ujam

i stumbled across this youtube video quite by accident and was sort of blown away. it is two of my favorites collaborating to "make poverty history." u2 and pearl jam have been standing up for what they believe in for something like a combined 50 years and i respect both bands immensely for it. still, at the end of the day they are both rock bands and how they rock is what they will be judged on.

in this video of what appears to be pearl jam with the edge and bono performing neil young's 'keep on rockin' in the free world,' all parties rock and rock hard. i love live music-it is easily my favorite art form. i can recall seeing both of these bands from great seats up close and there is just something about live rock and roll pulsing through one's body, coursing through the bloodstream in rhythm with a thump, thump, thumping of the bass guitar and the bass drum and the energy of the groove of the rhythm and melody and a voice rising above it all to sing something of real meaning, that moves me.

what is more is the feel of a mass of humanity exhibiting some sort of like-mindedness by jumping and bopping and contorting and singing along in a sort of unison to and with the performer. it is something like the riot mentality contained and when u2 and pearl jam are involved, it is the riot mentality, the exhibition of humanity as a fabric acting in concert outside of the confines of a single body, all hopped up on positivity, infused by the music and the sensation of oneness-it is in my humble estimation the highest form of this phenomena.

having seen a great deal of live music in my day it is difficult to get too excited about video recorded live music. still, when i viewed this video i was moved. i did get excited. i enjoyed seeing a couple of my favorites performing together and the song just drives forward throughout, gaining momentum just when it feels like a crescendo has been reached. it is a classic rock song and together with alternative "stop poverty," lyrics, u2 and pearl jam accomplish what most rock bands set out to do to begin with. they kick ass.

bests and faves and lists

christy hardin smith has a fun post over at firedoglake this morning. (it is linked in the header.) as of now, 1.5 hours after she posted it there are nearly 200 comments. the fire puppies are having fun with this thread/stroll down memory lane. i thought i'd answer the questions right here. (christy's questions are in red. my answers in blue. would love to see some comments on this post if anyone happens to read it.)

Best concert you ever saw? Where, when, and who?

radiohead at the hollywood bowl in support of amnesiac, (i think?) this is a tough one because of course i want to say it was radiohead at the santa barbara bowl. i want to mention the night i saw tool, porno for pyros, fishbone, and alice in chains at the palladium. u2 at the san diego sports arena the night i shook bono's hand during the show was pretty awesome. (11th row?) pearl jam from the 3rd row at the fargo dome. i saw de la soul, the sugarcubes, pil and new order once at aztec stadium and it was perhaps the most sun-drenched, youthful day of my existence. u2 in denver with my brother was the bomb. i think we grooved more to the opening act, rage against the machine, than u2 that night on the pop mart tour. rage against the machine at the palladium, the democratic national convention or coachella was pretty awesome. tom morello at the el rey this past autumn was memorable. frank black at the glass house in pomona. the pixies at the universal amphitheatre when frank black went all psychedelic and had his guitar decked out in black lights and on a bungee cord so he could bounce it reverberating off the ground. the scorpions with bon jovi was a great show and a night that ended around 8am. the night chaka khan kissed me on the cheek was cool. in the 6th row in wisconsin for the tibetan freedom concert i got to see eddie vedder that day, along with run dmc, the beastie boys, rage, tracy chapman, blondie, the cult, the roots and others. i saw a cool benefit concert one night at the wiltern which featured mike ness, (solo,) eddie vedder, (all by himself,) and beck, who brought thom yorke out for a song.) u2 at the long beach civic auditorium from about the 30th row, standing on fold-up chairs the entire show to see over the heads of everyone in front of us in 1983, with bono waving that white flag around... ahh but alas, it is radiohead. it would be radiohead if i got to see them again tomorrow.

Best album EVAR?

i am going to go with u2's achtung baby.

