By Jonah A. Berger

It’s mid-February and we’ve finally made it to the venue — no more than 18 years and thousands of what-ifs, should haves and what could’ve beens later. The room is crowded, smoldering hot and piping with cigarette smoke but it doesn’t bother me as much as it normally would, if at all, because I find myself standing just feet away from a stage that soon my favorite band will scream, jump and sweat upon. I’m absolutely thrilled. Andrea is thrilled too, probably more so for me to see them for the first time after all this time, because she knows the importance of the evening is more than just a set of 15 songs, sing alongs, forward and backward thrashings of the head and neck and the occasional air guitar and drum solo. I’m more than a bevy of kids on Christmas morning excited, and more than the teen on the night he’s to lose his virginity to the girl he loves (or thinks he loves) or likely doesn’t love, and definitely more than almost anything I’d ever done for the first time.

Before a band you really want to see takes the stage there’s always those way too many minutes when the crew is up there over-tweaking microphones and cords and over-tuning instruments and drum kits as intermission music blares out of speakers that’s sometimes in context, sometimes not. Rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat. Testing…testing… 1–2–3… testing. These minutes can be painful after an 18-year wait, when all you want to do is sweep the over-tweakers and tuners to the side with a gigantic broom and replace them with the reason you’re there, the reason you flew thousands of miles to be in this very spot at this exact moment in time. There are moments in a life story that you don’t always get back. The 30 minutes or so of rat-tat-tats seem like ages. We have downed a couple drinks, visited the bathroom with the cool toilets (I could write 10,000 words on Japanese toilets alone) once or twice, stared glowingly at each other and repeatedly smiled at the fact that we both grew up in small Massachusetts towns and are now standing among mostly locals in Osaka, Japan, awaiting a band that had so 100 percent broken up nearly half our lifetimes ago.

A few more tat-tat-tats, alcohol swills, scans of the audience and small talks between us later, the filler music fades away with the lights and I’m feeling every centimeter of my 69 ¼ inch frame light up with goosebumps and memories.

Mineral is about to take the stage.

You have to start somewhere

I think I was kind of emo before most people — myself included — knew what it was. Growing up on the East Coast in places like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and eventually Massachusetts (with a heaping dose of Midwestern Illinois thrown in for great measure), my seemingly always expanding family of five and then later seven siblings provided me with plenty of bumps and bruises and many more adrenaline filled experiences. Childhood was really good — fun and active on most days. I was no. 4 in the lineup from old to young, yet sometimes it felt like I was running for my life because my brothers were bigger and stronger than me. I was no doubt the unofficial runt of the litter, the one who was a tad shorter with the smallest bones, the weakest knees and who was the quickest to cry when things didn’t go his way. You shed a lot of tears and skin layers when you’ve got older brothers. I guess it comes with the paperwork.

My brothers and I for the most part got along really well. We shared a love of sports and were quite athletic ourselves, playing baseball and football into and throughout high school. Matthew once hit a grand slam vs. the Norton Lancers as a senior and was football captain and MVP that same year, while Ben proved to be the best Little League player and pitcher I ever saw. I myself was a too-small backup high school quarterback who could throw the deep ball with the accuracy of an underwater darts player at times, but it was baseball that always stirred the chocolate milk for me. I played the game from the time I was 7, after witnessing Ben annihilate and terrify the competition, to the time I was a college freshman and trying out at Westfield State — home of the Fighting Owls — as a catcher. I didn’t make the team that year because I had an absolutely shitty tryout, and from there my baseball career was over and replaced with old-man softball and repackaged in stories like these, on pages to be turned and re-turned again and again by a reminiscent me. Pages that are very creased by now.

I imagine that my parents felt bad for me for lacking the size of the big boys, but I wasn’t really bothered because once Sarah came along just 19 months after I did, in 1979, she soon had four older brothers painting the bull’s eye on the front, side and pretty much everywhere else on her tattered body. Poor kid. Glancing back I feel bad for her because she was picked on solely because she was the odd one out — you know, the thing that’s chosen in every “one of these doesn’t belong” type pictures. Sarah was fierce, man was she ever, and she could hang with her older brothers simply because she didn’t have other options. Either you take your lumps and bumps quietly or you fight back. She chose to fight. It wasn’t long till Sarah was a teenager who not only was stronger than some of us — she also was just as good an athlete, with that attitude to boot. She once homered in Little League — off a boy pitcher. I think the ball landed in the town pool, just over the tall trees.

With Sarah in the picture I was able to better learn about who I was and the things I liked. I could concentrate more on being an individual than how I was going to survive the here-and-there wrath from my brothers. With sports not yet a part of my everyday being as a kid, I must have been about 6 or so when I started filling the pages of blank journals with ramblings of nonsense, monsters and more nonsense. My dad was a successful advertising creative at the time who had penned memorable ads for iconic brands like Burger King, General Electric and Delta Airlines, and my mom was no slouch either as she had secured bylines in magazines and newspapers for years. They had passed on the gift of wanting to fill pages when there was nothing on them to see, no pictures or directions that explain what to do next. It’s not an ability that everyone’s given, to paint colors from blank, to tell stories that haven’t yet been captured. What fuels me in creativity is that you can construct something that nobody else can. As you’re reading this, these words have never been written in exactly this order in the entire run of history. They’re my words.

