AM I NOT YOUR GIRL?

Achtung Baby In Review

Kent was nice enough to get me the newest reissue of Achtung Baby.  This used to be my favorite album.  For years and years.  I like U2's entire body of work, but Achtung Baby came out when I was like 17 years old and I thought it sounded like the future of music.  Embarrassing, I know, but that's what I thought.

So in the years that followed, I gained some perspective on all this.  U2 got worse as a band, and I began to seek out a rougher aesthetic to my music.  I favored more do-it-yourself production. And music made from weird instruments. And lyrics about things less grandiose than who was going to ride my wild horses. 

Achtung Baby became something that represented a more naive time in my musical appreciation.  It was so sincere, and in some ways, a one-note album.  The same guitar is seemingly used throughout the album.  The Fly and Ultraviolet light are essentially the same song with different lyrics.  All those things seemed like sins to me.

I always knew I would love the album, but in the same way I love Star Wars.  I know it's flawed.  I like it anyways.  But the re-release on its 20th anniversary brought me a little deeper perspective on the album.

First, it made me feel old.  Everything seems to make me feel old.  Players I cheered for in college back then are all retired from the pro careers now.  They all look like old men.  Bobby Hurley looks like a gramps.  But I'm okay with this.  I'm old.  Whatever.

Second, I think I had a bigger appreciation for where this hit in U2's progression as a band.  I don't think I had any idea how much people thought they were dopes for putting out Rattle and Hum.  I loved that album, but failed appreciate how over-the-top it was in terms of U2 taking themselves seriously.  Whatever punk credibility they had going into that tour was gone by the end. They were dopes.  I had no sense of this.  I though Rattle and Hum was the best thing since sliced bread.  All that earnestness, all that Americana, all those duets with choirs.  I ate it up.

Thirdly, given the new-found appreciation for where the band was at when they made Achtung Baby, I am really impressed that this is what they came up with.  So many bands struggle to get back their magic after it's gone.  Few do so successfully.  I always hear that U2 decided to poke fun at their former image on this record, but more than that, they did so while making a really good album.  I would say their masterpiece "One" is on there, and some of Bono's best lyrics - which admittedly is not saying much.
Lastly, I think I have a greater appreciation for the overarching themes of the album, and I think it's solid.  It starts with all this appeals for the band to stop being so U2-y.  And then goes on this journey to find out what's there in the absence of being socially conscious nerd bottoms.  So the trajectory of the album goes from the sort of high-energy songs that explore love and religion and generally lofty pursuits. But it slowly bogs down again under its own weight.  Heaviness returns, but it's not the social injustice variety.  It's the heaviness of the aftermath of self-discovery.  The weight that follows those bursts of freedom.  Coming down.  I feel like Love is Blindness captures that aptly.  So it's journey into what happens when you set yourself loose, and find that you can't outrun your own demons.  That's pretty cool. 

So I just want to publicly apologize to U2 for turning my back on this album for so long.  They made a really nice album.  It was good when I was 17.  It's good at 37.  You made some real crap after Zooropa, but this here is a solid record. 

So far this month I have apologized to gutter punks and U2.  Who is next?
 

A Story

Since this blog is dedicated to fixing my memory problems, I just had a memory that I need to write down. 

It was Lundi Gras in New Orleans.  As per usual my friends and I were going to take drugs and go down to Frenchmen street.  We did this every year.  I don't know why.  We just did it one year and kept doing it every year for like 5-6 years.  Which is why I don't know which year it occurred. 

But this is what would happen on those evenings.  We would get dressed up in some Uptown apartment.  Lots of glitter.  Lots of eyeliner.  Painful stuff.  Then we would take in a healthy amount of alcohol and marijuana and pile into the back of a truck or something.  The truck would stop at a spot on the St. Charles parade route where the interstate goes over the street.  This creates just the right reverberation to be awesome.  Especially if you are on drugs.  Which we were.  

Once the parade was over we would walk the rest of the way to Frenchmen.  The walk was my favorite part.  Going down through downtown, through the French Quarter, down Decatur street was something to do.   And I always like to have things to do. 

When we got to the Frenchmen area there were a lot of street drums and hippies.  I hated it.  And we would literally hang out there until like five in the morning, so it was always a long night.  Which brings me to my story. (So far this hasn't been the story).

What would happen on Lundi Gras nights on Frenchmen is this:  Dancing, Drum Circles, Rowdy Hippies, Rowdier Hippies, Stuff Gets Set on Fire, Fire Department Shows Up, We All Go Home.

This happened every year. 

So on the night in question, knowing that it was going to be a long night, I found a place to sit.  It was a couch in the middle of the street.  There were always couches in the street on Lundi Gras.  I don't know why, but they were always up in flames by the end of the night. 

So being on acid, I made it my mission to protect this couch this year.  I sat on the couch and drank my beer, and made sure that anyone who wanted to sit on the couch would not be setting it on fire anytime soon.  This was my night.  And as I mentioned before, I like to have something to do, so it brought be great joy.  No dancing.  No hippies.  Just Brent and a beer and a couch that was not on fire.

Over the course of the night, I began to identify my enemies:  people who would try to light my couch on fire.  There were a few hippies or gutter punks or whatever that were eyeballing my couch, and had already set some other shit on fire that night. 

Finally they approached.  They tried to be nice, but I just told, flat our "Look I know why you are here, but you can't set the couch on fire."

They agreed, and in less than five minutes half the couch was ablaze.  I ran over and dumped my beer all over it, and said "Look!  I thought you said you weren't going to set it on fire!"

Too late.  The rest of the couch was on fire.  I sat there.  Disgusted.  Smoking a cigarette. 

I went to tell my friends about it.  I was still worked up.  They didn't care.  It was a hard thing to explain, and all my friends were more the sort to set things on fire.

Soon after, the fire was out of control, and we all got sent home.

I have always thought of this story as a indictment of the hippies that night.  These tender fucking hippies who had no integrity whatsoever.  But while I was showering today, I realized that probably those fucking hippies hauled that couch out of some hippie apartment so that they could set it on fire.  And here some guy plops down on it, and tells them they can't light it on fire. 

I guess I'm trying to say that I was out of line.  And I'm sorry.