"VH-1
Legends"
It
started out simply enough. Tape an as yet unseen U2
special on VH-1 as a lark, no big deal. I'd gotten
away from U2 in recent days, mostly because I didn't
care much for their last cd Pop,
nor had I tried to get tickets for the PopMart
tour when it came to Raleigh. I'd already seen the ZooTv
Inside and
Outside Broadcasts once each, Popmart
just seemed like a bigger, glitzier version of ZooTV,
and having done those already, I didn't feel much
like spending the $50+ that it would have cost me to
go. Not to mention that I had just completely
relocated 3000 miles to a new city, and was still
adjusting to that concept; going to see a U2 show,
for an album I wasn't truely crazy about, wasn't
really at the top of my list of priorities right
about then. Just as well, since it eventually was
canceled due to rain (and some say low ticket sales
in the area as well; they only sold about 20,000 for
a venue that seated twice that, read the article from
the N&O about that here) anyway.
I
wasn't anti-U2 by any stretch of the imagination. My
theory, after watching the group do a complete image
change in the time between Rattle
and Hum and Achtung
Baby, is that after a three (major)
album arc, they seem to change gears and go off in a
different direction, based on what they've
experienced since the last album. Boy,
October, and
War was one arc, The
Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and
Rattle and Hum
was a second, with Achtung Baby,
Zooropa,
and Pop
being the third arc.
I
figured that after Pop,
they would be right on schedule for the start of
another three album arc, entirely different from the
ideas and concepts of the AchtungZooPop
era. Which suited me just fine. There was some great
music that came out of those albums (even Pop
wasn't ALL bad! :-)), but IMHO, U2 didn't need
all the techno brou-ha-ha that came with it. I
understood the inspiration behind it (and respected
that they had made the music that THEY wanted, and
needed, to make at the time; remaining true to
themselves at the risk of alienating some fans, which
I know they ended up doing, but as Bono once said -
"It's best to just let what's in you come out..."
If that means putting out a song like "Miami",
which didn't do a thing for me, so be it), but was
patiently waiting until their next phase, whatever
and whenever that would be.
And
after the Legends
special peaked my interest again a little, I hopped
onto the internet, surfed around a little, and found
what I was looking for, a little paragraph that said
that U2 was working on a new album, and that for this
one, they were "going back to basics".
Hallelujah, here she comes! The next phase, era, arc,
what have you. Needless to say, I'm all revved up
again. Ready for the new album, ready for the tour,
ready for the laughing gas, ready for the gridlock,
yadda yadda yadda. :-)
"It's
very much a four-legged table..."- The Edge
I
first picked up on U2 back in high school, in 1985,
courtesy of my best bud, Susie, who was a big fan
long before that. I, on the other hand, was a Duranie
(forgive me, I 
knew not what I did!
:-) ), not a shrieking hysterical Duranie, but a
Duranie just the same. And not particularly
interested in this band U2 that she kept talking
about. But one day I agreed to sit down and watch
this U2 video with her, so she showed me this
rockumentary at her house after class one afternoon,
and that was the 
beginning of it all
for me. The vid was U2's "The Unforgettable Fire
Collection", and quite honestly, Bono just
knocked me OUT! He had me absolutely mesmerized. He
was, admittedly, no John Taylor (sorry, Bono! :-)),
but there was definitely something about him. The
music was serious and had heart, but the vid wasn't
ALL serious; all the guys showed a sense of humor,
even back then, and that appealed to me as well. To
anyone who thinks they were too serious in the pre-Achtung
Baby days needs to pull out that tape and FF to
things like Adam's photo shoot, the solar eclipse,
"Okay, Gringo!", and the like. To this day,
I still love that video. (And for those of you who
STILL think of the band as being nothing but serious,
I've got a separate page of nothing but photos
that'll prove you absolutely WRONG! Check that out here.)
"We're
gonna make this aircraft hangar work for us tonight!
