Coat of Arms

We are in the process of cleaning and purging the contents of our basement. We’ve held on to a lot of crap alongside a lot of important items from our collective and individual histories. Over the last few days and nights, I’ve been working my way through boxes of exclusively my stuff. Folders, photo albums, cartons of action figures and toys, baseball and football cards, cards from my wife, letters from friends… the same sorts of things you probably have in your basement.

I had a particular photo album that had all my organized sports team photos and all my class photos from grade school, along with all my choir and school programs, and miscellaneous items (like an autographed picture of Lindsay Wagner and a clipped story from the newspaper about Michael Jackson’s record setting eight Grammy awards win). But in the front of that album, on the very first page, was this…

I wish I could remember what year I made this. I am sure it was a school assignment – a “Make Your Own Crest” type of project. And I can still remember the reasons behind each and every item:

• Purple and orange because they were my favorite colors (purple still is one of my favorites).
• The basketball because, despite my size, I always loved to play it (just like my kiddo who faces the same size challenges).
• My name in calligraphy because I was into art and my mom signed me up for a calligraphy class at the local art shop.
• The tent because my family camped while growing up, and it was a huge part of my childhood (although we camped in a hardtop camper, not a tent, I took some artistic license here).
• The Walkman, baby. Music has always been important to me.
• Pitfall! I loved my Atari 2600, and I loved Pitfall.
• A comic book. Note: Even as a kid I was apparently sensitive to copyright infringement issues and, instead of rendering my favorite Marvel comic cover, I opted to go generic. Or, at least, that’s the story we’ll go with to cover the fact that I probably spent my entire artistic bankroll interpreting the Pitfall screen capture.

So, yeah. It was crazy to stumble on this and realize just how accurate a representation of the kid version of me it is (clearly, I took this assignment seriously and put a lot of thought into it), and although I don’t go camping and I don’t play a lot of video games anymore, I do still enjoy shooting hoops with the kiddo, appreciate art, love music, and continue to read comics. I guess four out of six ain’t bad.

Agent Provocateur

The Monster Ball Tour Starring Lady Gaga
27 April 2011: Quicken Loans Area, Cleveland, Ohio

If you know me, you know I have a soft spot for pop music. Girl pop, in particular, since the late ’90s. There was something about the Spice Girls and the pop confection they were putting out that I can trace this girl pop love directly back to those five ladies. From there it was Kylie and Britney and Rihanna and on and on, straight up through Adele. I love it.

Falling somewhere between my beloved girl pop and the serious artistry of Madonna is Lady Gaga. I disregarded Gaga as long as I could, but “Bad Romance” couldn’t be ignored. More than an earwig, the song is everything I could possibly want from a pop song: attitude, sex, hooks, a driving beat under a melodic wave. Impossibly fun. That was all it took, and I was in.

Somehow, the first time Gaga brought the Monster Ball through town (July 2010), the ticket sale got by us, and we didn’t get to the table until the show was already sold out. I was genuinely disappointed. Fast forward a few months and it’s announced that the tour that started in 2009 was finally coming to a close after a third North American leg. The third to last show – and the last North American performance – was scheduled for Northeast Ohio. I was buried in work when the announcement came out and had no idea, but when I turned 40 last October, Tracy surprised me with a pair of tickets to the encore Cleveland performance!

The entire event – from the moment we arrived downtown to the walk back to the car four and a half hours later – was encased in fun surreality. Just driving to the parking deck provided plenty of visual cues that this was no ordinary night in front of us. It was like Halloween had arrived six months early. Say what you will about them, Gaga’s fans are devoted. And they put it on display in every way imaginable. Regardless of gender, there was plenty of bubble and Saran Wrap, hot pants, fishnets, leather, caution tape, beer can rollers, face paint, wigs, and the pelts of a thousand dead Muppets. It was a glorious spectacle.

