SONG OF CRUSHING METAL AND FALLING WRECKAGE
You have your choices in life. You can take prissy mulleted Bono with the sleeveless t-shirt, the prissy Joshua Tree Bono, or gonzo Fly-goggle prissy Bono. Either way, U2 made one song and only one song passing the muster for “sounding like a bombing run put through an amplifier,” and we choose gonzo prissy Bono to deliver it.
RUN! INTO THE ARMS! OF TIMTEBOWRICA! Or something like that. That bass line still sounds like angry devastation on stilts to us.
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1
saw U2 in Atlanta in 05 at the Phillips Arena. Best.Show.Ever!
Comment by alextuscaloosa — May 2, 2008 @ 11:18 am
2
About the only U2 song that I would consider myself a “fan” of is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4oqpqu0jZ4
Comment by BDoc — May 2, 2008 @ 11:29 am
3
Seemed to me that Bono was trying to channel Jim Morrison there. In a prisssified way, of course.
I wonder how many people here even know who Jim Morrison was. I am, after all, old.
Comment by StageCoach — May 2, 2008 @ 11:35 am
4
Sunday, Bloody Sunday is my fav U2 song. You have to think that security gets a little nervous at the Derry shows when U2 plays that one.
Comment by Out of Conference — May 2, 2008 @ 11:56 am
5
#4 Ditto.
Actually, who I am I kidding. S, BS is the only decent one. Ever.
Comment by Der Schatten — May 2, 2008 @ 11:59 am
6
If I ever had a bad acid trip, from the guitar solo until the end is exactly what it would be like.
Comment by Ludakit — May 2, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
7
What #5 said.
Comment by Clem — May 2, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
8
Zoo TV in 92 was the greatest concert ever. The Pittsburgh show was right in the middle of two-a-days (August). Made the Tuesday afternoon practice, the concert and then Wednesday morning practice. Brutal but worth it.
Comment by Cock D — May 2, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
9
Sweetest Thing. U2. Youtube. That, my friends, is hardcore.
Comment by poguemahone — May 2, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
10
naaaa-the version on rattle and hum was better. long live the mullet!
Comment by jd — May 2, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
11
Okay, we now have defined the Swindle-DG generation gap, since there’s no mention of the Boy-October-War era, earnest young wanna-be poet/Christian rocker Bono or the Unforgettable Fire period “holy shit, we can pack stadiums . . . and actually sound better than in small spaces” Bono.
FWIW, the best show I ever saw was U2 at Wembley in 1987 with Lou Reed, the Pretenders, and the Pogues as the opening acts. (And that’s even after agreeing with every good thing said above about the Zoo TV tour.)
Comment by DevilGrad — May 2, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
12
U-2; that was Francis Gary Powers, right? [speaking of old].
Comment by Sundawg — May 2, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
13
Wait; isn’t bullet the blue sky from Joshua Tree?
Comment by Carlinthemarlin — May 2, 2008 @ 2:31 pm
14
Apparently if The Francis Gary Powrers Project had Hotblack Desiato on keyboards, then crashing the plane into the Soviet Union may have been more impressive.
Comment by Out of Conference — May 2, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
15
@carlin
the released studio version was indeed from the joshua tree.
however, i was referencing the video and audio from rattle and hum.
Comment by jd — May 2, 2008 @ 2:56 pm
16
The bass line on that song still sounds like Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” to me.
My best ever concert was Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. But #2 was U2’s Zoo TV tour and #3 was U2’s “All that you Can’t leave behind” tour right after 9/11.
Prince was amazing at Coachella last weekend too. And I’m not even a Prince fan.
Comment by oc phil — May 2, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
17
Did they actually know there was burning crosses all over the stage?
Maybe they are supposed to be burning stonehedges.
Comment by meatybob — May 2, 2008 @ 4:07 pm
18
U2 - incredibly overrated. Start throwing rocks….I don’t care.
Comment by Last Dragon — May 2, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
19
They’re supposed to be burning crosses and presumably (at the risk of going political on a Friday afternoon) a visual reference to lyrics challenging the implicit racism of the US’s 1980s policy in Central America.**
According to lore, the guitar part arose after Bono told the Edge to “put El Salvador through your guitar.”
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** Disclaimer: Despite my overall love of U2, I’ve always thought the political statements in this song were sentimentalist POLI 101 crap. But the guitar kicks ass. (Same goes for all Rage Against the Machine.)
Comment by DevilGrad — May 2, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
20
DevilGrad @ 19 - I’d say that Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine might have been based on some questionable views of “the other.”
Assuming that the Soviets would drive their tanks north from Managua and San Salvador was just silly.
IIRC, the only time the Soviets tried to intervene in numbers somewhere they couldn’t get to by train or tank - instead of using the local scruff like Uncle Ho - was air-mailing Cubans into Angola. That wasn’t a runaway success, unless it was part of some fetishist’s plan to create a population ready willing and able to take part in amputee beauty contests.
Comment by DC Trojan — May 2, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
21
“According to lore, the guitar part arose after Bono told the Edge to “put El Salvador through your guitar.” ”
Dear god, thats lame. BTW, I always thought that Edge was a Korean guy.
Comment by meatybob — May 2, 2008 @ 4:53 pm
22
Re #20: Having lived through the debate on campus, I’ll note only that the “Sandalista” assumption that the majority of the population actually *wanted* a Communist revolution was equally silly. (And I was pretty Sandalista in those days.)
(Side note bringing this sort-of/kind-of back to football: I remember driving around SW Ohio in 1989 and hearing Gary Burbank, the local radio guy, recommend that we solve the crisis in Panama by sending Boomer Esiason down there “so he can overthrow Noriega, too!”)
Comment by DevilGrad — May 2, 2008 @ 5:08 pm
23
Bullet the Blue sky is a painful song, in a good way.
My fave U2 video is beautiful day, esp w/ the airliners flying over. Heck, I’d like a Ben Kweller song if it had jet engines over it (yeah, I’m dissing your anti-folk icon).
Comment by MCab — May 4, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
24
Whatever one thinks of U2, you can’t help but to tip your hat at the Zoo TV tour. Not many bands would be willing to tap an in-their-prime, full-of-post-L.A.-riots rage Public Enemy to be their opening act on the biggest tour of their own career. Many other bands would be fearful of being upstaged. (Although maybe they just wanted to enjoy the irony of 50,000 white kids pumping their fists along to “Shut ‘Em Down”…)
(That said, I’ll still take the post-punk, steak-shredding guitar riff from “I Will Follow” over anything from the band’s later eras…)
Comment by Papa Lou BSU — May 5, 2008 @ 11:03 am