I’ve posted before about music and my playing of it, listening to it and my concert going years. No need to rehash that I suppose.

I still have a vivid memory of the day I went down to the Topanga Plaza shopping mall (which isn’t called that anymore) in the San Fernando Valley and bought my own vinyl copy of Rush’s Moving Pictures album. I’d been introduced to the band by my pal, Keith and I became a huge fan.

I remember, some 4 years later, going down on a weekday, with Keith, in 1985 to get tickets to see them play at the L.A. Forum. Those were the days when you showed up at the venue to buy tickets . You were given a wristband that signaled what place you had in line and then you got to go get your tickets. That was the Grace Under Pressure tour and I am hard pressed to believe that it was 24 years ago.

So, here I am recently just listening again to Grace Under Pressure when I had what recovering alcoholics call, “a moment of clarity.”

I’ve listened to every album the band has made and that’s a lot of albums going back to their first in 1973 and finishing recently with 2008’s Snakes and Arrows. The band’s music is so impressive and on such a grand scale much of the time and yet, recently, as I get older, I’ve found I don’t enjoy the music as much.

I chalked this up to my growing older, different interests, moving on, whatever. But then I put Grace Under Pressure on and all the old feelings were there again. I was moved by the music again and felt that same connection with it that I felt when I was a teenager and all the way through my 20’s.

That’s when it occurred to me that I was basically trying to like the newer albums. I’ll admit, there is some wonderful music in the most recent recordings and I think some really delightfully creative moments. However, that music doesn’t speak to me much and it never really did.

I got into Rush in 1981 when I was 15 and 16 years old. When I saw them for the first time in 1985, I was about to turn 20. I’ve seen them 10 times since and all of the concerts have been wonderful.

But, the fact remains, that music identified who I was when I was a youth. My mid-teenage years through my 20’s were a difficult and trying time for me as they are for most adolescents. My parents divorce, my move across the country and then back again, my contracting mononucleosis and because of it, my inability to attend the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where I intended to go after high school, the decline of my application to Cal State Sacramento–all of those negatives fueled a lot of issues through which I fought to maintain perspective.

And, in the end, I did indeed maintain perspective. I came out of it just fine, thank you. But the time is marked by realizing my own strength, my own ability to overcome failure, not to accept it and the soundtrack of that time belongs to three albums: Moving Pictures, Signals and Grace Under Pressure, all of which signify moments that really coincided with who I was.

Now, as I listen to the music in all its rich texture, its youthful fervency and its complex structure, I find myself remembering how I got from there to here–not wallowing in how I felt then, but rather taking joy in the fact that things change and I still get to make choices.

As my friend Edd says, even if the later albums haven’t really thrilled me, they are still good in their own way–and the band has earned deserved praise and they’ve also earned the right to play what they want. That’s beyond question. But, in a way, acknowledging these things is also a way for me to realize that their music, so freeing then, so much a part of who I was, isn’t so for me anymore.

So, I got out the CD’s today and put Grace Under Pressure, Signals and Moving Pictures into the car. I have the others, to be sure. And once in a while, I’ll listen. For now, though, it is a question of reliving the joy of that freedom and the memory that music can indeed change you, so much that it drives you to find your own new expression and your own balance.

For me, that’s worthy of real thanks.