The Landscape

So I have this friend.

We graduated high school together. She went on to marry this cat who was a few years ahead of us in school. A guy who, as it turned out, went on to become a phenomenal photographer.

I followed my friend through Facebook (like how 'ya do) as she and her photographer husband moved to New York City and started down their own road of artistic endeavor. Eventually, life led them both back here to Colorado where they set up a gallery in Denver to display & sell his astounding landscape pictures.

These two were on my mind today after a rehearsal when the subject of a blog post detailing the changing nature of the music industry came up. There was a lot of frustrated venting and analysis of just why it is that people in our culture think it perfectly acceptable to illegally download music, listen to it via a streaming service that pays the artists next-to-nothing, or just allow the standard for artistic excellence to be lowered to the insufferable degree that it has been over the past 15 or so years.

Anyway, the proprietors of the Balyeat Gallery in Denver came into the conversation because we had taken the opportunity to visit the gallery a few months ago and had been blown away by what we had seen. Now, I've taken a handful of pretty cool Instagram pictures in my time, so believe me when I tell you that the art that this guy creates is absolutely mesmerizing. Everything from the colors to the contrast to the locations to how the pictures get prepared to be displayed on the wall - something technical that I don't quite remember that basically allows for each picture to play with the light that's shone on it and "change"... astounding, to say the least - everything is top-notch. No corners have been cut. No tricks are being played. No hackery is being employed here. Just a pure love of taking photos of nature and a desire to do it for the rest of his life.

Buy This Album - 'The Joshua Tree' by U2

Let me begin by saying that I'm not sure I can say enough about this album as it pertains to my musical life. Oh, I know, U2 has been the band du jour for just about every rock musician alive for the last 15 years and whole bands & an entire genre of Christian worship music seem to exist both because of & in order to rip off this record. But, for me, it was one of two albums that served to form my dreams and start me down the path toward a life in pursuit of all that music has to offer.

And, seeing as how The Joshua Tree is, by most accounts, one of the greatest rock albums of all time, I needn't spend too much time trying to convince to you to purchase it (if you haven't already). However, I could offer up a little sentimentality to try and distract you for a few minutes and perhaps give you a tiny peek behind the curtain of my musical identity.

It wasn't just the music with this one. I mean, it was, but it was something more than that. The intangibles of what make U2 who and what they are are part of what hooked me so hard. I mean, as I mentioned before, there are some very, very popular mainstream acts selling lots of records these days who wouldn't be anything if they didn't have U2 around to mimic. But there's something to U2 and to The Joshua Tree that these other, newer bands didn't quite get. Namely, that both the record and the band were more than the sum of their parts, more than the notes on the notated music sheets, and more than the particular chords and grooves they were playing. There was an identity there that went far deeper than the way the music appears on paper.

There was the joyful expectation of Where The Streets Have No Name immediately followed by the restless wonder of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. There was the heartbroken passion of With Or Without You immediately followed by the rage of Bullet The Blue Sky. There was the depth of empathy in Running To Stand Still and Mothers of the Disappeared. And, for whatever reason, all this (and more) is what I needed to find in order to fall deeply and madly in love with the idea of being a musician.