#365songs (185 / 365)

Many many years ago when I was maybe on the tail end of my "I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats" phase (I refer not to the podcast of that name but the actual time in my life when I listened almost exclusively to the Mountain Goats), I was looking at the music listening tracker last.fm and I noticed a fellow Mountain Goats fan whose most-listened song, by a wide margin, was "Commandante," which I had never heard. I messaged them to ask about it and they said, quote:

commandante is the best song in the history of the world. it's on devil in the shortwave, get into it.

So I got into it. Four days later, on July 4, I met a girl I'd been chatting with on OKCupid for a first date. Not too much later I gave her a Mountain Goats mix CD whose first song was "Commandante," which is the last track on the Devil in the Shortwave EP but makes a fantastic opening track due to its high energy and its multiple "I'm gonna" declarations of intent.

"Come summer, I am gonna treat you right," John Darnielle sings at the end of "Commandante"'s first verse. As in any relationship, I imagine, between two people with rather messed up families, I haven't always treated my partner right in our almost 20 years together, but I have done my best. We've seen the Mountain Goats together more than any other musical act, and it all started, in a way, with "Commandante," and it all started, in a way, on the 4th of July. A way better anniversary than the one most people think of.