i realise this will be something of a shock to some people out there, but it’s time i came clean.
i like u2. a lot.
there i’ve said it.
this was not always the case, in fact, for many a year i had a healthy hatred to all things u2 related.
i couldn’t abide their brand of sanctimonious arena loving rock-n-roll, their cliched posturing, and the bands fucking show off of a singer. the band really were everything i despised about rock music.
then one day i happened to be browsing in the old virgin megastore in leeds when an almighty noise of a song came on.
distorted guitars, processed to within an inch of their nine cat lives were looped and rumbling the shops pa system to devastating effect.
i was spellbound.
needless to say when i found out i had just succumbed to the lure of the fly, lead in single to the bands lane changing album, achtung baby, i was somewhat taken aback.
still, i wasn’t overly convinced, one decent track, a fan doth not make.
no no. this all happened in august 1993 when as part of their zoo tv extravaganza the band dropped by roundhay park and thrilled 80,000 people with their car studded lighting rig, the phone calls, the shades, the sheer audio visual overload, and sheer mastery of the bands way at performing a big big show.
due to a pair of cheap last minute tickets i went into this den of commercial rock excess expecting little, i came away a fan, much to my welcome surprise.
thankfully, for the next few albums, the band continued with the experiments in technology powered dance grooves and media baiting irony.
they teamed up with dance producers such as howie b, and generally went off the rails for a while.
i loved it. every bit of it.
the more people reviled in horror as to the band shenanigans, the more i enjoyed the results.
the band were having a lemon flavoured mid life crisis, but were still managing to rack up the sales and make the world look like a real world recreation of max headroom, albeit with some world leader (un)friendly politics thrown in for good measure.
oh, and the odd cracker of a song.
of course, in recent times, their dance-rock period has come to a close, they no longer fete the neon lit dance bunnies, and have gone back to their comfort zone, but i stand by my change of life, and believe that for all their faults, this ego strong unit of loyal characters (surely one of the key aspects to their strength is their 4 men in a band, no line up changes, and the reliance on the same inner core of producers/mixers who know how to craft a good song out of the band) are probably the last great rock band the world will ever see.
the current music industry budget holders just don’t have the patience, nor the share holders willing to push a band into the echelons of total world domination in the way that u2 have managed to achieve.
so with my confession now out in the open, and the fact the new song gives me hope for the new album, here’s one track that really made sense at the time, their cover of the classic pop-cheese, pop muzik.
actually, this is not really a u2 track, it was used to open their much maligned pop mart show, and is more of a remix of the original version (which is sampled and looped throughout the 9 minutes), with bono laying over some of his trademark gubbins over the top of some excellent 90s electronic techno.
pop muzik never got a full release other than a few promo copies, was not given any space on the bands compilation of the era, and was only ever available to the general public via a pretty unremarkable cd single (other tracks included a pretty dreary cover of happiness is a gun).
i guess the fact that it’s got little involvement from the rest of the band meant that there is little love for it within the inner sanctum of the u2 world, after all the music is all done by ben hillier and steve osbourne, but i care not.
it’s pure over the top electronic dance fun, which after 5 minutes morphs into a delicious slab of ambient techno that could easily have been lifted from a discarded klf studio session.
so, before i get hauled over the coals by the men in suits (of the nutty farm and legal variety), grab this slice of widescreen dance, and revel in the brilliance when the worlds biggest rock band tried to strut their leather jackets on the dance floor.