While hanging out in the main concourse of The Q before the show, I told Tracy that as much as anything else I was struck by the sense of community among the fans Gaga has dubbed her “Little Monsters.” It reminded me of the punk scene we belonged to back in the day. There was a freedom to look how you wanted to look; be who you wanted to be. I didn’t see a single person hassled at the show for how they looked or what they chose to flaunt.

Announcing around 9pm that “We are Semi Precious Weapons from New York mother fucking City, and we hope you all get laid!” the supporting act took the stage. It has been a long time since an opening act I was completely unfamiliar with moved me, but SPW did it. With the ferocity of vintage PiL Johnny Rotten and all the theatricality of Freddie Mercury, Justin Tranter was the consummate front man. While they are the “filthy party band” they claim to be, that description falls short in defining who they are. Songs like “Semi Precious Weapons” (with the unforgettable opening line: “I can’t pay my rent, but I’m fucking gorgeous!”), and “Put a Diamond In It” were catchy as hell and hard-edged as any alternative rocker. Tranter played the crowd masterfully, telling them “You know why we love Cleveland? Two reasons: 1) You bitches love rock and roll, and 2) you like to drink!” before launching into “Sticky with Champagne”. The playful 30+ minute set was the most fun I’ve had with an unknown opening act in years, and I was left wanting more. And about an hour later, I got the “more” I needed in the form of Gaga.

After much delay, Gaga took the stage at 10:30pm and moved through four set changes, 18 songs, and innumerable costume alterations over the following two hours. While calling the Little Monsters a “spectacle” may seem like an overstatement, the word doesn’t even come close to describing the show itself. The woman is a showman first and foremost, clearly determined to give her fans their money’s worth. The idea of a storyline doesn’t exactly hold up in execution, but on paper Gaga and her dancers are trying to get from the seediest side of NYC to the Monster Ball by way of subway and some sort of fucked-up Narnia.

Each set change was preceded by movie shorts projected on a giant stage-covering scrim that showed things like Gaga gnawing on a heart, and Gaga being covered by a green paint spewing girl. All the clichéd arena rock trappings were present... repeated name checks of the city, high theatrics, pointing out a song she wrote in Cleveland, and pyrotechnics.

The second quarter of the show (the subway sequence) included an explicit shout-out to her “Cleveland gays” in the intro to “Boys Boys Boys” before ripping through a great version of the song. Shortly thereafter, Gaga called one of her fans in the arena from the stage. It played out in the exact mix of sincerity and mawkishness you’d expect: the fan’s adoration getting a little uncomfortable and Gaga’s reciprocation equally offbeat, but extricating herself from the call was clever genius. Gaga told the fan she had another call coming in from Beyonce and launched into “Telephone”.

This was followed by an extended piano version of “Born This Way” (complete with a rambling monologue about her never being able to ever prove to the fans how much she loves them and how much she’s been through and how being there is just a dream come true and that fans should remember her story if they ever feel down and on and on and you get the picture). She stayed at the piano for another new song, “You and I”, that she said she wrote last summer in Cleveland and that Brian May of Queen played guitar on for the new album.

The second half of the show (the fucked-up forest and the finale) was packed with hits and undeniably catchy songs. Beginning with “Teeth” and barreling through “Alejandro”, “Poker Face”, “Paparazzi”, “Bad Romance”, and “Born This Way”, Gaga delivered on every level.

"Born This Way" is more than the name of her current single and forthcoming album. I'm not sure if Gaga is a marketing shill or genuinely believes in her own words, but the way she wove the idea of being "born this way" into the entire show, it was clearly the theme of the night. She couldn't go more than a few minutes between reminding her Little Monsters that either she was or they were born this way. She even played two versions of the song: the midpoint piano version and the single-song encore full-blown version.

