and they were the first to sign the book! 

Then they pointed out a few members of Catbite. I had prepped a catch-phrase for potential signees, “Hey pardon me, are you in this book?” and then I’d hand them a pen and say “Do you want to be in this book?” It’s silly, but it’s fun. And it worked– I think I got four out of the five Catbites that way, and I got to chat with them about one of my favorite bands who happens to share Philly as their hometown, Man Man. And bonus for that night in particular: Kmoy plays keys for Catbite on tour, so she was there! All the way from New fuckin York! She signed my book! Fucking Kmoy! If you’re not listening to her album Princess Precure right now, do it! The vinyl is finally being released, and you can get a very pretty lyric booklet to go with it. DO. IT.

So ok yeah, so I bring In Defense of Ska to every show now. It goes in the pit with me, and the signatures grow. I got Stop The Presses, I got Sad Snack. I got Skatsune Miku! I got Flying Raccoon Suit and Bar Stool Preachers and the largest and most nicest man on earth: Adam Davis, who is the frontman for Omnigone, mortal enemy of El Homie, and co-host of the In Defense of Ska Podcast. I joined the Ska Punk International 2024 Record Club, which led me to their discord, which led me to more ska bands and skadjacent personalities on bluesky, and more friends. And these people aren’t friends with me because I have this book, but because I’m there meeting them where they’re at.

On top of laying the cornerstone for a new community, the book is a totem for me. I look at it, and I think of the show that I missed, and then I think of a Jeff Rosenstock line: “although I know I’ll struggle, I will do my best to never get tired.” And I do my best! I’ve gone to shows after I’ve had to drive for 12 hours and I know I’ll have to be up at 6 a.m. to do it again the next day. Sometimes I don’t go, which is also ok; the project makes me do an honest check-in with myself: “am I truly too tired for this, or am I just being a depressed person?” And if I’m just depressed, I know I’m going to the fuckin show anyway. I’m getting the endorphins from dancing and I’m meeting some new people. I’ve never once regretted going to a show while depressed.

Maybe a year or so later, Jeff released HELLMODE. And the first song on there, the very first line is “will you still love me after I’ve fucked up?” It had been a long two years since I lost my friend and almost lost my partner. I’d done a lot of 12 hour drives for work, thinking about that last talk with her, thinking about all of the other things I’d lost throughout my life– bands, opportunities, moments in time, dead friends, dead family– mourning it all, crying and punching my steering wheel while Jeff tells me that “growing and changing doesn’t change the stuff,” and then another album comes on and he tells me that “only one thing remains secure: that we all get old together, and we all get old forever,” and then in another he says “I’m tired of knowing what about myself is wrong, but never mustering up the resolve to really try to change it”, and I’m just emotionally steam-rolled, cruising up the 5 Freeway. 

I have to stop the car. 

The pomegranate orchards there on the side of the highway are ripe with fruit. I wipe my eyes, duck under the barbed-wire and I just start filling whatever bags I have with me with pomegranates. I don’t know why. Because fuck me. Because fuck this job, fuck my life, fuck these fucking farmers and their fucking pro-Trump signs that I see every godfucked day, and fuck fucking everything that I’ve ever fucked up. I split one open, scooping the gems into my mouth with the pith, daring Hades to come get me, daring Demeter to freeze this whole place. When I’m done, I drop what’s left of it and leave it out there in the sun and wind and dirt and head back to the car.

Then, my hands red, I message my friend. I say, “I’m not trying to start anything, and you don’t have to say anything, but I want to apologize if you’re open to hearing it.” And she says “ok fine.” So I give my long-thought-out, long-winded apology. And she says “that’s… maybe the best apology I’ve ever received in my life. I reserve the right to cut contact again, but I’d like to try being friends again.” And I say “I understand and I’d like to try that, too.”

So ok zoom out, get out of the desert and flash forward and I’m at this show, right? And I’m looking up at Jeff and his possibly pissed pink shorts and I’m thinking about how drastically my life has changed for the better since I missed that one show. I’m thinking about how this guy went from singing “I’m on the S.S. Bullshit Dreams nowhere” to eventually pretty much instantaneously selling out all his shows. Thinking how I, too, used to be thin, I too used to look good with a guitar. I’m not going to be a successful musician like Jeff, but if the guy who sings “I don’t wanna go outside cuz I might have a terrible day and get sent home” can also sing about marching against the police line on the freeway then I can also wrench myself up from despair and self-doubt and go forward into something that I didn’t expect and can’t predict. I can make a good life for myself despite all my fuckups and hangups– and I think I have. 

And like ok, I know that it’s not all because of Jeff. I did it for myself, and I did it with the help of my friends and my partner. But he pushed me in a good direction. No other artist has led me to make so many new friends, to discover so many new bands. To look so critically inward. To feel so good about myself.

Jeff’s playing with PUP this October. And me and my old friend? We’re going, and we’re going together. So… Thanks, Jeff. If I see you walking outside, I’ll try not to say “hey.” But like, hey man. My favorite guy. Sign my book sometime?

Kory used to be in some bands, but now he’s not. When he’s not watching horror movies you can probably catch him at your local ska/punk show, convincing himself not to buy MORE merch and then doing it anyway.

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