U2: Overrated?

I remember individual songs better than album names. But your point stands. I just wasn't THAT into music, though I certainly enjoyed both kinds.

 

They are one of those bands where each record is so different, I can't imagine many people like everything they've done. Their new stuff is basically disco. It's like how it's impossible for anyone to love all of Neil Young's work. If you like Harvest, then you probably don't care much for Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks or Trans, and nobody on Earth likes Landing on Water.

 

My wife is like this with music, movies and TV shows. It'll get to a poignant or transcendent moment in the song or film and she'll start talking about something pedestrian, completely oblivious to what you're supposed to be feeling or thinking about at that exact second. And she's that way with all music and all movies and all TV shows. It's not a taste thing. They just have no emotional pull for her.

I love her level head and often sardonic take on things. It keeps my sometimes manic personality in check. But dammit it sucks when you get to one of those moments in a song you've been waiting for for five minutes and it's interrupted by her wondering if we paid the water bill that month.

I've learned to laugh about it, but when I first met her I was baffled. Her entire family is that way. Completely unsentimental about all art.

Works in the courtroom and with shit for brains clients in her practice. At a concert or in a theater, it's frustrating for me, at least. She just laughs at my sentimentality.

I love 2001. I love, love, love 2001. I watch it once a year. I make an extravaganza out of it. I turn out the lights and set up my food and my liquor and I watch the greatest film ever made.

She decides last year to watch it with me. Silent for most of the movie. Speaks during the monkeys to tell me the suits weren't convincing AS THE BONE TURNS INTO A SPACECRAFT SIGNIFYING MAN'S GREAT LEAP FORWARD.

Then is silent until the end.

The Star Child emerges, Also sprach Zarathustra blares.

"That was really stupid."

I wanted to fight her.

 

Your wife and I would get along well, I think.

Though I admit I was moved to tears when Danny Noonan's putt finally dropped.

 

Love the 2001 story, Hermes.

I remember the first time I showed it on VHS to my then-girlfriend, now wife. She was vaguely aware of the movie but hadn't seen it, so I warned her about the heavy symbolism.

We watched part one, with the man apes learning about tools with help from the monolith. The bone is thrown into the air and becomes a spacecraft.

"What the hell are we watching?" she asked me.

I told her if you didn't understand this part, forget about the rest of the film.

She got her revenge by making me watch "Pretty in Pink."

 

More mainstream but some very solid music:

Can’t Buy a Thrill-Countdown to Ecstasy-Pretzel Logic
On the Border-One of These Nights-Hotel California

Thrill and Ecstasy took pop rock to a place it hadn’t seen. IMO of course.
On The Border is my favourite Eagles production and criminally underrated.

 

Country AND western?

 

I knew there was a reason I like you!

 

Will throw the Police discography up in there. Great five album run from 1978 to 1983.

 

I don't know. I was a HUGE Police fan back in the day. My first concert was the Police with Oingo Boingo on the Ghost in the Machine tour.

To me, a lot of it just doesn't hold up well at all. I think it's the white British dude singing in a fake Jamaican patois that kills it for me. I mean, I really loved "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic." Now I hear "ev'ry ting she do jus' turn me on" and I find myself clenching my jaw.

 

Saw U2 at RFK Stadium 20 years ago. Still one of my favorite concerts.

I don't listen to them all that often now, but I'm still a casual fan. Their die hard fans are obnoxious.