Stick Season | Veteran’s Day | Roman Empire | Old Subway Car | YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
Not only this weekend is Week to Week Notes declaring Mr. Brightside as the Pub Anthem of my generation and that it is officially Sweater Weather, but it’s also Stick Season by Noah Kahan. This song was released in July of ‘22. It showed up on my Spotify recommended that summer after it blew up on TikTok unbeknownst to me.
The story that Noah Kahan told Rap Genius was he posted a clip of the song on TikTok. After it initially received no likes or comments he nearly deleted it. “I was going to delete it because I thought nobody was watching it. I waited 20 minutes or so and it started to blow up. I finished the song after I saw the first part of the song doing well on TikTok.”
Cool story, I guess TikTok was useful in this scenario. Even if that app got us this tune, I’m still not thanking Xi Jiping and the Chinese Communist Party. I’d like to have my online data stolen from Zuck and Elon like a true American.
Anyway, this song was on my Sports Writer Bit playlist when I started writing Week to Week Notes, but it always felt like an autumnal tune.
Verse 1 of this tune describes a long-distance relationship that’s in the dumps. Straight, left, and right is wordplay as he sets the scene on the road. Strong open, but it picks up as does the guitar.
While the 1st half of the 1st verse describes someone else in motion, traveling, he feels stuck in the same place. The reefer like alcohol can be used as a coping mechanism. Most associate it with being happy, but in his case, the high gets drowned out by memories, especially when it rains. Kahan wrote this tune during the peak of COVID-19 in ‘20. His doctor told him traveling the world would be therapeutic but he couldn’t go anywhere like the rest of us at that time.
Sidenote: Remember everybody wearing masks on planes? Can we all agree that sucked? Feels like ages ago.
The verses are great, but I think the chorus is why the song really took off. On Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, it reached #8, not bad for a folk tune. This did pretty well in the UK reaching #8. Last, but certainly not least, the Irish loved this tune as it reached #1 on IRMA. I’m sure Kahan will have a pint or two of Guinness when he performs to a sold-out Dublin crowd this Wednesday while on tour.
Noah Kahan is from Vermont. He moved back there during COVID. Seeing moms and waiting for friends to come home for holidays feels pretty relatable. It’s wild that he could describe the feeling of moving back to your hometown, but he hits the nail right on the head. By the way, Stick Season “was a term that was used by some of the older folks in the town I grew up in to describe this really miserable time of year when it’s just kind of gray and cold, and there’s no snow yet and the beauty of the foliage is done.” (RapGenius)
Is it weird that I actually kinda like the gray and cold time of year? I’m a big 4 seasons guy and not the hotel, I’ve never stayed.
Well, I am half Good and half Davis. Sorry, that’s not funny and most readers won’t get that. Here’s what Kahan told Song Exploder about piling good on all his bad:
“I have depression and anxiety, which I’ve dealt with my entire life. And my dad and my mom both did, and my dad particularly struggles with depression. And a lot of my life I wasn’t dealing with my depression in the right ways. I was trying to just – tour through my depression, or drink through my depression, eat through my depression, and y'know, piling these things that are supposed to be fun and cool over a really real problem and it was not working for me…
…But I find that in songs that I grew up listening to when I was really struggling with a problem that I thought no one in the world had, I would hear a song lyric that just hit the nail on the head with what I was feeling and it would make me feel understood. I feel like the amount of help that I got from artists when I was growing up, that if I could provide that for somebody else, then maybe the discomfort of talking about my dad’s depression would help somebody.”
Song lyrics can mean a million different things to a million different people. Some songs can bring you back to a particular place in time. Sometimes you might listen to a song a million times and hear a lyric that strikes a different nerve. Music is wild and it’s very cool to hear from a songwriter about how lyrics he grew up listening to would make him feel understood.
Imagine the number of people today, who have been helped by a song like Stick Season, that never would have heard of Kahan’s music had he deleted that initial social media post because it wasn’t getting likes or comments in the first 15 minutes. Pretty cool.
On to Stumblin’ Along…
Veteran’s Day
The origins of Veteran’s Day being on 11/11 date back all the way to 1919 when it was referred to then as Armistice Day. That day was the 1 year anniversary of the end of World War I, which took place at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed, “To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations.”
Europeans had been fighting in trenches for over 4 years while America remained “neutral” while supplying the Allies with food and materials before joining the fray for a year & a half. Roughly 116k American soldiers were killed in WWI and over 4.7 million Americans were deployed, but all things considered, the US came out of the conflict in much better shape than Europe had. 16.5 million people died during the Great War. A whole generation of young men in Europe was lost and many of those who survived through it were never the same. Armistice Day was a holiday celebrated to try to honor all who served.
