30 Years, 30 Days: Day 8, 1987

I'm going to be real: 1987 was a rough year to find material from. Aside from the huge hullabaloo of both Madonna and Michael Jackson launching two of the biggest tours the world had ever seen, not a lot really came out that had a huge effect on me. So I have drummed up a couple of choices that, while being huge in my personal shaping, are pretty darn obvious. And here they are.

The Joshua Tree by U2. I feel my friend and fellow picker-of-musical-bones John would probably stop speaking to me if I didn't include this, and it works out, because I would probably stop speaking to me if I didn't include this, too.

I had The Joshua Tree on cassette at about age 11. I proceeded to wear it out and buy another one, which I also wore out. I would then buy it on CD at least three times in my lifetime, losing each copy to lending out or to the void where most things you lost as a teenager end up. If something were to happen to my current copy today, I would most definitely buy another copy tomorrow, despite having not listened to it for some time. Now that's importance.

As for the meat of the record, the why and the wherefore, I have to simply default to what most people have already said about the record. It soared. And so did I. It was also a much easier record to wrap my head around. The songs were much simpler, inspired by roots music rather than trying to recreate their own 70s punk and rock influences. The politics were less heavy. Or maybe they just seemed less heavy because the songs were about a lot of things that rang true to being an America: songs about the landscape, its leaders, hope and dreaming of better things. I will not for a minute claim that I had my finger on the American dream in 1991 when I first heard the record, but all the mythos and history of growing up native born in America definitely put you in the right mindset to relate with the record.

It's also the record where The Edge's guitar playing become less of a trick, dictated by limited musicality, and becomes his Thing with a capital "T". As I've stated before, I still base most of my playing on The Edge in some way. His guitar playing always seemed so powerful and beyond me at a young age. As I grew older, and particularly as I picked apart the elements of The Joshua Tree as a musician, I realized how darn simple it all was. But none of that diminished its power or hold on me, leading me toward the path that simple, done well and done interestingly, was all you really needed.

In a blatant case of repeating an artist two days in a row, I offer up Document by REM, released just one year after Life's Rich Pageant, which I spoke of yesterday. I don't know what it is about this era of REM that affects me more than others. Both these albums are my go-to albums when

I'm in an REM kind of mood. It was a time where their sound was expanding immensely, going beyond the muted jangle-pop of Murmur and Reckoning and starting to sound like, well, an honest to God rock band. All the elements that had been building up in their arsenal (Stipe's lyrics and trademark wail, Mills' excellently executed harmonies, Buck's romp-stomping Rickenbacker riffs, Berry's simple yet powerful beats) seem to really come alive on Document. It's fitting that it's their last release on an independent label: REM had outgrown college radio.

This is not a bad thing, to outgrow a humbler kind of fame. It's what bands get into the business to do. To not get there wold reveal more about their shortcomings then any "stick-to-your-guns", "indier than thou" attitude that permeates punk and the indie rock of the 90s would prove that they were still "down to earth". I love that REM sounds bigger and more confident on this record, and that the hit "The One I Love" was such a success. They were due. And if they weren't due at this point, they probably would have gone the way of a lot of other great bands of the 80s college rock renaissance and simply faded into the woodwork, popping up on iconoclasts' "Overlooked Gems of the 80s" lists and whatnot. They simply did not deserve that. Many other bands have broken huge who don't really deserve it, so rather than bemoan our favorite underground acts for grabbing at the brass ring, we should be thankful that amidst the sea of mediocrity that is the popular music canon, a few managed to sneak in who had something to say and a truly unique way to say it.

So maybe 1987, despite not being chock full of material for me, stands tall because it brings up some important ideas of what makes popular music popular, and how the machine of the music industry churns on, pushing bits and things up to the surface for us to "ooh" and "aah" at. And how every so often, it's deserved. U2 definitely took a departure from their fiery Irish politics and began to take on fiery world politics with The Joshua Tree, and many would turn up their noses and cry sell-out. I don't necessarily judge the sentiment, there are plenty of underground faves for me that I've lost interest in once they started having a massive, faceless audience (Modest Mouse and The Shins, to name a couple). But rather than bitch and whine about my favorite bands being unsung and under-appreciated in their lifetime (I could list about fifty off the top of my head right now), I take comfort that some of them managed to crack through to the next level and delight people all over. Because if music and bands can be a bonding point between people, it helps to have more people to bond with.

-Dan