There I was as a little kid who should’ve been out playing with his siblings at all hours but instead was writing about monsters and incorrectly numbering the pages in the journals his mom bought him. Constructing stories allowed me to be me, and they allowed my mind to wander and wonder about life, girls (especially girls) and whatever else I was experiencing. I don’t remember most of what I’d write in those journals because they were lost along the way, probably during a move or three, but what I do know is that my feelings have always been of the softer, oft-delicate sort. More of a “let’s watch a Nicholas Sparks movie” than “let’s throw some Rambo on again and turn it up to 12!” I’ve always been in touch with and appreciated, well, the stuff that not every guy will ever admit. My brilliant sister-in-law Jennifer over the years has referred to me as an old soul, and when I was minuscule my mom used to say that I was like an old man in my unique ways. Put these together and I think I’ve garnered a better understanding of who I am and who I’m not.

Barry Manilow, Air Supply and more gangster rap

I don’t remember us listening to a lot of music in the house. My parents were teenagers of the ‘60s and probably spun whatever was popular then, like the Beatles and the stuff they’d listen to on the radio while sipping shakes at the drive-in (that era really existed, right?). My mom likes to tell the story of when the Beatles first appeared on TV and how the world flipped upside down, then again when people first put eyes on a black-and-white Elvis doing his thing that had never been done. My mom was never a big fan of Elvis but I think she appreciated his impact and how cool he was. He passed just five days after I was born in 1977, at age 42.

As I got older and reached double digits my mom’s music tastes became more evident. She loved soft rock and the songs that got stuck in your head for days, whether you invited them in or not. Today she lists Barry Manilow as her favorite artist of all time (everyone has their Barry song), and also on the jukebox inside her head are Michael Bolton, Air Supply and Michael Jackson. She used to tell us the story about the time she met Barry and he commented on her hair and how pretty it was, or maybe that was Steve Perry, the original lead singer of Journey, who did that. I can’t remember. Either way my mom had a brush with musical greatness in a Hyatt hotel lobby in New York that could’ve changed everything had she later become Mrs. Manilow or Mrs. Perry.

In high school I got my first taste of two types of music in particular: gangster rap, because every suburban white kid in Massachusetts seemed to be listening to it in the mid-90s, and radio rock in the style of Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band and U2. All ages liked Pearl Jam in high school, just as much as they did Dave Matthews (or simply “Dave”) in college. Sometimes you go through your musical phases based on what’s cool at the time and blaring through the oversized speakers at parties and in dorm rooms. With gangster rap (Did you really think I’d forget about this?), my brother Ben (at 11 months my senior and a true “Irish twin”) and I got heavily into groups like Public Enemy, NWA, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Wu-Tang Clan when we were maybe 16 or so. We’d blast it in the car, we’d try to sound cool and keep up with the lyrics, and we’d even talk the part from time to time. Ben still calls me “G” today, short for “Gangster” I think, because I don’t know why. It’s dumb but it stuck and probably always will. Music does things to you that can’t always be explained, like the time Ben, Andrea and I snuck backstage during a Redman show at UMass Amherst for no good reason at all. We’re lucky we weren’t killed.

Osaka

Mineral is finally enveloping the stage in Osaka and for this moment, where I stand is the best place on Earth. The optimal spot for my two feet to be. I have my stunning wife at my side, the band I need to see in front of me and I’m in Japan. Japan! This country is way too incredible to put into words. I’m not even going to try. Instead, just take my word for it and visit way before you die — not just before you do. This way you can see it more than once, and I promise you won’t be the same person when you return home.

Osaka is a city we’ve always known the name of and little more. As it turns out it’s the third largest city in Japan, at 2.6 million, and it sits on Osaka Bay and has the Yodo River running through it. The area we’re staying in is smack in the middle of it all — the all being the Shinsaibashi shopping district and its endless blocks of outdoor shops and restaurants. This style of shopping is nothing new to us as we currently call Singapore and its legion of shopping our home, and we know that even if we don’t have anything to buy that we’ll eventually walk up and down the streets to people watch and peruse the merchandise. Check, check. There’s pretty much no way to live in or visit Asia without being exposed to the shopping mall culture — especially in big cities. We’ve enjoyed the little time we’ve spent in Osaka, with its ramen shops and big city Japanese charm.

When the lights dim for the show and then reappear, there are four musicians on stage and each looks familiar to me and probably most people in the room. They’ve started with songs like “Five, Eight and Ten”, “Gloria” and “Slower”, and each chord, drum beat and vocal sounds like it’s jumped off the record and into my ears. Sure, lead singer Chris Simpson’s chops have aged with the rest of his body, and sure, the guitars and the sounds that protrude from them aren’t always perfect. This is expected when you haven’t played the songs and with your band in a consistent manner since the late ‘90s. It doesn’t matter to me because each sound and movement still proves so passionate. Music is amazing because it gives and takes. It comes at us from all angles and fills all voids, and it stirs up memories from inside and extracts them into our eyes and all over our faces. You can’t hide the power of music, you just can’t. Music brings ex-girlfriends and boyfriends back into the room just as easily as it does joy and pain and everything in between. It reignites vacations and jungle gyms, conversations, laughter, tears and “I’m sorry” cards.

More passing moments and dimming lights lead to the next songs, and Mineral has strummed through “February”, “MD”, “Aletter” and “80–37” with fervor. If you only ever get the chance to listen to one Mineral song, maybe it should be “February”. If this song doesn’t stir up emotions in you, chances are you’re probably not a Mineral fan. About 92 seconds in, it’s Simpson who yells at the top of his lungs in the song’s apex, “And I don’t know if I should say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Thank you’. I try to speak but the tears choke the words”. I get chills up and down and side to side every time I hear it.

Simpson, now a father and four decades young, wrote most of these songs when he was half his age and viewing a different world around him. Many of his lyrics come off as desperate, like he’s crying out for something and unsure exactly what that is. Since the reunion and stepping back in front of the microphone he’s been asked questions about the lyrics and if he can still relate. He’s honest in admitting that, yes, he can, and even though it was a different time in his life it was still his life, still the same life. Maybe he doesn’t remember why he wrote this line or that line, or why there were hints of religion dropped into some of the songs. It’s akin to taking that old shoebox out of your closet or from underneath your bed and reading the letters you wrote to someone two decades ago.