If I could see any live performance past, present or future -- who would it be and why?

jeff buckley at the sin e coffe house in nyc. that one was easy. why? because i never saw him live and yet, because i have listened to every second of every live thing he recorded countless times. because i lived with jeff buckley for seasons metaphorically, times when life was hard and depression sunk in like a stone in water. jeff buckley's grace was with me in those times, perhaps feeding my feelings of despair but comforting me at the same time. there were weekend when i came home from work on friday and never came out of my house until i had to go to work on monday morning. in between i listened to jeff during all waking hours, wallowing in self-pity, desperate and alone. it's weird how you can miss a time like that all while hoping you never, ever end up in such a place again. jeff was an unbelievable talent and the fact he left the world early only increases that sense of wishing i had seen him perform live. and whether it would have been at sin e or the bataclan in paris, any of those early shows when he was working out who he would become as an artist, when he had the hat in front of him and played requests for cash to pay his rent, wow-i wish i had been there.

Song you've found yourself humming along to lately that you are embarrassed to admit you like?
hmm. if i like it i am usually not embarrased by it. there is this song...i don't know who sings it but the chorus she keeps singing is, 'i'm in trouble..." (just googled it. it's pink.)

Song that always gets stuck in your brain, no matter how much you loathe it?

haven't had one of these in a long time. i remember once upon a time when it was the nookie by limp bizkit.

Recording artist you'd most like to see struck with laryngitis?

kid rock.

Cover song you'd most like to see attempted?

i would love to hear radiohead slow down men at work's it's a mistake and radiohead it up a bit.

If you could put together your dream band, who would be in it?

eddie vedder crooning. jeff buckley on lead guitar. thom yorke on keyboards. dave grohl on drums. my friend dave lenci on bass.

Best vocals EVAR?

i guess i would say buckley on a live version of lover, you should've come over. still, thom yorke on you and whose army or bono on the live version of bad from wide awake in america is pretty hard to dismiss. that from the mars volta just wails, too.

Best guitar playing EVAR?

i'll go old school on this and say jimmy page on the song remains the same. there are moments when the photography of that day could not keep up with his fingers. i think page's guitar playing just killed about a decade of guitarists who simply quit because they knew they could never reach his plateau.

Best song in the history of music is _______?

black, by pj? nooooo... one, by u2? i am the walrus? what i got? rainy day woman? song 2? true love waits? blue monday? some girls? hey? come undone? haile sellase up your ass? no, i am going to go with famoous blue raincoat by leonard cohen. ahh, now that is sublime.

u2 - still relevant

i watched u2's first night on david letterman with lower expectations than what i might have had in the past. their most recent record; how to dismantle an atomic bomb, was among my least favored u2 albums and up to this point i had only heard the new single, 'get your boots on,' from the new record; no line on the horizon. however, instead of looking and sounding like a bunch of 40-somethings rocking the local pub with a cache of songs from 30 years ago, they continued their tradition of seeking the cutting edge, if not necessarily finding it every time out.



i think they got it though, this time. spot on. i watched and listened to them perform 'breathe' on the monday night david letterman show, and i was amazed though not completely sold. i remembered 'vertigo,' a bad ass, hard rocking, blitzkrieg of a tune on every level amidst a collection of otherwise nice but forgettable songs, (excepting 'sometimes you can't make it on your own.')

'breathe' is fresh air. it is artistic and shows some progression in bono's writing as it is a departure, nothing like any song lyrics he has written previously. it is an impressionist sort of song. bono is telling a story in a way, about something that happened on 16 june, a man threatens someone from a front porch but the one who answered the door cannot be frightened because he or she has already been redeemed by the almighty power of music, or...something like that. it will be interesting to discover what this song is really all about some day. but for now it is enough to have vague impressions about the powers of love and music, and the freedom to breathe.

'breathe' sounds like 'come together' collided with 'head like a hole,' then had lunch with 'rainy day woman #12 & 35.' it's not as sonically resounding as 'vertigo,' but it does have another random number inserted at the end of the first stanza. (instead of catorce it's three.) otherwise bono blurts out some of the lyrics like a stream of consciousness warning from on high, then sings and even rhymes others. the affect is of a band taking chances and doing things different long after having secured their place in the pantheon of rock immortals.

the lyrics in 'breathe,' are typically bono, which is to say refreshingly more colorful and vibrant and interesting and poignant than virtually anything else out there.

