When How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was first released, I immediately fell in love with quite a few of its songs – songs like “City of Blinding Lights”, “All Because of You”, and even “One Step Closer to Knowing” tickled my fancy with the very first hearing. There was one song on the album, […]
Read MoreU2101 – Breathe
I still remember the week building up to the release of No Line On The Horizon. I was, of course, neck-deep in U2, excitedly following the news, and downloading and listening to each and every one of their promotional appearances. It was one of those promotional appearances – I think the one from February 23, […]
Read MoreU2101 – Leonard Cohen
This past week, the world lost a talented giant when poet, writer, singer and songwriter Leonard Norman Cohen died at the age of eighty-two. I was personally a big fan of Mister Cohen, especially his first four albums, but more germane to this article, do you know who else was into Leonard Cohen? That’s right […]
Read MoreU2101 – Alex Descends Into Hell For A Bottle Of Milk / Korova 1
One of the great unreleased tragedies of U2’s career is the score that Bono and Edge wrote for the 1990 stage production of A Clockwork Orange: 2004. I say that it’s a tragedy because the one small glimpse that the world at large was given into this musical adventure, a B-side from the 1991 single […]
Read MoreU2101 – Wild Honey
Continuing on from what we started last week – that is, looking at underrated songs from All That You Can’t Leave Behind – I thought that this week we could examine “Wild Honey”. Recorded, of course, in the year 2000 for inclusion on the album that came out that same year, the story goes that […]
Read MoreU2101 – Peace On Earth
I’ve been listening to a lot of All That You Can’t Leave Behind lately, and it occurred to me during one of those listenings that something ought to be written about one of the undervalued gems that are buried on the second half of that album (and yes, there’s more than one undervalued gem there).
Read MoreU2101 – Elvis Ate America
This past weekend was my birthday, and as per my annual tradition, I mostly spent the day with my mother and my wife watching U2 stuff. The last thing we watched before bed this year was U2’s 1988 theatrical release, Rattle and Hum. During the segment of the film wherein the band visit Graceland, the […]
Read MoreLove and Peace, Or Else!
If you’ve watched the show South Park recently, you might be familiar with the concept of “member berries.” If not, I’ll fill you in: Essentially, these animated grapes are the show’s current device for mocking the adult characters – specifically, the way we modern grown-ups get hyper-nostalgic about the pop culture fixtures of our younger […]
Read MoreU2101 – Exit
“Exit” is a song from U2’s best-selling album, The Joshua Tree, which was first released in 1987. “Exit” is a dark song, both lyrically and musically, and the song’s words concern a trip into the mind of a very disturbed individual. For a band like U2, who have made their reputation recording hopeful, uplifting songs […]
Read MoreU2101 – Miami! My mammy…
U2 fans can be a persnickety bunch. For one thing, it seems that some of us aren’t satisfied with anything the band do. I’m sure you’ve all read just as many negative internet comments and forum threads as I have, so you know what I’m talking about. For another thing, it seems that some of […]
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