U2

My End of the Table

/ Deb / Leave a comment

It’s definitely fall around here. I went for a walk this morning while it was still dry and crisp outside. I heard a Black Crowes song and thought to myself — gosh, today would be a good day to listen to The Black Crowes. Usually when fall hits, I am compelled towards U2 and, more specifically, towards The Joshua Tree. (Was that album even released in the fall? Is it the moody music? I associate it with fall, but is that just because I discovered it during an autumn of teenage heartache?) Regardless, while The Joshua Tree will always mean fall to me, it shouldn’t get all of my autumn attention, and so it was nice to get a reminder of The Black Crowes and have something to dive back into. If I were ever forced to compile a list of favorite albums, their The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion would absolutely be on it (along with The Joshua Tree, of course).

Anyway, as often happens, I got sidetracked and had continued my day, Black Crowe-less. Then a friend texted me to tell me about a new Jason Isbell album of cover tunes, Georgia Blue. He was alerting me towards a cover of The Black Crowes’ “Sometimes Salvation”, which just happens to be on The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. I laughed and told him that I had, just that morning, been thinking about The Black Crowes.

So of course on his recommendation, I listened to the Georgia Blue album, and it’s great just like he said. Imagine my surprise when I saw that it also contains a cover of R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming”. Just a few weeks ago, a podcast episode about that song sent me down a noodle-filled R.E.M. rabbit hole. I mean, really……isn’t this all some strange culmination of universal nudges?

And so as I continue my rock-stepping, I realize that my best times are not just when I have music, but when I talk about it. Music brings us together, and so do our musical memories. Those long conversations, when stories of concerts, albums, and songs come out. Maybe it’s around a dinner table, or a campfire, or on a beach. Even people who I don’t know very well — if I know your music stories, I feel like I understand you. Maybe that’s because the inverse is true — if you know my music stories, you know me.

Tonight I have the house to myself, and I am writing at the dining room table with my dog nearby, music playing. I happened to look back at my very first blog post, and had a full-circle moment. Plans and ideas are flowing as easily as the tunes on a favorite album.

Stay tuned.

Even Sadder Than a Wedding Dress in a Thrift Store….

/ Deb / 1 Comment
Just a few of the many treasures awaiting you at the Ballard Goodwill

….it turns out, is a mix tape in a thrift store.  I never realized this until I found a stack of them at my local Goodwill.  I was intrigued by the one called “Wedding Music/Favorite Love Songs #1″, so I picked it up (What happened?! Was the wedding cancelled?).  I glanced at the list of songs only long enough to see Mariah Carey well-represented, but then I felt compelled to put it down.  It was too much like reading someone’s diary.  I couldn’t do it.

Ah, mix tapes.  Our kids will never know the magic of a mix tape.  They will craft digital playlists, I’m sure.  But nothing so time-stamped and permanent as a mix tape with their handwriting on it.

I freely admit that I am a sentimental hoarder.  I’ve got all of my old tapes, even my earliest mix tapes made with my sister and cousin (if you can really call them mix tapes… really it was just us talking into a Panasonic tape recorder, telling stupid stories and singing songs).

Another gem is the “Workout Mix” tape that I made in college, with appropriate-tempo songs for a routine of exercises.   Given that it was 1989, of course the lineup included INXS, Prince, and Neneh Cherry.  The last song, the “cool down”, was – what else – “Nite & Day” by Al B Sure.

Then there was the mix tape trilogy made for a post-college road trip (“Driving Tape #1, #2, and #3”, of course.)   Number 1 has got you covered with your basic R.E.M, Pearl Jam, and U2, with some Naughty by Nature thrown in for reasons I don’t recall.  Number 2 was the mellow tape, with Luther Vandross and Johnny Gill – you know, for when the road asked you, “come on, let’s bring it down now….”.   Number 3, sadly, is no longer with us.  But it’s quite possible that it contained country music.

My favorite mix tape, though, is one that my long-distance boyfriend sent me in college.  Oddly enough, I only remember one song on it – “Cars that Go Boom”, by  L’trimm (wasn’t he romantic?).   But what I love about that tape is that, inter-mixed with songs, my boyfriend talked about what was going on in his apartment, or what he was studying.  He introduced each song like a DJ. “Cars that Go Boom” reminded him, he said, of me and my best friend/roommate (were we like “Tigra & Bunny”?).   I haven’t listened to the tape since then, but I love the idea that his 1989 voice is preserved on it.  I can’t even remember what his voice sounded like then.  I’m saving the tape like a fine bottle of wine.   Someday the time will be right, and he and I will listen to it with all the reverence it deserves (through a series of twists and turns, we ended up getting married years later.)

I really hope that the mix tapes I made for others never made their way onto a thrift store shelf (in the garbage = fine!).  And now I’m feeling like I should have purchased those thrift store mix tapes and given them a proper burial.  I need to think more about that one.   As should you — what mix tapes do you treasure, and what mix creations of yours might still be floating around out there?

In the mean time, though, welcome to McMahon Hall, and enjoy the mellow grooves of Al B Sure (closing your eyes and pretending that it’s on a cassette tape, of course).

Quality Time in the Back of a Van

/ Deb / Leave a comment

Only two of my major life decisions have an exact date of origin, meaning that I can pinpoint exactly when they were made.    One of these is the decision to not move back to my home town.

Since New Year’s Eve, I’ve had U2 on the brain.  (“A 1987 Bono for the New Year”).   I’ve pulled out all of the old albums, so it was only a matter of time before this nugget came my way.

There is a short list of music that I associate with the Fall of my Freshman year of college, for all the obvious and not-so-obvious reasons:  R.E.M., Guns n’ Roses, and U2, with a dash of The Doors on the side.  These were the albums playing in the dorm halls, fueling our parties, and bonding us with new friends.

