All That You Can't Leave Behind | U2

     All That You Can’t Leave Behind  |  U2

     release date:  2000
                            record label:  Island                  

 track

listing: 1) Beautiful Day

          2) Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of

            3) Elevation

            4) Walk On

            5) Kite

            6) In a Little While  

            7) Wild Honey  

            8) Peace on Earth

                                                                      9) When I Look at the World  

                                                                    10) New York

                                                                    11) Grace

“the only baggage you can bring

is all that you can’t leave behind…”

The worst part about growing up is the point when you realize they were right – the people who told you things would get hard, friends would grow apart, and loved ones would leave.  You almost hated them for suggesting such a bleak future while you looked ahead to the prime of your life.  You reasoned these prophets of doom were speaking out of bitterness or resentment; years down the line, they would be forced to eat their words.  Certainly your life would be different.

Time passed, and you eventually found yourself carefully stepping around the broken shards of your rose-colored glasses.  Every deplorable outcome they predicted has become part of your story.  Life got difficult.  Friends disappeared.  Loved ones are now further apart than ever.  Of course, its not their fault – the people who warned us that such a time would come – but still, a piece of you wants to hold them responsible, to pin the blame on someone else.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t stick very well. 

In a story, the most important part is the end.  Everything, from the opening scene onward, moves steadily toward the conclusion.  In that ending, we hope to find an answer for the conflict that the main character has gone through – the guy finally getting the girl, a lost family member reunited, or the forces of evil defeated by an unlikely hero.  But an ending doesn’t have to be “happy” in order for it to be satisfying or memorable.  Who can forget the empty funeral of the title character in The Great Gatsby, the moment Edward Norton turns to his girlfriend and tells her that she met him at a strange time in his life as buildings slowly begin to collapse around them, or when you finally realize that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time?  Without an ending, a story is pointless. 

While we love a good ending in literature or film, few of us have learned to embrace the conclusions that life throws at us.  Its one thing to finish a book; its quite another to live an ending.  But as much as we want to avoid it, we can’t escape that fact that we will all have to face the end of a relationship, a project, or a dream.  In my twenty-six years, I could count on one hand the endings that I have handled in a healthy way.  The past year has been difficult for just that reason.

In June of 2010, I made the decision to step away from a promising career as a high school science teacher.  It was a bittersweet ending – in some regards, I welcomed it, but in others, I grieved the loss.  I left teaching in order to care for my aging grandparents – one an invalid, the other suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.  While I treasure the time we continue to spend together, each day brings with it an ending, as independence and health slowly slip away from the both of them. 

Providing round-the-clock care obviously takes away from the opportunity for social interaction.  During that year, I saw many friendships suffer under the weight of the responsibility I was shouldering.  Single, in my mid-twenties, these should have been the freest years of my life; instead, I spent most of my time, including weekends, at my grandparents’ house.  A handful of close relationships withered to nothing.  At the same time, the small group that I had been leading for almost three years began to disintegrate.  At one time, over twenty of us would meet weekly for Bible study and fellowship.  By the end of my tenure, we were down to five.  On top of all that, I also found myself approaching the end of my time with an intentional Christian community that I had helped form.  I had been living there before moving in with my grandparents, but the time required caring for them made it impossible to continue, in any meaningful way, in the work and the relationships within that community. 

The switch to providing in-home care was a shock to my daily routine.  As a teacher, I rarely saw free time, washed away in a flood of lesson plans and papers to grade.  And then, almost over night, I entered the much slower-paced world of my grandparents.  We ate all three meals together, watched every newscast, and continually napped throughout the day.  As these endings began to incessantly bump up against my life, I found myself with more than enough time to brood over each of them.  This led me to one conclusion:  I was a failure. Obviously some things were out of my control (namely the health of my grandparents), but in regards to my dying friendships, the end of my once-successful Bible study and the conclusion of my time with the Christian community, I placed the blame squarely on my own shoulders.  Needless to say, this was not a healthy response. 

I struggled because I believed that endings, at least in our personal lives, were a bad thing.  Instead of embraced and welcomed, they were something to be avoided and shunned – a sign of failure.  I spent over a year believing that some deficit within me was to blame for the losses I was experiencing.  And then, near the end of August 2011, I got a shock to my system. 

This summer, I started working at a church in Lexington as the Creative Arts Pastor for Student Ministries.  A few months later, near the end of August, the entire staff went on retreat for three days.  During this time, our senior pastor shared with us what God had been teaching him during the course of his summer study break; little did he know he would be speaking right to me.

He began by giving an overview of a book he had recently read, Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud, in which the author makes the case that endings “are not a tragedy to be feared and later regretted, but a necessary stage on the way to growth.”  He explained that endings are an essential component of a healthy life, yet we so often do all we can to avoid them.  If nothing in our lives ever comes to an end – be it a job, a relationship, or a goal – then we are allowing unhealthy baggage to accumulate.  Our bodies expel waste as a way of survival – if this did not occur, toxins would build up in our system and very quickly kill us.  Why should the same not be true in our lives as a whole? 