While it's easy to question her musical originality – one listen to the new single or "Dance In the Dark" and it's clear Gaga’s no stranger to Madonna's songbook – the uniqueness of her character is undeniable. Gaga is as much an icon today for both her persona and music as Madonna was at the peak of her relevancy. But, thinking back on the ’80s, Madge’s shock value seemed to be derived from shock for marketing’s sake, whereas Gaga’s meat dresses and general exhibition seem to come from a somewhat less contrived place – feeling like a more natural extension of the act. By the same token, Gaga is as much a part of Bono’s legacy in her fearlessness of using her status for socially active promotion as she is Madonna’s. Between the opening act and the main set a video was played of the performer urging fans to text donations to charities that help GLBT kids who’ve been forced out of their homes because they were (yes, here it comes again) born this way, and a donation was made in the name of the fan she called during the show to a charity that offers support to gay kids.

Last year, I saw bits of Gaga's Oprah interview online and was struck by what appeared to be a cross between genuine appreciation for her fans and radical insecurity. In concert, Gaga is prone to bouts of over-emotion that manifest themselves unexpectedly in the middle of songs or while half-naked on a piano bench. These eruptions were uncomfortably raw, often rambling monologues about never being able to repay the fans for believing in her and how far she has come and to, basically, don't let the bastards bring you down.

It certainly appears Gaga takes her position as inspiration and role model for the gays and freaks and misfits of the world seriously, and that seems to be where these emotional outbursts originate. The result is an R rated old-time gospel tent revival, an Up With People-positive production slathered in sex for the 21-and-over crowd.

(All photos by Tracy Besenyodi.)

Punk Schmaltz

Green Day
06 May 2005: CSU Convocation Center, Cleveland, Ohio

When Dookie broke, there were rumblings from Green Day’s northern California punk brethren that they had sold out and had become corporate, mainstream whores. Green Day denied it, and I think they were justified in that denial at the time. But I have to wonder what their contemporaries would think if they attended one of the stops on Green Day’s American Idiot tour.

Admittedly, I wrote off Dookie as, well… dookie. But I eventually picked up their greatest hits collection and then got the brilliant American Idiot when it was released. And the more I listened, the more I was convinced that Green Day were the latter-day Clash. In 2004, Green Day mattered, at a time when very few artists did. And they knew their history: The album is rife with overt references to the likes of the Who, Bowie, and Mott the Hoople. Much like the Clash, they're not afraid to trot out their album collection and put their influences out there, as well as their politics.

Taking its activist and socially conscience tone from “Minority,” a single off their immediately previous album, American Idiot is a fierce indictment against the second Bush administration, the war in Iraq, and the neo-cons of the Religious Right. It contains bold statements of conviction. Lines of songs – like “Maybe I am the faggot America / I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” from the title track, and “Pulverize the Eiffel towers / Who criticize your government” from “Holiday” – drip with contempt and irony that amount to landing a kick somewhere slightly south of the Bible Belt. And the political Left doesn’t make it out of the fray unscathed either, as the band takes a swipe at the John Kerry’s of the world (remember him?) with the “Holiday” line: “Hear the drum pounding out of time / Another protester has crossed the line / To find the money’s on the other side.”

I have been to my fair share of punk shows and seen footage of the Clash live, but nothing prepared me for what I saw one night in May 2005. When I got my tickets for the American Idiot tour stop at the Wolstein Center on the edge of the Cleveland State University campus, I had visions of attending a punk show. I did not get what I expected. What I got was Def Leppard pyrotechnics and a Britney Spears audience. The show opened with five of the first six songs off of American Idiot… but they were peppered with “1-2, 1-2-3-4’s” and “Hey-O” call and responses. As if channeling all the 70’s arena rockers who influenced them, Green Day offered numerous call-outs to Cleveland and lyric changes to incorporate the hometown. Flashpots lit up the stage, synchronized with songs and illuminating the arena. The satiric pinnacle was the cover of Queen’s “We are the Champions” during the encore, complete with lyrics flashing on the giant curtain of lights so the kids too young to know them could sing along. It was clichéd and schmaltzy. And it would have worked beautifully for me on an ironic level, if not for being surrounded by girls less than half my age screaming and crying in N*Sync-like joy at attending their first concert – with their mom’s and dad’s in tow – turning the evening’s proceedings into a wholly surreal affair.

