U2: Elevation 2001 - Live From Boston

You probably remember your first-ever live concert. You felt the thrill of being a part of the crowd and the excitement of seeing the artist take the stage. Perhaps you found a greater appreciation for a certain member of the band and realized that in a live setting, songs you’d heard only in their recorded versions came alive in a new way. You may remember feeling the high, jumping up and down with excitement, and then just basking in the afterglow as the last song ended and you came back down to reality.

Hopefully you had an experience like that the first time you saw U2. That’s the way it was for me. It was when I watched U2. Live in Boston. The Elevation Tour DVD.

Ok, ok, hear me out. Let me give you some context. I grew up mostly in a little town in northeastern Montana during the early days of the internet era. I happened upon U2 through a series of random events that could only be orchestrated by Fate, and obtained The Joshua Tree CD when I was 11. I started to collect the band’s albums whenever and however I could. Again, it was long before iPods. Also, my only job was mowing my grandpa’s lawn.

I was 15 when All That You Can’t Leave Behind came out and it was the first album release I experienced in real time. I remember waiting SO LONG for music videos to load on U2.com over our dial-up modem. All I really knew about the band at this point was picked up by poring over liner notes and listening to their music incessantly on my Discman. Now they were the big thing of the moment, “Beautiful Day” was a hit, and they were all over TV. They were even going on tour! I was several days of driving away from anywhere they were headed and I didn’t even consider attending a show a possibility. Not happening.

Fast forward to early 2002. Always a music nerd, I was on a band trip in Billings, MT, and so we stopped at a mall for a few hours of shopping. This was like a visit to a pop culture oasis, and I was thirsty. I hightailed it to Sam Goody to look for music. As always, I went straight to the “U” section, and that’s when I saw it: the special edition DVD box set for The Elevation Tour: Live In Boston. Like a movie of U2? Where they’re recorded playing live? A whole concert? I paid the $32.99 without a thought – not a little sum to me in those days.

When I got home a day or two later, at the first chance I got I rushed down to our basement and put in the disc with the concert. I was tingling with anticipation and all alone with a front row ticket. From the first moments I was in a trance. I remember the slow-motion walk as the band enters the arena to the intro of “Elevation” with the house lights up. They start playing until, BOOM, the lights go out and they hit it hard. “Elevation” wasn’t my favorite song on ATYCLB but at this point I was all alone, in my basement, lights off, watching this amazing moment and FREAKING OUT.

One thing I learned while watching the show was that The Edge is the engine that keeps this band running. His guitar solos in “Until The End Of The World” and “Bullet The Blue Sky.” His angry guitar-slamming at the end of “Gone.” His beautiful smooth crooning on “In A Little While” – be still my heart. I could never have fully realized how much work The Edge does for the band until I saw him live. He became my hero.

There were many classic U2 moments that were completely new to me and I experienced for the first time: the bullfight between Bono & The Edge in “UTEOTW”; Larry’s snare drumming in “Sunday Bloody Sunday”; the crowd singing the end of “40”; the unforgettable climax of “Streets”; Bono singing intimately to the entire arena through one girl brought up on stage in “With or Without You”; and on and on.

I had underestimated or previously failed to notice many of the songs they played, and seeing them performed in this context brought fresh perspective. “UTEOTW,” “Gone,” “I Will Follow,” “Stay,” and “The Fly” were all in that category. I went back to the records and heard these songs with new ears. And the combination of “Bad” in to “Where the Streets Have No Name” at the show’s zenith is almost indescribable. These were already some of my favorite U2 songs, but before this I hadn’t realized their full potential: two of the band’s most soaring anthems coming together in a blissful explosion. I know some say “City of Blinding Lights” is the new “Streets,” but there is nothing that compares for me.

I also knew ATYCLB really well, so “Beautiful Day,” “Kite,” and “New York” felt exciting. But it was “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” and “In A Little While” that had me, at first, up out of my chair with excitement, and, at their conclusion, each leaving me in a puddle on the floor. And “Walk On” was a perfect closer. I was almost in tears as Bono sang out his declarations of gratitude. As the last notes approached and the credits started to roll, I just sat there dumbfounded, paralyzed, basking in the experience.

I know I wasn’t at a live concert, but there are few moments in my U2 fandom as visceral and exciting as watching this amazing concert film. It transformed my understanding of the band. As a student of the visual medium, the story told through the editing was energetic and put me in all the right places of the arena at all the right times. In addition to the music, I also loved hearing Bono tell stories and seeing how the four band members interacted with each other in a hundred small moments. I felt like I really got to know them and was blown away by how they connected with the audience.

Since then, I have seen the band six times live. The first time was the 360° tour in Chicago. Even though I was way up in the cheap seats, it was a thrill with many impactful moments. Still, I can remember Live in Boston more than I remember moments from that tour. The next time I saw them on the GA floor at Innocence and Experience, just a few feet from the front bar, was when I finally had the truly rapturous live, in-person experience. The Joshua Tree 2017 and Experience and Innocence tours both provided some amazing memories as well. But I will always remember fondly the Sunday afternoon that this nerdy, small-town teenager really got a taste of seeing U2 live. I’m excited for all of those who will get to see U2 live in some really amazing places starting next month on the Joshua Tree tour 2019.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Poster by Ignacio RC

Inside Llewyn Davis tells the story of a down-on-his-luck, ne'er-do-well folk musician, Llewyn Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1961. Quickly you get to know his routine: play music, scrounge to make a living, sleep on friend's couches, and all with a bad attitude. But maybe this isn't how he always was. He was part of a duo, and you get the feeling Llewyn Davis was the less-personable half of the act. His partner's gone, from the band and from this world. Llewyn is still in mourning. Late in the film a music promoter tells him he's no good as a frontman or a solo act, "My advice: get back together." "That's great advice," Llewyn answers.

