Duals: Let’s look at the bigger picture

Okay, I am taking on the 400 lbs. gorilla in the room named Duals, the recent perk/giveaway from U2.com for it’s members.

We have know about this U2.com perk for the past four months and there has been a lot discontent spewed on other sites about how U2.com subscribers were given something of a sham for their hard earned cash. I am not here to speak to those issues. What I am here to discuss is the project as a whole and how this disc, with this many duettes, would be the envy of any up and coming band to have in their catalog.

Ask any singer song writer who they would want to record with and I am sure they would answer Frank Sinatra, Elvis or John Lennon. Well, all of those musical heroes are long gone, but in the case of U2, they came pretty close. Singing with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Mick Jagger, Johnny Cash, B.B. King and Willie Nelson would be any artist’s dream studio date. U2 has recorded with all of them. I dare ask you to list a contemporary band that comes close to this great collection of artists, whom U2 has creatively conspired with, in their catalog and I think that list would be very, very short.

Yes, I am disappointed in the album because I have most of these tracks, but I like the concept. What is cool is that these are not the only “Duals” U2 has in their catalog. They have many, many more. In hindsight, I wished the band would have created this album with even harder to find duettes, but we have to remember that the music industry is fraught with contracts, rights and ownership. Yeah, there are a lot of “Duals” that they probably cannot touch. For example, when they were on Elvis Costello’s television show, Spectacle, two years ago. I hope you saw it. U2’s performance was commanding. They shared the stage with Elvis and ripped through a performance of Pump It Up married with Get On Your Boots. It was a hair-raising mini-concert. There are countless examples of these recordings in their “catalog” but again, does U2 have the rights to them or are they willing to pay the financial price, above and beyond what our subscription raises in cash, to give them to us as part of our membership? I’m not sure, but I am sure we can all agree that we would have loved to have that collection as a special gift.

In closing, let us be thankful that U2 has been able to invite, or be invited, to perform with others. As we have seen on the 360˚ Tour, U2 has brought onstage performers important to the country where the band is performing on that given night. For example in Sao Paulo, they brought on Seu Jorge who is a Brazilian singer songwriter. He came onstage to great applause. Yes, it was U2 appealing to the crowd but more importantly; it was this respect, to Brazil, that U2 was playing into. Duals is doing the same thing. Within the fifteen tracks, U2 are rejoicing with those who have paved the way before them. Also, U2 are sharing the creative time with contemporaries who can push U2’s sound that much further. I never thought I would hear a rapper, let alone Jay-Z, jump in on Sunday Bloody Sunday, making it sound fresh, but he did. It works and so does Duals.

Last night, you got it right in Sao Paulo

I am like many of you, reeling from a great show that was lifted across borders and into our hearts last night from Sao Paulo. From the opening of Even Better Than The Real Thing to Moment of Surrender, U2 took the world out for a ride in their 360º car and it was fun.

I began following this band quite some time ago and I finally feel they have got it right when it comes to a live show. There is no clear set-list and on each new leg, of this tour, U2 adds a gem or two from their rich past. They are not afraid to dig into their their treasure chest of tunes to find a newfound gem with renewed energy. Yeah, Zooropa is not my fave but they brought it back, which means that any song in the vault is fair game.

In closing, I hope they can reel in this energy the next time around and put it into a tighter bottle. Yes, that would mean playing smaller venues, but that is okay because they are a club band who has turned stadiums, on this tour, into intimate spaces like portraits on your dresser. Each night, has been just as special as the previous. I am glad to see Larry, Adam, Edge and Bono showing their flexibility as they cover generations of fans who sit in their audience awaiting what is next even if we saw it the night before.

MLK and what he means to me.

This week we passed another anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. In those 43 years since his passing, the world has changed for the betterment of humanity and yet, we are stuck, sometimes, on April 3, 1968 where nothing has really changed. I was born on Dr. King’s birthday of that fateful year and honored to share his birthday. I do not take it lightly. I wear it like a badge of honor because Dr. King was a mover and a shaker in this world. I believe he still is.