From 1919 to 1944, Armistice Day was a way to honor WWI Vets. Then in 1945, after serving in the US Navy during WWII, Raymond Weeks came up with the idea to honor all veterans of war on November 11. Weeks felt so strongly about the idea that he wrote a letter to General Dwight Eisenhower. The first Veterans Day celebration took place in Birmingham, Alabama, after Weeks had petitioned for the holiday. Then in 1954 while Dwight Eisenhower was in office as the 34th Commander in Chief, he officially changed the designation of the federal holiday’s name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Raymond Weeks would go on to be dubbed the “Father of Veterans Day.” (Unrembered History)
That’s a bit of the history of Veterans Day in the past. Here are some hard pills to swallow about American vets today. 30% of vets have disabilities as a result of their service. Since ‘02, more than 200,000 service members have suffered Traumatic Brain Injuries. 22% are diagnosed with Depressive Disorder. 1 out of 3 veterans who need mental health care actually sought treatment. Over 48,000 vets are homeless or at risk. 40.7% of veterans feel like a “guest” in their own homes. 22 veterans commit suicide daily. 84% of veterans say that the American public has “little awareness” of the challenges facing them and their families. (Combat Wounded)
This is an entirely separate issue but here is a scene in New York City from last night. Those flags are up there for Veterans Day weekend. Look I understand not everybody loves this country that lives here. The United States has a ton of flaws today and we had even more flaws in the past. That said, I guess one of the reasons why I think we have it really good is that some guy could protest like this, I guess he has the right to throw around the flag, just like I have the right to call him a scumbag, and you have a right to tell me to shut up. Not too many other places on planet Earth where could you pull this off, namely wherever the hell this guy is from, just saying.
I honestly try my best to block out negative shit like this when writing. I realize people probably don’t want to read this sort of stuff, but I’m human, let’s get back on track with some fun…
This Week’s Bit on The Roman Empire
This week your quick bit on The Roman Empire brought to you by Week to Week Notes featuring Ancient Rome: The Exhibition in New York is on Roman roads.
The Ancient Rome exhibit provided a look at what their roads were like. The construction technique of their roads varied depending on the terrain, the materials they had available, and the geographical needs of the path. For example, a road on a mountain would vary greatly from one they would build in wetlands. The point is, that it’s not like they were paving the same standard blacktops as today. The first step in building Roman roads was designing the route. They would use tools such as the Roman “groma” for straight lines and right angles. They would also use a tool called the Roman “corobate” for leveling the road. It basically looked like a bench that they could push down on in the center to make the ground even. Please do not ask me how to demonstrate how to use either one of these Ancient Roman tools, I’m not as good with my hands as they were.
Once the path was marked on the ground, they would create the statumen or base of the road. A 3-foot trench would be dug and filled with stones. The 2nd layer they would top over it was called the rudus, which was a little thinner and consisted of smaller stones pressed down. They were compacted with lime and pozzolan, which then was followed with sand and gravel, or the nucleus as they called it. The final cover of the road was called the pavimentum or summum dorsum which consisted of paving stones or hard stones. (I guess that is where we got the term pavement?) They even took into account smoothing out the top layer of the roads so that stormwater could run.
Once the roads were completed, they would then build sidewalks on both sides, often using clay or gravel that would be slightly elevated above the road. Pretty much just like what we have today. If that doesn’t floor you, they had pedestrian crossings, and along the sidewalks were milestones indicating distances from the nearest city. Wow. No wonder all roads lead to Rome.
More Roman Empire history next week!
Old Subway Car (Vol VIII)
BMT D-Type Triplex Car
This subway car was built in 1927 by the Pressed Steel Car Company in Pittsburgh, PA. Pressed Steel was founded in 1899 and stuck to manufacturing Railway cars until WWII when they started building tanks too. This subway car in particular was in use from 1928 to 1965. It was a part of the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company.
One of the big differences with this railway car that was different from the past 1900s was each car used 4 wheels instead of 6. They were able to cut down on the number of wheels because the center sections of the cars shared its “set or trucks” with sections ahead and behind. Passengers found these cars pleasant because they were quieter rides thanks to soundproofing with new designs. The BMT D-Type Triplex Car also had illuminated signs for the first time. Green-lit signs indicated it was on the Manhattan Bridge route while white sings was the Montague Street Tunnel.
The red floor is a nice touch.
This is an advertisement for Coney Island’s Mardi Gras celebration that took place September 14-19, 1925. From 1903 to 1954, Coney Island in New York City would pretend to be New Orleans for a week. They would host a parade to celebrate Mardi Gras but in September instead of February. Gotta give them a pass, February weather could be brutal. In 1935, Coney Island’s Mardi Gras was the setting for the Popeye episode called “King of the Mardi Gras.”
YouTube Rabbithole
Noah Kahan "Stick Season" Official Lyrics & Meaning | Verified