BONUS TRACKS: The Get Up Kids, "Walking On a Wire"

On emo, breakup songs, and disappointment

Bonus Tracks is for songs that might not get a full essay and so otherwise wouldn’t be written about. These shorter write-ups will post on Tuesdays, while the main essays run on Fridays.

The other day I was talking with someone about the emo classics and I played a track from The Get Up Kids’ 1999 masterpiece, Something to Write Home About. It’s an album I’ve probably listened to thousands of times, and for better or worse, its influence was felt throughout the early 2000s emo/pop-punk that made it big across Hot Topics across the country. There were other influential records at the end of the last century too, of course — Clarity, American Football, Through Being Cool — but the long tail of The Get Up Kids cannot be overstated.

Obviously I went through an emo phase myself during this time, and probably weaned off of it just around the time mall punk and “third wave emo” was really getting going. (Apologies to My Chemical Romance… more on them another day.) But even as emo was winding down for me, The Get Up Kids followed up their classic with a more mature, subdued record that, while a mixed effort, has a couple of classic tracks I still love playing today.

The Get Up Kids formed in Kansas City, MO in 1995 in plenty of time for emo’s “second wave.”* As a teenager who had been listening to punk and radio-friendly alternative with a penchant for overwrought songs about girls breaking your heart, getting into emo in the second half of the 90s was a no-brainer. I remember picking up their debut album, Four Minute Mile, plus their first EP together in a long gone record store in Naperville, IL, where I would go to and drop out of college a few years later. Those songs, still burned into my brain all these years later, were catchy, dramatic, and right in that noisy/pretty sweet spot typical of much of the punk/emo of the era, pulling in indie rock influences to create something more raw and earnest than what was typical of punk at the time (think Dude Ranch and Nimrod, or whatever NOFX was doing at the time).

*For a more detailed breakdown of emo’s various waves, asked literally anyone else, please.

As the Get Up Kids’ profile steadily grew, they added keyboard player James Dewees to give the band a fuller new wave/pop-inspired sound for their sophomore record, Something to Write Home About. For the album’s 20th anniversary, the eternal emo proselytizer Ian Cohen wrote for Stereogum that “Dewees immediately made a solid project exponentially funnier and worthy of being taken seriously” with his goofball stage persona and even more goofball side project, Reggie and the Full Effect (who would release a couple of albums of skits, joke songs, filler, and like one or two genuine, stone cold classic emo anthems, as if completely on accident.)

They also stalled in their negotiations with various labels, including major label Mojo (then known for a lot of ska/rock like Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger) before landing with Vagrant, a label practically synonymous with punk and emo revival. The band headed back to Kansas City to record and produce the record themselves, citing power pop and indie influences like The Colour and the Shape and Summerteeth, which gives the record an accessibility that’s unique to many of the similar records at the time.

If this was a newsletter about 90s songs, there’s no question I could spend 2,000 words on nearly any song from Something to Write Home About. “Action and Action,” “Ten Minutes,” and “I’m a Loner, Dottie, a Rebel”* have all had their turns as my favorite Get Up Kids track. But the one I think will always stand out the most is “Holiday,” the massive opening track with glissandos, crunchy guitars, keyboard melodies battling other melodies, and impassioned vocals you’d only get from 1999 emo. For fans of this music, “Holiday” likely ranks among the best album openers, alongside classics like “Never Meant” and “Bleed American,” and hearing it immediately takes me back to that time and place, and to the person I was when I first heard it.

*Arguably the best song ever named for a direct quote from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Between Something to Write Home About and the Red Letter Day EP released a few months later, the band was primed for a huge breakout, going on tour with up-and-comers At the Drive-In to support the record. (I actually saw them in 2001 supporting Weezer and again a year or two later.) Touring for years in support of an instant classic, particularly one that inadvertently helped define a genre and influenced decades of bands that followed… certainly this takes a toll on a young band in a world of bands that tend to burn bright and disappear quickly. Expectations for whatever they did next were absurdly high.

In my memory, when On a Wire was released in 2002 the reception was mixed-to-negative. (One friend of mine hated it, and rejected outright my suggestion it had at least a couple of good songs on it.) In that same Stereogum piece, Ian Cohen says of the album only that it “wasn’t a career-killer,” but in a sense it did seem as if momentum had suddenly stopped for a band that had been so much on the rise. The music is more mature, contemplative. Unlike Something to Write Home About’s barn burner opener, On a Wire opens with “Overdue,” with simple acoustic strumming and a vaguely-Americana guitar lick (the long tail of Summerteeth’s influence, perhaps). Pryor’s vocals are quieter, more deliberate. “Do hope I won’t learn to make the same mistakes that you would.” Elsewhere, “Let the Reigns Go Loose” is even more contemplative and subdued musings on regret: “This isn’t what I wished for / This isn’t what I knew / What can waiting do?” The band sounds resigned in some ways, exhausted in others.

For “Walking On a Wire,” though, the song from which the album takes its name, the quieter instrumentation works strikingly well. The guitar has a sinuous quality, working in tandem with a surprisingly slinky bass groove, and Dewees’ gentle keyboard notes are on the other end of the spectrum from the wild Moog swings of the previous record.

“I’m the one you’ve been hanging ’round
Just stop hearing any sound
Found you face down on the ground
Found a friend never could be found”

The band creates tension as Pryor laments: “I’ve been waiting / Systems failing,” and I love the way that tension is released when the bass and drums (courtesy of brothers Rob and Ryan Pope) kicks back up during the pre-chorus. Then, the second verse gives us more.

“On your honor so I hear
It’s never been your fault, you swear
Is the union based on fear?
Turn a man to tears”

It’s tempting, of course, to see this as a breakup song, especially when the narrator tells us in the chorus he’s “Walking on a wire on the ground.” He feels the stress of walking on a high-wire, a balancing act that’s causing frustration and fear, but stakes are ultimately nonexistent: the wire is on the ground. He can step off at any time and is at no real risk. And maybe it’s that realization that allows him to get out of this cycle.

I am also inclined to point out that this song shares its name with one of the all-time songs about marital strife, pain, and divorce. Richard and Linda Thompson recorded Shoot Out the Lights in 1980 despite having no real support from their record label and no contract. By the time the album was finally released two years later, their marriage was over. The two songs don’t have a lot in common musically, but it’s not a stretch to hear similar themes, especially in lines like “I hand you my ball and chain / You just hand me that same old refrain” and “I wish I could please you tonight / But my medicine just won’t come right.” It’s the sound of two people failing to live up to their expectations for each other, and in the process making some of their most inspired work.

I won’t say The Get Up Kids’ “Walking On a Wire” is on the same level as Richard & Linda Thompson’s, because that’s not nearly a fair comparison. But I do think the songs similarly express the angst over feeling like you are disappointing someone, or yourself, and of not being sure when or how to walk away. Even if the wire you’re walking is no higher than the ground, that fear of falling into the unknown can be enough to keep you on it. Stepping off takes rare courage; it is not for the feint of heart.