But let me be clear:  just because life hits a rough patch does not mean its time to go on an “ending spree.”  There is certainly a time to fight for our relationships, dreams and goals.  But its important to remember that there may also come a time in which, for our own spiritual, emotional and physical well being, an end must be embraced.  As our pastor continued to teach, the work God had been doing started to come into focus; the endings He was bringing about were something to be celebrated, not feared.  I realized that the relationships which had been deteriorating were the unhealthiest, ones in which I received little support and acceptance.  The end of the Bible study that I led was not a failure on my part, but an opportunity to use my gifts and talents in a different area of ministry, as well as an opening for a new leader to step in, giving the group fresh vibrancy and life.  And even now, I’m beginning to understand that the desires God has placed within me to be a part of an intentional Christian community are not ending, but rather being pruned to produce more fruit in the future.  This was a totally new way of thinking for me; I needed time to let these thoughts marinate.

A week or so ago, I put on my iPod, clicked down to the next album and went for a walk on a fall afternoon.  It was overcast, with a slight chill in the air, but it seemed as charming as any warm summer evening as Beautiful Day, the first track from U2’s 2000 release All That You Can’t Leave Behind, came roaring through my headphones.  I meandered through a field beside my house, watching butterflies and moths take to flight as my feet shuffled through the tall grass.  As the album continued, I came to a set of trees, one which I was able to climb into; I sat on a branch, ten feet off the ground, listening to the remainder of the album under the protection of its green leaves. 

All That You Can’t Leave Behind is a great album; the first of many U2 discs I would purchase.  Besides Beautiful Day, it contains Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, written for Bono’s friend Michael Hutchence, the former lead singer of INXS who committed suicide in 1997 and Peace on Earth, which pleads for an end to warfare.  One of my favorite songs of all time, Grace, closes the album with some of the sweetest theology you’ll ever hear put to music: “grace, she takes the blame / covers the shame / removes the stain / grace makes beauty out of ugly things.”  But that fall day, as I sat in a tree whose leaves were still green, the song that spoke to my very soul was Walk On, an anthem written in support of democratic Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi.

As the song began, everything I had been learning over the past year seemed to come full circle:  “love, is not the easy thing / the only baggage you can bring / is all that you can’t leave behind.”  As children – perhaps even as young adults – we believe that in this life we’ll never be forced to leave anything behind.  Our lives are a grand adventure, one in which everyone and everything we desire will also be involved.  But that is just not the case.  Some things will, eventually, have to take precedence.  The list of things that we can take with us throughout the entirety of our life is quite short – and only you can decide what makes the cut.  For me, the list tops out at two:  faith and family.  The love of Christ and relationships with those who share my last name are two things that I can’t leave behind.  And one of them, according to Christ, must take precedence over the other. 

Walk On implores its listener to continue living their life, even as they have to leave pieces of it behind.  The songs ends as Bono sings “leave it behind / you’ve got to leave it behind / all that you fashion, all that you make / all that you build, all that you break / all that you measure, all that you steal / all this you can leave behind.”

There are plenty of things in life that I love – my job, close friends and dreams – but I realize that there may come a time when I must leave these behind in order to hold onto the two things that I can’t leave behind.  Endings will continue to rear their ugly head throughout the rest of my life, but instead of something to be feared, perhaps they are to be embraced, for, as my pastor taught me that late summer day, “good cannot begin until bad ends.”  

All-Time Greatest Hits | Lynyrd Skynyrd

   All-Time Greatest Hits  |  Lynyrd Skynyrd

    release date:  2000
(songs recorded between 1972-1977)                                                        record label:  MCA

track
 listing:    1) Tuesday’s Gone*

                2) Sweet Home Alabama

                  3) Gimme Three Steps

                  4) Simple Man

                  5) Saturday Night Special

                  6) Swamp Music

                                                                            7) The Ballad of Curtis Loew  

                                                                            8) Free Bird*

                                                                            9) Call Me the Breeze

                                                                          10) Comin’ Home

                                                                          11) Gimme Back My Bullets

                                                                          12) What’s Your Name?

                                                                          13) You Got That Right

                                                                          14) All I Can Do Is Write About It

                                                                          15) That Smell

                                                                         

                                                                                    * not included on original release

“Tuesday’s gone, with the wind…”

The other night, I was flipping channels, when I stumbled upon Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.  In the ever-waging late night wars, I proudly fly the flag of Jimmy Fallon.  But with more than an hour before he would take the air, I lingered as Leno brought out his first guest, actor Charlie Sheen.  Sheen, as most of you can remember, was fired from his hit prime-time comedy Two and a Half Men for being, well, insane.  The few months that followed are the definition of a public relations nightmare.  Mr. Sheen went through a very high-profile meltdown, which culminated in the posting of several bizarre online videos in which he blasts his former bosses, speaks of drinking tiger’s blood, and “winning.”  For weeks, Charlie Sheen was a train wreck that no one could avoid. 

Eventually, Sheen worked through his problems and has recently landed another acting job on an upcoming sitcom.  That night, Leno began his interview with Sheen by noting the cheers of approval from the crowd and remarking that “Americans will accept anything but hypocrisy.”  Turning to Sheen, he continued, “the one thing you are not is a hypocrite… you always said, ‘I like girls,’ ‘I like to party,’ and I think that’s why people rolled with you through this [turbulent year].”

