Rekindling the Note, and a Blurb on U2

Most of you don’t know this, but I used to review music. I slated Sitti’s and Agot’s bossa album, praised Charles Mingus’s Black Saint and Harry Connick Jr’s Occasions album. Despite having such history, I’m not interested in preserving the memory here, which means I won’t be posting the reviews on this blog. Why? Because I hated my old writings. They were high-brow, and I used too much musical jargons I ended up infuriating myself. My reviews read like those Pitchforkmedia snobs - they probably have Superman’s power to resist their own chest thumpings - that I realized I’m not informing, but self-validating. Those didn’t help a nick on my blogging carreer, however moot that is. When I’ve began fiction marathons, that’s when I gave my writing proper fine-tunings (and it helped that I read Elements of Style and consider it my Bible ever since). Put it this way, Liz, J or Schumey wouldn’t put me on their blogroll had I sustained my older ways of writing. So, no, I hated reviewing music. A lot of that had to do with the elitisms going on.

But yesterday when I did ramblingvirus’s meme, I realized that I still like to talk about music. Not just that; anybody who’s been on chatrooms with me knows how I light up whenever they bring music up. Give me an album, make me hear it, and you won’t shut me up even if artists threaten me with a code of omerta. I am bold about hating Jolin Tsai, F4, Kenny G, Britney Spears, Akon, Dave Koz, Hale, Gregorian Chants and their likes.

Anyway, with this divine realization, I made up my mind of reviewing music again, but this time I’ll do it with candidness, and cut the name-dropping and technicality. No, scrap "reviewing": this will be more of discussing, like I’m having coffee shop talks with you about music.

I am into jazz, and my goal is to speak of it in ways that will inspire newcomers (not to brag, but I know a lot about jazz. I perused its history and I have more than 200 albums). I will try making that a weekly feature. Choice track will be uploaded too so you can hear it and see if it interests you (and, uh, i.ph team, what’s the storage capacity for audio? Can it be expanded?). Apart from jazz, as I am not someone who only listens to jazz and thinks everything else blows (there are rock fans who are like that, and I don’t respect such group), I will also write about other genres - like rock, hiphop, rnb, soul, funk, pop (whatever that is), folk, blues and maybe even OPM and classical. Speaking of reviews, I have tremendous respect for Francisco Silva, a Portuguese who’s offering a non-insider views on every albums listed on 1001 Album You Must Hear Before You Die, David Thorpe from Your Band Sucks of somethingawful, and The Curmudgeon of The Curmudgeon’s Fortress of Solitude.

I’m doing mental drafts of "getting into jazz based on your background", something I have for years dreamed of writing. I don’t think I need to say this, but I’m preparing heaps for that, and I don’t want to rush such work. Today, in the meantime, let’s talk about one of my all-time favorite rock albums.

The Joshua Tree by U2

I’m growing agitated with what’s happening to a lot of rock songs of late - any genre of music, for that matter. It’s as though the days when music actually talked about something substantive have passed, and nowadays artists are more concerned about bragging. They keep going about sex, sexual frustrations, supermanning dat ho or how badass or G they are. All vacant ego-massagings. I am not in any case a fan of U2 and I am detached from their recent works, but The Joshua Tree is pure love. Oh, sure, it has songs about romances too, but those are mostly done in the  innocuous way. Meanwhile, it has songs against war, songs about complex relationships, songs about loss, songs about death and songs about pessimism on modern day America. If you are keen to listening to each song’s lyrics you will find plenty of words to ruminate on. Take, for instance, "Mothers of the Disappeared":

Midnight, our sons and daughters
Were cut down, taken from us
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat

In the wind we hear their laughter
In the rain we see their tears
We hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat

Night hangs like a prisoner
Stretched over black and blue
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat

In the trees our sons stand naked
Through the walls our daughters cry
See their tears in the rainfall

Being as instantly recognizable as it is, Bono’s vocals is infused with gospel and blues. He yearns, and that suits this record perfectly. With him the songs are dark, gloomy, haunting, hopeful, angry and passionate. He is notable for such wide range of moods, and no matter what the theme, he makes you believe in everything he says.

And I probably never told you this, but this song is my bliss:

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - U2

So you know how this works? Go get it.