#atozchallenge #wis H is for Heartland x2

1986: I've been picking up my monthly copy of the glossy teen magazine Star Hits (aka Smash Hits in the UK, and later in the US) just before the start of my shift at the YMCA.  Thanks to its UK ties and its focus on music, they featured quite a few British bands that I'd otherwise never hear or know about. I've also been looking at a few other music magazines, and stumbled upon a one-man band named The The, led by Matt Johnson. He's also made a mini-movie of his new album released that October called Infected. The movie is shown a number of times on USA Network's Night Flight show, where I end up taping it and watching it multiple times. The album itself is an angry missive about the state of Thatcher's Britain (aka, "The 51st State of the USA" per the lyrics), and holds back absolutely no punches.  This particular song is Matt looking Maggie straight in the eye and saying "This is what you've done to our country...I hope you're fucking happy."

Even though I'm starting to hang out with that new group of friends who like this sort of stuff, at this point I'm testing the waters with my older friends, talking about my latest music obsessions. My three big tapes of 1986 are Sigue Sigue Sputnik's Flaunt It, Fuzzbox's We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It!! and The The's Infected.

I let my friend Scott borrow the Infected tape (he'd heard of the band from one of his older siblings), but hands it back the next day, shrugging: "It's okay, but who wants to hear about a piss-stinking shopping center?"

Probably the funniest dismissal of my musical tastes I'd ever gotten in high school, really. :)

1988: U2 released the transitional Rattle and Hum that October, alongside the documentary of the same name. Released to mixed reviews by not just fans but the band themselves (it's often viewed as somewhat of a bloated, navelgazing movie), it holds up surprisingly well after all these years. Sure, they were ubiquitous and thought they were hot shit by that point--and they were, let's face it--but looking past all that, it does a stellar job of showing the band on the road and showing just how hard they were working at the time.

It's somewhat of an unwieldy album of live favorites, demos, and songs written on the road, and listening to it in one sitting is not unlike sitting through the Beatles' White Album--not necessarily a bad thing if you're a huge fan, but it's not for the casual listener). The strongest songs on there are the Americana-themed tracks, such as "Desire", "All I Want Is You", "God Part 2" and "Heartland". They're almost a logical extension of 1987's The Joshua Tree. They capture an America slowly making its way out of the 80s, still holding onto its roots yet wishing to escape their stifling grip at the same time. Pretty much exactly how I felt at the time.

This came out during my senior year in high school, and I'd originally copied it from Chris' cassette version (I bought my own via Columbia House a short time later), and the two of us went to see the film at Hampshire Mall when it came out. We knew there were a few live songs in the movie that weren't on the album, so we'd smuggled in a tape recorder to record those few tracks to make a complete collection. In a nice tie-in with yesterday's post, on that tape you could hear me quietly singing "I read the news today, oh boy..." when they kick into "Sunday Bloody Sunday", and Chris laughing and shushing me.

It also reminds me of that stint I had at the radio station in Orange. They'd gotten in these prerecorded PSAs from a Mormon priest who was actually kind of hip--he'd use recent pop songs as a music bed for his thirty-second messages. They were much like the LDS commercials you'd see on TV at that time, not so much about joining the church as just quick segments about how to be a better person towards yourself and others. They were our favorite PSAs to play during our shifts, just to hear the songs. They used "Love Rescue Me" from this album for one of them.