The Young and The Hopeless

10 years ago today we put out our record “The young and the hopeless” and on the inside of the album cover, Benj wrote this. Pretty much still sums it all up…

so it’s 2 am july 27 2002 and we’re driving thru the middle of nowhere on our way to a show in chicago. i haven’t showered in a week, i’m running on no sleep, i miss cashdogg and some kid at the show today asked me “why i even call myself punk”. these may sound like complaints but actually i’m really happy. i am listening to this record. yea i’ll admit it i listen to our records and i am thinking how crazy all this is. 3 years ago i was stocking shelves at target living on ramen noodles and crashing at Billy’s house. now i’m on tour. 4 kids from nowhere. we made another record and i feel just as excited as i did the first time. i say this all the time but i mean it, if this all stopped yesterday i would still feel like the luckiest guy alive. i remember going into my room after school writing letters to record labels saying “you can sign us now for cheaper” and sending out demos. i laugh about it now but back then i was so serious. you know we dreamed about this all day every day and i gotta say it feels just like we thought it would.

our goals may have changed. i’ll admit, it’s not about being famous or making millions of dollars anymore. yeah, i used to day dream about that, being broke gets old quick but now i have sorta seen how it all works and i don’t want to be the biggest band in the world i want to make music with paul and billy and joel. that’s all. i want to tour. i want to be good to my friends. i want to take care of my family. i want to meet kids at shows. that’s real to me.

i see some bands and i get frustrated for them. it’s easy to get lost in the whirlwind of all of this but i realize we all have to learn on our own, we are still learning. we have made our share of mistakes. we have done some cheesy stuff. but it’s good to look back and laugh at how young we were. i see a lot of bands worrying about credibility and all of that and i guess i have realized it only comes with time if we are still here in ten years maybe we will be credible. til when we just gotta do what we want to do, make music. tour. provide for our families. you know i use to fist fight ever guy i came across that told me i wasn’t punk. lars asked me one night “are you gonna flight the world?” he was right, i was pretty stupid. it made me realize we are what we are and no one can change that. i guess we have done a lot of growing up since the last record. we started this when we were 16. its the only thing i ever had. its probably the only thing i ever will have. i just feel lucky. we are four kids in a rock band from waldorf. we’re no better than any other band out there and we know it. so thanx for getting our record and being a part of this. thanx for giving us a chance to do what we love. thanx for making this real. see ya at the show

benj

good charlotte

the young and the hopeless