33. Chessa Subbiondo | The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) - Songs of Surrender

40 Songs re-recorded by us. Re-imagined by you. #U2SOS40

Songs Of Surrender. Out Now: http://u2.lnk.to/SOS

Chessa Subbiondo is a photographer and film maker based out of Los Angeles, California. She has been capturing surrealism in American culture for the past four years and has cultivated an understanding of these images with the youth, mainly through her social media presence. She focuses on the art of “Amateur” image making with staged concepts of emotion through her photo and video work. Working for Magazines such as Vogue, The Face, and Office- Chessa aims to show the beauty in normality through her editorial and personal work.
This piece is something that is very dear to my heart. As a child growing up my father and I would take a long road trip once a year from Los Angeles across California to visit his family. I have a very vivid memory of falling asleep on the car ride home from the trip, the sun was setting and it felt like a very peaceful moment. My dad had always carried the All That You Can’t Leave Behind CD with him in his car and I remember listening to it a lot as a child. On the way home from this trip “In a Little While” began to play and my dad told me the infamous story about Joey Ramone listening to this song as he passed away. My dad and Joey were close friends before he passed and I could tell how much the song meant to him. In this video I really wanted to replicate that moment and show the emotions you feel as a child when you hear something your parent plays for you in the car, especially something with such strong sentimental value. The song for this video being “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)”, it felt only fitting to touch on what he clearly meant to the band and people everywhere. The feeling of being a child and finally arriving home reminds me a lot the emotions of closeness that are showcased in the cover for Songs of Innocence. This song being the first song on the album it felt right to incorporate some form of ode to an album cover as iconic as that one.
My experience with U2 is probably very similar to most people my age. U2 is a legendary band with a sound that provokes a lot of emotion. As a child, when you hear them for the first time it definitely stands out against other music. I think with a video like this it perfectly captures how this sound felt to a different generation than the one it came from. I remember when I got my first car it didn’t have an aux cord yet and all it could take were CDs. I went into my house to look through my parents old collection and found this U2 album and immediately brought it back to the car with me, still sounded just as beautiful as it did when I was a child. That’s how you know something is timeless."

Find out more about Chessa Subbiondo:
https://www.instagram.com/chessasubbiondo/