It upsets me to see that people cannot see the greater good Dr. King had when he spoke of his vision in the “I have a dream” speech. What I am speaking of is the birther movement in this country, chasing after our current president who is of color and one who is trying to put this country back on course. I feel as though we have stepped back into time and are in Selma, Alabama once again, ignorant and stupid.

When U2’s The Unforgettable Fire was released, I was in high school and I was one of the only ones in my class who liked the record. It was a far departure from their previous release, the War LP, but that was okay. The band took on a bigger figure in Dr. King and praised him for what he had done. Why did it take an Irish band that had very little connection to this man to write such a prophetic song? I don’t know but they did and I have been hooked on the band ever since.

U2 has picked up the gauntlet left behind by John Lennon and Dr. King. Their activism is what makes them great. Their music makes them special. As we sit and watch our country fall apart at the edges, let us think of one thing ”what is the betterment for all of us in the human race?” I think the answer is to get along, walk in peace and make sure those less fortunate get a chance in this world. Remember that famous line “the rich are getting richer and the sick stay poor.” How prophetic.

Solidarity changed New Year’s Day

I was living in the South of France in 1981/80 on sabbatical leave with my mom and stepfather. It was a wonderful year and my second living abroad. As I look back in the rose tinted rear view mirror, living on the Cote D’Azur was wonderful. Yes, Dad could’ve fought Mom’s extradition of me to Europe but now that I look back on the year in discussion, I am very glad they didn’t. What I witnessed that year was another event that put me closer to U2 when the spark of fandom turned into a flame – X-mas trip, by car, to London via Paris in 1980.

My parents and I arrived in the City of Lights on December 13, 1981, which could have been an ordinary day for anyone. Three weeks before Christmas and the city was under the cover of a grey sky as we walked across Les Invalides and into the mass chaos near the Polish consulate. My stepfather was Polish but we were out of earshot of hearing the shouts of protest. I go on in greater detail about the event in the book but what is important to understand is the sabbatical to France was adding more color to my life’s canvas. If I had gone through with the legal battle with my stepfather about taking me to Europe and me not seeing my father, the event on this day in history would be just another day to me. It still is just another day until you tie into the connection to U2, who were about to head to the studio in the coming spring to work on the War album. A song New Year’s Day came to the forefront of the recording process but it was a love song. When Bono caught wind of even more upheaval in Poland, the song’s direction changed. The brilliance to the lyric is that it does not state what was going on with the Solidarity Movement just that there needed to be a new day.

What happened in the studio is one of the great things about this band I like. They found a nugget of an idea and changed what they had, almost in the can, into something completely different. Which is why the studio can be as magical as it can be creatively catastrophic. I have spoken to musicians at all levels and once you are in the confined recording space, the creativity can be hard to find. In U2’s case, you go in with a love song and then come out with a political anthem. Add to fray that New Year’s Day became a chart topping song steeped in lyrics about a protest, which I saw with my own eyes. In my mind, the song does not offer hope even though it is a new day. What it tells us is that we have a new day to keep up the fight.  The same fight that begins the War album with the song Sunday Bloody Sunday steeped in Irish heritage. The irony is the Irish and the Poles have battles songs on the same record kept apart by a tune discussing nuclear war – Seconds. What if New Year’s Day did become that love song? The trilogy wouldn’t have worked. Which is why this band is brilliant

The funny thing about that trip to London via Paris is that my parents were on the way top New York for business. I stayed behind with friends in London. Before mom left, I asked for a birthday present. “Would you pick up the new AC/DC record For Those About to Rock, We Salute You for me?” I asked her. I even wrote the album title out on a piece of paper. I’m sure the record store sale clerk raised an eyebrow when a Mia Farrow look alike asked for the AC/DC record. Three weeks later, I was given my request as we dined in some chateau in the South of France for my birthday. What I didn’t realize is that the real gift given to me was that day in Paris seeing the uprising despite the longing I had for home and my Dad.