Chances are that bits and pieces will still feel familiar.

The crowd cheers to the opening guitar sounds of “Unfinished”, just as it did for every song prior to it, and Mineral then tears through four more songs from its second album, “EndSerenading”, including “ForIvadell”, “Soundslikesunday”, “Wakingtowinter” and “&serenading”. The second album was unlike the first, titled “The Power of Failing”, which was the better of the couple in my opinion, maybe because it’s so hard to top something you’ve done so magnificently well the first time. “EndSerenading” was released in 1998, after the band had broken up, and Simpson would later tell Andrea and me that he had to enter the studio alone and without his bandmates to record the vocals. Something says that while it wasn’t ideal for the reserved, take things as they come frontman, there probably was a bit of appeal as well. At that point it was his album to finish, to say whatever it was he needed to. And the results were pretty fantastic.

Mineral leaves the Osaka stage after 12 songs and the entire room knows an encore is on tap. It is, in the form of “Lovelettertypewriter”, “Palisade” and “Parking Lot”. It turns out that my favorite song, “Rubber Legs”, isn’t in the cards on this night or any night for that matter. In fact, to this day I’m confident that it’s never been played live.

Afterward Andrea and I decide to wait around and introduce ourselves to the band. Why not? We’d come all this way and figure at least a hello is in order. As we stand by the bar and merch table we meet a couple concertgoer pals — one a local and the other from France (naturally) — and we chat them up for a few minutes before spotting the band members just a few feet away. We all head over there together, some more frantically than others (ahem), and when we get there we start what would end up being a lengthy conversation with Chris, Jeremy the bassist and Scott the guitarist about all sorts of topics — mostly those about music, the years that had gone by since they were a band and what the hell we were doing seeing them perform in Japan. They are really nice guys, thankfully. Sometimes it’s probably best to follow idols and those we adore from afar. You just never know. This night we knew.

We say our goodbyes and tell them we’ll be seeing them at the next show.

Home of the Fighting Owls

When I graduated from high school and the small, sleepy seaside town of Cohasset, Mass., and its 7,000 or so inhabitants, I knew I wanted to go away from home — just not too far away. I was never one of those kids who couldn’t wait to break free and start a life of my own. I saw that stuff as invigorating for sure; I just wasn’t in any hurry to get there because I liked the world I lived in up to that point. It was probably sometime in 1994 when I discovered Westfield State College. A gem of a state school that hides exactly 2 hours west of Boston, WSC (now a university and therefore WSU) was in the middle of nowhere yet not that far from the charming college towns of Amherst and Northampton. There was farmland there, too, which was a rarity for my home state, and there was plenty of bad weather in the winter to get snowed in by, and springs and summers that forced you to go outside and do stuff. I loved every minute of being at Westfield — it changed me in 15 million ways.

Music was one of those ways. As a freshman I still clung to my gangster rap when I needed it because it still was popular and I guess I didn’t know any better. What I was finding, though, was that kids of all shapes and sizes were listening to stuff I’d never heard before. For every Alanis Morissette and Gin Blossoms song there was Rage Against the Machine, Pink Floyd, Alice in Chains, Pantera and even Metallica — these were bands I didn’t know too much about, and the intrigue was absolutely there. One of the first bands I adored due to my new surroundings was Buffalo Tom. A Boston-based trio, their songs weren’t mind-blowing or set to alter the history of music. Instead they were honest, catchy, non-flashy and consistently good. I listened to Buffalo Tom all the time in my first two years, and I bought every album and spent hours upon hours reading up on them on the Internet. There’s that first mention of the Internet — a Godsend that changed the course of just about everything that people my age were experiencing at the time. Imagine that, a box that you could park your ass in front of for as long as you wanted and look at whatever — anything to keep yourself entertained or to make the writing of papers and taking of tests easier. That was the Internet. It was the same Internet of today minus all the social networks, mobile devices and texts first, maybe face to face conversations later. I can remember my freshman year in 1995 when I hadn’t used the Internet yet and was instead relying on my Brother word processor to write papers. A word processor! I’d plug that behemoth in at night and try to print a 10-pager without bugging the crap out of my roommate and now best friend John who was sleeping just feet away. It was cool to have a word processor because you could write papers without leaving the comforts of your dorm. It was also cool because… um… that was pretty much the only cool thing about it.

Finding emo

I’m confident that the Internet is where I first discovered emo, whether I knew it or not. To those who are unfamiliar with the term or who are cringing just hearing it, let me explain. The year was probably 1996 or maybe even early 1997 and I had developed a passion of finding new bands. Being capable of logging on whenever I wanted definitely had something to do with this, as did my love for music magazines (“zines” to the cool crowd at the time) that I’d flip through and often buy during trips to record stores at the mall. One record store in particular, Newbury Comics, quickly became my favorite place in the world to shop. This was the chain CD haven that carried all the bands that others didn’t, the bands that weren’t selling millions of records and touring the world in 27-wheeled buses. Newbury Comics was punky, edgy, hardcore, cool, loud — all of it — and it always honored my quest to find something new to bring home and press play to. Newbury Comics also carried a section of “emo” band CDs, a section that would end up catering to me for the many years that followed.

