Get Back Up (2020)
Blue October, the band that heals people...
I can’t only mention the documentary ‘Get Back Up’, about Blue October, when their songs are a journey that has healed people. Consequently, I emphasise introduction over review.
Let’s begin by reading and listening to the words from an earlier performance. It’s okay to kneel beneath the gravitas of ‘Weight of the World’.
‘Weight of the World’
I wake up in the bathroom
And dare not bother asking
why the mirror's cracked and all I see
are shards of glass inside of me.
There's voices there to dare me,
My father's here to scare me
My mother sits beyond the door,
she's curled up crying on the floor,
look at what her son's done…
when the weight of all the world's gone wrong.
[Note that I have linked each album to a song]
Blue October’s 2006 album Foiled made such impact that I invited people over to listen, telling them that they couldn’t speak until the album finished playing. However, one lady cried and said to me, “He's like me”. She was bipolar, and she was right. And then there was silence until the last song, ‘18th Floor Balcony’, had finished.
I gave a copy to my best friend. He said that it was the best thing that I'd done for him and his wife - it made her visit a psychiatrist to deal with her childhood trauma.
‘Retarded Disfigured Clown’
Learning to love life by living through loss and mistakes. Lessons learned then gradually surfacing, Letting go, stripping naked to scream. I am not perfect nor do I strive to be, I am alive in this world of face first falls and public breakdowns. I'm a retarded, disfigured clown. Dying to be heard through the simple art of letting this heavy wall finally fall. I'm an equal being of no race, or color, a hallucination if you will. Sneaking into the lives of strangers, and letting them fall apart to a new rhythm just to feel better.
Thereafter, I had the joyful pain of listening to Blue October’s excellent back catalogue.
Consent to Treatment (2000) and History for Sale(2003) are evidence of my love for music and disgust for the industry which ignores its flesh and blood. After all, there must be a reason, dear readers, why most of you have never heard this band’s name.
I climbed highest with 'Argue With A Tree'. It became my favourite live album (not just of the band, but my all music #1). At the top of this page, I posted a ballad, and if you went back to the start of that video, you will have heard another. Those were from its branches, and this is from the same show, but heavier.
‘Razorblade’
In a way, I failed religion,
I spit the wine from mouth to cup,
and I reached for something more than just your God
Uncle, you spared not your children,
and while your praying hands are up,
there's no forgiveness for you, you sick fuck!'
At the heart of the bands small but passionate followers is the way they have related to the tribulations of its lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld.
In 2012, the band released the ballad ‘Fear’. It included the lyrics “And now fear in itself will use you up and break you down
like you were never enough. Yeah, I used to fall, now I get back up.”
Furstenfeld is speaking of his addictions. All the songs of Blue October have been a journey to Norry Niven’s rockumentary 'Get Back Up', an honesty needed in our world of brutal liars.
Beatroute webzine describes it as “Furstenfeld [acknowledging] the various stages of his mental and physical disintegration and how his actions as a diminished man have negatively impacted those around him. The film’s candid interviews reveal how his understandably shellshocked bandmates were either left feeling like abused spouses or potential junkies themselves. But, as frustrated as they were with the perma-numbed Furstenfeld’s repeated attempts at financial and social suicide, they have remained loyal friends and dedicated co-workers.”