Category: Music

Back in the very early 1990s–like 1990 to 1991, which is really the very late eighties and the first year of the nineties if we must be technical, but since this is a personal narrative essay we don’t, so it was the early 1990s, dammit–I was a student at the University, living in the far northwest corner of Milwaukee, and about two blocks from the Mainstream Records at Fond du Lac and Silver Spring roads. Which explains where much of my non-tuition grocery store paychecks went in those days.

One of the things they offered was cheap 10-packs of used 45 rpm singles. Continue reading “Brian J. Noggle and the Adventure of the Accidental Collectible” →

But as J. Christian Adams points out, the U2 album Achtung Baby is 20 years old this month. Which would make The Joshua Tree, what, 25? You remember the olden days, when bands had comeback albums after their initial success, and that time period was like five years? And it seemed like a long time?

Here’s my favorite U2 song, “One”, which is from the album:

Like all good U2 songs, and by which I mean “both,” (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” being the other), the song starts out highly personal, where the listener can relate in a very raw fashion, and then all of a sudden we take an Automan-like left turn and Bono is singing about Universal Harmony and Feeding Africa (but not manufacturing there). Strangely, I spent most of my youth thinking the song was about a man and a woman rehashing, again, their broken relationship, but apparently I was enjoying a meaning at odds with the song’s real meaning. So it’s my failure as a listener that makes this song my favorite from U2.

So I posted on Facebook about the age of Achtung Baby, and a contemporaneous friend said, “And the album hasn’t aged one bit, I still listen to it all the time.”

To which I replied, “You tell yourself that. To an eighteen-year-old today, you might as well be listening to Pat Boone.”

And not the metal Pat Boone:

What? No More Mr. Nice Guy is fifteen years old?

But he was just on Letterman the other day promoting the album.

Now I’ve made myself feel old, old man.

UPDATE: Welcome, VftP readers. Hey, if you’ve got a buck, I’ve got a comedy to sell you. The Courtship of Barbara Holt is now available for the Kindle. It, like Achtung Baby is about 20 years old, but I’ve stripped most of the dated pop culture references from it except a reference to the Spin Doctors.

I have recently discovered that I suffer from Sudden Music Liking Syndrome.

This struck me today, as I heard the second song by The Who on the radio in two days (“Teenage Wasteland” today, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” yesterday) and decided, hey, maybe I ought to get an album by these guys.

I mean, for forty years almost, The Who has been part of the background soundscape. I’ve been listening to “classic rock” since it was called album-oriented rock and pretty much thought “meh” about The Who until sometime yesterday. I mean, these guys are so old they played during the Super Bowl halftime show in the 21st century, hey?

So where does the sudden “I like that” come from if not some psychological disorder that will be covered in DSM-VI?

Frankly, I lie awake in my own sweat that another outbreak will drive me to like Led Zeppelin.

She rips your copy of Tin Tin’s Astral Taxi to MP3s for you.

No, that’s really an album.

And she’s trying very hard to get Marian Segal With Silver Jade’s Fly on Strangewings ripped.

It is love or indulgence.

VodkaPundit tries to start something:

After strapping the boy into his car seat, I got in myself and checked to see if the next song on the iPod was inappropriate. “Son, would you like to hear a really good song?”

“Yeah!”

“It’s Earth, Wind & Fire, and it’s really funky.”

Pressed play and watched his face as “Shining Star” started to play way too loud.

Preston sat, listened, judged, pronounced: “It’s not funky enough.”

Last night, I offered to sing “You Are My Sunshine” (first verse only) to our two-year-old, and he declined. He wanted to hear the “Hi, Hi, Hi” song.

“I don’t know that song,” I said.

“‘Minne the Moocher’,” he said clearly.

Top that, Martini Boy.