The culmination of Love, U2, creativity and brotherly attention…

Uh, I guess some lead in…

This is only my, planned, third fourth BLAWWWWG entry (best laid plans…) and it is touching on some seriously dangerous territory…music. I jump into this abyss and we may never find our way back. I have a goal, a desire, to stir emotion with my work, whatever that work may be, art, writing, acting, comedy, I want to stir emotion, make people feel. I want to do this because all of the great art I’ve encountered has stirred my emotions. Music, man music stirs my emotions, in an instant. Funny as I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was embarking on when I started into this firework memory. U2, creativity, Love, pride, and I still don’t think I know, but I’ll get there before it’s done. Also, I’ve fallen into setting this whole post up, which seems unlike anything I had intended, if I had intended anything at all, so with that I’ll dive…..

My propensity to go from zero to extreme…

There are a number of things that I am deeply passionate about that I did not like at first. In fact, I probably detested these things in some way. Things that come to mind that fall into this category include items like:

• Cool Ranch Doritos – “What are these jackass things, this is a ploy to just make more money, these can’t be as good as original Doritos,” is something I thought that eventually turned out to be wrong.
• Being Irish – hurts me to say, but to be honest, as a young kid I kind of wanted to be Italian. My best friend growing up was Italian and his family was cool and sort of reveled in it. A neighboring city, where I had some friends, was also known for being soundly Italian (I just considerably understated that). Now, it’s funny because my kids are largely Irish/Italian.
• The Cleveland Browns – I was always upset by how much adoration Bernie got because I always thought, “this guy isn’t gonna take us to a Super Bowl”, he has since also become one of my favorite ex-NFL players and I am now a Browns season ticket holder.
• Justin Timberlake – now don’t get me wrong here, I still think his music is absolutely awful, but I never thought it would ever get to a point where I’m like, hmm, I kind of like that guy.

And finally, where I’m going with all of this, the band U2. Another one that pains me to say, and this post isn’t even primarily going to be about U2, but it’s true that prior to being a huge fan I most definitely was not. I mean, this fella:

I was a middle school-ish age kid and the whiny, kind of yuppie, crap music that I was hearing from U2 wasn’t doing it for me. I also feel like the folks who were fans of U2 at that time were the sort of folks that portrayed that they were smarter than everyone else, like kind of pretentious and a bit stuck up. All I can say is that sometimes you just end up being wrong about some stuff. I guess it’s called maturing, but in this instance I think I was just narrow minded and wrong. However, it all works out in the end.

Well sometimes it just takes a young lady to set you straight…

Also, when I hit middle school, circa 1987, there just so happened to be a new young lady that had arrived at my school whom I took a serious interest in. These two things collide, U2 and the new girl I was very intrigued by, when I find out that she is a big fan of U2. On top of all of this, if you hadn’t painted the picture yet, I was an asshole-ish middle school-ish kid and when I did find out that she was a big U2 fan I did what any asshole-ish middle school-ish boy would do, which was to take every opportunity possible to tell her that U2 sucked and that Bozo was a wiener. I was a real charmer. In retrospect I realize that this is not always the way to win a girl’s heart, though sometimes I admittedly slip back into my neanderthal base of being a boy.

Well, somehow by the grace of God, me and that lovely young lady got closer (sometimes the shit works, if you pull her hair and run away at least she knows who you are now). In the meantime U2 came out with a little cassette called Rattle and Hum (the fans that were there from the start are now cringing) and I started to open my ears and my mind and considered that maybe what this girl, whom I thought was absolutely outstanding, is into might not be that bad. In tandem with my growing love of being Irish my passion for the band was born. Maybe surprisingly, similar to this post not being about U2, this post is not about that girl, whose friendship, recommendations, views, and insights would lead me to discover so many more things about the world and about myself. She’s no longer here in body, and, straight up, I miss her. The topics of that girl and of U2 loom large and will likely be thread throughout many posts, as they have been a thread throughout my life.