While I was surprised by how much I enjoyed hearing the older material live, I would have preferred Green Day to play the American Idiot album in its entirety – straight through, in order, and uninterrupted. There is a ferociousness to the American Idiot material – a combination of urgency and (what seemed like at the time) timelessness that is still compelling. In spite of the arena rock trappings, the conviction found on the album arrived in tact when translated to the live show, and was surprisingly coupled with an earnestness in its delivery. And while I think the message came across very well to the crowd, I almost wanted more political statements throughout the show to ensure the kids understand just how important it is, that it’s worth giving a damn about, and that they have the power to influence it. I appreciated frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s political comments that peppered the show and that he closed the show urging everyone in the venue to get out and make a difference. But, if you’re going to neuter your stage presence to the point where a punk show is a semi-political family-friendly event – you might as well pour it on a little thicker.

I remember this being one of the first shows where it struck me just how much concert going has changed. Before the Information Age, you had no idea what to expect when you attended a concert. Things like what the band would perform, stage setups, etc. were all a part of the great unknown. Now, with the interweb, if you choose to look you can find the set list, the stage setup, the pre-show music, reviews, and even how often the songs have been performed on that particular tour.

Going into the evening, I knew all about the big pink bunny, “YMCA”, the theme from 2001, the set list and order, the making a band bit during “Knowledge”, the “King for a Day/Shout” routine, that “Minority” would be the last song of the main set, and that a solo version of “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Armstrong would close the encore.

I’m torn on this spoiler knowledge. Part of me misses the sense of unknown and anticipation that going to a show used to generate. There was a sense of “this show is just for me” and, by virtue of not knowing what was done or played at other shows, a sense that what we were seeing was truly a unique experience. Does all this knowledge at our fingertips detract from the overall feel of the show? Maybe, but despite all that knowledge going in, by virtue of their charisma and apparent genuine appreciativeness of performing, I still felt the Green Day show I saw that Friday night in Cleveland was unique and personal and worth both my time and money.

So, is Green Day still a punk band? Are they worthy of Clash comparisons? On disc, the answer is a fairly decisive “yes.” Based on the incarnation of their live show I witnessed six years ago, the answer is a bit more of a shoulder shrug and a half-hearted “sure.”

Piano Man-ish

Michael Cavanaugh in Concert: The Music of Billy Joel and More!, with the Akron Symphony Orchestra (Conducted by Christopher Wilkins)
12 February 2011: EJ Thomas Hall, Akron, Ohio

I almost saw Billy Joel in concert once. It was August 1994 and Central Florida was being brutalized by a nasty storm. My buddy John was working, so his then-girlfriend (someday-to-be wife) Jenn and I decided to head over to the Citrus Bowl and see about picking up some scalped tickets for the Billy Joel/Elton John show that night. We circled the stadium in my 1983 Honda Civic for what seemed like hours in sheets of rain. People showing up for this open air show already looked miserable and drowned. I don’t know that Jenn and I ever even ended up getting out of the car that night. We – wisely, I think – abandoned our quest.

I’m not a huge Billy Joel or Elton John fan, but I like both of these artists and still wouldn’t mind seeing either of them live at some point. Born in 1970 and raised a child of the ’80s, there is something familiar and comforting about their music.

I had never heard of Michael Cavanaugh prior to Tracy weaving her contest winning magic. Courtesy of 91.3 The Summit, she came up with a pair of tickets to see Cavanaugh at EJ Thomas Hall, and after some cursory digging about the show, we figured it sounded like a potentially good time.

We discovered Cavanaugh was handpicked by Joel to star in the Broadway production of Movin’ Out and has since continued to cash in on that ticket. I would never begrudge him that, but Tracy and I both came away from the show Saturday night a little disappointed in Cavanaugh probably because of the expectations that path to stardom and endorsement entail.

