7_Kewell wrote:i wasn't brought up on the early U2 stuff so it was only when i stubbled across Discotec on MTV that i started getting into the band. I thought Pop was a good album, and i liked it all the more when i heard their old stuff because it was so very different.
Bono has openly said that they could have carried on on the same format as the Joshua Tree and carried on being sucessful, but they took a risk and took the whole thing in a new direction. I think the Popmark tour was amazing and wish i'd had the chance to go. Sadly, i have to make do with a DVD of their gig in Mexico city, but its a fantastic overload of 90s pop culture.
Agree with your sentiments on All That You Can't Leave Behind, but thought HTDAB was a step toward the more creative. I saw U2 live in Mancheste rand Vertigo is a great live track as is Love & Peace Or Else.
I've placed my order for the new album (been suckered in for the limited edition box set DVD thing) and am looking forward to hearing it in full
The only thing that resembles U2's earlier stuff on the album (well, 80's U2) is 'Magnificent'. The guitar rifts are strongely reminiscent of The Unforgettable Fire album and New Year's Day in particular. One of my mate's was arguing with me about how he dislikes this "new U2 stuff" and that the older stuff was miles better. I strongely disagreed and then let him hear the song that I mentioned off the new album. It's just straight up 80's U2 with a modern element at the build-up at the start. It sounds just as good as "the old" U2 yet he turns it off half way through and proclaims it as "nothing special". Honest to God, it's like "old man syndrome" or something, where people just want Where The Streets Have No name and The Joshua Tree with everything new they release and claim that everything isn't as good as the old days. Bollox! It's never going to happen. If U2 did this, then they'd have just been another Oasis, as much as I love them, they've just stagnated. Not to say their music is cr@p, it's just getting dull and U2 were going the same way up until this point.
IMO this new stuff is as good as anything they've ever done. It's easily the best they've created since Achtung Baby and I still maintain that it belongs to be bracketed alongside Joshua Tree and AB as a classic U2 album. It will stand the test of time. I must have listened over a dozen times or more, which is more than I did for any of their previous two or three efforts.
I know how you feel about looking at the PopMart tour and wishing you could have went. Although that tour almost finished the band and was the main reason for them disappearing for so long until coming back in 2001. However, their best tour was easily the Zoo TV tour. I recommend you check the DVD out of that. That tour was off the scale and really shows just how big the band were at that time. Bono was at his most flamboyant on stage as a showman with his alter-ego characters and the overall grandure of the set was something else. From what I hear, like the new album, and from what was seen at the Brits, they are aiming at bringing that scale of tour back for the material. If it's anything as big as Zoo was, then it'll be a once in a lifetime chance to catch something that you missed out on the first time round. I'd start saving.
