Achtung Baby

     One great thing about the relationship between me and my wife is that we are musically compatible. Not that we agree on everything (Enrique Iglesias), but we do share similar taste. We also enjoy going to concerts together, such as, McCartney, Duran Duran, Foo Fighters, U2 and Rush. It takes a special kind of wife to go to a Rush concert and actually like it. She has drawn the line on one thing, however. Now, she will only go to concerts where you buy seats - no standing. A few years ago we went to the House of Blues to see Cheap Trick and Squeeze. We bought main floor general admission tickets and had to stand. The standing wasn't necessarily the problem, but she couldn't see over people and they keep bumping into her. We made it through Cheap Trick, but left half way into Squeeze because she couldn't take it anymore. I'm not a huge fan of standing, but most bands I want to see play at the Beachland or Grog Shop. Therefore, I stand.
     Some couples don't find out that they are musically incompatible until it's too late. That was not the case with us. Before we started dating she invited me to a party at her apartment. While everyone else was talking and drinking, I was looking at the shelf with her CD's and DVD's. The first thing that caught my eye was the complete series of The Young Ones. I was, and still am, a Britcom dork and I love the Young Ones. So, I knew we had similar senses of humor. Then I noticed something interesting about her CD collection. She had the other halves of my collections. What I mean by that is I had all the 80's U2 and she had all the 90's U2(hence the title of my post - I'm not going to break down the album, sorry). I had the first two Better Than Ezra cd's and she had the next three. Oddly though, we had the exact same Oasis cd's. This can be explained by the fact she is nine years younger than me, but it was still kind of serendipitous. So, we had a Dr. Evil / Mini Me "you complete me" thing going on musically.
     Anyhow, neither of us had seen U2 before so we decided to splurge and see them at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. This was their most recent tour that was postponed part way through when Bono messed up his back. Originally, the opening act was Interpol which I was excited about. When the show was rescheduled it was changed to Florence and the Machine who were better than I thought they'd be, but not Interpol. U2 were amazing and it was a great experience.
     As long as I'm on the subject of U2, I do have some confessions. To me, they parallel R.E.M.
They were the biggest bands in the world in the 90's and seemed to have a friendly rivalry with each other. However, I'm that guy that likes the "old" stuff and didn't like them changing. I hated Zoo TV, The Fly, McPhisto and all that crap. U2 really lost me for awhile. My perspective on that has changed as I've gotten older and I enjoy my wife's 90's U2 cd's as much as my 80's U2 cd's now.
     We've also seen Better Than Ezra twice and enjoyed them. The last time we saw them they talked about being Rush fans and played a little Rush medley, which was awesome. Friction, Baby is one of my all-time favorite albums and I hope some day they play it live in it's entirety. We never saw Oasis and I guess we probably never will, unless the Gallagher's stop being wankers and get the band back together. I would love to see them play "Supersonic" live. Keep hope alive. Peace.