Cavanaugh is from Northeast Ohio, which is cool. My civic pride swells a bit more every time local people do well. But the link goes deeper than that. Cavanaugh’s first full time musician gig was at the Blazing Pianos bar in Orlando. If I’m reading his biography right, he worked there during the same time I was living there. That means there’s a pretty good chance I saw him perform once or twice back in the day, having spent a few nights in my twenties at the various piano bars around Orlando with friends.

Regardless of any cool connections, it’s hard to get past the execution of Cavanaugh’s symphony orchestra collaboration. It’s a case of the performer being crushed under the expectations set by the hype. Tracy and I anticipated more from Cavanaugh’s voice and stage presence based on what we’d read about him. I thought his saxophone player John Scarpulla had more charisma, and it was impossible not to watch his drummer (another Northeast Ohio native, and who played the drummer in Almost Famous) Johnny Fedevich play.

The selections were interesting, in that many times the band only seemed to play parts of songs and often resorted to medleys of Joel songs. The best Joel song of the night was, by far, “Goodnight Saigon”. Cavanaugh’s cover of Elton John’s cover of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard” was also interesting. When he covered Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire” and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”, Tracy and I both went into full ’80s pop culture overload and could only think of Dennis Quaid, Top Gun, and Back to the Future. Sad, I know.

The two orchestra only pieces from Joel’s 2001 classical album, Fantasies & Delusions – “Opus 2. Waltz #1 (‘Nunley’s Carosel’)” and “Opus 10. Air (‘Dublinesque’)” – were excellent. As was their work during the cover of Joel’s “Pressure”. As a bonus, it was cool to see our son’s drum instructor – second chair percussion with the orchestra – do his thing.

The night struck me as striving to fall somewhere between the artist/orchestra collaboration of Pink Martini and the Cleveland Orchestra we saw a year ago, and the Beatles cover band perfection of RAIN last month. But Cavanaugh never quite succeeded on either front. The Akron Symphony Orchestra deserves a lot of credit for their efforts, but Cavanaugh’s song selection didn’t lend itself well to interpretation. And Cavanaugh wasn’t a close enough approximation of Joel or Elton or any of the others he covered (vocally or from a stage presence perspective) to put him anywhere near the caliber of RAIN.

Regardless, though, I had a nice night out with my wife. And I almost saw Billy Joel in concert once.

Come Together

RAIN – A Tribute to the Beatles
23 January 2011: EJ Thomas Hall, Akron, Ohio

Honestly, when we purchased our season subscription to Broadway in Akron, none of us were entirely sure what RAIN was, other than something involving the Beatles. Although, in reality, it’s nothing more than a tribute band show, that’s selling it a bit short.

I find it fascinating that the Broadway reviews of RAIN all seem to talk about it being another way for aging baby boomers to relive the glory days of the Beatles and their catalog. While the show at EJ Thomas Hall was primarily boomers, there was a healthy 19-and-under contingent in attendance – including my kiddo. Tracy has been under the weather, so I took Jack with me. He’s been to concerts before (The Black Keys, Bob Dylan, Jake Shimabukuro), he’s been to theater productions before, and he digs the Beatles, but this was a funky little mix of all those things.

Beginning with their arrival on American soil for the historic Ed Sullivan Show appearance and using the musicians’ costume changes as signposts, the show moves in rough chronological order through the Beatles career. And, as proven repeatedly throughout the years, it’s difficult to find a Beatles tune that isn’t instantly recognizable, so nearly every song was a sing-along affair.

In the same way it’s difficult to comprehend how The Greatest Generation literally saved the world, I struggle to wrap my head around just how seismic the musical paradigm shift was when the Beatles arrived. In context of the times, it’s amazing to think about these teenagers’ minds being completely blown by an aesthetic and sound that had never been seen or heard previously, and what that experience must have been like. I don’t know that there will ever be another popular cultural revolution like it. You could argue things like the rise of personal computers or the internet, but those weren’t specific moments in time to our collective conscience. We can accurately point to the Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan as the exact instant at which music changed.