What’s emo? That’s a damn excellent question. I always knew it as a word that was short for “emotion” that described music that was melodic and heavy at the same time, almost as if you’d mashed a pop punk band together with a hardcore band. Emo was always whiny and the lyrics leaned heavily toward girls, loss, desperation and the like. When it was at its peak for me and I became DJ Emo for my “Emotherapy” radio show held weekly on WSKB, 89.5 FM at Westfield State, I considered myself emo not because of the way I looked but instead because of the way the music sounded and how it made me feel. I would’ve said I was emo back then due to my whining and intrigue for finding happiness and fixing heartache. Sure, I may have grown sideburns around that time as well, so, OK… maybe it was a bit about the way I looked. I take that previous sentence or two back. I was emo without doubt.

The first time I remember hearing an emo band wasn’t on the Internet — it was a friend’s tape. Yep, a tape, and the band was the incomparable Texas Is the Reason. To this day that band is one of the greats in the genre, even though it released just one full length and probably didn’t sell more than 25,000 copies if I had to guess. I had never heard anything like Texas — the way the guitars sounded, the way the vocals were so sincere and desperate, the way it made me warm and fuzzy. From there my life became a waterfall of emo that ranged from the jangly, quirky Promise Ring to the Midwestern and honest beauty of Chamberlain. Then there were the dorky but extremely catchy Get-Up Kids, the gruff-sounding Hot Water Music and the pop-sugar-sweet New Found Glory. There was also Jimmy Eat World, Sense Field, Lifetime, Farside, Jejune, Elliott, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Knapsack, Angels in the Architecture — the list of memorable band names reads like something my best friends in the world, John and Justin, would have a field day with. Why? They never got the whole emo thing and instead took to poking, prodding and pointing out how dumb the names were.

Then came Mineral

It was sometime in 1996 when I first laid ears on Mineral. With my emo-ness at full speed, I always knew that the next great band for me was just a listen away — whether it be on a 7-inch record, CD compilation or something I heard while traversing the Web. Formed in 1994 in Austin, Texas, Mineral from the start for me was different. The music was so bone-chillingly beautiful and the whiny words falling from Simpson’s mouth resonated with me, even if I didn’t know exactly what he meant by all of them. I’m pretty sure the first Mineral song I heard was “Rubber Legs”, which funny enough to this day is my favorite song of all time, of all songs. It was on a random compilation album put out by crank! Records, a tiny California-based that released the first two Mineral albums.

The song is achingly sad and depressing and lonely. At the same time it’s passionate and screaming at the top of its lungs for attention. It’s the perfect summation of what I was feeling through this newfound music that had grabbed hold of me at 19 or 20 and would never let go. I listened to “Rubber Legs” so many times that I’m surprised the CD didn’t catch fire. At the time I wanted to know more about Mineral, wanted to hear more Mineral, and even more ideal, I needed to experience Mineral live.

Kyoto

The next night we’re in the lovely, charming and obviously traditional city of Kyoto, just a 15- or 20-minute bullet train ride from Osaka, to watch Mineral for a second time. Earlier in the day we’ve had the chance to explore Kyoto and its geishas, temples, mountains and hills — each with its thousands of years of stories to tell. What a place. Writing this now, our sole regret from the trip is that we haven’t spent more time here. It’s not our fault because we didn’t know. Have you ever visited a place that was just a small speck in the itinerary and found it to be much bigger? That’s Kyoto. We kind of planned the stopover here blindfolded, with the primary purpose of seeing a small band from Texas.

Kyoto

The venue is a bit on the outskirts and in a nondescript neighborhood that offers a strange combination of residences, random buildings and other structures. It isn’t sketchy like you’re picturing because nothing we’ve seen in Japan can really be classified as sketchy. Instead, it’s just very Japan — another surprise tucked down a side street and alongside a warehouse that probably is something other than a warehouse (a magic castle maybe?). It’s so tucked away that it baffles our very gentlemanly taxi driver (they’re all the utmost professionals here), who when we first showed him the address made a funny, drawn out “huuuuuuh?” sound that Andrea and I still laugh about.

Now that we’ve finally arrived, following a phone call from the driver to the venue, we can tell from the outside that it’s going to be tight in there and it is — packed like Osaka sardines a night earlier and with less room to roam. It’s smoky, too, and we again aren’t fazed. It’s so energizing to be here.

Less than an hour later, after downing a beer and taking in our surroundings — a mixture of concrete slabs, low ceilings, slight darkness and billows of smoke, the lights dim even further and Mineral takes the stage as its own. The Kyoto crowd is just as appreciative to be there and sing along to the Mineral lyrics many had memorised a decade-plus earlier, probably when they first heard them on a friend’s CD or the Internet. It amazes me that so many people who grew up in Japan know how to scream verbatim lyrics of my favorite band, the same band I listened to as a 19 year old in Massachusetts, about a planet or two and thousands of cultures away from Kyoto. There’s that miracle of music again, the ability to reach near and far. It will find you or you will find it — it simply doesn’t matter where you reside.

The band knocks out the same set as it did about 24 or so hours earlier, aside from swapping out “80–37” with “If I Could” — two songs I always liked from the first album anyway, and what Andrea and I again notice about the crowd is how willing it is to let its limbs and voices wail during the songs, when passion oozes from every angle, but not in between the songs. Apparently a quiet crowd is what you’ll experience time and again during the few seconds of any stage silence here, say, as Mineral tunes its instruments or quickly glances at the set list. It must be a Japan thing, a way to show appreciation to the performer by not making a scene because it’s their name glowing on the marquee. It’s at times intriguing and other times uncomfortable. You almost want to yell something just to lighten up the room.

Mineral finishes its set the same way it did in Osaka, with “Lovelettertypewriter”, “Palisade” and “Parking Lot”, and instead of chatting it up with the band afterward we decide to give them a breather and not seem too overbearing. I think secretly I have this planned for the third and final show in Tokyo, slated to happen in three days.

