Nope

What is someone in their 40s supposed to listen to? Wilco? Snoop Dogg? Neil Diamond?

I hit the big four-oh in December, and maybe it’s midlife anxiety, but I’ve found myself lately listening to a lot of a band I consider a bit of a guilty pleasure.

They’re called Punchline, a pop-punk four-piece from Pittsburgh, that may never get as big as Blink 182, but was just as huge or bigger for me in my formative college years.

I’d gone to shows and festivals in high school, but always with friends I’d known since elementary school. People who had only seen out of me a pretty predictable range of behavior. I might nod along to a good song, or maybe shout some lyrics if things got wild enough. But rarely was I brave enough to stray out of that rut.

I found Punchline in college, still going to shows with those friends from home. But now, because I was living just a short walk from Punchline’s home venue — the former Club Laga in the city’s Oakland neighborhood — when my friends couldn’t go, I just kept going.

I wondered what it would be like to be someone who wandered into punk shows by himself, and found myself straying from the edge of things into the swirling heart of the crowd, into some Bermuda Triangle, where all the energy amplifies in front of the stage. 

These weren’t metal shows. There wasn’t a pit. Or a lot of elbows. 

But there was a mass of kids my age that swelled and crashed with the peaks of every song. And that close to things — to the stomping guitarists, the pounding bass drum, the overpowering speakers — you didn’t just hear it, you were enveloped in it. It rattled down your bones, curled around your ribs and set your heart arrhythmic. 

I discovered a lot of music in my four years in Pittsburgh, some of the most meaningful songs and albums of my life, but if I had to pick one band that defined it all, it would be Punchline and it was those nights.

So why would I use that unenviable phrase, guilty pleasure?

Because you’re supposed to outgrow punk, right? Because songs about heartbreak are only for teenagers? Because it’s too fast and loud for people who tuck in collared shirts to go to work?

At some point, we tell each other, it stops being cool to get too excited about anything.

But why is that?

On the hard days, I load up on caffeine before a run just to get in a few miles. Drafts of this essay lingered in my gmail for weeks, as I stumbled around, waiting for the gumption to finish it.

Like the last time I ran the Pittsburgh marathon. At some point I’d burned through every ounce of energy and inspiration I’d carried with me, and found myself searching not for reasons to go on, but reasons to quit.

Until, as if by fate, Punchline started blasting through my ear buds. 

“This is right now,” screamed bassist Chris Fafalious. “Time to back up all your big words and live your life you want to.”

It’s not Dylan, but the plodding “Times They are a-changing” also wasn’t going to get me up Pittsburgh’s last hills.

That perfect mix of power chords, punk harmony and Punchline attitude blasted me back to that sea of college kids, being thrown about by power chords and cymbal crashes.  And blasted me to the finish line (as finishing, when running marathons, ends up being my one true goal.)

Still, today, a well timed Punchline anthem at the right volume can get me through the hardest runs.

So, in a life where we find ourselves stuck in front of televisions, dreaming but not doing, with a very limited number of days allotted to us to accomplish all we’re meant to do in this life, why feel guilty about anything that keeps us moving or that gets us up off the couch? 

If that scene from “Dirty Dancing” amps you up as much as Luke dueling Vader; or if the Backstreet Boys shoot adrenaline right into your heart like “Paint It Black” or “Voodoo Child,” why waste a second feeling guilty?  

If you find a wave taking you where you want to go, sometimes you just have to ride it.