The timelessness of the Beatles catalog is as impressive as its near-universal familiarity. The entire hall was rocking throughout, singing along, clapping, people standing up and dancing. While perhaps not as fervent as a true Beatles show back in the day, the night crackled with energy.

The sparse sets were unobtrusive, with the focus primarily on the musicians and music, and the three projection screens to enhance the experience. From the Ed Sullivan period, the performers took the audience through the Shea Stadium concert, the Sgt. Pepper era, the Abbey Road and rooftop concert years, and more.

The Fab Four of RAIN did a great job approximating their respective Beatles. Our seats were just far enough away to help maintain the illusion that they just might have been the real Beatles up on the stage. Along with our John, Paul, George, and Ringo, there is also a fifth on stage each night on keyboards to supplement the show. In the RAIN franchise there are three to four different John, Paul, George, and Ringos who tour or perform on Broadway, along with a pair of keyboardists. In a nice hometown touch, our “Paul” was a Northeast Ohio native, Robert “Mac” Ruffing.

With half of the original group now gone and already multiple generations past the group’s working period, it’s easier to make the argument for this tribute band than for something like a KISS or Aerosmith tribute band because there is simply no other way to hear Beatles music live. And while I’m sure it’s possible, you’d have to work pretty hard to come up with a crappy setlist. (Although the kiddo desperately wanted RAIN to play “Yellow Submarine” – they didn’t. But I think the “When I’m 64” sing-along helped smooth things over for him.) I guess you’re pretty much guaranteed a standing ovation if you’re doing it right, and that’s just what the cast of RAIN got when they came through Akron.

First Communion

David Lee Roth
29 September 1986: Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, Ohio

The first concert concert I attended was David Lee Roth at the Richfield Coliseum. I went to the show with Courtney. She was a few years older than me and had just moved to the school district. My dad was in the local Lions Club chapter and I believe Courtney’s dad joined when they moved to our area. I seem to recall meeting her at one of our dads’ Lions Club family functions.

My musical tastes and my parents’ rarely cross, but especially then. My older sister Karen was into popular music – I remember her going to Rick Springfield and Jack Wagner and Corey Hart concerts in high school, all pretty tame. I am, however, grateful for the music Karen exposed me to and my subsequent appreciation for early ’80s pop music. From there, though, I moved on to a cocktail of hard rock and classic rock, a fairly natural progression for mid-’80s Midwestern adolescent. Rush, Boston, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, The Doors, Mötley Crüe, Led Zeppelin, and, of course, Van Halen.

I was a huge Van Halen fan in middle school and early high school. While I was ok with the Van Hagar incarnation (and saw them a couple of years later headline the Monsters of Rock Tour), it was the original lineup that always made me giddy. And, although Diamond Dave’s output took a nosedive after Eat ‘Em and Smile, that first solo album was a lot of fun.

With the Eat ‘Em and Smile concert just days before my sixteenth birthday and that I was going with someone older my parents seemed to trust, they relented and let me go. I don’t remember too much about the concert, to be honest. I vaguely remember the glam (now seemingly camp) metal group Cinderella opening for Roth. They had a few songs with videos that were in fairly heavy rotation on MTV that were up my alley at the time.

The now-long gone Richfield Coliseum was a cinderblock affair set in the middle of nowhere, about 20 miles south of Cleveland, and the only venue in Northeast Ohio outside of the Blossom Music Center amphitheater nearby in Cuyahoga Falls. These venues would be the site of the bulk of my mainstream concert-going activities until discovering modern rock/college radio acts in the late ’80s and the smaller downtown Cleveland stages they hung about.

