The Gospel Of John Wall

One of the great simple joys in life is when somebody excitedly tells you about a new band, and you stand there, listening to them rhapsodize about their new single, that crazy thing the lead singer does with his voice, and their totally awesome EP. And then you can calmly respond, “Oh yeah, I heard of them like six months ago.” The satisfaction of knowing before anyone else is hard to quantify, but it makes you feel pretty awesome, doesn’t it?

(To put this in perspective, there’s an entire group of people in society that dedicate their entire existence to enjoying just this one thing. They spend their lives trolling the underground, wearing strange clothing, and following middling musical acts--all in the hope that one of those bands or fashion trends might become super popular, at which point they can smugly declare, “Yeah... I mean I’m actually kind of sick of [band or fashion trend]. It was so much better three years ago.” We call these people “hipsters,” and for some reason, they all seem to smoke Parliaments.)