miggi c

About 21 or so years ago, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop punk side project of what we assumed was Pete’s more serious band Arma Angelus. We were sloppy and we couldn’t solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it.

We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would become “Evening Out With Your Girlfriend,” and tactfully said “What do you think your best instrument is Patrick? Drums. It’s drums. Probably not singing Patrick.” 

We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O’Keefe…. So there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who’d only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean and record at Butch Vig’s legendary studio.

8 or so months later, Fueled By Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We’d sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next 3 years, and somehow in spite of that eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and for the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable and unlikely things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn’t made it to the session and Joe hadn’t dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band. 

Happy 20th birthday Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record that absolutely changed my life. 

———