Do you want to go back to your favorite basement venue circa 2015? Do you yearn for the sensory overload of mildewed walls, a stranger’s armpit thrust dangerously close to your nose, poorly-mixed live music, and the feel of a toasty PBR in your hands, hands you did not wash in the bathroom because there was no soap? (Not even an empty bottle, just straight-up no soap?)
Of course you do. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug — and Jason Ebbs knows it.
The Boston singer-songwriter descends into the cellar of his memory for his new single “The Basement Scene,” a wistful commentary on the inevitable appeal of yesteryear. The song swings by the recent past, firing up a highlight reel of collegiate thrills to the melody of Ebb’s beachy pop-rock.
“‘The Basement Scene’ is a nostalgia song, but not nostalgia for something deep in the past like a childhood memory, it’s nostalgia for something more recent and not necessarily out of reach,” Ebbs says. “’The Basement Scene’ represents something different for everyone; going to a show in an Allston basement, playing music with your band in a cramped Brighton apartment, or just partying with your friends while being blissfully shielded from the world outside for a moment.”
“Do you wanna go back to the basement scene? / ‘Cause everyone you know will be there / And everybody in between,” he asks on the chorus, kind of like if the refrain of the Cheers theme was actually cool. The song discovers joy in the familiarity of Ebbs’ memories, but refuses to forsake his present, maintaining a reserved position instead of woefully flinging himself into the past.
“When I first came up with the concept of ‘The Basement Scene,’ to me it meant the high school and college days of going to parties in someone’s basement and experiencing a newfound sense of freedom and carelessness that is so characteristic of that time period in most people’s lives,” he elaborates to Vanyaland.”
It’s probably why we wouldn’t trade cramped house shows and grotesquely warm beers for the world (or even a bar of Dove).
Hit up “The Basement Scene” with Ebbs below.