‘You look like Jewel’

In April of 1997, late in my sophomore year at Westfield, with Emotherapy in full swing and garnering all of two weekly listeners (my brother and a local high school student who used to call the studio probably due to temporary insanity), I met her. It was the night of the 23rd and I was studying in the third floor lounge, just down the hall from the dorm room I’d lived in since I’d arrived at college. I happened upon the lounge because I’d recently missed some classes due to a terrible bout with pneumonia that had me calling my mom and crying for her to pick me up and take me home (sounds very emo, right?). When I got back to Westfield after a short stint away I’d fallen behind and felt it was necessary to hide out in the lounge and study. While in there I noticed a girl standing by the window with a guy friend of hers and smoking a cigarette as he joked with her and maybe even rubbed her shoulders. These activities didn’t bother me at the time for one reason and that one reason only: She was the most beautiful, wondrous girl I’d ever seen in my 19 years. I don’t know what got into me right then but I just had to meet her and learn more about her. So without hesitation I looked up and uttered, “You look like Jewel.” There it was, the four words that were either going to propel me to new horizons or sink me like a 1-foot putt on the 18th hole. You have to understand that Jewel was a very famous solo guitarist at the time who was selling records and winning the hearts of people around the globe with her stories of homelessness and survival in a station wagon in the Alaskan wilderness. Jewel seemed as unique as she was gorgeous and that’s who I witnessed standing in front of me, at the window, smoking a cigarette and maybe getting her shoulders rubbed by some dude. Who knew that just silly four words and 2 seconds between two strangers could end up being the catalyst to something lifelong?

Shortly after the Jewel comment I learned that this girl lived across the hall from now best friend Justin. Right across the hall! She was a year behind me as a freshman and for eight months had been walking the same floor as me, yet we never really remember bumping into each other. Yeah, it’s a small world we live in sometimes, and sometimes that world expands like Stretch Armstrong and never retracts, even when measured in terms of a few feet. I had Justin put in a good word for me and shortly after that I was nervously walking with Andrea to South Lot one night to pick up my car. (Good line, right?) We talked about a lot of stuff on the jaunt, I’m sure, and the one topic that remains in my head is music. She’s an enormous fan of both Jane’s Addiction and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, two bands I knew little about at the time. She also really likes Buffalo Tom, which I thought was anything but coincidence, and even more exciting to me was that I just knew she was going to like some of the bands I was destined to introduce to her. Turns out I was right. Maybe I could even get her to tune into Emotherapy as listener No. 3.

A couple weeks after that night we were officially going steady, to use a term from my mom’s drive-in days, and from that point on things were great, things were good and sometimes things were really, really bad. I’ll take all the blame for the bad and the fact that I was 19 and not sure if I wanted to be in a relationship or not, even though I had this wunderkind standing in front of me who I assumed could do no wrong. Still, when you’re 19 you’ve got plenty of stupid in you, and my stupid came out a lot and forced us to break up, get back together and break up, only to get back together again. Apart. Together. Apart. Together. I always missed Andrea when we were apart, and I knew that meant something — maybe not completely at the time but eventually it would mean something. There are some things you have to let go of to truly appreciate, I now know.

Breakdowns — lots and lots of breakdowns

As the college years zoomed by quickly and the memories, firsts and sometimes lasts continued to adorn the journals I was filling, Mineral and other whiny emo bands with funny names weren’t my only musical calling card. Thanks to my Irish twin Ben, who discovered Pantera when he was delivering pizza back in Cohasset and always listening to the radio, I also couldn’t get enough of the heavy stuff. What kind of heavy stuff is a funny question because Ben and I still get embarrassed when people ask us about the music we listen to. My embarrassment that’s there, for whatever silly reason, means that my first answer is to say something like, “Oh, bands you’ve never heard of — they were never on the radio.” People will usually push to hear at least one name that’s familiar (people like to know things), and if I say I like metal or metalcore they’ll turn to old standbys like Metallica and maybe even ancient stuff like Zeppelin or a hair metal band or two from the ‘80s. No, it’s not that kind of metal; instead it’s the kind that’s filled with breakdowns and screams and the occasional Cookie Monster vocal. What are Cookie Monster vocals? Imagine a sweaty, angry Cookie Monster grabbing a microphone and screaming at the top of his lungs while guitars and drums wail bloody murder in the background. Some of the bands Ben and I uncovered were the aforementioned Pantera and Rage Against the Machine, and also the Deftones, Limp Bizkit, Machine Head, Soulfly, Korn, Coalesce and Vision of Disorder. If you put these bands in front of a rowdy crowd and there are microphones and speakers and random farm animals within arms’ reach, look out — it’s going to get ugly fast. I don’t know why we enjoy the fury, the sweaty crowds, the shaking stages and sound systems, and the occasional need for earplugs and aspirin.

Mosh pits have a way of injecting heaping tablespoons of youth into a batch of older age.

The first chance to see Mineral

Being 2 hours away from civilization at Westfield, it was a lot to ask to drive to Boston for anything, especially as a poor college kid who delivered pizza, just like his brother. However, in 1997 I learned that Mineral was touring the area and was to play a show at the famed Middle East in Boston. Here it was, a moment I couldn’t pass up. I was going to get to see my favorite band at the height of its emo royalty, and all of this was happening just a couple hours down the road. Naturally I went to Strawberrie’s, a popular, now defunct record store in the New England region, and bought two tickets for $7 apiece. I had my own car, a nice Toyota Camry that shined way more than my bank account did, and as the Mineral show was approaching, let’s just say that I could no longer afford the car and it was about to… go away. [Jeez, we make a lot of financial mistakes in our teens and early 20s, don’t we?] Knowing the Camry was about to drive off into the sunset sans me in the driver’s seat, I decided that I had to remove the sound system I’d put in there, the one that I paid way too much for using a credit card I shouldn’t have. [Yes, we make a lot of financial mistakes in our 20s.] I don’t know why I took the sound system out just before the Mineral show, and being such a big music lover this was a big problem because I had a 2-hour drive and it was going to be without my emo and screamy stuff in tow. So I made the regretful decision to not attend the show, figuring I’d catch them the next time they passed through town.