U2’s Rattle and Hum was released that fall, and for many of us, it was cause for an expedition out of the dorms, to purchase it at Tower Records on the Ave  (on cassette tape, of course.  And by the way…..R.I.P. Tower Records).    The day it came out, you could walk down the hallways of McMahon Fifth South and hear it wafting from every other door.

Those first few months away from home, I didn’t have reason to venture much farther than the University District.   But my RA had an internship that gave her access to free passes to movie premieres.  When she scored enough tickets, we headed out of the U District for the night (one of these outings, of course, was to see the U2 movie “Rattle and Hum”).  The movies were held at theaters all over town, giving me a chance to see other parts of the city.

On the night when the Big Decision was made, whatever movie we were seeing was playing at Uptown Theatre on lower Queen Anne.  I had never been to Queen Anne, although I would later live there for four years.  We piled into a van, and I loved the feeling of not knowing where we were going, and not being in charge of getting us home.  I was along for the ride.

We traveled down I-5, towards the sparkling lights of downtown – very far from the wheatfields and desert vistas of my hometown.  I had never consciously thought of it, but maybe in the back of my head, I assumed that, after college, I would move back home.

But on this night, looking out that van window, I thought to myself:  This is my city now. 

In a strange way, the world just opened up.  I said to myself — I don’t have to move back there.  I could live here (or anywhere else), forever.   And in that moment, I knew that I would never again live in my hometown. 

I had fallen in love with a city.  The hook set even further with the onset of grunge music a few years later, when Seattle became the self-proclaimed music capital of the world (and maybe it was, for a while).  If there was a better place to be in college during those years, I don’t know where it was.    

I’ve now lived in Seattle longer than I lived in my hometown, a milestone that did not go unnoticed.  The University District haunts that I knew are mostly gone.   The entire city has cocktail lounges where once there were dive bars, and the grimiest of my old college bars, although still in business, now proclaims itself to be a “nightclub”.  I’ve watched the influx of California and East Coast transplants, with their incessant whining about the rain.    But I still don’t see myself living anywhere else.

And the other life decision with a precise point of origin?   I’m keeping that one to myself, but I will say that, in true Pacific Northwest fashion, it happened on a crystal clear September day, on a trail about halfway up the side of Mt. Rainier.

A 1987 Bono for the New Year

/ Deb / 2 Comments

I found the old t-shirt at the bottom of a drawer, and I am taking it as a sign.  Ordinarily it wouldn’t be, but fresh in my memory were two things:  1) a recent viewing of “It Might Get Loud” that reminded me how much I love U2 and The Edge’s trademark guitar riffs, and 2) a discussion with a friend at a New Years’ Eve party, where I lamely tried to justify why I didn’t buy tickets to the upcoming U2 show.

On the heels of these two things,  the discovery of the Joshua Tree concert t-shirt (buried deep in a drawer) was therefore quickly elevated to “sign” status.

Long before there was Pearl Jam in my life, there was U2.  I loved their distinct sound, and to the junior high small town girl that I was, they seemed worldly and sophisticated.  I had The Unforgettable Fire on cassette and made a mix tape for myself, shuffling the songs into an order that I liked, and repeating others.  (So high tech, wasn’t I…. to have a double tape deck for dubbing?)

The Joshua Tree album nursed me through the late Summer and Fall of 1987, after my older boyfriend broke my heart and ditched me for the bright lights of college and college girls.  But I had Bono, the boyfriend had never liked U2 anyway, and the music on that album was perfect for an autumn of hometown teenage angst.

Years later, I’ve worn the Joshua Tree t-shirt a lot, although I feel like a fraud when I do, since I never went to a show on that tour (the closest they came to my small town was 200 miles away).   I do, however, love the shirt.  It belonged to a guy whom I dated later that fall.  It was a brief and mostly forgettable relationship of convenience, borne out of the fact that our friends were dating.  But he did have great taste in music, and I got custody of the t-shirt.

Which brings me to the New Year’s Eve conversation.

U2 was supposed to play here last summer, and the concert got re-scheduled for this coming June, due to Bono’s back surgery.   My friend and I were talking about The Edge, and then discussion turned to the upcoming show, and how excited he was for it.  He asked whether I had tickets, and I told him no.

I explained how I had seen U2 in 1992 at the Tacoma Dome, and had been underwhelmed.  I had been so excited for that show, to see one of my long-time favorite bands.  But the band was in a weird phase then; they had decided not to play any pre-Unforgettable Fire songs.  The venue was terrible, more suited for monster trucks than concerts.  I heard nearly all of Joshua Tree, which was great, but mostly Achtung Baby.  No “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, no “New Year’s Day”, none of the early stuff.  I didn’t get my Concert Moment (“Oh, You Like the Banjo, Eh?”), and I’ve never felt the need to go and see them again.

I explained this to my friend, earnestly.  Was I trying to make myself believe it?  His look said it all:  You call yourself a longtime fan, a teenager of the 80’s, and you don’t want to go to this concert?

But therein lies the problem:  I want to see 1987 U2, not the U2 from 2011.  I want Bono and The Edge with long hair, before they were UN ambassadors and had back problems.   I want “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day” and all of Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree, not any new stuff that has already been featured in an iPod commercial by the time you see it.

I understand that when bands have been around for awhile, they can’t make everyone happy.  Really, I do.  And I get the fact that the music needs to stay interesting for them, too.  Still, as a concert-goer, I am selfish.  I want what I want.  And what I want is U2 from 1987.

However, the fact that it’s not 1987’s U2 was probably my friend’s most persuasive point.  He said “you know, with the back problems and all….they aren’t going to be around forever”.   A reminder of our mortality, and on the heels of my Big Birthday, too.   Point taken…. now I am looking for tickets.