Early & Alone #66: I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today
A Guster Appreciation Post
I’ve never been one for fandoms. I’m a fan of many things, but I don’t really consider myself a FAN of any of those things to the point of knowing every obsessive detail. This isn’t shade—being part of a fandom seems like a lot of fun, honestly. Sometimes I wish I was more the kind of person who could listen to the same song/album over and over, watch the same TV show 11 times, research Reddit threads and podcasts and fan theories, write fan fiction involving knowing terms like “ship” and “slash.” But I’m just not.
Except…maybe Guster?
My first Guster show was at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel (RIP) in Providence. I was 17, a senior in high school. I’d already been listening to them for a few years, after WBRU (also RIP) started playing “Airport Song” and my sister bought Goldfly on CD and I promptly stole it. (Don’t worry, I returned it, eventually.) This show was the same night they released what is arguably their most beloved album, Lost and Gone Forever. In my memory, my friends and I already knew all the words, even though that probably wasn’t true, couldn’t have been. But I can’t imagine it any other way.
I’ve since seen them many times in the last 23 (JFC) years—too many to count and certainly more than any other band. I’ve seen them outdoors, indoors, at standing room clubs and big seated theaters. I’ve seen them in impromptu shows around Boston, where they have an official Guster Day every January 15 (they met at Tufts, so they’re considered a Boston band though none of the members are from MA originally and none live there now). I’ve seen them play in orange wigs as a European EDM band called Pippi. I even saw them at a drive-in show last summer, during Covid, carloads of people parked in a massive field somewhere in New Hampshire, watching the band from blankets and camp chairs beside cars and SUVs.
Some of you may be thinking “Who?” Others may be thinking “They’re still a band?” or “I heard them once in college. They were fine.” And I get it! The thing is, I’m not necessarily going to tell you to drop everything and go listen to them. (Although, if you’re curious, I do have a playlist you can check out.) I love their music but I’m not sure I can separate the songs from the band, from my 23 years of growing up alongside that band.
I’m not the same person I was at 17, putting on a fake flowered lei to see their luau-themed show at the Providence Performing Arts Center the spring of senior year, but I can access that person so easily by listening to those songs (or the Hawaii Five-0 theme song). I’m not the same person I was hearing the lyrics to “Come Downstairs and Say Hello” for the first time, intoning “To tell you the truth I’ve said it before, tomorrow I start in a new direction” and having it all make sense, but I still feel that way, still get chills when I hear it. I’m not the same person who went to see Guster on my 20th birthday, the last day of my sophomore year of college, but I still remember it as one of my favorite days of all time. I’m not the same person who eagerly read Brian’s Road Journal entries on the old Guster website, but I still definitely have a crush on him.
You might think, “It’s just a band…and not even a really famous one.” But I think that’s part of what’s so interesting about them. They are one of the few bands I can name that have been playing shows consistently since the ‘90s, and continue to put out new albums—not just rehashing the same songs—despite the fact that they’ve never topped the Billboard charts or won a Grammy or whatever the mark of mainstream music success these days is (gone viral on TikTok?). I can’t speak for the band, but I wonder if this kind of success isn’t better—the kind of success where you have an extremely devoted fan base who will come out for you and stick by you and support your creative choices and throw ping pong balls at you for decades.
Last weekend, I went up to Portland, Maine for Guster’s annual On the Ocean weekend. It was their fourth ever, but their first since 2019, because of the pandemic. My friend Di and I went back in 2019 (see Pippi pic) and this time around my sister came too. We attended an “acoustic” show at the State Theatre Friday night, then the main event at Thompson’s Point, an outdoor venue, all afternoon and evening on Saturday. My sister and I stood in line for three hours to get custom screen-printed tank tops. Still, our fandom PALES in comparison to some folks out there. It turns out that attending dozens of shows and knowing all the words to the songs does not make you the biggest fan out there.
I think making music, making any kind of art, is about connecting with people, and Guster has mastered this. They care about their fans and they care about the music. I think that’s actually sort of rare these days.
Years ago, I wrote a concert review of a Guster show for Bostonist (another RIP). I ended it with the line “Guster is growing up without growing old.” I like to think that I’m doing that too—not clinging to the past by continuing to love this band I’ve been listening to for 25 years, but honoring that past, integrating it with my present, hoping it will be around for my future, whatever that looks like. It feels like a solid presence in my life, an old friend, something I can count on. And that’s not nothing.
Do you have a band like this in your life? I want to hear about it!
Bright Spots
Looking up old YouTube clips of your favorite band and marveling at how young they used to be.
Sneaking lots of candy into the movies.
Letting yourself buy the merch.
I was prepared to hate Emma Straub’s time travel novel, This Time Tomorrow, but I was actually really charmed by it and fascinated by the premise.
J and I started watching Twin Peaks. It’s a rewatch for me and the first time for him. That show is so bonkers and I love it so much.
BeReal—I’m trying to get away from social media but I’m kind of obsessed with this new app. You get notifications once a day and when you open it, you have two minutes to take a picture. That picture is a combo selfie and whatever is in front of you. The idea is that it’s cutting down on the scrolling and lifestyle curation of Instagram. So far, only a few of my friends are on it, but I love it. I feel like it’s going to be big. If you click on the link above, you can friend me.
Oh, my goodness, Guster! I have some good memories associated with them- they remind me of college, and of working as a lifeguard at a pool, where we used to play a lot of mix CDs contining Guster, as one did in the early 00s. I also used to put some of their lyrics up as melodramatic AIM away messages in college ("Two Points for Honesty" and "Either Way" are two I remember using). I've seen them twice. Thanks for sharing that playlist- I'm definitely going to be listening to it!
Guster is one of my favorites. Their first four albums were already out by the time I first heard them in college, but I went on to see them a bunch of times in concert. One of the best shows I saw was Guster playing on a Lake Michigan beach in Chicago! Great playlist, btw!