But I’m running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease

directly following that line is this one:

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it

it is a new way of describing a frenetic run down the street, like loose electricity? perfect. it is not the first time bono has conjured the music in his head. (he conjured the opera within him on 'ultraviolet,' and on 'sometimes you can't make it on your own.') is there a roar on the other side of silence? and fear is a forest fire and denying it is probably as good a strategy as any in combating it. whether it is a metaphor or a phrase or sometimes just a word, bono is a poet of the first order. for instance, near the end of 'breathe,' when he describes a street as "sunburst." simple and yet, beyond what i have been hearing from his peers.

after watching the performance on letterman i was relieved and my curiosity was piqued. so i tuned in the next night, (way past my bedtime.) they played another track from no line on the horizon, called 'magnificent.' letterman said he felt it right in his chest and i was reminded of just how concise that guy can be, (as well as why he has that job.)

magnificent' is a rock and roll hymn. it floats and soars throughout the higher register and bono plays around with some of the notes bending them up and down and around like a snake emerging from a basket. bono plays lucifer in a way, (prior to the fall,) exclaiming his mission from the beginning, which was "to sing for you." 'magnificent' is rife with biblical imagery and references. ultimately it may be that bono is suggesting lucifer's redemption when he says "only love can heal such a scar." in any case, magnificent is well...no, i won't say that. it is a bombastic song with a great pop hook and so many parts that sum up to rock music as listenable high art. larry and adam as u2's backbone of a rhythm section pump this song along and drive it to being the rocking and bumping song that it is. edge has an understated guitar solo that fits its placement like a glove.

i am anxious to see their performances tonight, tomorrow night and friday on letterman. if they can even be in the same range as these first two nights, i will run to the store on saturday and buy the record if i have to collect aluminum cans to pay for it. (it just hasn't been worked into the budget yet otherwise.) i always planned on buying it but i was in no rush. after seeing 'breathe,' and 'magnificent," these last two nights, my sense of urgency has been substantially engorged.

lots of old bands are still playing. few remain relevant. few offer the new, the interesting, the thoughtful. springsteen recently had a super sunday but it was with old material he whipped out and just rocked the heck out of. the stones, by contrast, look like a group of undertakers trying so hard to be lively when they play, it makes my teeth hurt. sting unceremoniously entered irrelevance when he got in bed with the industry that is high fashion. how un-rock and roll can one get? meanwhile, u2 just keeps working that envelope, pushing at the boundaries of what is expected and what is possible, raging from deep within the machine all while maintaining their death grip on the lost sensibility in rock music, positivity.

kite

bono says this song is about letting go of someone. he said he wrote it when he was thinking about his dad nearing the end of his life but after it was made, he realized he really intended the message for his kids.

it is truly an amazing message for one's children, too. i just thought about it this morning as my kids were scampering around in my parent's house. i see terra getting older and at four, there are already behaviors she has left behind that i will never see or know again. and, that is okay.

the night before i was up late with my dad discussing everything from prop 8 to nietzche. i enjoyed the conversation immensely.

all of this simply underscores the fact that i do not own the people i love. it is not to me to keep them. they are not for my pleasure, enjoyment or security. my dad is for me to cherish for as long as i possibly can. my wife is for me to love and venture forth with. my children are for me to influence as positively as possible, to impart the very best of me and my values, and to encourage to follow their own dreams and visions for this life.

here are the lyrics for kite. i can imagine saying this to terra and mark. in essence the message is, i have given you all i can and i trust you to go out into the world and live your life.

Something is about to give, I can feel it coming, I think I know what it mean, I'm not afraid to die, I'm not afraid to live, And when I'm flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did, 'cause hardness, it sets in, You need some protection, The thinner the skin, I want you to know, That you don't need me anymore, I want you to know, You don't need anyone, or anything at all, Who's to say where the wind will take you? Who's to say what it is will break you? I don't know, which way the wind will blow, Who's to know when the time has come around? Don't want to see you cry, I know that this is not goodbye, In summer I can taste the salt in the sea, There's a kite blowing out of control on a breeze, I wonder what's gonna happen to you, You wonder what has happened to me, I'm a man, I'm not a child, A man who sees the shadow behind your eyes, Who's to say where the wind will take you, Who's to say what it is will break you, I don't know, where the wind will blow, Who's to know when the time has come around, I don't want to see you cry, I know that this is not goodbye. Did I waste it? Not so much I couldn't taste it, Life should be fragrant, Roof-top to the basement, The last of the rock stars, When hip-hop drove the big cars, In the time when new media, was the big idea, What was the big idea?