Well, why not?
This will just be a running commentary on great music that always ends up running in my head. It's actually an annoying thing. It divides your attention; it distracts you from important conversations. It gives every new album you put in your disc player more and more to live up to. Great music is a great conversation between the souls and imaginations of people who will probably never meet one another. Through a song they find what they have in common and that we all share this one crowded earth trying to sow dreams into the soil.
When I was 15 I was shocked when I played U2's "Beautiful Day" for the first time and had one of those experiences so many music fans and musicians describe- a single that can change your day, and, just maybe, if you listen carefully enough, your entire life. This is a tradition handed down from the bluesmen and folk legends that came even before Elvis, the ones who gave us new ways of thinking of choruses and melodies and lyrics. Consider the influential singles released ever since from The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Radiohead.... what a rich history.
I was in Belfast, Northern Ireland this past summer. I was there studying the long history of violence between Catholics and Protestants. Imagine growing up in this city in the 1970s where everyone expected at least one homemade bomb to go off everyday. It had the worst of everything- state-sponsored terrorism, political impasses, detention centers, barbed-wire fences, gang-mentalities, and so on down the whole fucking awful list.
I saw one of the best live shows ever there. It was Belfast's own Stiff Little Fingers doing their annual show at a local university. We were crammed into the basement of a student center that smelled like piss and stale beer. Shirtless fans with giant blue mohawks and giant piercings flung themselves on another as the SLF fed the fires with their politcally-oriented songs. The Fingers did the same fiery punk rock songs they first played in the late 70s and early 80s to crowds just like the one I was with. Their shows, and the many shows like them, were one of the few places in a city torn by hatred where Protestant and Catholic youth knowingly mixed. It was that important. Unreal.
If you have pictured Johnny Cash's silhouette with a guitar in one hand defiantly standing in the middle of the American heartland...
If you find incredible joy in David Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel" and "Starman"....
If you have ever listened to Miles Davis' A Kind Of Blue while the sunset glows in the back alley outside your window....
If you have ever walked through a blinding snowstorm with The Arcade Fire's "Funeral" playing in your ears or walked down a beautiful beach on Block Island late at night with Jeff Buckeley's "Hallelujah" stuck in your head....
If you have ever put on an album and been transported to the intimate places in Bruce Springsteen's hometown and feel as if you've known all his friends with weird names your entire life...
If you have ever suddenly felt angry for no reason as you listened to Joe Strummer spit the words to "London Calling" through his gritted teeth as The Clash raged on....
...Then you know that music has something special to offer. We are lucky to have so many of these moments.