Shortly after that, Mineral broke up.

I don’t think I was heartbroken at the time for missing that show because if youth and my early months with Andrea had taught me anything, it was that life was full of opportunity and second chances. I figured there would be another one.

Mom and the Windy City

A couple years later I graduated from Westfield with a journalism degree in one hand and not a clue as to what I was going to do in the future in the other. My initial major was math because I’d always found numbers easy. I was that weird kid in middle school who could plow through the times tables more quickly than tie his shoes, the weird kid who could see equations in his head without having to write them down with a No. 2 Dixon Ticonderoga. I liked being that kid. At Westfield things started off fine for the young mathematician. Statistics were fun, as were the adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, and that kid had visions of one day becoming a baseball statistician or someone who made a lot of money solving equations. Was there such a job? To look back now, it’s funny how disillusioned we are at times about what we want to be. I’m not sure we ever figure this out, even if we love what we do. There’s just too much to choose from. Take me, for example. Had I not been a baseball player I would’ve been a statistician. And had I not been a statistician I would’ve been a famous music producer. And had I not been a famous music producer I would’ve been a… search engine marketer? Hey, we choose a path and sometimes it chooses us.

There I was, trucking along as a math major and taking linear algebra as a college sophomore. Linear algebra — how hard could it be, right? I’d had algebra before and done fine, so what was the big deal? I’ll tell you what the big deal was, and it was in the shape of a giant, slap you in the face and finish with a donkey punch “F”. That’s right, I failed Mr. Kim’s linear algebra class after attending every single lecture and staying after for extra help. The guy was ruthless and was either the hardest math teacher I ever had or I was the dumbest student he ever had. This is up for debate. As can be imagined I was crushed, and not knowing what to do I sat down and thought about what else I was good at. It wasn’t throwing a tight spiral 60 yards and I guess it wasn’t donning the catcher’s gear and crouching behind the dish for nine innings. Those were out. And then it hit me: writing. That’s it! I always liked to write and I knew I could dust the cobwebs off a bit and take up journalism. It was absolutely the right decision because by writing again I could be creative, and with this oozing of creativity comes passion, and with passion comes a ballsy post-graduation move to Chicago to introduce myself to the city.

I arrived in the Windy City in the summer of 1999, having left Andrea behind to finish her senior year. It was so hard to be apart from each other, as things were so good when they were good between us and at that point I needed her in my everyday life. We knew that distance and time were just temporary and we moved forward and did our best to make things work. Plus, Chicago was a great city and its thousands of restaurants, bars and sights would keep me busy, keep my mind off the distance.

Also on my mind at all times was my wonderful mom, who about one year earlier had suffered a stroke while she was recuperating in a Boston hospital following a hysterectomy. It was the tail end of my junior year at Westfield and caught me and everyone in my world completely off guard. Mom was always so strong, so independent, and maybe even a little taken for granted by us at times. I guess we pictured that she would always be back in Cohasset and making home feel all warm and cozy for whenever we called or visited. The thing with family and especially parents is that the everyday makes it easy for us to love and appreciate them, especially as we age. What the everyday doesn’t do is teach us how to deal with them when they’re sick or in need of our help. My mom getting sick changed me in so many ways. It sounds silly to say it really brought out my emo side but it absolutely did. Then and forever since I softened even more. I teared up for little to no reason while watching movies that probably weren’t that sad. I floated through fuzzy days. I turned to writing and music and relied on them more than before. I missed the old version of my mom and her independence. Still do.

My mom’s short term memory left her for good that year, in 1998, and it was nearly impossible to deal with at first. Nearly two decades later it’s still difficult. We don’t know why bad things can happen to good people. Things just happen sometimes and we deal. We turn the pages of the calendar and move forward, more than occasionally stopping to reflect and wonder how that much time could’ve possibly passed since this and that happened. Amazingly, through all the years of not remembering and confusion, her sense of humor and incomparable compassion and love for her kids is still there, right where it’s always been. If she can deal with this handicap the way she has and still crack jokes, I’m confident I can deal with the trivial moments of my own life.

Heartbreak

A major trivial moment for me happened in 2002 when Andrea and I broke up, five years after we first met in the lounge and I told her she looked like Jewel. She needed time to do her own thing and live by herself, pay her own bills and be her own person. It made zero sense to me at the time and I struggled mightily. I was 25 years old and 100 percent confident that we were supposed to be together. I knew that much, just like I knew that Professor Kim was some kind of evil math monster; just like I knew that you can almost always outrun brothers who are bigger and stronger than you. I knew. The thing is, she didn’t, and her knowing wasn’t going to happen then, no matter how emo I got and how many Mineral and Texas Is the Reason mixes I made her.

A calendar flip to 2003, then 2004, and that year I moved to Denver to live in a city I’d always wanted to live in. I probably have the Broncos to thank for a lot of that move, as they were a team I’d latched onto since I first saw John Elway rifle a spiral downfield and into a receiver’s waiting arms. Elway was immortal to the 9-year-old boy who started watching football one day, probably by accident, and the flipping of the channels led to the Broncos bright orange uniforms, of all the NFL uniforms. My time in Denver would end up being eye-opening and refreshing, as if it were a 13-month meditation session to rejuvenate and find myself again. I have no Mile High regrets, not a one. While there and spending a large chunk of time on my own I formed more and more relationships with my writing, the music and bands like Taking Back Sunday, Brandtson, Christie Front Drive, Dashboard Confessional, The Jazz June, Juliana Theory, Sullivan and Superstitions Of The Sky. There were also the heavier bands in rotation like Eighteen Visions, Underoath, Norma Jean, From Autumn to Ashes, It Dies Today and Remembering Never. Sometimes it just depended on the mood, the environment, maybe the left or right turn on a back road.

