Anchor Down

Steel to Dust (2009)

Richard Verducci

It's easy to romanticize about one's past. Sometimes I find myself looking back on times gone by where a group of friends would seem to spend endless nights idling away at nothing. We'd leave a movie, show, party or whatever function we were at that night, and pile into someones 1980-something or other with a rear door that didn't open and three functioning seat belts and peel out like a bat out of hell (even though there was nowhere to really go). Someone would flip through an oversized CD binder and pick out whatever melodic punk band we were digging at the time; Bouncing Souls, the Broadways, NOFX, Operation Ivy all laid side by side, waiting to get selected and put into the portable CD player that was connected to the car's tape deck through a weird adapter that was purchased at Radio Shack. These albums required being played as loud as possible, as we all shouted along in the backseat and the car filled with the smoke of the driver's Camel Wides.

We'd drive around all night doing whatever came to mind (plans were not a perquisite). Sometimes it would be driving to the top of the hill overlooking the city and shooting the shit until the sun came up. Sometimes we'd just go to the home of whoever had parents out of town and hang out there. Jump off roofs into pools, drink at the local park, blow shit up with Mexican fireworks, anything to stay out later and spend more time with the people who you related to more than anything else in the world. Anchor Down's six-song EP Steel to Dust, on Solidarity Records would be the perfect soundtrack to those nights and it's a disc that I'm still excited to listen to now.