…and a weird “boom box”…

So if it’s not about U2 and it’s not about the girl what the fuck am I talking about then? Well, when I was a kid my sister had this crappy little mini “boom box”, I think it was pink and kind of looked like candy (didn’t see it going this direction…). It was one of those radios that had two cassette decks on it and the reason this particular radio was unique was because it allowed both cassettes to play at the same time. I’m not even sure how I figured that out, but most radios that had two decks would not allow both to play and then actually generate sound from both at the same time. The Joshua Tree album was not originally my favorite (more U2 fans just stopped reading, but stick with me), but it was growing on me, and the song that probably really jumped out at me first was a relatively lesser known song called Running to Stand Still. For me, this song, along with a number of others, tied itself to that girl in my mind for many reasons, but I’ll simply say that I find it eerie, and different, and magical, and lovely, and confused, and sad. To this day it is still one of my absolute favorite songs and when it plays I essentially stop whatever and just listen.

Stumbling into creativity in the face of my idol…

Well, at some point I decided to play U2’s Running to Stand Still on that crappy little “boom box” on one of the cassette players and then also play it on the second cassette player at the same time. However I wouldn’t get them started at the exact same time and they would be off a bit and I actually started to like what I heard. I have no clue what I was trying to accomplish but by delaying the start of the second cassette just slightly the result was this cool, even more eerie, version of the song. I had to play with it a bit to get it to be, what I considered, just right. Then I used another tape recorder to tape what was playing. It was one of those tape recorders that you absolutely think of when I say the words tape recorder.

At the time my older brother was my absolutely biggest idol. He’s six years older than me and when I went to sixth grade camp some of his classmates were my counselors, and when I entered middle school, which started at 7th grade, and the Seniors and Juniors still remembered him I would lead any conversation with those folks that I could weasel my way into by informing them that he was my brother. The responses I would hear back were what an outstanding person he is and, I recall the direct quote of, “best damn artist I’ve ever seen.” My brother is an artist, I wanted to be an artist, my brother had a kick ass old muscle car, I wanted a kick ass old muscle car, my brother loved Randy Rhoads, I loved Randy Rhoads, my brother referred to Bono as Bozo…well you get the picture. He shaped who I was and who I wanted to be.

The payoff…

Now this is where that firework memory comes in and the culmination of all that shit I just unfolded sort of comes together. I remember my older brother taking notice and being slightly interested in what I was doing with our sister’s “boom box” and that U2 song. At the time we shared a bedroom and as we were going to bed one night we decided to play it.

We silently listened to it and I recall almost being on edge about it, like I was opening the door to my idol into something “creative” I had done (kind of how I feel every week when I hit publish on one of these posts). And let’s be honest, I hadn’t even really done anything other than create an echo of a song. After the song was done playing it was quiet for a few seconds and he said, “Man that’s kind of cool, I think that might be better than the original.” I don’t know how to explain the impact that had on me, and I also don’t want to overstate it either, I mean I didn’t go out and buy mixing equipment or anything, but it was a notable statement, which might be an understatement given I’m talking about it here and now.

He kind of made the comment as a throw away type statement, but my ears perked up like a dog that hears the rustle of the Begging Strips bag being opened from 4 rooms away, like something might be happening here but I don’t want to overreact. Also, don’t get me wrong, my brother wasn’t a non-compliment giving asshole or anything…most of the time…but this particular moment just stands out to me for some reason, it’s burnt itself into my brain, my life memories. It might be because that song also has significant meaning to me as being tied to my friend who impacted my life so significantly. It might be because I made this silly simple version of this outstanding song like a mad scientist using a pink “boom box” and a tape recorder. It might be because my brother acknowledged that this U2 song was suddenly interesting, and U2 was something I was independently exploring off the path from our normal judgmental stance at the time that he was now acknowledging as being cool and newly interesting, or it might just be because my older brother said I had done something cool. I’m guessing it’s a culmination of all of those things, but most importantly the fact that my idol had acknowledged something I had creatively done, without his influence, as being worthwhile. As flattering as it is to have someone want to be you I almost find it more flattering to want to become your own person with influences from that person. I’m beyond grateful on the regular that I had five siblings come before me that all have influenced my becoming who I am in so many ways.

Like I’ve said before, I’m literally dissecting this “adventure in retrospective learning” as I go along, but I do know that it has been cool reliving that night listening to that song in our shared room in order to do so. So as not to let this just fall off of a cliff, here’s close to what I recall being the version of that song, appreciating that I was probably 12 years old at the time and I know I didn’t do anything amazing here, U2 did, but I have to admit, as simple and dumb as it is, I still Love listening to the song this way. I know it’s simple, but it takes me back. Like it or hate it, hopefully if you get a chance to listen you can take a minute to sit and soak it in, again, not because of the rocket science I did, but because of the beauty of the song and the lovely weight and story that it can carry with it: