The Impossibles - Stand Up Fall Down Get Crushed (Live)
Last June I went to Austin with my four younger brothers to see a band that had played its last show 10 years prior. The Impossibles had gotten back together to play two shows over one weekend. The band filmed its other final show in 2002 and released 1,000 copies of it on DVD through their old record label, and since then I had probably watched that DVD 30+ times, both with and without the commentary (which is incredibly funny--the commentary, I mean). My expectations were high, though in all likelihood paled in comparison to my younger brothers', who had all grown up listening to the Impossibles, and who held them in the same esteem as Weezer, Radiohead, Elliott Smith, et al. The concert that we went to--the first night, June 9th--was one of the most fun I've ever been a part of, and that's for a hundred different reasons, but the best of which were: the band's enthusiasm, their sense of humor, their genuine surprise at the crowd's reactions; the crowd itself, one of the most age-diverse I'd ever seen, with 45 year-old dudes and 15 year-old kids all displaying the same beside-themselves levels of excitement; and the opening acts, some of whom also grew up listening to and admiring the Impossibles. I tried to imagine what the band members must have felt, what they thought about their time in the band. The Impossibles were never as popular as Weezer, or Opertation Ivy, or Jimmy Eat World, and the band has admitted that they're fine with that--but even if they never sold a million copies of any album, or got to headline Coachella or whatever, it must be heartening for them to know that the art they made, even when they were in their teens and early twenties, had an intense and durable effect on a whole lot of people.Anyway, so that night's show was filmed and recorded, and the Impossibles have released an HD recording of the show through their website, and an album of the show through the usual places. It's all pretty wonderful.