Courtney got our tickets. Our seats were probably about two-thirds of the way down the floor, on an aisle, next to the front corner of the mixing board. The metal folding chair may or may not have been red cushioned, but even 25 years later I can recall that feeling of heady excitement standing on the deathtrap, straining for the best possible view of Diamond Dave while doing my best to not lose my balance and be eaten by the chair Snoopy style à la A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Much like Cinderella’s set, I couldn’t tell you specifics about what Roth and his band played that night. I don’t remember any of Steve Vai’s solos or Billy Sheehan’s playing. What I do remember was being struck by the somehow intimate experience of sharing the night with 20,000 strangers. And that communal feeling extended beyond the night of the show. I remember buying my first concert t-shirt and wearing it to school the next day. I was suddenly in a club – exclusive to those that had been to a rock show, a concert at the Coliseum. I had credibility of sorts. It was a very cool feeling.

I lost track of Courtney quickly after she graduated, but I will always be grateful for her role in finally getting me to my first rock show.

I may not be a huge David Lee Roth fan these days, but that first experience of witnessing music I love live – the raw power, the transcending energy, the sense of community – was transformative. For a kid to whom music was so important to anyway, the live experience forever altered how I both perceive and listen to music.

When Music Matters Most

My blog post on The Cure’s Disintegration has prompted some great feedback via comments, Twitter, and email. One of those personal emails was from my good friend and musical confidant Jeff. I’m of the mind that if he had intended for the contents of the email to be shared with a wider audience, he would have sent it as a comment on the blog, but there are some sentiments in his email that I think are worth exploring a bit and using as a jumping off point.

Jeff agreed with my observations on the importance of specific albums being tied to the fervor of one’s fandom at the time of its release, as well as the ties between songs and memories. But to me, his most interesting observation was that “all of the really memorable and important albums [in his life] are from high school and college.”

This is an idea I have always maintained. I wear my sentimentality on my sleeve, and I have no problem looking backwards in order to understand my present. There is something to be said about that period in your life – college in particular, that carries immense weight in shaping who we become as adults.

Jeff and John and I all went to college together, and they, along with Jen and Erin, were my closest friends that freshman year at Bowling Green. John and I have talked at length about the importance of the first year of college. Never before or after in one’s life do we find ourselves away from home for the first time, thrown into a hyper-real mini-society that combines all the cliquishness of high school with the quasi-responsibility of young adulthood. Everything is dramatic. Every decision is the Most. Important. Decision. Ever.

Because of this, at least among my friends it seems, the music of that era is imparted with more significance than music from any other time in our lives. Meeting and dating my wife, getting married. All arguably more significant periods in my life, and music accompanied them all, but not in the way it did when I was 18 and 19 years-old. I have mentioned before how U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind is the only album I can think of that entered my adult consciousness with anywhere near the importance of the music from my youth.

Last year, I wrote about that significance this way in a blog post about Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine: “The closest any other album has ever come to being as fundamentally meaningful to a period in my life is U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Released just after my 30th birthday at the end of 2000, this collection of songs became the soundtrack to our return to Ohio after ten years away, our trip to Paris, the birth of our son, our friendship with Jeff and Anna, our post-9/11 trip to New York City in December 2001, and on and on. But it was different, in that this was a collective soundtrack for experiences Tracy and I shared. And if you’re lucky, your thirties inhabit a very different worldview from that of your 19-year-old self.”

From a practical perspective, I don’t think we consume music in the same way we once did. Listening to Disintegration over and over as I was writing about the album, I recognized that as each song was ending I knew instinctively the next song’s opening notes. I anticipated them, and took comfort in that familiarity. I think that comes from being a product of the last generation to listen to music on LPs and cassette tapes. There was no “shuffle” or downloaded singles. It wasn’t until compact discs that we had a random play option outside of mix tapes (which, of course, are set playlists anyway). And now with digital downloads we live in a singles driven, “album optional” world.

While the way music is consumed affects what is listened to (i.e., our downloadable world lends itself to singles versus whole albums), that doesn’t diminish the importance of the music to today’s youth. I’m sure they are hit just as hard by “their” music today as we were at the same age by “our” music.