Who said anything about crap?

The problem with trading music is that you have to trade. A promise to indulge someone else's taste is of course the only way to get them to take in your own. No news here, I'm a huge U2 fan. I feel like I'm validated in my love of the band by the critical response they get, the huge following they have and of course my own response to their music. It's almost like you could scientifically prove they're a good rock band. Which is another way for me to say my opinion is right and if you don't agree you're clearly in the wrong.

Anyway, I have a brother-in-law, a few years younger than me, who is a huge Creed fan and clearly in the wrong with U2. We go at it every now and then arguing over the stregnths and weaknesses of both bands. In the end we all know Dave's life would be better if he stopped listening to Creed and learned to love U2. I feel justified in my position because you could throw a rock in the air at a music critics conference and have perfect confidence that it would land on someone who has written Creed off as a soulless, monotonous, talentless waste of music recordings. And that's the fun thing about music. He would argue the same thing about U2.

So last week, talking about the upcoming U2 tour, I suggested he could go -- a live U2 show has converted countless -- and he suggested that all thier music was dull and boring. I in turn suggested I could burn him a mix that was anything but. He said he'd take my mix -- and listen to it -- if I promised to do the same with Creed.

So knowing that I want him to give U2 a fair chance, I feel like I have to give Creed a fair chance which I most painfully don't want to do. But I will. Hoping that it will convert him into a believer. And he's of course hoping the same for me. And that leaves me with two abhorent fears: 1.) I'll end up liking Creed and 2.) he'll lord it over me for the rest of my life. I don't want to like Creed. No one wants to like Creed, but they were one of the best selling acts of the new century for a reason. I would like to think its because the average American has terrible taste in music (yes, I'm one of those types of music fans). But I have guilty pleasures too. I like AC/DC, I like Huey Lewis and the News. I even like John (Don't call me Johnny Cougar) Mellencamp. Waht if I develop a similar taste for Creed. I stand against everything they are -- water-down homogenized, generic grunge rock. What could be worse? Nickelback? Yes. But Creed's running a very close second.

Anyway. I'm dreading listening to the CD and feeling hypocritical because I know Dave's feeling the same way. But I'm telling myself it's different with Dave because it's U2 he's going to be listening to. It's scientifically proven that they're a good rock band, right?

There's a lot of reasons I love U2. Here's another. It's from the band's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Monady. Say what you want, but the band has perspective.


“It’s so hard to keep things fresh and not to become a parody of yourself,” Edge told the audience. “If you’ve ever seen that movie ‘Spinal Tap,’ you’ll know how easy it is to parody what we all do. The first time I ever saw it, I didn’t laugh, I wept. I wept because I recognized so many of those scenes.”