The summer of 2005 was really emotionally formative for me. I was 25. In the last four months of 2004, a long relationship ended, one of my best friends died, and the other was shipped off to Iraq.
I was basically in a fog until the beginning of April when the same friend who got shipped out was blown up by an IED. (for those who don’t know, he’s alive and I’m thankful for that every day.)
I started dating someone at the beginning of the summer, and she was awesome, but we were ultimately terrible for each other and it ended. About two weeks after it fizzled out, I met my now wife.
My whole world had basically turned upside down in that almost one year span. There were two groups that I listened to almost religiously through that time. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and Reggie and the Full Effect.
So, as much as I love both of them, the memories I associate with them are all over the place.