Skipping the family Thanksgiving of 1993

u2 sydney, Zoo t.v.Well, I didn’t skip it. I just didn’t go home to visit the family for one reason – U2’s Zoo T.V. Zoomerang pay-per-view concert from Sydney, Australia. My parents had basic television with rabbit ears and no cable. I had no chance in hell of seeing this in Iowa. I would’ve been stuck with no connection to the outside world for six days. Luckily, my aunt and uncle graciously let me stay at their place and have a run of the house just so I could tap into U2’s event. Thanksgiving Day of ’93, the day of the broadcast, had been almost a year and a new album since I’d seen U2 play live. Well, I did get a chance to tape the live broadcast of their final Dublin show a few months prior off local radio station WXRT and I was familiar with the set list, including Bono’s McPhisto character. Curiosity was killing me to see how the show had changed visually with the new additions. I was not disappointed.

As the concert rolled on that evening, I was on the edge of my seat, actually end of the bed, watching with glazed eyes and reminiscing about the show I had seen four times, one indoors and three outside. The Zoo T.V. tour, U2’s two-year road show for Achtung Baby, kept evolving as it hit different continents, which made the whole tour a very cool thing. The opening video montage focused on the EU, not George Bush, with the brilliant clips from Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will film along with a cricket match, which got the crowd roaring leading into Zoo Station. We were on for a ride through one of the greatest touring spectacles ever produced for a stadium show and one that has been copied, in parts, by several other touring acts. Near the end of the concert, McPhisto’s, Bono’s devilish character created for the Euro part of the tour, spews a ranted recount of all that had happened during Zoo T.V.’s  lifespan of 2 years was the way for the tour to go out in style. His poetic spilling of headlines such as Bill Clinton coming to power, Yugoslavia’s turmoil and the NEO Nazis rise in Germany was in step with all of the video bombardment that hit us at the opening of the concert. It was if I was watching the curtain call for a long running Broadway show. Bono, actually McPhisto, tied it all up in a nice bow by telephoning a taxicab company for a ride home from Sydney’s football stadium. It doesn’t get any more rock n’ roll than that at the end of the tour.

The Sydney concert couldn’t have come at a better time for me. My spending Thanksgiving alone with U2 was going to aid me getting through one of my toughest parts of my life. I was battling depression set on by a girlfriend who left me flat added to the fact of my frustration of still working in a retail environ 3 years after college. They say rough times happen to all of us but I was hit hard and in the gut. I looked to my band, as I usually did back then, to help me through this traumatic time. My aunt and uncle were also there as well. They knew I was fragile when it came to relationships because they both witnessed my parent’s divorce when I was three years of age. I was now 25. In all fairness, I was getting back at my ex who had pulled the rug from underneath my life five months prior. My pair of custom painted U2 jeans was sitting in London waiting for U2’s return. The band requested my work in order to make a decision about a merchandising venture with me. I was a day late and a dollar short on tying the idea into this tour but still my work was in their hands and it was comforting.

In retrospect, the Sydney show truly was the end of the yellow brick road of this adventure U2 took the world on. The Zoo T.V. tour was so far ahead of its time that in this day and age of Twitter, Facebook and media blitz, simpler is better. Actually, the tour was a forecast of what was to come. Today, we are living inside Zoo T.V. as we were then watching it. It is strange how that happened but I feel that there’s a disconnect in life just as it was portrayed on those television screens and vidi-walls oh so long ago. In U2’s terms, it was a bookend of genius and something we will never see again. The band was on rare form.  Not that they have not been recently but creatively, this was their apex. For Bono to come out in costume would be to fill his prophecy of “I’m a tired old pop star in platform shoes.” Which is a fitting way for him to look at himself in the mirror long before reality told him. As for the history of this show, it will stand the test of time because it not only showed the passion of U2 but also gave light to their fans down under.