We're gonna make it work because the music is worth
it and these people are worth it!" - Bono
It
just worked out that Susie 
had a pair of
tickets to the U2 show at the Cow Palace in Daly City
that year. I swiped her second one, and just like
that, I found myself going to my first concert ever,
and WHAT a first concert! (cheap too, just look at
that price on the ticket stub. A far cry from PopMart,
it is. Of course, that was 14 years ago...) I had
such a great time, I swear I didn't come down for at
least three weeks after that. And no tv screens,
belly dancers, or trabants suspended from the ceiling
were required. Go figure. Click on the Cow Palace
ticket stub at right for a review of that concert.
Early shot of U2, from "The
Unforgettable Fire" tour program
Interlude
- Present Day...
Given
that I'm currently on a big U2 kick, I've started
rewatching some of my collection of videos, starting
with "The Unforgettable Fire Collection",
the "Achtung Baby" Interference vid, the
"Numb" vids, a tape of "Rarities",
courtesy of Ron over on ebay (GREAT tape, dude!), the
new "Best of U2" video, and am currently
working my way through "ZooTV Live From Sydney",
courtesy of Steve, also of ebay. I got as far as New
Years Day before I shut it off
for the night.
A
few thoughts crossed my mind while I was watching it.
Random thought number one? Hopefully the tour for the
new album will have at least SOME reserved seating,
watching all the people squeezed in so close together
in front of the stage like that, all screaming "Bonooooo!!!"
at the top of their lungs, made me claustrophobic.
:-) I said before that I was NOT a shrieking
Durannie; as much as I love U2, I'm also not a
shrieking U2 fan either. I can "Whoooooooo!"
and cheer with the best of them, but a the rest?
Fugetaboutit. (To their credit, not EVERYONE who is
squished into the front rows is a shrieker and a
grabber, I know. I saw at least ONE person on the
Sydney tape who was right in front row, who had her
arms resting on the barricade, just singing along,
like any sane person. :-) )
Random
thought number two? I found it odd that as good as
the music was on the first 7 songs (One
is in my personal top ten list
of favorite U2 songs of all time), the first song to
actually give me a good old fashioned U2 chill (like
you get when the music really hits a vibe) was New
Years Day. Strange... They say
the new album is "going back to basics"? I
really DO like the sound of that...
"Live
Aid"
The
next big historical U2 event that comes to mind was
"Live Aid". Once again, that was another
one of those "big chill" moments, I can
play back the tape of Bad from
that day and
still get goose bumps. "Live Aid" was a day
I remembered well, it took place on my 18th birthday,
and I couldn't have been further away from the
concert festivities, I was on a road trip on vacation
up the Oregon coastline. I caught very little of it
on the road, but had a tape set to get at least 6
hours of it back home... Eventually I got to see the
U2 portion of it, many MANY times. :-)
"The Joshua Tree Tour"
The
next time I actually got to see U2 play live was for
the Joshua Tree tour, when they played Oakland
Stadium, November 14, 1987 (again, click on the
ticket stub at left for a "review" of that
concert). I have no idea why we didn't get to the
April show when they came through the Spring before,
but the review of THAT show is here. U2 was the final
band in the three band "Day on the Green #3",
playing after The Pretenders and The Bodeans. They
had just done the free "Save the Yuppies" 
concert in San
Francisco a few days prior (Remember "Stop the
traffic...Rock 'n' Roll"?), but Santa Clara was
a little too far from San Francisco to even think
about getting there to see it. Susie and I took BART
(Bay Area Rapid Transit) out of Fremont to get to
DOTG and back, a pretty good way to go, once you got
past the cattle stampede to get back to
BART after the show was over. Whew! Did I mention
being claustrophobic? :-) But we sat at the far end
of the stadium in Oakland, opposite the stage, so
while the bands were tiny, we had a relatively well
centered view of the whole stage. Click here for a few more
photos from DOTG. After comparing the two reviews,
from both the spring and fall shows, it sounds like
we missed the better of the two, but other than a few
contrived moments in regards to the graffiti, I
remember the fall concert as being really fun. Not
quite as good as the show at the Cow Palace, but I
didn't feel like I'd wasted my money in going, by any
stretch of the imagination.
