Tales from MVT is a regularly-occurring series of blog posts where I choose one of the videos from our Music Video Theatre sessions and write about it. Music Video Theatre has become one of the most fun and enriching experiences of my current life, and for a multitude of reasons, has sparked abundant creativity. It serves as the inspiration for this series of silly little blog posts.
Song: “California”
Artist: Delta Spirit
Director: Abteen Bagheri
Appeared in: MVT Vol. 15
Chosen by: Jeff
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It was my first night in Hawaii, and I couldn’t stop thinking about “California.”
Our rented apartment sat perched on the top floor, and our giant balcony looked right at the ocean. Directly below us were some well-trafficked retail shops that butted up to the bustling S. Kihei Rd that ran along the waterfront. Across the street was Kalama Park where they taught surf lessons during the day. There was a playground, a soccer field, some grills and showers, and just beyond that the beautiful ocean that, on most nights, would provide the soundtrack of lapping waves and surf folding over itself again and again in perpetuity.
Not on this night. On this night all I could hear was a live hardcore band blasting their distorted guitars and shouted vocals from the nearby skatepark where skaters kickflipped over a box jump and did awkward rail grinds while a few intrepid souls tested their mettle in the halfpipe. I had an instinct to walk down there and check it out with my own eyes, but I knew absolutely nothing about the Maui punk scene, and I’m not wandering into new turf late at night by myself on the first night of an 8-night Christmas vacation with my wife and kids. Knowing what I know about punks in general, I’m sure it would have been fine, but even with all the punk credibility I can realistically conjure, I’m still a 42 year-old dad who almost certainly smells like a fucking narc.
So I sat on that balcony having escaped the dreadful Colorado winter into the sweet warmth of Hawaiian bliss, sipped my whiskey, took a few hits of weed, and basked in the wonderful old man feeling of knowing some things just never change.
The video for Delta Spirit’s “California” sees a group of teenage friends in an El Camino pick up a girl from her high school on what feels like a Friday afternoon and follows them into the night as they drink, do drugs, skateboard, see a hardcore show at some shitty local youth center (or abandoned park or whatever), get into a fight, and just be irresponsible, adventuresome teenagers. I’ve rarely seen a video that so accurately captures the vibe of a lost teenage night better than this.
And look, if you’re reading this, maybe your nights weren’t enrobed in this much overt debauchery, but who hasn’t wandered around a pet store with your friends because no one can think of another way of killing 35 minutes? Who hasn’t made out with someone on a tailgate when you’re pressed right up next to one of your friends? Who hasn’t gotten roped into watching your friends miss skate tricks over and over again in some shitty park? Being a teenager on a night like this, although you don’t consciously realize it at the time, feels somehow simultaneously like you’re the invincible king of the world (you are), and like you’re an absolute fraud and have no idea what in the hell you’re actually doing (you don’t).
Now that I’m an adult I recognize in my bones something that Chuck Klosterman wrote in Raised in Captivity. “The only way to enjoy the present is to pretend it’s the past. Emotions must live in the future.” It’s another way of saying you almost have to be nostalgic for the good things happening to you right now. Good times, happy memories, and the experiences that shape you into who you become all live within us for as long as we let them. And if we can project ourselves into the future thinking back on the great things we’re experiencing right now, we create a stronger anchor for a happy refuge we can visit anytime we like.
“California” by Delta Spirit supercharges this feeling because it captures so evocatively the rhythms of both teenage vice and teenage ennui without casting judgment upon them. The song itself feels like instant nostalgia written in the second person with its aspirational message to an unnamed recipient and its wistful “oooh-oooh-oooh-oooh-oooh” mantra that undergirds the entire song.
That’s why my heart swelled when I sat on that balcony in Kihei and heard the familiar sounds of a loud ass hardcore band just tearing it up for the frustrated local youth. How do I know they’re frustrated? They’re kids at a hardcore show. Everyone at a hardcore show is dealing with something. It’s easy to wonder how anyone could feel frustrated in a place as beautiful as Maui, but that’s adult perspective talking. No matter where you grow up, the familiarity of any place breeds resentment, and that resentment needs a release. This is probably why punk will never die.
It bears mention that Vol. 15 was the first MVT list I did not curate myself. Jason did the honors, and this video was placed 18th, right near the middle. For the first time I got to experience MVT without knowing any of the videos except for my own, a feeling that only deepened my love for this goofy shit we do on the reg. When it came on Jason said, “Jeff sent this to me and I can’t stop fucking watching it. So good.”
Jeff is really, really good at that. Without fail there’s always one video among his selections that demands your attention, and demands your attention for a long time thereafter.
My body was in Hawaii, and my heart was beating to the rhythm of “California.” Geography says Hawaii and California are different places. But for that night, that trip, and that vibe, Kihei and “California” were one and the same.