Thirteen albums into my quest to listen to (and then write about) every album on iPod, I have come face-to-face with my own hypocrisy.  In my original post (which you can find here), I decried a culture that no longer has time to listen to entire albums, instead choosing to purchase only singles from online outlets such as iTunes.  I felt as if I soared above this practice until I came across the next album on my iPod, All-Time Greatest Hits by Southern-rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd.  It forced me to hold up a mirror and see, in myself, the problem that I condemned in others.  But, if there is to be redemption, it must come through confession – so here goes.  All-Time Greatest Hits, in my opinion, didn’t live up to its name.  So I changed it.  Edited it, until it became the record I wanted it to be.  I added songs through purchasing them from iTunes, and removed a track I didn’t like.  Funny how my self-righteous tones diminish when I start preaching to myself.  But more on that later.  

I didn’t grow up a Skynyrd fan.  My little hometown in central Kentucky had two high schools.  I graduated from the city school.  We fancied ourselves a strange mixture of top-40 popular kids, punk rock outcasts, and hip-hop street thugs.  In actuality, we were none of the above, but we thought ourselves mighty tough.  On the other side of town was the county school.  We city folks knew that the kids over there were nothing but rednecks, listening to country music and flying their rebel flags high.  Lynyrd Skynyrd was associated with the county school, so I didn’t have much to do with the classic rock icons.  (It’s funny, or maybe sad, how we draw lines in the sand to separate “them” from “us,” even at such a young age.)

Ironically, in college, I dated one of those “redneck” girls from the county school.  She helped expand my musical taste beyond three chord punk-rock anthems.  Janis Joplin,  Bob Seger, and Skynyrd were always in her CD player.  I didn’t mind Janis, and I warmed up to Seger pretty quickly – but I fought against Skynyrd as long as I could.  I didn’t want to like their music.  First, I objected to them on the grounds that I was raised a Neil Young fan.  His 1970 release, After the Gold Rush, contained a song entitled Southern Man, in which Young decried Southern racism.  Sweet Home Alabama, easily Skynyrd’s most popular song, was written as a counter-attack to Young’s song.  In my justice-driven mind, I equated choosing Skynyrd over Young as tantamount to supporting racism over equality.  Secondly, and I’m not proud to admit this, but I judged Skynyrd based upon their fan base, which I perceived to be party-hungry frat boys and beer-guzzling NASCAR fans – and I wasn’t interested in joining the ranks of either.  Even before I gave Skynyrd’s music a chance, I had decided not to like them.

But then, I listened to them.  I fought it as long as I could, but the music of the Southern-rockers eventually wore me down.  It was too good to dismiss, and too important to judge unfairly.  When I listened to Sweet Home Alabama with impartial ears, I didn’t hear racism, but boys who didn’t want an outsider (like Young, a Canadian) to judge them.  If I’m honest, the same thing happens to me when outsiders turn their nose up at my beloved home state as being “backward,” or full of people who “don’t wear shoes and only eat fried chicken.”  In fact, Young and Ronnie Van Zant, lead singer and principal songwriter for Skynyrd, were actually close friends.  Young wrote a song for Skynyrd, while Van Zant was seen numerous times, most notably on the cover of Skynyrd’s Street Survivors album, wearing a Young t-shirt.  Luckily, the choice between Young and Skynyrd isn’t an “either/or.”  As for the idea that Skynyrd wrote only light-weight, party music – nothing could be further from the truth.  Of course, they have songs like Sweet Home Alabama, Call Me the Breeze, and What’s Your Name which seem to extol the virtues of riotous living, but to assume that the band has nothing of significance to say is nonsense.  Just a cursory listen to Skynyrd’s songs prove otherwise.  In Saturday Night Special, a song which decries violence, Van Zant peaches that guns “ain’t good for nothin’ / but put a man six feet in a hole.”  On That Smell, the band tackles the issue of substance abuse, “the angel of darkness is upon you / stuck a needle in your arm / so take another toke / have a blow for your nose / one more drink, fool, will drown you.”  The Ballad of Curtis Loew finds the band daring to place value in a man whom the rest of society has rejected, “people said you was useless / but them people all were fools” and  Simple Man, one of my favorite songs by Skynyrd, is full of worthwhile knowledge passed from a mother to her growing son, “take your time, don’t live too fast / troubles will come and they will pass / and don’t forget son, there is Someone up above.”  Much to my excitement, I found that my premature judgments of the music of Ronnie Van Zant and company were completely off-base.  Skynyrd was about so much more than just drinking music.

After deciding it was past time that I embraced Lynyrd Skynyrd, I went out looking for an album to add to my collection.  Problem was, I couldn’t find one that included all the songs I wanted.  I had only had three requirements:  the album had to have 1) Simple Man, 2) Tuesday’s Gone (which, on a side note, has to be one of the best songs ever – heartbreak and trains, it don’t get much better than that) and 3) the studio version of Free Bird (I know, everyone likes the live version better – except me).  Problem was, I couldn’t find that combination.  So I took matters into my own hands.  All-Time Greatest Hits included Simple Man, but its version of Free Bird was live and Tuesday’s Gone was nowhere to be found.  Luckily for me, a Skynyrd album that my brother purchased at Goodwill did have the studio version of Free Bird – so, on my iPod, I made the first change to the All-Time Greatest Hits album by removing the live version of Free Bird and replacing it with the studio recording.  My freshmen year of college, Coca-Cola was running a promotion that printed an iTunes code, redeemable for one song, on the bottoms of winning Coke caps.  I drank a Coke a day until I became a winner, rushed home, and promptly spent my winning cap on Tuesday’s Gone, adding it to the All-Time Greatest Hits album on my iPod.  Of course, changing an album so that it contains the songs I want makes me, at least to some degree, a music hypocrite.  But, at least, the album now lived up to its name. 

Great art has the ability to transport its beholder.  So often, a song, a painting, or a sunset has created a story in my mind.  Sometimes I attempt to record them; other times, I just delight in watching them unfold.  A few years ago, I had the idea to create something I would call a M.A.E. – a multisensory artistic experience.  The idea was to utilize music, writing and photography to tell a common story.  For me, Tuesday’s Gone has always been a work art that has transported me into the middle of a story: its opening lines take me to a train track, a broken heart, and a grey fall sky.  Over two years ago, I tried to record the story that Tuesday’s Gone crafts in my mind every time I hear it.  A few weeks ago, I finally had the courage to try my hand at photography.  A finally, after days of putting it together, my first M.A.E., years in the making, has been completed.  I hope it has the ability to transport you to that train track, to that broken heart, and to the grey fall sky as well.  

Access my first M.A.E. here - Tuesday's Gone.  

Again, for the First Time | Bleach

           Again, for the First Time  |  Bleach 

    release date:  2002

                           record label:  Tooth and Nail

     track

      listing:     1) Intro

                      2) Baseline     

                      3) Celebrate

                      4) Broke in the Head

                      5) We are Tomorrow

                      6) Fell Out

                      7) Weak at the Knees

                      8) Found You Out

                      9) Said a Lot

                                                                              10) Almost Too Late 

                                                                              11) Andy’s Doin’ Time

                                                                              12) Knocked Out

                                                                              13) Jenn’s Song

                                                                                                           

“All that I’ve done, I hope that it counts…”

My youngest brother, Joseph, was born on August 29^th, 1989, in Lexington, KY.  Every year, as the summer begins to wind down, my family searches for birthday presents, my mother purchases a cake, makes a big meal, and gathers a slew of family and friends together to celebrate.  And like clockwork, one story gets retold, year in and year out.  The time that I, his oldest brother, ruined his birthday.   

Like everyone else, I have my fair share of character flaws, but one tends to rival all others in intensity:  my lack of foresight.  Making plans has never been my strong suit.  In my excitement, I ignore flaws obvious to most anyone else.  Literally, every trip I go on finds me arriving at the destination without something crucial:  a toothbrush, deodorant, shoes.  On a trip to Florida with my cousin, I forgot to pack underwear. 

In the fall of my sophomore year at the University of Kentucky, I heard about a concert in Nashville.  I was dead set on attending.  Having recently gotten a job, I scrapped together enough money to order a ticket.  As the weeks passed, and the day of the show grew closer, my anticipation hit a fever pitch.  In my single-minded excitement, however, I had failed to recognize two glaring problems.

First, I would be attending the concert alone.  Not usually a problem, except in this case, as the ever-dutiful student within me planned on driving back to school after the show.  I didn’t want to miss classes Friday morning.  Somehow, the seven-hour round trip didn’t faze me.  Second, and most important, the day of the concert also happened to be the day that my little brother was brought into this world.  Learn from my mistakes:  if you plan to miss your fifteen-year-old brother’s birthday party for a concert, you should tell him before the party. 

I arrived at my parent’s house the afternoon of the concert, proud of myself for leaving enough time to at least see my brother on his special day; he was lucky to have such a thoughtful older brother.  After singing “Happy Birthday,” the family sat down for a huge dinner.  Finishing my food quickly, I got up from the table and announced that I had to leave. Every face in the room turned toward me, varying degrees of shock and surprise on each of them.  You’d have thought I had just crowned myself the king of Narnia.  I hadn’t anticipated this.  I started to blush.  Naturally, my brother asked why.

“I’m going to a concert,” I answered matter-of-factly. To say I was unprepared for his reaction would be an understatement.     

“A concert?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied sheepishly. 

“On my birthday?!”

I was almost beginning to feel guilty about it.  Almost. 

“It’s their last show.  Ever.” 

My father raised an eyebrow,  “Who’s playing?”

“Bleach.”

My brother shook his head in disbelief. 

“Bleach?!”

I thought my family had gathered to celebrate my brother’s birthday, but from their appalled stares, I was beginning to wonder if they had assembled to prevent me from attending the show.  I was beginning to feel desperate. “They’re my favorite band… it’s their last show!” I said again, to no one in particular. 

“Where is this concert?” my mother asked.  With my answer, I could see the worry begin to move across her face.  “Is anyone going with you?”

I shook my head.

“Son, you will fall asleep at the wheel and die on the side of the road.”

Mom’s a worrier. 

I reminded everyone, for what seemed like the tenth time, that this was Bleach’s final show.  “I have to be there!” 

My mother proceeded to speak words that shook me to the core.

“Well, then I’m going with you.”

Simultaneously, my brother and I blurted out the same response:  “What?!”

“Its my birthday!”

“MOM!  I’m eighteen!  I think I can drive myself to Nashville!”

Thirty minutes later, I was riding in a minivan.  And I was not alone. If you’re going to skip your little brother’s birthday for a concert, and you don’t tell him ahead of time, at least have the decency not to rob him of his mother as well.   

Every year, on August 29^th, when the story gets retold, those unfamiliar with the tale question me, an air of righteous indignation in their voices.

“You missed your brother’s birthday for a concert?”

Seven years later, it still shocks me that no one will accept my answer. 

“It was their last show!” 

Two years prior to that fall afternoon – almost to the day – Bleach released their fourth studio album:  Again, for the First Time.  The group broke onto the Christian music scene in 1996 with their debut album, Space, but it was their second and third albums, Static in 1998 and Bleach in 1999, that cemented Bleach as a mainstay in the Christian music industry.  Not bad for a band birthed at a little college in eastern Kentucky.  As 1999 came to a close, Bleach’s stock seemed to be rising by the day; critics and fans alike were certain the band was destined for even greater things.  And then, seemingly overnight, Bleach disappeared. 

Fans eagerly awaited a new album and another tour, but years passed with no word from the band.  Behind the scenes, the foundation was crumbling, as members were lost to other pursuits.  By 2000, the band comprised of five friends from Kentucky Christian University had been whittled down to only two:  Davy Baysinger, lead vocalist and principal songwriter, and guitarist Sam Barnhart.  The duo were forced to confront a difficult question:  was this the end of Bleach? 

It took three years for fans to get an answer to that question, but in August of 2002, Bleach burst back onto the scene with a new album, three new members, and a new lease on life.  Brothers Milam and Jared Byers took over lead guitar and percussion duties, while Jerry Morrison and his bass guitar completed the new lineup.  It was nothing short of a rebirth.  Once facing the end of their musical dreams, the members of Bleach remerged with Thoreau’s passion to seize the day, live deliberately and “suck the marrow out of life.”  The new set of songs were loud, rowdy and fun, but at the same time, deeply personal and reflective.  Bleach, at once, had grown up and learned to let loose – the result was something truly magical. 

Again for the First Time, the world’s reintroduction to a reborn Bleach, begins with a track aptly titled Intro.  An instrumental piece, lasting all of eighteen seconds, it provides a perfect complement to the raucous mixture of rock, pop and punk to come.  The band jumps into its new sound with Baseline.  Clearly excited about being back where they belong, Davy sings “bring back / bring back the baseline / I think it’s about that time / I can’t afford to miss / I was made for this.”  The party continues with Celebrate, a love letter which could equally have been written to a significant other, a band, or the God who “makes all things new.”  With the boys backing him, Davy’s joy overflows: “I celebrate the day / that I met you / the impossible is possible / the unthinkable is coming true.” 

But life isn’t all celebrations.  On Again, for the First Time, Bleach gives significant time to exploring the rollercoaster that is human relationships.  Most everyone can identify with the situation chronicled in Broke in the Head, “you haven’t said a single thing / the whole way home / the air is thick with awkward silence / so you turn up the radio,” or the description of heartache in Fell Out:  “what’s wrong with me / I just been layin’ around / wishin’ it’d be like it was before I fell out / now is there any chance, that I can find romance / like we had back then, oh, I want it again.” 

But Bleach is ready to offer something drastically missing from most songs about heartache:  hope.  In Weak at the Knees, Davy describes a dire situation by singing that “this hole is big / and my light is starting to burn out,” but for Bleach, darkness is never the end.  By the conclusion of that same song, the band has found the will to carry on:  “I won’t let go cause something inside me is saying hold on / just for one more night / I can’t explain it, but something is tell me its alright / it’s alright / You found me.”  Likewise, in Said a Lot, frustration with a friend surfaces, “makin’ friends so you can use them / that’s the way you pick and choose them… you said a lot of things this year / half of them untrue.”  But the boys in the band are unwilling to give up, the song ending with the promise “there is hope and I’m not jaded / my passion for this hasn’t faded / there is hope and it’s unchanging.” 

But nothing preaches hope quite like Knocked Out, a song that, at certain times in the past, has literally brought me to tears.  It begins, “how did I get here / all tied up … complacency has gotten the best of me / and the best of me is forgotten / beneath the sea of what I’ve become,” before going into the chorus, “all that I’ve done, I hope that it counts / I’d rather be knocked down / than to be knocked out.”  Who hasn’t, at times in their life, wondered if they were going to be able to get back up?  But hope finds us in the end, as it does with this song, with Davy definitely singing into the darkness, “I will sing at the top of my lungs / I will dance even if I’m the only one / and I hope that we’ll never be apart / and I will sing and I hope it heals my heart.”  That kind of hope changes things.     

Seven years after ruining my brother’s birthday and being chauffeured to Bleach’s last show by my mother, I have come to a realization:  were I put into that situation again, I would make the same decision.  Sure, I’d do things different the second time around –  I warn my family beforehand, and do much more to make my brother feel loved on his birthday, but seeing the closing chapter on a band that has meant so much to me was something that I’ll never forget.  Over a year after that concert, Bleach’s record label would release a double album entitled Audio / Visual, which contained a greatest hits-type retrospective of Bleach’s nine year career, as well as a DVD of their final concert.  A few years back, I remember reading an article about Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York album, the first record released after the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain.  The writer of the article noted that, having attended the historic performance from which the album was recorded, he bought, but then never listened to the album.  For him, the memories of the live performance would be diluted by listening to the recording; the same is true for me in regards to the DVD of the Bleach farewell show.  I never watched it, because I lived it. 

No band has meant as much to me as Bleach.  The music, the honesty of the lyrics, the energy of the live shows, and the attitude of the band members make them unforgettable.  I lost count of how many times I saw Bleach live through high school and college – but what I do have are memories.  The time Davy climbed up the speaker towers and jumped off, into the loving hands of the mosh pit, inside a church in Wilmore.  When I got stuck in traffic on my way to see them at the Ichthus Christian Music Festival and didn’t make the show; when I finally arrived, a close friend presented me with a piece of wood autographed by each band member.  That last show in Nashville, and the fact that my mom was probably right – as soon as the show was over, I crawled into the passenger seat of her van and feel asleep, my mother driving the entire distance back home.  And every time, after each show, when the guys were gracious enough to stop and really talk to us.  There was a time when I saw the band so much that they began to recognize me.  What a shot of self-esteem for a high school student, to have his favorite band actually know him. 

Davy, Sam, Milam, Jared and Jerry – rest assured, all that you’ve done has counted.  Over and over and over again. 

Each time I write a new blog, I poke around the internet, researching it and the band.  I was going through this ritual with Again for the First Time, remembering my favorite band, when, completely by accident, I came across something that made me yell like a school girl: bleachisalive.com.

Apparently, the boys have one more rebirth in them; I couldn’t be more excited!   

After the Gold Rush | Neil Young

            After the Gold Rush  |  Neil Young  

    release date:  1970

     record label:  Reprise Records

track
 listing:     1) Tell Me Why

                 2) After the Gold Rush

                   3) Only Love Can Break Your Heart

                   4) Southern Man

                   5) Till the Morning Comes

                   6) Oh, Lonesome Me

                   7) Don’t Let It Bring You Down

                   8) Birds

                                                                             9) When You Dance, I Can Really Love

                                                                           10) I Believe In You

                                                                           11) Cripple Creek Ferry

                                                                                                           

“I was thinking about what a friend had said,

I was hoping it was a lie…”

When it comes to the second-coming of Christ – the time when the Church is taken to heaven (sweet!) and the rest of the unbelieving earth is torturously destroyed (not near as sweet) – Christians seems to fall into one of two camps.  On one side are believers who seem to base their entire relationship with God on this future event.  They read and reread the book of Revelation, look for signs of the end times in the news, own the entire Left Behind series, and, with hushed voices, even dare to predict the date.  Their obsession with the end of the world is, honestly, quite unsettling. 

But on the other side of that coin are the majority of Christians who rarely give the return of Christ a second thought.  They blissfully go about their lives, daring to fall in love with a life and world that, according to scripture, has already been doomed to pass away.  Their faith ignores the end of the story.  And we all know, with out a good ending, a story isn’t worthwhile. 

For most of my life, I have fallen squarely into the second camp, standing with the vast majority of believers who do their best to avoid thoughts of Armageddon.  In our defense, the book of Revelation is pretty scary.  Four-headed beasts.  Whores riding dragons.  Pits of fire.  War.  Famine.  Pestilence.  Death.  Those images just don’t fill me with the warm fuzzies like “God is love” does.  But no matter how badly I want to avoid it, the end of our story has already been written.  We’re on a bullet train barreling toward the end, with no idea when that last stop will occur.  The question is:  what will we do with our trip?  And how will we face the end?  

My father graduated from Fayette County High School, Fayetteville, Georgia, in the summer of 1973.  As a sophomore, in the fall of 1970, he purchased Neil Young’s third solo LP, After the Gold Rush.  It quickly became one of his favorites.  Fast forward thirty-one years:  now a father of three, my Dad, on a quick run to Wal-Mart, happens across that long-forgotten album in the electronics section.  Fondly remembering it as one of his favorites while in high school, he buys the album, now in CD format, and rushes home to give it to me.  Isn’t it odd how seemingly mundane events in our lives find their way permanently into our memory banks?  This would be an example of that.  For whatever reason, I can remember it like it was yesterday.  I was sitting in a chair in my room, working on homework, when my dad knocked on the door and entered, handing me the CD.  At this point in my life, I only knew Neil Young as part of CSNY – that hippie group Dad made us listen to while on long car rides.  But, I could tell my father was excited about his gift and so, an ever dutiful son, I played along.  As quickly as he entered, he was gone again, leaving me with my unexpected gift.  I set it aside and finished my homework. 

To say that the attacks of September 11^th changed our nation would be an understatement.  Growing up, my mom would tell us about the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  She was in elementary school, blissfully going about her day when the principal interrupted class with an announcement.  At that point in time, he had not learned of the death of the president – only that he had been shot while in Dallas, Texas.  He announced this to the student body, asking each of them to pray.  School was let out early and, upon returning home, the radio told my young mother that the president had succumbed to his injuries and died.  She remembered hearing reports of the manhunt for the killer, and the eventual assassination of the accused, Lee Harvey Oswald, by Dallas businessman Jack Ruby.  My mother was young enough to worry that the authorities would mistakenly arrest her mother, whose first name was Ruby, for the murder of Oswald.  It was a time in history that left a permanent imprint on her – she will always remember where she was on that fateful day.  I had no way of knowing, as I walked to school on the morning of September 11, 2001, that only hours separated me from the day I would never forget – the one I would tell my own children about. 

