U2, Brute?

On September 14 my wife and I will join the people pouring into New Orleans’ Superdome to see U2 play its thirtieth anniversary Joshua Tree concert tour. Like us, many of these people will be graying, balding, or both; and probably still wearing their office clothes (it’s on a Thursday). Like us, they will have come of age in the middle- and late-eighties when, in our millions, we devoured U2’s soaring, politically urgent protest rock, thrilled to let Bono shape our nascent senses of right and wrong with songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Also like us, many of them are likely to be shepherding a child along with them, proud and excited not only to be seeing the music icons of their teenage years play again, but also to be introducing their very own teenager into the live music-lovers club. 

This will be fourteen-year-old Mathilde’s first stadium concert; and given the pull-out-all-stops sensory onslaught that Generation X’s favorite Irish rockers are known for, we think it’ll be a good introduction. Mathilde adores music, and while she has spent her brief life thus far being subjected to her parents’ musical whims, recently she has done what well-adjusted fourteen-year-olds are supposed to do, which is to get into music that her parents don’t really care for. “A grown man shouting over the roar of machinery” is how my mother memorably described music by the bands I was into as a teenager. And while I think that Mathilde’s taste is better than mine was at her age—she’s more indie pop than industrial—it would be a lie to say that her music cranks my tractor. The feeling, I suspect, is mutual. Since getting a hold of our U2 tickets, her mother and I have taken it upon ourselves to educate our first-born in the finer points of the U2 oeuvre (War, The Joshua Tree, Rattle & Hum). Being an agreeable person, she smiles and nods tentatively, with much the same look on her face as I probably wore thirty years ago when, after a few drinks, my Dad would wear out his Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five records, bobbing his head, snapping his fingers, and exclaiming, “Just listen to that!” Dad was keen on his jazz, and although I knew the music was good, even the most face-melting clarinet solo is hard to get excited about when you’re seventeen and watching your normally reserved father poised on the brink of a full-blown jazz trance. If I made a show of appreciation for a track or two I could usually slip out of the room and back to my new cassette of The Joshua Tree, leaving Dad to his air clarinet. There’s nothing new in the world. Kids aren’t supposed to like their parents’ music. Parents aren’t supposed to like their kids’. If they did, no one would ever leave home, start a band, and invent something new. This is how we evolve. 

But in a giant leap for familial relations—if not for musical evolution—the diabolically clever concert promoters behind U2’s tour have made what must be the most brilliant booking decision in the history of rock. The support act for U2 is none other than Beck: the multi-instrument-playing, Grammy-winning, folk/funk/soul/hip-hop/alt rock-fusing, universally acclaimed singer-songwriter beloved by music geeks of every taste, subculture, hairstyle; and crucially, generation. Mathilde likes Beck as much as we do, so everybody wins! She gets to start her concertgoing experience seeing a musician she adores; we get to see a band that makes us feel like teenagers again; the concert promoters get to sell three tickets instead of just two. And we, who after all are paying, get to take credit for introducing our child to the unforgettable thrill of her first really big live music experience. Even if everyone around her has gray hair and is lost in Generation X’s version of my father’s jazz trance, that’s an experience she’ll never forget. 

We’re really proud of the stories in this annual Performing Arts issue. Don’t miss Alexandra Kennon’s story on the origins of the drum kit, John Wirt’s profile of Bentonia blues icon Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, or Maggie Heyn Richardson’s preview of the River Center Theater redesign. For lovers of live performance, there’s a lot to look forward to in the season to come. See you in the stalls.