One band in particular, Taking Back Sunday, is the one I remember most following the time apart from Andrea. When its first album, “Tell All Your Friends”, was released in 2002, I guess the timing for me was perfect. That wonderful album became the soundtrack of my life then, and I listened and listened and listened again. It didn’t matter where I was or the time of day — Taking Back Sunday followed me everywhere in Colorado. It made me happy. It made me sad. It made me quite emo at times. It made me miss Andrea and revisit old shoeboxes. She and I had remained friends from very afar during the Denver days and we communicated on occasion. When I moved to Massachusetts in early 2005 for six months to follow a new relationship that was probably doomed from the outset, we’d catch up here and there, albeit quickly, with her still residing in Chicago. For me I think it was therapeutic to hear about how she was doing. I think secretly I wanted her to hear my voice and in the most emo, boom box above my head-type way possible give our relationship another chance. That’s what love does to you — like a song it evokes emotion, makes the mind wander into and out of temporary insanity, and it appears from time to time out of nowhere like a wind gust.

Radio silence and second chances

I moved back to Chicago in late 2005 to start anew and visit old haunts with my siblings and friends who still lived there. Chicago was familiar and I was mostly happy to be back. With Andrea living just eight blocks or so down the road, which in a big city I guess could still be a lot, three years would pass before we’d speak to or see each other again. That’s three years, 36 months, 1,095 days, 26,280 hours. You could watch 52,000 episodes of Friends and still have about 11 or so days to go. Three years is a long time. At some point in 2005 we’d decided to move on from friendship, and from what I knew through mutual friends she was doing well and had found happiness in another relationship. I could say the same.

Near the tail end of 2008 I was missing Andrea more than usual and maybe spinning Jewel on the CD player a bit. It was around that time, probably in the fall, when I started to notice things around me — signs, if you believe in stuff like that. My relationship with my girlfriend at the time was failing and my mind was wandering like an old man in a blizzard in a foreign land. I can remember eating at a restaurant and seeing the name of the waitress on the bill. Her name was Andrea. I can remember having dreams about her. I can remember the night of my company holiday party when I got out of a taxi and stopped in my tracks because I swore I saw her, standing right there, after all that time had passed. It turns out it wasn’t her and was instead a lookalike or stunt double. I was so spooked that one of the guys I was in the taxi with asked me what was wrong and told me it looked like I’d seen a ghost. I think I had.

All of these signs sparked my inner emo, of course, and by Thanksgiving that year I found myself single and learned the same about Andrea. She was single! The timing was right, I felt, to give things one last shot and to do what I needed to do to see if we were supposed to be together. So I did what any normal person would do — I showed up at her family’s doorstep in her Massachusetts hometown of Maynard on Christmas Eve. I knew she’d be there because her family’s Christmas Eve party was an annual event and a big one at that. And when I got there all dressed up and feeling good but more nervous that I’d imagined, I walked in and saw her standing in the next room, looking as stunning as she did more than 11 years earlier when we first met in the lounge and I told her…you know the story by now. The rest of the magical Christmas Eve night was spent with us walking around the neighborhood and throughout her mom’s house catching up. There was a lot of catching up to do.

Three years later we got married.

It’s ever so emo

Our marriage has been such an exciting whirlwind and anything but conventional. Shortly after that imaginary knot was tied we moved to London and spent the next two years exploring that historic city and as much of Europe as we could fit into our suitcases. London led to trips to wondrous places like the Netherlands, Iceland, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary… oh, so many! After London our lives led us to Singapore and Asia for the first time, where we attempt to soak up as much of the rich culture and history as possible. With Singapore you get Australia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan and so much more. All you need to do is board a plane and close your eyes.

Regardless of where we’ve lived and traveled, one thing that’s been consistent all along is our passion for music — especially live music. We’ve been so lucky to see Jane’s Addiction in the flesh in Aspen on a snowy New Year’s Eve. We’ve seen Jimmy Eat World in Chicago, also on New Year’s Eve. We’ve seen the Bosstones’ annual “Hometown Throwdown” in Boston. We’ve been to Groezrock, a random two-day metal festival in the middle of nowhere in Belgium, strategically placed among roaming cows and acres of farmland. We’ve seen Texas Is the Reason’s last show ever, in the trendy Camden area of London. And now we’ve gotten to see Mineral live not once, not twice but three times, in Japan of all places. How this band reunited is completely beyond me. For years I’d checked old websites and message boards. I’d posted on forums myself. I’d heard reunion rumors that never even came close to coming true. Then out of nowhere they booked a small US tour in 2014, which naturally we missed due to the side of the globe we’re on. And then they went to Europe in early 2015 and stopped in places like Italy, France, Germany and the UK and we missed that. And then they planned the most random of random tours to Asia to play six shows in the Land of the Rising Sun. Tickets went so fast, we only got our hands on three pairs of them.

Music is that important, that special. It makes the traveling of thousands of miles to see it, even just for 1 hour, worth it.

Tokyo

It’s Friday night and just hours before our third and final Mineral show. We’re pumped because we’re in Tokyo, one of the cities of the world that has to be seen, up there with the likes of New York and Paris. Andrea and I are spending the day as any normal couple would, at a cat cafe where we meet two nice Japanese ladies and are playing with maybe 15 cats for an hour. We pay about $20 USD for the experience and that includes a special cat feeding session where they all swarm and act like they’ve never eaten before. Cats, like Japan, are filled with quirks.

