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 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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U2
Wait a minute, what's going on here? Had the members of U2 lost their minds? The band that had worked tirelessly to convince half the free world to trust in the goodness of its intentions suddenly went Vegas show-biz and glitter. In one of the most seismic shifts rock and roll has ever witnessed, U2 abandoned its vulnerable innocence for a posture that placed Bono somewhere between Madonna and Andy Kaufman. He became a self-conscious, Vegas-era Elvis who knew how to “vogue”. Yes, it's a bizarre hybrid, but the image change was even more bizarre.
Apparently, U2 sensed the need to change. I suppose they realized that they’d taken this sincerity thing as far as they possibly could. Once you stand emotionally naked before the crowd, as Bono had done time and time again, there is no place to hide and no mystery to enshroud your intent. If they had continued along the same path, things might have gotten tiresome and predictable. Realizing this, the band set off in the completely opposite direction. Sincerity was replaced with attitude. Clarity of intent was replaced with enigma. Earthiness and humanity were replaced with high-tech gadgetry and mechanized characterization. Warmth and spaciousness were replaced with industrial noise and claustrophobic focus. Instead of street clothes, Bono was now wearing bug shades and a reflective suit. In short, everything was different now. This was a very clever change of pace, particularly for U2. Because of who they were, nobody really believed that they had suddenly become cynically deceptive, so we looked through the cracks to find the truth. The truth was irony; the band was deliberately assuming the posture of cynical deception so that we could see through them and think for ourselves.
By embracing the technical wizardry that was available, U2 made the world an infinitely smaller place; it was so small that it became comical. Combining pre-arranged video shots with as-they-were-happening broadcasts from local satellite television, the stage shows mixed the real and the unreal in a sickening blur that, on another level, was both stimulating and entertaining. The arcane and the stupid were mixed with the hyperreal to the point where everything became meaningless. Words flashed by in rapid succession, phrases appeared and disappeared, and images rolled across the giant stage screens at a mind-numbing speed. The messages were cryptic and occasionally sarcastic: "Death is a career move." "Watch more TV." "Contradiction is balance." "Art is manipulation." "Guilt is not of God." The images flashed by so quickly that it was easy to think that all of this information was meant to be some type of subliminal manipulation. As art, it was manipulative but it wasn't subliminal at all. The images, words and phrases moved by just slow enough to register in our minds. Bono's stage persona was coy and reveled in the fact that he was taking the audience for a ride. Once his attitude announced his intention to manipulate, the message wasn't subliminal anymore. Instead, it became a statement about how easy it is for us to let ourselves be manipulated by the mass media.
Bono revealed the game for what it was when he told the press "I'm learning to lie." Why did he say this? Did he feel that since he couldn't beat the manipulative media, he'd join 'em? Nah, he already had beat 'em. Bono's lie was that he really didn't want us to believe him when he said he was learning to lie. He was glad-handing us, alright, but he was winking at us on the sly, too. By accepting him on his own terms, we saw the kernel of truth that underlined this charade. U2 put on an air of phoniness so they could take Bono's one-dimensional stridency and disguise it. The 'furrowed brow' syndrome that had afflicted U2’s best work gained depth because they buried it. What genius it was to evoke truth through the haze of contrivance!
This was a very clever tactic, but it could also be very confusing. The band knew what it was doing but the audience didn't always get it. A lot of people simply thought Bono had become decadent. The underlying problem with his creation, though, is that he runs the risk of actually becoming decadent. Perhaps he won't be able to escape from this construction of his. When I was a kid I used to mug it up with my friends by acting like an idiot to make them laugh. One really moronic tactic was to screw up my mouth into some grotesque shape and cross my eyes. Although it would get a cheap laugh, my mother would warn me, "You better be careful or one day your face might get stuck like that." At ten years old, that was enough to put the fear of God into me. But I did it anyway, and luckily my face never got stuck.
Watching the new U2 in action, it becomes apparent that junk-food culture has progressed to a junk brain-food culture. U2 knew it and portrayed it brilliantly. The show became one of the most entertaining, humorous, frightening and, most importantly, aware artistic expressions of cultural crisis that I ever expect (or hope) to see. Bono wore his mask well, but oddly enough, the pretension of his character somehow granted him the ability to become even more personally honest than he had previously been. Despite its deceptively (and deliberately) idiotic title, the album "Achtung, Baby" was probably the most serious record that the band ever recorded. Hidden by the mask of pretense, Bono sings some of the most powerfully truthful words he ever wrote about painful separation and the alienation that ensues. That guitarist, the Edge, was experiencing a divorce while the album was being constructed certainly was not irrelevant. In fact, it seems as though Bono donned the Edge’s mask so that it would be easier to embody his experience. "One", "So Cruel" and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" all flaunt indignation while pain oozes out of every corner. "One" in particular contains lyrics that can sting you to the depths of your soul. No matter how you look at it, there is nothing even remotely amusing about this song or its unadulterated lyrics about emotional abuse and dependency.
Bono was like a jester at a masquerade ball. No longer tethered to his own real-life persona, he was free to wreak havoc in any way he saw fit. He sang about how lonely and disaffected he felt, all the time adopting the persona of a vainglorious freak. The act was emotionally wrenching and awkwardly amusing, all at the same time. He was disconcerting but he was fun to watch, too. Probably for the first time in his life, Bono discovered the freedom that artifice offers, and as a result, his hang-ups became liberated. Hidden behind his shades, he was free to say whatever he pleased. I only hope that his face doesn't get stuck that way.
 
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