Of course, by the time the show came around, Media Darling had been reduced to Joe Teague, and I still remember him saying "because Brian is on some island somewhere." So it was just this very tall guy with an acoustic guitar playing between us and another band. Joe Teague was 28, so that put him a good 13 years ahead of us. He was there with drummer Billy Hartsock, who was quite a bit younger. We actually have it on video, them watching us from the side, and you can see them nodding occasionally rocking out. Joe famously ran into the play area to join me on the chorus of Green Day's "Welcome to Paradise." That began a pretty interesting friendship.
Joe's band, Media Darling, was comprised of himself on guitar and vocals, Billy on drums, Dan on bass, and Brian on guitar in their original lineup. Joe had gotten a bit of a fifteen seconds of fame a few years ago in his old band "Supergiant MD." He'd done a little bit of touring, and played with a few bands that were now huge (as I recall, they played with Fall Out Boy in Baltimore bar, and often said "All Time Low came to SuperGiant shows before they had pubes!"). Supergiant MD was one of the harbingers of the pop punk wave that swept over the world in the late '00s, except they were doing it earlier. Media Darling, in my opinion, put an excellent twist on that pop punk formula, adding in some more arena rock tendencies and more sophisticated rhythms.
I swear this sounds nothing like this now.
In fact, it was after hearing Media Darling that my brain sat on a metaphorical toilet until Gurly on the Run came out in its entirety. It's true, Ask Me Next Week's flagship song was also its second (Punkeye being the first), and it was a blatant ripoff of Media Darling's style. I always wanted them to cover it, and sadly they never did. Ask Me Next Week not only went on to cover one of their songs (at a show I sadly do not have on tape), but covered Supergiant MD's biggest song, "Secondhand Skyline," delighting friends of the band, since they could get Joe's drunk ass up on stage for some memories of the good ol' days. There was even an excellent time where Joe, Brian, new bassist Bryan, new drummer Sam and...probably someone else all got on stage and sang with us. Fucking drunkards.
There were two things I remember a lot about Media Darling shows. The first was that I wanted to rock out as hard as possible at them. I treated them like they were fucking Green Day up there because God dammit that's how I wanted my audience to act. The second was the amount of cans and bottles that ended up at their feet at the end of the show. These guys could put away alchohol. especially their second bassist, Bryan (y used for differentiation purposes). I guess it was part of my naive youth to believe all that energy was their own. Luckily I never let it get in the way of enjoying the show, and I don't think I ever saw them put on a bad one, even when we played with them in 19 degree weather down in the boonies. Actually, I have incredibly fond memories of that show.
What do you know, a song about drinking! (This one's for you, Cat!)
Most shows that Ask Me Next Week playwed with Media Darling were the only ones we could go to due to our ages at the time, but there were a few others that we went just to see. While members often of the "oh I'll try and make it" kind when coming to our shows, they did make it to some, and interacted with us youngsters on a few other occasions too. I had Joe show up at one of my last birthday parties, I remember Brian stopping in for a practice ("A new band is like a new girlfriend," he said of one of our guitarists going rogue at the time), and quite fondly, a game of laser tag. I think they liked having a group of younger guys that they could imprint on, and indeed they did. It's no mistake that Joe did AMNW's first real recording ever, and the solo he improvised and put into the song is the one that eventually made it onto the EP. The song? Gurly on the Run, of course. I like to believe that, in return for all the influence we allowed them, Joe tried keeping the band together for us.
They went through a great deal of changes though. A few months into 2008, Dan and Brian quit the band (eventually forming Younger Years) which was a shame since they were both good players, and ultimately, I would realize, what gave Media Darling their unique sound. This was exacerbated when Billy left the band. That was sort of when I knew things were going to be terribly different. Billy was more our age, but even so he kicked major ass on the drums. Watching him do fills at shows was always something that would be chat worthy on the way home. The most notable of the replacements were Bryan and Ryan (seriously, Joe needed to know some guys with different names) on bass and guitar respectively. Bryan was form SuperGiant, and Ryan was from Joe's previous band New Tokyo. When I heard this, I thought for sure that they'd go back to their pop punk roots, and I had no desire for them to join the ranks of the generic bands I'd come to loathe since they were all over Baltimore.
"Pity Not Payment"- one of the first songs with 3/4 of the band changed.
Fortunately, they did an excellent job of maintaining their uniqueness, and some of that second-era stuff was some of my favorites. This was back in the days of Myspace, mind you, so naturally I downloaded almost every song as they put it out. To this day I think I'm only missing one or two original songs. It was always fun when a new version of "Tonight Anyone" or "State of the Scene" came out, and the format made following their evolution easy and interesting.
I think their general lack of success took its toll on them though, especially Joe, who'd come so close before. Joe was often cited to have "I am the band" tendencies by people who left the band, which I'm only just now finding ironic, since AMNW basically broke up over the same thing. The question of who has power in a band is a topic for a different day, but the idea that the guy who writes the songs, sings, and plays an instrument should have more power was an idea that Joe and I came to share. Anyway, I'm not sure what broke the latest incarnation of Media Darling up, but needless to say they disappeared for a little while.
Or maybe they didn't. Honestly, they fell off of my radar for a while after Joe overhauled the band and took it back to its punk roots and advertised as such. This is the era I don't have many songs from, and I really regret not snagging them when I had the chance, or at least listening to them so I could remember them. I'm pretty certain this phase was short lived, and they dropped off the radar again like a school-smart girl on facebook that doesn't know what she wants.
They came back in late 2009 with The Tuesday Night EP, which was interesting since it brought back Dan on bass and had two old songs on it. Listening to it was weird though. Joe had gone through a pretty rough time recently, as I understand it, and as usual that came up in the music. His voice was much gruffer on this go-round, and the lyrical content was much darker ("I'm over you, I'm under the rafters"). As well done as this EP was, and despite the fact that their live show still seemed intact, this was the last incarnation of Media Darling that made music.
Joe went solo and acoustic for a while (AMNW had actually broken up by the time Media Darling returned for the last time, so when he did this AMNW's drummer actually joined him in the acoustic effort). Dan and Brian are still in Younger Years. Billy is a firefighter. I actually came across a video on Dan's Youtube called "O! Billy saves Baltimore," and it's a silent video of a news story where fire fighters are fighting a big fire and there's a long shot of Billy's face. It was really weird and touching for me. Joe's actually in a band called "Kid Gloves" now, who actually kind of sound like Media Darling, now that I listen to them on facebook.
Wake up to this song. Do it.
Still, Media Darling is always the project that's going to be in my head. They had every right to make it big. They had a unique sound. They had a great live show. They helped youngins like us get into the music scene. They were the reason I started believing in local bands as "real" music like I do, because these guys were on par creatively with people who were getting signed and making money off of the shit everyone in Baltimore besides AMNW was doing. In this town in my day, you had to be pop punk, screamo, or some combination of the two to attract anything. I latched on to Media Darling not only because of the opportunities it provided (and the easy merch and behind the scenes stuff), but because I actually freaking loved the band. It was unfortunate that while they were my role models for live shows and good original songs, they were also my first example of how the music world is cruel, and even the best of bands can end up in the ditch.
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