"Street Smart Cyclist is a 6-piece emo/math band from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the surrounding Lehigh Valley cities of Easton and Allentown. This started out as a side project of our many other separate bands, but I’m pretty sure it recently turned into everybody’s main priority, which is awesome. Though its a little difficult to practice lately because I live in Brooklyn, and Kevin and Brad live in Philly, and John and Ross live in Kutztown, and David’s still in high school in Bethlehem, I don’t think we’re going to break up or anything, because everybody’s still way into it. We’re just going to keep doing weekend jaunts, and i’m sure we’ll find a good solution to the writing/touring problem soon. It’s tough to say when the band started, because it was more like an idea that existed for David and me for about two years before we even had a practice in the current line-up. You would definitely not say that the band started then, because it always seemed more like a pipe-dream that was never going to happen. We wrote all these weird little parts that we didn’t think we’d be able to get anybody else to care enough about to understand the arbitrary mathiness or quirky instrumentation. This prototype produced about three or four jams that will most likely never be used by the current incarnation of the Cyclist (though about the first half of Hoods Up is one of them), but they contain the same basic idea and guiding principles that this band tends to adhere to, however unconsciously. Dave and I got Brad and Matt Wirick interested in it and we had a few practices and wrote Hoods Up. Then nothing happened for mad long, but we were all pretty stoked about that song and we told a lot of people about it because we’re braggarts, and then a lot of people kept asking us to be in it and it seemed to us like a band that a lot of people should be in, but we had to cap it at me and dave and brad and john and ross and kevin, and somehow matt’s not in it anymore, i don’t really know when that happened. sorry matt. anyway, this is getting long-winded and boring for you, so I’m going to skip to the part where I describe our sound. The other dudes will probably more or less agree with my conception of what constitutes good SSC material, which is: must make you feel like riding a bike/wearing flannel and having a big beard in the fall, and jumping in big piles of leaves; and must be, at its core, comprised of beautiful wussy little melodies, which should get rocked out, played way too hard to the point of almost total obscurity; must unabashedly rip off the promise ring at least once in every song (hehe). Because I think that’s what SSC is for everybody: it’s this great concept of a band that only really exists to have a killer time and get real happy and shrug off all the bullshit of a young person’s life for just a 15 minute set, and take our shirts off. While I’ve just about reached my limit of taking this band entirely seriously, I’d like to make a note about emo, in anticipation of criticism of our use of this term to label Street Smart Cyclist: SSC is an emo band. This band isn’t emo in that pejorative MTV definition where we cry about girls (but i feel like we often do tend to cry about girls). This is different from that because we know where emo comes from and we all love moss icon and rites of spring, as well as angel hair, indian summer, mohinder, fuel, antioch arrow, one-eyed god prophecy, navio forge, usurp synapse, anasarca, policy of 3, jeromes dream, boilermaker, list list list, blah blah blah, yes we are all well aware of what real emo is, and we can probably name more songs by those bands than you can. but its not like aristotle’s concept of the good where if you know them then you will be compelled to abide by them. I know that shit is real emo, but at the same time, i know that braid and cap’n jazz and boys life and the goddamn street smart fucking cyclist are also emo, and they are also fun as fuck, which i understand is completely contrary to the spirit of real emo, but whatever man. I just want to have fun with my friends, and run through fields in the fall, and find birds nests full of cute little robin eggs, and get grass stains on my jeans, and get drunk and drag police barricades and garbage bags in the middle of the street so cars can’t get through and ride my fucking bike." - Jonathan Geeting, circa 2007
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He's such a sweet little dude, him and I have been e-friends forever, Im meeting him next week HOLY SHIT.
Also, you dudes wont care if I make a bootleg ssc kitty-yarn shirt right? I think mine got moldy or some shit and therez some girl out west who wants one.
remember when this band stopped being a band because you guys were all seniors in high school at the same time and went your separate ways? remember that?
hey, hey i lost all my street smart music when my computer crashed ;( if any cool dudes might have some of their music and wouldn't mind helping a fellow fan out, please leave me a message
