“Damn Good” (Brandon Hoogenboom song) – Queen City Sounds and Art

BrandonHoogenboom_DamnGood_sm — Brandon Hoogenboom “Damn Good” cover

Brandon Hoogenboom was born in southern California, went to high school in Monument, Colorado, started indie rock band Set Sail in Sydney, Australia but ended up back in California before discovering through friends an active music scene in Denver where he spent some time before settling back in Los Angeles. And his new song “Damn Good” reflects some of that worldliness often spent in sunny places. Its bright, lush guitar work is the backdrop to a song about peer pressure to conform to mainstream normalcy but rejecting that in favor of what feels good and right and following one’s instincts and wanderlust because staying too still is how you can be convinced to stop living a life less normal.

In a world where drab mundanity and comfort in arbitrary measures of stability and placing a premium on what constitutes good sense and long term happiness have turned out to be a built on the crumbling edifice of an international economic system that favors only the ultra-wealthy with diminishing returns for those lower down the economic ladder, why bother aspiring to fitting in with such a destructive and soul crushing paradigm for the good life when you have your own vision of where you want to be? Though the song is based on a joyride in Nashville, much as the hippies and other counterculture types in the 60s created a parallel social and to some extent economic milieu in opposition to a corrupt and oppressive society, Hoogenboom is rejecting the offered future in favor of one that seems good by comparison. Listen below and explore Hoogenboom’s solo album and other work at the links after.