Unforgettable Fire

It's nearing my normal time for turning in on a Monday night but I'm not quite ready for my nightly fight with my cat for space on my bed. Instead I'm spinning some vinyl with my replacement needle for my stereo phonograph (c 1985) and I'm falling in love all over again. The music of my youth played on ancient spinning discs, crackles and pops coming through along with all the warmth that only the analogue age can provide. The memories that flood back....traipsing downtown to Sunrise Records or Sam the Record Man, plopping down $15 for a couple of new releases or some classic finds and than hightailing it back to the confines of suburban life.

My friend Humberto and I would make the long trek back via subway and bus, sitting across from each other devouring liner notes and trying to make sense of the lyrics before us. It mattered not that we may have a cassette version of the album we held in our hands...unwritten code meant that we had to have the vinyl version as well. Sort of like the Godfather Rule...if you happen to be flipping the channels and the Godfather is on, you must watch it. Doesn't matter if you just did a Godfather binge two days ago...."Leave the Gun"

Currently I have on deck The Unforgettable Fire by U2, my getting ready musically for the concert this Friday. I'm pretty stoked for this show as I have been trying to see them for over 30 years, and now on their 30th Anniversary tour of the Joshua Tree....I've got seats. Nosebleed territory but I don't care. The music, as always, makes me reflective, transporting me back to 1985. The summer of the Europe trip with my family...dragged around Yugoslavia and a bit of France for five weeks, just what every young teen wants when they are more interested in the goings on back home. Dummy. I found a bootleg of The Unforgettable Fire in some sort of flea market and I fell completely in love with it. I played it constantly on my knock off Sony Walkman, as if stuck on a permanent repeat loop I found refuge in that music....escapism in my early days. Slap the headphones on and I don't even have to try not listening to the outside world. This album changed things for me, opened a door or two not only musically but on a more spiritual level.

It lifted me up....it saved me from mediocrity. It was rock and roll but not like any other rock and roll I had been listening to. It's been said that U2 and Springsteen saved the guitar and one can see how that can be said of Springsteen. He plays straight ahead rock and roll and that's all great. But U2 didn't fit that mould...you couldn't pigeon hole them. They played with passion and had something to say, and at the end of the day that is what caught me up. Travelling through ancient towns, dusty roads and sleeping on chicken wire bedding, the music that came through my tinny headphones was all about passion.

Bono's soaring vocals, the driving rhythm or Edge's melodic singing guitar work, it all came together to form some pure magic that to this day sounds as fresh and new to me as it did all those years ago. That tape began the process of prying me away from my narrow listening habits. Rush was and still is my band but they share that stage with U2. Two amazing bands that are very different from each other, soaring melodies and visceral messages versus complete virtuosity and driving progression. A year previous I wouldn't have thought it possible but there I was following every note and letting the music wash over me like waves upon the beach.

The memories of that summer are so tightly related to that album...from those opening notes on A Sort of Homecoming to the final lament of M.L.K, I still think of lying in bed falling asleep to those last chords of the album. Or taking that ancient train ride towards the coast from the northern region, Pride ringing through with Edge's unique sound, smiling inwardly that I knew something the other passengers didn't, my little secret....that U2 was fucking awesome.

I am very much looking forward to the show. An old family friend as my companion this will be a bucket list kind of entry after all these years. I suspect I will sing my heart out and let the music do music does best, lifting us out of the everyday and showing us what is out there. For the briefest moment opening a window onto the soul of life itself.

Ciao
D