23 years ago tonight, U2 played Iowa City, Iowa.

I remember the day tickets were announced to the show. I was aimlessly flipping through The Daily Iowa, our student newspaper delivered daily to our room, as I ambled my way to the dining room in Burge Residence Hall for breakfast. Suddenly, my eyes caught a display ad – 1 night only U2 Carver Hawkeye Arena, October 20, 1987. All of the rumors I had heard were now true. U2 were coming to the University of Iowa. They changed the venue from the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls to Iowa City just because they weren’t allowed to put up their outdoor stadium stage inside the UNIDome. Or, at least that’s what the rumor was when it hit the streets and bars on campus four weeks earlier. More shocking was the band would be coming to where I was going to college. It was as if the rock gods were looking down on us and hit our campus with a lightening bolt stating, “With the powers vested in us, U2 will play Carver Hawkeye Arena.” It was a life changing moment and one everyone wants to have when they are in college.

Let’s back up a second and talk about what this meant for ticket buyers 23 years ago. There was no Internet and no Ticketmaster in 1987, just good old class skipping and waiting in line, no matter what the weather, for those coveted ticket numbers. It’s a bygone era, which I miss dearly. I loved the camaraderie of standing in line wearing the smell of the night before’s U2 celebration still on our breath. Some of us would be huddled under a sleeping bag for warmth. An errant Thermos, filled not with coffee but something along the lines of other warmth, would be passed around to get us through the boredom. Others would be knee deep in the books trying to look studious with good intentions if the Prof. stopped by. More importantly, you would make new friends whom you would see in six week’s time at the show sitting near you. All of this is a long-gone era, as the intimacy of the Internet has taken away our street socialization of making friends and talking about our band months before the show. The swapping of stories with new found acquaintances has been forced to technological interaction with an “LOL” or “BTW I was there too.” Now, you never know whom you will sit next to at the show and how they got their ticket.

Technology aside, we all have our first, U2 show that is. Whether it was 23 years ago this week for me or last summer on the 360 tour or even before me, we can share and revel in the fact that we can remember exactly what happened to us on the night we first saw the band. I was taken to campus security inside Carver Hawkeye Arena and had my U2 banner taken away from me. My cousin, who I was with at his first show which was on the PopMart tour, lost $10 to a bootleg t-shirt seller as the seller was bum rushed by the cops outside Soldier Field. I upset a table of food and spilled Champagne, on my then girlfriend and my now wife, moments before her first U2 show. These are the experiences that never leave us. Add to this is our reminiscence of where we were in life, who we attended the show with that night and what our pre-U2 concert ceremonies were. Oh, and there is the U2 show itself.  Witnessing one of the great bands of our generation, taking the stage in front of us, and becoming a life altering moment, an event ingrained in our memories for life. I still remember the lights going down 23 years ago tonight and the fans rushing down the stairs and spilling onto the floor with U2’s energy emanating from the stage. It was as if I went to a tent revival, one that has stayed with me all of this time.

In closing, I guess the real question is why, or how, does U2 have this affect on us no matter when you see them for the first time. It should be an easy answer but it isn’t as they touch us in various ways by writing brilliant lyrics, sonic guitar riffs, odd stage antics, or just performing a solid show by master craftsmen. Maybe, we believe that they are doing right in the world or make it a better place or perhaps they suspend our daily pain for an evening as we take in a night of great music. All of those are valid points. Even better, it’s the community they create as we congregate amongst ourselves in anticipation of the next show we attend or next U2 whatever. In my 23 years since the first show, nothing has changed. U2 are still attracting the same passionate fans. Some of us are older but young at heart. The real question is where did the 23 years go?

I share with you video from my first night. U2 opening the show at Carver Hawkeye Arena with Where the Streets Have No Name.

I invite you to tell the story of your first show. Share with others. Come on. It’s OK.