Transit: Planes Mistaken For Stars

A band whom I'm quite fond of (I own all of their CDs released in America), Planes Mistaken For Stars recently broke up. The label they were previously an artist on folded back into its parent label, and while a couple groups survived, so I hear, most of the other ones are left in limbo. It was probably this and a combination of other factors that led to the group disintegrating.

They are transitioning as well. The singer now has two kids and is starting a new band with the drummer (Gared and Neil, respectively, both the only original members left), and the other guitarrists are starting their own group.

Of course, this doesn't exactly soften the blow. Describing Planes' sound precisely really is a challenge. In the beginning (1997), they started out as an screamo group on Deep Elm Records, an old guard emo label known for groups like the Appleseed Cast, Brandston and Cross My Heart. As you may have heard, this was back when emo did not mean putting on your sister's jeans and raiding her makeup cabinet. Their final full length, Mercy, was one of my favorites of last year owing to it's aglamartion of metal volume, manic tempos and emotional voalitility.

They played with many groups from all ends of the punk and metal spectrum, finishing tours and crossing oceans with Converge, Small Brown Bike, Dillinger Escape Plan, Hot Water Music, Mastodon, Cursive, and most famously, Against Me!. Planes was a group not quickly pigeonholed or quickly grasped. This, is of course, why their headlining shows I saw never had more than 100 pepole there.

Listening to Planes' music ran a gamut of moods for me. I've cried, made out, headbutted mirrors and most other emotions in between while listening to that group, so to say that I'm saddened that I won't ever have a new Planes Mistaken For Stars CD to look forward to wherever my life takes me is an understatement.

In my life there is plenty of transit so on one level, my roads parallel theirs. I suppose I naively hoped that Gared's and Neil's musical trails would stay with Planes Mistaken For Stars for longer, but I know so long as I have an internet connection and their new project has a MySpace page, I can follow where that aircraft touched down...

Theme: Transit

This weeks theme, decided after precious little discussion, is transit.

When I'm on a train or bus, or bus after train or train after bus, I really just want it to be boring. I don't want someone's cell phone going off and hearing the latest ringtone from Luda, the Hova, or the RZA. I want the air conditioning to be working if it's the summer and I don't want the vehicle/apparatus/hunk of junk/pile of bolts to break down. I don't think I'm asking for terribly much.

Really, my view on transit is that it exists in my life as an inbetween. I am not where I want to be and I am not where I was, so therefore, the state in between the two I do not find to my liking. But James, you cry! Isn't life about the moments between where you were and where you want to be? You're throwing away hours and minutes of your life! Do you want to do that? (Yes, and no.) Aren't the unexpected and the surprises what makes life worthwhile? I must sheepishly admit you're right.

On the other hand, buses and trains allows me to slip my headphones on and ignore the slice of the world that is also presumably not where they want to be either. But, as my opinion of the world around me is rather low (present company excluded), I don't find listening to a phone conversation about baby's momma drama or I want those reports in by tomrrow or it's someone's head on a plate to be really, the way to spend my time. If I must listen to something while I am neither here or there, it will be of my own choosing, not what is imposed upon me. These inbetween moments are still moments of my life, and so long as I rule every moment of my life, I have chosen those moments to listen to music.

Sadly, this does not hold for elevators. The space is too small, headphones too blatantly anti-social and other people omnipresent. I never know who might walk in that door and see me mouth "We can light the fuse and run!" As Jerry/Tycho from Penny-Arcade might say, it is sub-optimal.


Most of the time, I (and here, I guess that most other people) spend their time on elevators nervously looking around and waiting for their floor to be called. As I have had a conversation more immediate to my life and how I really felt with a complete stranger rather than some of my best friends, a stranger whom I'm confident I'll never meet again in an elevator a couple weeks ago, I can say this behavior in elevators a true waste of time if there was any.


Why did I have this conversation?


Well, this complete stranger was an attractive woman who looked like she was within a couple years of my age and also nervous. I figured, and believe now is probably a good idea, may as well try to have something to say to these kind of strangers which is a) worth talking about, b) interesting and c) that will keep a conversation going.


Also, (as Zach has been known to quip) why the hell not?


He is, of course, right. Whimsy keeps life interesting, and if I didn't have that conversation, it would have been another awkward elevator ride from which nothing remotely memorable is gleamed in an otherwise unremarkable day.


And I think, for everyone involved, the less, the better. I know that xkcd would agree, and currently, that's enough for me...