The parts of Tokyo we’ve seen are hard to describe in writing because they’re all quite different, with each possessing its own personality. Great big cities tend to have this characteristic about them, to surprise you with a street or neighborhood that you just didn’t see coming. In Tokyo we’ve slept in two different neighborhoods — the ultra-trendy Shimokitazawa with its boutiques, restaurants and abundant charm, and Asakusa, with its big city-like feel, old temples and very friendly walkable streets. Both areas couldn’t be more different and we love this about Tokyo. Just because you’re massive doesn’t mean that everything has to feel that way.

Hours later, from the 21st floor of our hotel that’s overlooking the bustling Asakusa, Andrea and I stare out the window and still can’t believe that we we’re in Tokyo. This is when you know that you appreciate what’s happening around you, when you’re in 360 degree awe of it. Eventually we pull ourselves away from the view and start to get ready for the show. I of course am feeling quite emo at this point because I know this will probably be the last time I ever prepare to see Mineral perform live. Emotions are everywhere.

A long taxi cab ride later and it’s nearly show time. What’s so cool, we find out, is that the venue is just down the street from the famous Shibuya Crossing with all its lights, camera and Times Squareness. It’s about 9 p.m. and having not eaten dinner yet we decide to quickly dart into a ramen shop down the street from the venue for another bowl of some of the best comfort food Japan has to offer. The ramen is delicious (we order gyoza as well) and we sprint to the venue, called O-Nest, where we grab a drink from the bar and then head down some random back stairs to find a large one-room venue that’s more packed than the previous two we’ve populated. People are seemingly hanging from the rafters and Mineral has already taken the stage and is plowing through the powerful “Five, Eight and Ten” opener, just like we’re now accustomed to. We find what feels like the last two places to stand in the very back and start bobbing our heads along with the rest of the room. The atmosphere is absolutely electric, like it’s been plugged into the main city grid.

The Tokyo crowd appears to be even more appreciative of the occasion than Osaka and Kyoto, almost as if these people have been part of the Mineral journey from the start. They’re singing and really getting into it, and with the ending of each song the applause is more heartfelt than noise. We’re so happy to be here. Andrea, who I’ve always known to be a wizard in learning the lyrics of songs she doesn’t know very well, is now at the point where she can sing almost every word. I’m impressed. We kiss and stand closer to each other on this night, and I think it’s because we’re caught in the moment. You only get a few of these moments in the journey when a feeling takes over and words aren’t necessary. You just know.

Some 12 songs later Mineral finishes its set with the three-song encore of “Lovelettertypewriter”, “Palisade” and “Parking Lot”, and just like that the lights go down, the crowd screams one last time and the band leaves the stage. I’m all smiles and so sad at the same time because I know it’s over. Eighteen years of waiting has been pared down to three shows, then two, then one, and then that’s it — end scene.

Feeling and remembering just about everything at this point, from the “you look like Jewel” moment to the six years we spent apart to the Christmas Eve Hail Mary I successfully completed, we decide to wait around for the band upstairs in the bar and by the merch table, which they’re certainly to visit. And sure enough just minutes later they’re talking to people and signing autographs on shirts and posters as adoring fans (most so much younger than us) patiently wait in line for a just a minute or two of conversation and a thank you. It’s fun to watch this itty-bitty band from thousands and thousands of miles away in Texas get so much love from kids — many that weren’t even born yet when the first album came out. These are the moments when music can make you feel old, or at least older.

And now the crowd has dispersed and Andrea and I find ourselves sitting at a table and drinking beers with Chris the singer, Jeremy the bassist and Scott the guitarist. The conversation runs the gamut on everything from song meanings to what they’ve been up to, what they do in their spare time, which bands they listen to now. What we’re quickly realizing is that these guys don’t come across as the rock stars they are. They’re just normal people. They’re just like us. This is so refreshing, to sit down with a band that’s always been so important to me and converse as if we’d known each other for years. I chat with Chris for a while about the lyrics to “Rubber Legs” and if they’re about his mom. They are. I ask him about recording the second record after the band breakup and what that was like. I ask him about where Mineral goes from here and his answer sounds very similar to what the rest of the band says, without really saying it. You get the feeling that this reunion tour is a reunion and that’s it; that the Mineral legacy is destined to again revert back to dusty, overplayed 7” records and CDs. And the band members seem all right with this realization.

Selfishly I want this quartet to stay together forever and make more music. It’s silly not to think this way when you love something so much. But then there’s this other part of me that’s come to terms with all this reunion stuff and maybe what it’s really all about. Maybe some things are supposed to come in and out of our daily story like characters, scenes and chapters. These can always be revisited and remembered with just a few flips of the pages if necessary, a bookmark moved to and fro. Then we write the next story, then we read, and then we write some more. We should never stop writing. And listening.

I’m happy with my story — it’s ever so emo. I got the girl, I got to see the band and I got the answers to a lot of the what-ifs, should’ves and what could’ve beens that started 18 years earlier.

Jonah A. Berger (jberger143@gmail.com) is an emo oldster turned search engine marketer who’s based in the exotic island country of Singapore. When he’s not listening to music about heartbreak and growing out his sideburns, he likes to spend time with Andrea and their orange and white cat, Ignatius. He also adores traveling, sports, and eating cake, maple syrup and downing the occasional hard cider. Not all at the same time.

Washed Up Emo is the preeminent home for bands from the late 90s, early 2000s and 2010s. The site hosts a critically acclaimed podcast, and DJ night in NYC. More information on Washed Up Emo.