I was at my locker, during class change between first and second periods, when a friend ran up to me.  “Did you hear about the World Trade Center?”  I looked at him confused.  “There’s been a terrorist attack … it’s really bad.”  This particular friend was very interested in political science – we had actually had conversations about terrorism and Osama Bin Laden before the attacks on the World Trade Center – so I trusted his report.  I rushed through the crowded halls to my second period class.  My biology teacher, Ms. Calvert, was turning on the TV when I came into the room.  As the images flashed across the screen, my heart dropped.  It was much worse we could have ever imagined.  It quickly became apparent that instruction wasn’t going to happen today.  The students in my class were transfixed on the television.  Some were crying.  Others were praying.  All of us were in a state of shock.  We watched, live, as the second plane hit the towers.  To our horror, we realized that what we thought were falling pieces of debris were, in actuality, people jumping to their deaths.  Minutes later, the towers were falling to the ground, and alongside it, our youthful sense of innocence came tumbling down.  A close friend, a Muslim girl from Pakistan, turned to me and asked why this was happening.  I didn’t have an answer. 

In the madness, I remember someone saying that this was a sign of the end of the world.  Christ would be coming back for his Church soon.  Hell, fire, and brimstone would follow for unbelievers.  Armageddon was upon us.  I didn’t tell my Muslim friend this.  It wouldn’t have comforted her.  In fact, it did nothing to comfort me. 

The bell never rang for third period.  Much like the day my mother will never forget, the principal came onto the loud speaker and, addressing the entire student body, asked us to pray for our nation.  School was dismissed early.  I walked home and found my parents watching the coverage on TV.  It was the only topic of discussion in our house that night – it was as if a heavy blanket had fallen upon us, and we couldn’t find our way out.  After supper, I went to my room and closed the door.  I needed some peace.  Some quiet.  Some escape.  Without checking to see what it contained, I turned my CD player on, and lay down on the carpet, staring up at a ceiling covered in band posters.  After the Gold Rush started to play, with Neil Young begging “tell me why.”  What was the answer to that question?  I still had no idea.  Were the students at school correct?  Could this really be the end of the world?  My thoughts consumed me as the album progressed into the title track, After the Gold Rush, when a line stopped me dead in my tracks.  Over somber piano chords, Neil Young admitted, “I was thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.”  My friends had told me this was the beginning of the end.  Like Neil Young, with all my might, I was hoping they were wrong.  

After the Gold Rush was released near the end of a prolific time of recording in Neil Young’s career.  In the span of fifteen months, Young released three records:  his sophomore album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in May, 1969, the CSNY classic Déjà Vu in March of 1970, followed by After the Gold Rush five months later.  Originally conceived as the soundtrack for a movie by the same name, After the Gold Rush was released as a stand alone album after the movie project was abandoned.  All that remains of this unfinished film is its soundtrack, recognized now as a quintessential Young recording.  In 2003, Rollingstone magazine recognized it as the 71^st greatest album of all time – the highest ranking for a Neil Young record on that list. 

In 2011, hindsight allows us to look back at After the Gold Rush and recognize it as a virtual microcosm of Young’s carrier.  It’s an uneven mixture of the folky, Americana-influenced music of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young and the rough and tumble, often highly political, rock and roll Young created in albums with his backing band, Crazy Horse.  The album jumps right into the folk end of Young’s carrier, with Tell Me Why, featuring Young’s characteristic vocals over a few acoustic guitars.  The title track, After the Gold Rush, comes next, with Young on both vocals and piano.  Three tracks into the album, percussion instruments, in the form of drums and bass, finally make their first appearance on Only Love Can Break Your Heart.  But don’t be fooled, the scope of the album, up to this point, has remained squarely on folk.  No blaring guitar solos just yet.  Young finally lets the rock out with one his most popular, and controversial songs, the album’s fourth track:  Southern Man.  The song decries the history of slavery and the then current state of race relations in the south:  “I saw cotton and I saw black / tall white mansions and little shacks / southern man, when will you pay them back?”  Young also calls into question the hypocrisy of racism arising in a historically religious portion of our nation:  “southern man, better keep your head / don’t forget what your good book says.”  The fire in Young’s lyrics is equally matched by his ferocious and impassioned guitar playing.  This is Neil Young’s brand of rock and roll at its finest.  Not everyone, however, shared Young’s feelings.  Many southerners objected to their portrayal in the song, chief among them Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd, who penned their biggest hit, Sweet Home Alabama, in response to Southern Man.  Van Zant specifically addresses Young in the lyrics:  “I hope Neil Young will remember / a southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.” 

Young’s electric guitar disappears with the last notes of Southern Man, and the album again slips back into the Americana mindset, with Till the Morning Comes, Oh, Lonesome Me (featuring Young on harmonica), Don’t Let It Bring You Down and another piano ballad, Birds.  The rock and roll band reemerges on When You Dance I Can Really Love, just to disappear again for the last two tracks on the album:  I Believe In You and Cripple Creek Ferry.  With five of the eleven songs clocking in at under three minutes, the album moves along rather quickly, finishing in just over thirty-five minutes. 

