Word: u2
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...U2: RATTLE AND HUM (Island). A diary of the band's discovery of a mythical musical America. A concert album like no other...
...rock n' roll terms, the worst offender of this genre is U2. Enough is enough with this Irish intensity that Bono and the boys want us to believe imbues their Celtic Christian Consciousness. I don't doubt that life is tough in Ireland, but U2 music is produced for maximum movingness effect that is achieved through lots of driving thumping beats, plenty of references to a hopeless, endless search (for sincerity, it seems), and ripping guitar riffs interspersed at the right moments. One is tempted to suggest that Bono lighten up and smile for a change of scenery. If Bono...
Look, I like listening to U2 too--its really chilling, haunting stuff to the uninitiated ear. But I don't buy it. When you think about it, all this pre-menstrual screaming and yelling is reminiscent of nothing so much as the whining and complaining that we used to associate with funky female folkies. Methinks that the band doth protesteth too much, and this lack of subtlety, this blunt polemicism, can cut an album but it can't cut an attitude...
...course, the only thing worse than copping the sincere attitude (and in the case of U2 I don't doubt it started out sincere and was eventually co-opted by the forces of commerce) is having an attitude. Enough with Sting's image as the politically correct artiste extraordinare who can rock out with the boys, jam with Black jazz musicians, do the classical thespian thing, father a host of love children and be just the eccentric country gentleman donating his time and energy to worthy causes. I mean, aren't we bohemian? Gimme a break...
...four days is a long time away to be looking for home, and the song, fragile and heartrending, ends the record with unexpected quiet, and intimacy. It is a characteristically bold, even reckless move. Whatever was given up in 1987 remains a mystery, but it is clear, now, what U2 came away with -- the best live rock album ever made. The record, in every sense, of their lives...