Later shots of the band, from
the Joshua Tree tour program. I've always liked these...
Excuse
me, present day intruding again...
Well,
just finished up with ZooTV Live From Sydney. As
expected, I loved the stuff on the small stage, where
they left the Zoo paraphernalia on the big stage and
just played. Which isn't to say that the high tech
equipment didn't have it's moments. "Satellite"
with Lou Reed was kinda neat, the screens with their
flaming crosses during "Bullet" had impact,
but once again, the moment that I had to stop and
play back a second time was the segueway between
"Running to Stand Still" and "Where
the Streets Have No Name". The opening of that
song, ever since the Joshua Tree tour, has always
sent chills down my spine and damn near brings tears
to my eyes. Every single time. I still can't figure
why U2 took a song like that and made a video for it
that does absolutely NOTHING for the song. "Streets"
deserved better visuals, IMHO. But then, that's just
me...
"Is
Film Expensive, Phil?... ... Just Checking." -
Edge
Past and Present Day
are sort of coming together at this point. Enter U2's
rockumentary "Rattle and Hum": See the
Movie. Buy the Soundtrack. Read the Book. As I'm
tripping through my U2 archives, I've just started
rewatching 
"Rattle and Hum"
(having purchased the Video some time back as well!)
and can't find a single thing wrong with it so far. I
vaguely remember my only gripe being that some of the
best songs from the movie didn't make it onto the
soundtrack, but other than that I thought it was
great. Most critics were a little harsher than that,
I think, in regards to the movie as well as the
soundtrack, but some, like the reviewer here, were in agreement.
Of course the biggest question was "Why'd you
make a movie, what's the movie about?" In the
book "Rattle and Hum" manager Paul
McGuinness says "It came about for a number of
reason but one of the main ones was to kill Red
Rocks, which was made in 1983 and now looks very
dated." I like Larry's answer in the movie as
well, it was very simply put - "It's a musical
journey!" :^)
Back
in the here and the now...
Well,
I just finished watching "Rattle and Hum"
the rest of the way through, and now remember why I
went out and bought it within the first month it went
on sale. :^) It's a great tape, although I really
WOULD liked to have seen more interview footage; they
always seem do a little something offbeat. Loved that
version of "Desire" that they filmed for it
though...
Oh
listen, Mofo
is playing. Well, I guess YOU can't hear it, huh?
Sorry, turn off the midi at the bottom of the page,
toss "Pop" in your CD-ROM drive, then you
can hear it too. :^) I opted to play "Pop"
today, since I had the ride to and from work to
myself this time. Had a VERY bad day. Mofo,
played very loudly with extra bass in the car on the
way home, is a GREAT remedy for a very bad day. (And
word to the wise? DON'T get DirecTV. Or if you do,
WATCH your bills very
carefully. Just some advise from me, your friendly
neighborhood "Satellite Guru", keeping your
DSS, Cable, and C-band providers honest. :^) )
Hello,
where have I been!?!...
It's
now about a week later. I'd forgotten how little time
I actually have to work on new page additions, when
it's a) not a long holiday weekend, and b) there are
no hurricanes threatening the Raleigh area, keeping
one indoors for safety. Dennis came straight through
Raleigh last weekend, the good news is that it was
downgraded to a "Tropical Depression" by
that time, and all we got was some MUCH needed rain.
The BAD news is that Hurricane Floyd is on it's way,
still quite a ways out, but heading right for us at
the moment. *SIGH!* I traded in earthquakes for THIS?!?
At least those only came once in a while, hurricanes
threaten every year out here.
