And that guy is a raging asshole! Great psych-rock tho. There’s a documentary. It is.... enlightening.
This album cover And We Didn't Start the Fire was a ripoff of It's The End of the World As We Know It
He has mental issues for sure but he is a genius. They launched 3 albums in one year...LOL The documentary you are thinking about is DIG! about BJM vs The Dandy Warhols which are, meh!
Dude, he's not going to actually throw the rock. He's a passable pianist who wrote some good, reasonably thoughtful pop, like Elton John did at his best. You're not gonna read about him trashing hotel rooms and shit like that just to boost his street cred. Pop pianists don't need street cred. If you want examples of self-destructive behavior, you need to check out... jazz. A Who's Who of folks that should have had standing invites to the Betty Ford Clinic, but were born too early. REM didn't start the fire, either. I bet both bands heard Reunion first, even tho they dealt with music only. And I don't necessarily think they were the first- this is just the first tune I know of where high-speed name droppin' was used.
Pretty much everything is derivative in the music world. Anyway, I saw Billy Joel in concert for $2 at a local theater in 1973. Kind of unpolished but it was a small setting and couldn't beat the price. Here is a portion of that concert with a very young Billy Joel voice.
The Werewolves Of London guy? Well, that's a whole 'nother argument you're putting forward now. You were emoting over an album cover. I replied to that.
1. I'm a huge, huge U2 stan. 2. Their show in Chapel Hill in 1983 as the 3rd act on a 4 act bill is locally legendary. I was there. 3. I used to have The Joshua Tree as one of my top 5 albums. Whether it's from overlistening or a change in my taste, it's not near that now. 4. They left 2 brilliant songs off that album, Spanish Eyes and Silver and Gold. If they had put one of them on instead of Still Haven't Found, it would have been a better album. 5. Um, Achtung Baby? That's a great, great album. 6. Their first 3 albums are bursting with potential, but weren't quite...polished or something. Can't quite put my finger on how to describe it, but a tighter hand from the producer or engineer would have improved those albums without losing the spark. 7. They put out a bunch of good-not-great albums after Achtung. Clearly better than REM after, say, Automatic for the People.
Probably best show I've ever been to was at Palladium in NYC in May of that same year. Return show in the summer at the Pier was great but didn't have that same energy, just a bigger crowd. Funny, my favorite albums (and even now) are the first three, perhaps because of that unpolished raw power. Goose bumps remembering the opening of that first concert... Out of Control. I was in the first row right under Edge at the Palladium show and nearly got crushed to death, seriously. It was crazy. Had to jump up and crouch on that lower part of the stage where the security sat, so I was close enough to get a sweat shower from Edge.... ughh gross.
No. New Adventures in Hi Fi is ridiculously underrated and better than most of U2's albums, much less anything after Achtung Baby.
I'm a U2 fan as well. I have taste. When I got a chance to see them for free (benefits of working in entertainment), I went, at my parents insistence. My friend and I weren't expecting much, but after the show, we were blown away. I'm not a religious person at all, but it was the closest thing to a religious experience I ever had. I'll add that their albums ranging from War to Acthung Baby are brilliant. Their creative output from 87-91 is on another level, though. Few artists are capable of achieving that kind of creative output, closest I can think of is Prince and Joni Mitchell.
I'm a U2 fan. I have taste. What do YOU dig that would have been played on standard AM or FM radio at any time during the last 50 years? They made what I consider to be the greatest live rock album of all time (certainly the best I've heard) peaked around Unforgettable Fire and began a slow dropoff from there. I tend to think two things happened to them: 1) They stopped taking themselves seriously (I can't recall the last time I heard Bono say anything like, "Well, the god I believe in isn't short of cash, Mister". Just an example) 2) The became more... polished, which ruined their vibe. They are, at heart, a thinking man's band, with a punk band's lack of individual musical technique. A thinking man's punk band, talk about a contradiction. But it came together so musically, worked brilliantly in U2's case. I was looking at a webpage dedicated to remarkable basses and came across Nick Beggs' early 80s Wal, which he used on Too Shy. Which led me to listen to the beginning of the tune again. Which led me to listen to some Duran Duran and Level 42. Those guys could all play their asses off, at least in a rock context. That wasn't what made U2 great, and the minute they tried to sound more like guys who could play, it all went wrong.
So yesterday, after posting about how much I used to love The Joshua Tree, I decided to actually listen to it (or at least much of it) on YouTube. The spell seems to have broken. It no longer works for me.
Like I said earlier, If Bono had offed himself after the Unforgettable Fire, U2 would have been an all-time great band. Unfortunately for everyone, he didn't.
I saw them in ‘97 & ‘01, neither were particularly good or bad, just cromulent stadium rock. Everything prior to the Joshua Tree I made a dub on cassette from, and honestly, they still stand the test of time. Achtung Baby has a ton of nostalgia from that point in my life - the album isn’t that great, but the memories of then are. Actually, Rattle & Hum and the singles from it I appreciate a lot more now rather than how I dismissed it then. Anything post ‘Anything You Can’t leave Behind’ I actively tried to delete.
Was going to say same thing. REM petered out shortly after New Adventures. But from 1981 to then, REMs growth & album quality is far superior to U2. Plus, no Bono!
I forgot that it was you who said that. I did like the post. All-time great bands have lows. Look at the Beatles' early stuff. It doesn't drop them from the pedestal.
Paging @usscouse - care to offer an opinion? I hafta disagree even though I prefer their later stuff, their early stuff is lit af.