I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: August 1, 2023] Geoff Rickly

Geoff Rickly is the singer for Thursday, a band from New Jersey who I had never even heard of when I saw them open for My Chemical Romance last year.

I wasn’t really looking forward to his set (I would have missed this one if he was first), because I didn’t love the Thursday set.  It was fine and I may have liked it more if I was closer.  But it was fine.

However, as a solo performer, Rickly was fantastic.  He told little stories before each song.  He said that since Thursday torued with Sparta 20 years ago, he was going to play mostly Thursday songs (instead of his solo songs).

I didn’t know any of them, and at first I didn’t think the set would be that enjoyable, but he put so much passion into his singing that “Time’s Arrow” blew me away.  He had lots of fans in the audience who knew all the words and it was fun to hear them singing along.

He told us about a lawsuit that the band faced back ten years ago or so that cost them $100,000 which they did not have.  So they wound up doing a lot more shows to make some money.  They even did an “emo cruise.”  He said that he had written a solo osng which he thought was perfect and after the show the Captain of the theater told him to never play that song on a ship again.

I made my bed, Now I’ll sleep in it, alone,
But I’ll have bad dreams Like the bottom of the sea
With the waves crashing down,
The sight and sound of a sinking ship and what goes with it:
A shudder from above, a groan and a creak, The crackle and streak of a spark set free
…
The passengers talk And they’re starting to tell Of a Captain on deck And he’s pacing around And he’s waving his arms Trying to comfort the crowd He says, “Please, Please, Please, One at a time. Please, Please, Please, Stay Calm… We’re all going to die.”

Yea, maybe not the nest place to play that, but only a few people jumped overboard.

Then he talked about working for Victory Records and their hardcore policy of never paying anyone.  So when they signed with a major label, he said he wanted to write jungles, and so he wrote one for Lockheed Martin “This Song Brought to You by a Falling Bomb.”

He talked about hw difficult it was to play some of their songs on an acoustic guitar (he was playing electric but I think he meant on other tours) and so he didn’t play certain songs like “For the Workforce, Drowning” because they were too hard on acoustic.  Then a friend said to him.  Hey, you’re a musician.  You’re creative.  Maybe you can figure a way to d o it, so he played for us the county/goth version of it.

I’m still not sure if I’m a fan of the band,  but his confessional set (he’s five years sober after a debilitating addiction) made me want to buy his book–a novel.  He chatted for a bit and was super nice.  I hope the book is good.

1. Time’s Arrow  ¢
2. This Side of Brightness ¥
3. New Sympathies ∞
4. This Song Brought to You by a Falling Bomb ♣
5. Cross Out the Eyes ⊗
6. Understanding in a Car Crash ⊗
7. For the Workforce, Drowning ♣

¥ THURSDAY: Waiting (1999)
⊗ THURSDAY: Full Collapse (2001)
♣ THURSDAY: War All the Time (2003)
¢ THURSDAY: Common Existence (2009)
∞ Mixtape 1 (2012)