You're all that's left to hold on to

When I purchased a cassette of The Joshua Tree in November 1987 and for years--decades--of listening thereafter, I barely paid attention to side two of the album. It wasn't until a drive across West Virginia and Virginia (possibly with my sister) in the mid- to late 2000s that JT was put on and, somehow, the sounds of side two--"One Tree Hill," "In God's Country," and especially this one--merged with the ribbon of highway unspooling through the Applachian Hills. 

No wonder it sounds like a landscape: the album was inspired by their views of America, good, bad, ugly. Apparently, though, this track was such a disappointment for the band that they remixed 30 years later with some restored horn-y-sounding synths and re-recorded vocals by an older Bono.

Oh, no. This sounds flat, shiny--and with treated vocals?! Come on! Oh, I'm going to pretend I never heard this. Bono, guys, you didn't need to go back to fix something that was real, human, not tech-manipulated, but more importantly, the choices of your younger selves. 

Maybe that's why I tear up when I hear it--inexplicably, since the source material is really pretty far removed from life today. Maybe it's how I felt about Bono back then, having a poster (not this one, but like it) on my dorm room wall freshman year, my Bono For President campaign of one, how distinctly I remember the start of the Joshua Tree tour stop at Rupp Arena (23rd October 34 years ago) when I could see him emerge in the dimness from the side of the stage during the long wind-up of "Where the Streets Have No Name." I can go see him and him alone now, on a smaller stage, for a small fortune.

But, I don't want to see my hero now. I want to hear him then.

I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside

Last week, I heard this in Jewel--the nice, big one on Western, where you'd expect more of an elevated, er, moment, as they say now. I finally get it, this song. 

I overlooked it, the first song on The Joshua Tree, all this time, fast-forwarding my tape purchased at Rose Records on Michigan Avenue Rock Records/Rolling Stones Records on Washington [edit: I think I've misremembered where and what the records store was. I was sure it was across from a Bennigans on the east side of Michigan Ave, but who can reconstruct chronology and geography from 33 years ago?] in the fall of 1987 to deeper cuts and deeper meanings. "Bullet the Blue Sky" fit my unending teen rage, "With or Without You" to whine and feel longing, and, later, "Red Hill Mining Town" and "One Tree Hill" squeezed my heart tight.

Sure, it sounds like winding through the curves of Jackson County, Kentucky, or coasting down the foothills of Virginia to sea level. This was a road-trip album. 

But now, now, this song feels like freedom to me. And I don't mean the freedom to move about afforded by the bigger-footprinted, latest version of Jewel, retooled for the 2020s for the yups or whatever you'd call them now of Roscoe Village. Bigger aisles, more shelves to scan, less dust, less grumpiness.

No, it's the freedom I am going to feel so soon I don't want to even let myself think about it. Keep head down, keep in the game of working and preparing meals, keep making headway through tv episodes.

But I don't have to, any more, much longer.

I always thought you'd be by my side

Me Now: How come u didn't go to the Purple Rain tour when you could have?

Me Then: I liked him, but I had to spend my money wisely--on L'Oreal eye shadow and Duran Duran import 12-inches.

Me Now: Gah---gackkk--ah. DUMMY!You liked Purple Rain...you liked it a LOT.

Me Then: Yeah, but I didn't buy it. Taped it off the radio...

Me Now: One lousy dime!!

Me Then: But none of my friends were going. I think. No, they weren't.

Me Now: You couldn't find a way to go?? I mean, you had to figure it out sometime. How else would you finally see U2 for the 45 (50?) dollars no one else was gonna pay to go with you?

Me Then: Yeah, but the concert was on a Saturday, and we had a speech tournament that day. We had to have. Or I had to work (and then go directly to Record Bar and buy another 12-inch).

Me Now: Just...just watch this:



Me Then: Goddamn.

Me Now: GODDAMN.

Just for one day

I remember.



I think. Actually, I remember all of this:



It's funny, though. That means almost nothing to me now.

And Bowie is...everything. Sharp, on target, on message, unifying, electrifying. And I didn't realize that until I saw it (again?) within the mesmerizing final room of the MCA show.

Also of note within these two: the Union of the Huge High-Low Backup Singer Shirts.

But this... sheer raise-funds, festival-busting perfection. Set the standard, really. And prepped me for dorm-room poster-level worship just a few years later, shifting from multiple, be-makeuped mullets to just...one love.



Still, Bowie wins. I mean:

Time got excited

Speaking of album openers (even though we weren't), the single drumbeat that kicks (ha) off the title track to the album that includes the hugely synthy and thrilling "Alive and Kicking" is ... I don't know what it is. It just works for me today.



It's also how the Minds' biggest--not greatest--Stateside hit starts. And they didn't even write it, though it was written with them in mind (ha).

[Ed. Note: listen to the demo embedded in the Spin article and tell me they weren't actually aiming for the Psych Furs and Richard Butler and not the Minds]

I was precisely in the target demographic, so, yeah, it worked. Consider me obsessed, and I probably viewed it not long after the 2/15/85 opening, and hit up The Record Bar straight after.

I also don't know if I'd agree with the subtitle "Poor Man's U2" for the band. Yes, they made epic, sweeping use-a-thesaurus-here songs, but these sprang, in my estimation, from straight from the heart ("I'd be with you/I dreaaaaam about you...I stay with you...tonight"), less filtered through the head. And embroidered with the keys and piano of Michael MacNeil, which don't cross between actual human hands plunking keys and chirps emitting from the turning of knobs. SM are synthy, but not Depeche Mode, for god's sake.

I'm glad The Breakfast Club pushed the Minds onto our shores, our record players, tape decks and for god's sake, into our minds.

The notes don't seem three decades old, though. Not at all.