Oh, the archetypal older brother...

That mansion on the hill of masculinity, that gatekeeper of "cool," the champion and the fuck-up. Older brothers are responsible for a whole litany of the word's passions and sensibilities. Accordingly so, I would not be here today if it weren't for my older brother Alex. Four years my senior, Alex provided a clear picture of success in my preteen mind as he spent his high school years establishing a unique teenage identity for himself, a life that I spent a great amount of time daydreaming about as I pictured myself in his shoes in my own upcoming teen years. All the while I was blissfully unaware of the fact that the whole thing–the scene, sensibilities, and identity for which Alex found himself–would quickly be rendered extinct by the swift tide of popular culture and the frivolous nature of "cool."

You'd be hard pressed to call Alex a nerd. He rode mountain bikes, looked people right in the eye, and his existence had a funny way of inciting freshman girls to write paint pen love notes all over his Nissan Pathfinder. He had friends, lots of them, and some of them even had vaginas. He was voted "Most Attractive" in his senior yearbook; the result of a vigorous campaign by his mischievous friends, but an undeniable testament to his overall popularity regardless. Despite all this, somehow, someway, the climate and sensibilities that defined youth culture in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina from 2003 to 2007 allowed a popular teenager like Alex to spend his weekends moshing at NC Hardcore shows, driving cross state with attractive girls to see bands like Jack's Mannequin, and skanking across dance floors at amateur Ska shows. In a feat made possible by an early preoccupation with Minor Threat, inherent pressure surrounding his status as the first kid out of the gate in our family, and a lingering private school imposed skittishness regarding illicit substances, Alex did it all sober as a whistle.

Alex's friends had an aforementioned Nth wave Ska band called the BFGs. After their occasional shows, Alex and his friends would drive across town to Cookout (North Carolina treasure, Fast Food Mecca, Drive Thru Only) and at least once, he brought me along. I remember sitting in the back seat, sweaty from the physical toll Ska demanded that night, watching him and his friends intently as I dreamed about my turn at the car, the cool friends, the cute girls, and the basement shows. Just then, two of Alex's friends pulled up next to us in their car, triumphantly blasting Brand New's "Seventy Times 7"–quite possibly the best Emo diss song ever–as they passionately shouted lines from the song at Alex, who returned the favor. The same kids had a garage band of their own and they tried out for their high school talent show with a cover of "Seventy Times 7" but were disqualified for that pesky line where Brand New's JesseLacey implores former bandmate/Taking Back Sunday's Syd Barrett, John Nolan, to "have another drink and drive yourself home," and to "think of me when you forget your seatbelt and again when your head goes through the windshield." Brand New was cool. Alex was cool. They were all so fucking cool.

I was thirteen.

Alex showed me who I could be and the Warped Tour showed me who I was. Determined to define myself through the pages of Alternative Press magazine, I spent hours combing forums for New Found Glory b-sides, bee-lining through Borders and Best Buy in search of the CD racks, and sitting alone in my bedroom writing sappy emails of adoration to the members of Yellowcard. All the while, each and every year from age 11 on, I attended the now infamously shitty Vans Warped Tour. Somehow, I had managed to establish my identity through a world that was neither cool nor smart, and I couldn't have cared less. I placed my coveted Fall Out Boy hoodies and macabre Senses Fail t-shirts front row center in each and every single yearbook photo without question. I had somehow found confidence in the individualism afforded to me by one of the biggest rip-off scenes in the history of guitars. The Warped world gave me a confidence that manifested itself in the form of the Taking Back Sunday t-shirts (plural) I wore to school damn near every day and that time I gave the Queen Bee of my 8th grade class Panic! At the Disco's A Fever You Can't Sweat Out for her birthday. Hell, I even dabbled in a Hot Topic studded belt from time to time. Fuck 'em.

When considering the years of my life as a nerd, the years wherein Warped Tour was king, I am disturbed by the warmth of my nostalgia. Despite the fact that my life between the age of eleven and fifteen involved the most self-loathing and alienation I have experienced in my entire life, I have no doubt those years were the purest time of my life as a music fan. Physical media was dying and I was coming alive. Still, the wheel of popular culture moved on and it wasn't soon before I started hanging out with kids who listened to Arcade Fire, unbeknownst to the fact that I was about to truly understand the consequences of cool.

I didn't care much for 2007. The year marked the moment where American Pop Culture in the 2000s finally got the hangover it deserved, facing the repercussions of a half decade spent upholding a pop landscape wherein bands like Fall Out Boy, Green Day, and even Bowling For Soup stood and sold alongside artists like Kelly Clarkson and Justin Timberlake. Sure, The Offspring and Green Day cashed their fair share of checks in the nineties, but we're talking about a time where My Chemical Romance's "Helena" played in dentists' offices for pete's sake. Songs about driving fast in the summer and crying on bloody sleeves got very, very popular which of course lead to them being very, very hated, especially by the nerds of the Indie Rock world. As I was wearing checkered Vans slip-ons to school dances and fighting the good fight without shame, the musicians in my favorite Warped bands–many of whom started out as teenagers themselves–were nervously changing their sound, style, and haircuts in a desperate attempt to combat the critical cries of sad nerdy music critics. Despite all the exasperated tears and emotional anthems the scene churned out over the years, every artist seemed dead set on finally becoming "serious." New Found Glory replaced screeching synths and snotty kiss-off anthems with Benmont Tench assisted lounge piano ditties. Brand New, a band once capable of producing a line like "drop me like a brick off a rooftop of your high school," left the overpasses, mix tapes, and magazines of Long Island in favor of making The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, a record as bloated and disingenuous as its title. The scene upon which I formulated my entire identity had become such an embarrassment that its own leaders rejected it publicly in the form of the "serious" follow up record, a feat only ever really pulled off with integrity by Blink-182.

For a year or two I eschewed new albums entirely, floating in a purgatory of endless listens of Catch-22's Keasbey Nights. At fifteen, I felt like I had voluntarily tied myself to the mast of a sinking ship, blind with loyalty and devotion, only to witness the captain abandon his helm entirely in order to spend his time churning out half-assed murky instrumental explorations of white dude existentialism. As I stared into the incoming abyss, I wondered how cold the water would be, realizing my fate was plainly due to my steadfast allegiance to the ship, the scene, the whole thing that almost every single person in my life found childish and irksome. Icy water lapped my face as the tidal wave of high school social life rose in front of me yet still, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what people saw in those bearded mopes in Fleet Foxes.