Anyway,
where was I? Oh yes, I'd just finished Rattle and Hum
and was HATING all the satellite companies. Really
funny, considering how closely U2 worked with 
satellite stuff for
ZooTV. :^) But NOW I'm currently working my way
through my PopMart in Mexico City video, seeing what
DIDN'T come through Raleigh, for the first time. Gee,
now I wish I'd seen it live and in person. It really
WASN'T just a glorified and glitzified version of
ZooTV. U2 used that HUGE vidiwall to great effect, I
think. But the one thing that I really missed by not
catching PopMart, if the vid is any indication, was
seeing Bono sing as Bono,
not as The Fly, not as the Mirrorball Man, and most
definitely, not as MacPhisto. And the accoustic set (but
of course!) I thought was terrific. I LOVED how Edge
sang "Sunday Bloody Sunday" all by his
lonesome. That was different. But I've only gotten as
the end of "Streets", ready to start in
with "Discotheque", but am liking what I'm
seeing much more than I did with ZooTV.
On
an entirely different note, a quote that has popped
up on the internet appears to have many fans in a bit
of a tizzy. In regards to the new album, Bono has
been quoted as saying - "I don't want it to be
our last record but it feels like if it was, that
would be OK." Perish the thought, having the
next album be the last. Oy. It IS encouraging though,
that he thinks that what they're working on now
apparently really is the best that they've ever done.
Just so long as it's the best they've done SO FAR,
with even GREATER things to come in the future...
Oh,
and while we're on things being said on the internet,
I have to say a hearty congratulations to Bono and
Ali on the birth of child number 3, son Eli, whose
full name is (and I'm sorry, I have to do this,
because I am absolutely amazed at the full name
they've given him, I think the name is bigger than HE
is! :^) ) "Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q"
Hewson. Hence why they call him just plain "Eli"
I think. <grin>
Well,
eventually I'll move ahead in history and get up into
the Achtung Baby/ZooTV era, but not quite today yet...
Hello,
where have I been!?! (Part 2)
(Added
January 21, 2001)
Well,
people, it's been quite a while, hasn't it. Where had
I left off before, oh yes, being threatened by
Hurricane Floyd out in the Atlantic. Well, to say
that Floyd came through Raleigh would be a bit of an
understatement. We woke up the morning after Floyd
roared through to about 2 inches of water standing in
my basement bedroom. Minor stuff compared to what
other people ended up with, definitely, but when it's
just you and your mum living in a house, clean up was
QUITE a job. The waterbed had to be drained and
dismantled, the sopping wet carpet removed, the place
mopped and dried out, and the waterbed put back up
and refilled again. Whew! But it DEFINITELY could
have been worse.
Needless to say,
this page went by the wayside in comparison, and then
with the return of hockey season, and the arrival of
my digital camera, my hockey pages blossomed and this
one stagnated. But I'm once again inspired to
continue this page, having just picked up a ticket
for the U2 Elevation show in Charlotte on March 29th
yesterday. I wasn't going to go initially, Charlotte
is NOT my favorite city anyway, and is three hours
away. Small potatoes to people who are willing to fly
cross country to see U2, I know, but I pretty much
figured I'd be making the trek by myself to go see
them, and while I tend to enjoy little adventures
like that on occasion, this was CHARLOTTE I'd be
going to, not my favorite spot. Plus the 29th is a
Thursday night, a "school" night. But this
is U2, maaaan. I hadn't seen them in YEARS. So after
hemming and hawing for nearly a week, decided to go
after all.
I'd
signed on to Propaganda again sometime back, figuring
that would be the best way to get first news of the
tour and first crack at tickets, and with Raleigh
having recently completed their new Entertainment and
Sports Arena (the ESA, for short), I figured they'd
be making a stop in Raleigh. Alas, no. Who knows why,
could be because PopMart didn't sell well here last
time, or because they're in the area right smack dab
in the middle of hockey season, and the arena floor
is covered over with ice. I lean towards the first
explanation more, given how many stops on the tour
are in places that are also hosting hockey games at
the same time. They seem to manage those nights just
fine. In any case, Charlotte is going to be the place
to be on March 29th, I guess.
