mixed emotions and hipsters.

i feel like most of my friends who read this blog are hip kids. we are all somewhat fashion forward, like good music, probably do things like read pitchfork.

so while we all walk around this town wearing our skinny jeans and our beards and tattoos.. deep down, we are all just nerds and we all used to like really shitty music (and probably still do). we all do things that violate the "hipster code of conduct", and that's totally okay.. because if we were all actually true hipsters, everyone would hate us. because actual hipsters are really obnoxious.

i'm guilty of not really actively discussing my college years before i started going to shows and listening to indie music. unlike kenny, who somehow started listening to cool shit at like 12 years old, i was not as lucky. i was beardless. i had this ridiculous blonde-highlighted spiky hair. i liked bands like barenaked ladies and guster. i even liked nu-metal. this was in college, mind you.

i have come to terms with this.

another thing that i don't really talk about is that i used to sing in an a cappella group. we were called "mixed emotions". you know... because we were a mixed co-ed group. anyway...

i was proud of my time in the group, it's just not something that comes up in conversation at the local dive bar. not to mention, i always think of that scene in stepbrothers where the family is singing a cappella in the car and it totally makes me cringe.



anyway, the gist was that we would learn all these contemporary pop and rock songs, arrange them for vocals and then sing them at concerts around campus and stuff. it was amazingly fun and i met some amazing people through it.

why i'm even discussing this is that i received a random facebook invitation out of the blue for the mixed emotions spring concert. i left the group when i graduated in 2002, so the current group is made up entirely of people i've never met.

mixed emotions was entirely student-run. with maybe 12-14 kids in it at any given time. there were no faculty involved. each year, the older kids passed on what they knew to the new recruits and then eventually the new recruits replaced the older kids. when i joined, there were still a handful of founding members still in the group. the idea that this group that i left in 2002 is still evolving and developing seven years later is totally crazy to me.

it's been a long time since i've thought about mixed emotions. i'm semi-interested in driving to blacksburg to see the concert, but something tells me it would be totally weird. i wonder how i would have felt if some random old dude had come up to me when i was in the group and said "oh hey, i used to be in mixed emotions seven years ago." so weird.

it's comforting to know that the thing that i cared about and spent so much time doing during my college years is still continuing on. and other kids who are having a whole new experience with the same group.

and as it turns out, thanks to the power of youtube, the new mixed emotions isn't half bad! it'll never be as good as the class of 2002 version, but i think i might be a little biased.