This film is not one of redemption or hope, though those things are there. It's a story of struggling and survival. But just surviving is not what Llewyn Davis is interested in. When stopping by his sister's place - in her decidedly non-Bohemian little suburb home, she suggests he quit music, which he seems to be failing at, and go back to being a sailor, like their father. "And what, just exist?" he asks. And so he tells us, music is what gives life its flavor, like the starving poet who doesn't take a real job so that he can experience suffering, thereby enriching his poetry, but always hoping for a hit to make it big.

And music is where the flavor of Inside Llewyn Davis lies. It's what keeps you watching and hoping for a main character that is kind of a jerk to everyone around him and knows it. The songs here, performed by Isaac, Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons (singing the part of the deceased partner, Mike), Justin Timberlake, and a host of others, all overseen by the legendary T Bone Burnett, are, of course, the heart of the movie. The famous Gaslight Cafe figures prominently, with its smoking patrons listening to everything from young buskers with guitars to grandmothers from Oklahoma with their autoharps. And when Llewyn Davis is playing songs, that's when you see his heart right out there. Great music can make life bearable where otherwise it seems impossible to endure.

And that partly explains Llewyn's bad mood: his music is who he is, and it is rejected, at least at the level of being able to provide for himself. The world doesn't seem to have a place for him in music besides a loaned couch for a couple of days. He and his partner had a record which didn't sell. Llewyn has his own solo record, which hasn't sold. He meets another hopeful young folk singer, Al Cody (played by Adam Driver) at a recording session. While crashing on Cody's couch, Llewyn goes to stuff his unbought records under the end table, only to find a similar box with dozens of copies of Cody's own unsold solo album. He sees his future and his past. Llewyn writes it off as "careerist" when a pair of friends, another musician (Justin Timberlake) and his wife (Carey Mulligan) aspire to use music to settle down with a home and a family. Llewyn Davis, you see, is a pure artist. All the way down to living in the gutter.

And that brings us to his personal life and the damage he's caused. He's got a regular relationship with a doctor that will perform abortions, including one for his friend's girl. He may have a kid in Akron, Ohio, and his relationship with his dad is... strained. Llewyn doesn't really connect with others accept through his music, and even when he considers giving that up, he can't find a way out.

And then there's the cat(s). The cat is like a cipher for the film. Is it his lost partner? Himself, always wanting to get out, even from a comfortable situation? Lost, mistaken, and left for dead? Does he have 9 lives? Is it a living burden that he can't just seem to let go of? His eventual redemption? There is a long It could stand for a lot of things but may not stand for any of them.

Currently available on Amazon Prime. Rated R for language. Watched on VidAngel to edit language.

This Is Not A Film

Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director, is a guy who can't stop making films. He's been finding ways to create them while under house arrest in Iran after his last film was not approved since around 2010. And so he finds a way to make it happen, to reflect on film and what it means to him. This Is Not A Film (2011) follows him through a day in his home discussing his appeal case and hanging out with another filmmaker, reflecting on the situation he's in. It was filmed entirely in his home and, the legend has it, smuggled out in a cake before eventually being submitted to the Cannes Film Festival.

I'll be honest, I haven't seen any of his pre-ban films, though I have them on my criterion channel watchlist. The story behind his recent films is just so compelling that they are what drew me in. Taxi (2015) was the first I saw and it follows him driving a taxi around Tehran in a period when he's allowed out of his house but still banned from officially making movies or leaving a country. This is what man trying to be honest can do from within his own home. I think this one actually makes a great double feature with Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, as they both are very meditative reflections of art through the story of one man's simple day-to-day experience.

There's something so beautiful that slowly builds here, as we observe Panahi and how he speaks about life through the language of film. Early on he decides to try and describe last film he couldn't make as he would've made it. After painting the opening scene he stops, coming to the realization that "You have to make the film first, to be able to describe it." The film is not the plan of the film but the end result of the alchemy, struggle. and spontaneity that comes out of the process. He turns to scenes from previous films he's made to describe examples, and we watch these, though only as captured by the camera filming his TV screen, and they becomes reveries or like dream sequences within this film.

Visually, at first you just notice the lack of any real cinematography. He has a handheld camera and an iphone. After we as the audience become accustomed to this as a baseline, we realize he is able to capture some beautifully spontaneous angles and moments. These may not be objectively cinematic, but they become so through the context, both of what we are given in the film and through the situation Panahi is in and what we can sense of his feelings.

It makes strong and subversive statements, while balancing both acceptance and frustration at the same time. He doesn't comment directly on the government at any point - that would be bound to get him in more trouble - but he lets it speak for itself. It is New Year's night and the city is alive with light and sound for Fireworks Wednesday, a cultural tradition we learn is condemned by leadership as unreligious from the newscasts we pick up on the TV. Panahi surfs the internet to find some basic information and every page is either highly censored or completely blocked. Daily life of comings and goings is relatable as it is for most humans -- he feeds his pet, he makes tea, friends and neighbors come and ask for this or that -- but there are these cracks that help to outline the greater freedoms that exist in many other places throughout the world.