I
DID get my ticket order form from Propaganda, about a
week before tickets went on sale to the general
public at Ticketmaster, and HAD been planning to use
it, since I hate Ticketmaster and their lousy service
charges. But since tickets were going on sale to the
general public the same day the form had to be
postmarked, I thought I'd try my hand at getting them
on my own, and if they sold out, I'd still be able to
get to the post office and get the Propaganda form
mailed in enough time to get the tickets through the
fan club. But I showed up at my favorite Kroeger
Ticketmaster outlet (I'd had great luck there for
Sister Hazel tickets, ended up with 6th row center
for that show) at about 9:30 and the place was
deserted, I was the first one there (having many MANY
Ticketmaster outlets in Raleigh helped, I'm sure, as
well as the fact that there was absolutely ZERO
promotion for the show in the newspaper here). By the
time 10am rolled around, the line was about 7 or 8
people deep behind me.
The
half hour wait gave me time to figure out where I
wanted to sit and how much I wanted to spend. General
admission floor ($45) was out of the question, the
thought of being squished amongst all those bodies
has always been a little un-nerving, plus you have to
get there early to claim a spot, and can't EVER leave
it, or you lose it. Not what me and my tiny bladder
need to deal with. :) So that left $85 reserved
seating in the stands, or $130 Golden Circle seating.
I went in planning on the $85 seats, but the more I
thought about it the more I figured "Okay, I
spend $40 to $80 a month for hockey tickets, drop $100
without batting an eye not once but twice for
Hurricanes University, U2 comes by once every 8 or 9
years, AND I'm going to be driving 3 hours to see
them, let's make this worth my while!" So
splurged and got a ticket for a $130 seat. I think I
did pretty damn good, Larry. :D Section 108, Row A2,
Seat 7. Click the link for a photo of what that
equates to at the Charlotte Coliseum. YES!
Hallelujah, here I come!
Needless
to say, I'm rather stoked. As well as rather BROKE!
:) I justified the expense by NOT getting tickets to
the Canes vs Kings hockey game at the ESA yesterday,
which I had been planning on attending, saving myself
a quick $40 in the process. And yes, Ticketmaster hit
me up with some MAJOR service charges since I put the
thing on my credit card, adding on $11 to the ticket
cost. But I weighed my options while I was waiting
there for the U2 sales to come online at 10, and
figured that Propaganda would be hitting me up for
their $5 handling fee right off the top, plus I'd I'd
have to buy a money order, plus pay the postage to
get it there and the SASE to get it back, all the
while leaving it up to THEM to determine where my
seat would be, and leaving it to the postal service
to get my ticket back to me safely. I figured it was
worth the extra $5 or so dollars to pick out where I
wanted to sit myself, know that I couldn't be
downgraded to a lesser seat, and have ticket in hand
on the spot.
Anyway,
so it looks like I'm going to Charlotte on March 29th.
Chances are pretty good I'll end up spending the
night up there and driving back the next day (there
goes my first vacation day of the year!) so I don't
have to deal with the three hour drive back after the
concert, but that's still up in the air at this point.
You know? With all
this brouhaha about the concert, I've yet to say
anything about the new album. As y'all know it's
called "All That You Can't Leave Behind"
and it's GREAT. There are a few tunes I don't care
much for, which are growing on me more each time I
play the cd, and several songs that are absolutely
spectacular. One of which is that bonus track "Always"
that is on a cd all by itself. I'd have to rank THAT
one to be THE best track NOT on the album proper. :)
I'm going to TRY and set up up the song as a
streaming real audio file and add it to this page in
place of the current midi, sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't. :) So if you hear something
other than the old midi file, you'll know it worked
this time. If you still hear the midi, or dead
silence, then, well, you'll know I had a little
trouble with it. :)
Meanwhile,
check out something COMPLETELY different (hint, it's
a U2 parody...). Just click on the -ehem- cow (?)
below...
Already
seen the cow link? Then head over to my main webpage for something else
entirely.
OR...
looking for more U2? Check out the U2 webring. You
know how those things work, just click and go...
So until
next time...
"Adios, amoebas!" <LOL!>
