#dave soloway

Fandom: Bandom, Saves the Day

Pairing: Chris Conley/Dave Soloway

Rating: Not Rated

Tags: Eventual Romance, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Period-Typical Homophobia, Teasing, Jealousy

“Their thighs are touching, and Dave’s hand hovers over his waist. Not quite crossing the line but laced with too much tension to just be friendly. Intoxicating and terrifying. Like they’re going seventy on the freeway, hurtling toward an inevitable crash, but they just can’t slow down.”

I love this music video. Saves the Day themselves, though, aren’t big fans.

“Shoulder to the Wheel” is the first single from 1999’s Through Being Cool, and the band’s very first music video. It’s cute and charming, lo-fi and punk. It brings to life the spirit of a 1999 basement show in New Jersey, captures both the “road trip” theme of the song and the “party” theme from Through Being Cool’s album cover and liner notes, and packs in some moments of legitimate humor, although perhaps moreso from Conley’s character’s depressed reactions to everything going on around him rather than some of the more zany antics.

(Maddeningly, it also apparently doesn’t exist anywhere on the internet in anything greater than 240p quality.)

Saves the Day have essentially renounced this video though, once stating that they regret making it. I suppose I can see why; in this video lives a version of Saves the Day that could have been, one who kept making pop-punk songs and funny, youth-centric music videos for the rest of their career instead of growing and evolving. Maybe that would have been a more lucrative career, but that’s never been the path Saves the Day or Chris Conley have seen for themselves. Years later, when Conley mentioned in a statement that he has largely found making music videos to be an inauthentic experience, I get the feeling that he was thinking almost solely of this video.

april 23 2006 — croatian culture centre

april 23 2006 — croatian culture centre