“I don’t want Jesus to come back.”  All heads in the room jerked instinctively toward the sound of the voice, looks of surprise in our eyes and nervous laughs in our mouths.  As middle school students, we weren’t aware of much – but we at least knew you weren’t supposed to say that – especially at church.  Embarrassed, the girl who had interrupted our Sunday school lesson began to backpedal:  “I mean, I want Him to come back, just not yet… at least not until I get married.”  The tension in the room vanished, and a smile crossed our teacher’s face.  The girls in the youth group, who had been dreaming of their weddings for as long as they could remember, politely nodded in agreement.  The boys snickered amongst themselves – marriage, in their minds, meant only one thing.  And, truth be told, we really wanted to be on earth long enough to experience “it.”  Don’t get the wrong idea – its not that we didn’t love Jesus – it just didn’t seem fair that we could be called into eternal bliss without ever having a chance to experience our wedding night.  The girls continued the conversation, “I’d really like to have children,” “I want to raise my family before Christ returns;” the boys, on the other hand, didn’t have much to say. Their thoughts were focused on what they would miss if Christ were to return that afternoon, their eyes gazing despairingly into space. 

The night after the attacks of September 11^th, I didn’t want Christ to return.  Unlike my friend from youth group, I wasn’t brave enough to verbalize those thoughts – but that’s exactly what was going on inside my head.  I wanted to live my life.  I wanted to get married (and yes, have my honeymoon), raise children, and pursue my dreams.  On Sunday morning I would proclaim my love for Christ, during the week I would allow that love to influence my thoughts and actions, but when it came down to it, I just was not excited for the source of that love to come back to earth.  To be honest, part of that fear was based on my teenage understanding of end-times theology, influenced heavily by popular Christian culture, which made the event sound more like a horror movie than a source of hope.  But, to be fair, I’d have to admit that an equal portion of my trepidation was rooted in selfishness.  In my mind, it was only fair for Christ to avoid returning until I was in my 70s - that way I could live my life, but still avoid that pesky death thing.  As I sat and listened to that Neil Young record, I realized that I wanted my future more than I wanted Christ.  Unfortunately, ten years later, many days I still feel the same way.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a story about flowers.  Although they do not work or labor over their appearance, they are the most splendid of God’s creations.  In fact, plants essentially do one thing – grow upward toward the sun.  This growth, however, does not just occur vertically.  Plants, especially seedlings, actually follow the course of the sun as it passes by overhead, centering their whole selves on the source of their life.  When the sun shifts positions in the sky, the plants shift ever so slightly as well.  This phenomenon, known as phototropism in the science world, teaches a most important lesson.  Like flowers, our lives should be focused squarely on our Giver of Life.  Our singular vision should be the Son, His purposes becoming our own. 

After talking about flowers, Christ commands his followers to stop worrying about what they will eat, drink, or wear. Instead, He asks them to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”  Seek me, Christ says, and everything you need will be provided.  In his book of essays, God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis calls this promise the “law of first and second things.”  To Lewis, the first thing in our lives must be Christ.  Everything else – our relationships, friendships, family and jobs – must be second things.  If, in the course of our life, we make secondary things (our lives, our happiness, our futures) into first things, then we will lose both first and second things.  But, if our lives reflect Christ’s command, and first things remain first, we shall gain both first and second things. 

In my favorite Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back¸ the hero, Luke Skywalker, in the course of looking for the great Jedi master Yoda, crashes his spaceship on a swampy planet named Dagoba.  While getting his bearings, Skywalker runs into a little green creature with huge ears.  Prideful, thickheaded and selfish, Skywalker does not realize that this creature is actually the famed Jedi knight he has been looking for.  He eventually realizes his mistake and begins to train under Yoda, but his pride, doubts and fears continue emerge and derail his progress.  Yoda, reaching a point of frustration, tells Skywalker that he must “unlearn what [he] has learned.”  That advice contains much truth for the follower of Christ.  Growing up, we learn to be self-centered, to hate those unlike us, and to live with judgment.  Christ, on the other hand, commands us to seek His kingdom first, to love our enemies, and to bless those who persecute us.  Following Christ in this life requires unlearning what the world teaches, and replacing it with the truth of God. 

In the past year, I have begun unlearning what I was taught about the end of the world.  Instead of a source of fear, the return of Christ should be hope for all Christians.  Watching the nightly news is enough to convince even the most optimistic viewer that our world is broken.  Children murdered by parents.  Bloodthirsty dictators killing their own citizens.  Theft and deception robbing seniors of their life savings.  Thousands dieing each day from drought.  Thousands more suffering from preventable diseases.  Christ commands his followers to be the answer to these problems, but I am convinced, now more than ever, that our world will never be completely cured until “the dwelling of God is with men.”  The writer of Revelation describes this time, saying that “[God] will live with them forever.  They will be His people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making all things new.’”

If this world needs anything, it is a Savior who can make us new.  God forbid that I should choose my desires for happiness, or a future of my own planning, over the only event that can truly bring peace and healing to our world.  Although I do not fully understand what will occur when Christ returns, I pray that I can approach that day, and each day of my life, with the attitude of John the Revelator, who after seeing the entire vision recorded in the book of Revelation, responded by writing “Come, Lord Jesus, come.”