“20” – U2 TRACKS POLL (voting closes midday, Thursday 4 August)

my wife still has a mad crush on Bono; I find this unfathomable

Ha! I was working in a record store when the tree album came out, and I had a huge crush on my manager, and she had a schoolgirl-swoon crush on Bono--she was like Elaine's "Desperado"-loving boyfriend whenever we played it in the store, completely zoned out and oblivious to the world. I'm sure that contributed greatly to my U2 problem.

Hey ladies

http://www.wnd.com/images2/bono.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mp_K0c6kJkk/Tb2e8f71gBI/AAAAAAAACPQ/QnSI-M6DLs8/s400/bono.jpg
http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/bono.jpg

he looks like robin williams in bad convenience store sunglasses

STILL, I understand the raw power of a residual schoolgirl crush. I do.

24 hours to go, and 31 ballots received. Well, 29 and two runts. So vote, and vote now.

Excellent stuff, but still plenty of scope for change. Not that I've done an interim count or anything, but my feeling is that it's pretty close between half-a-dozen tracks at the top. There certainly won't be a runaway winner.

I'm still going through my absurd relisten to their entire catalog, including most b-sides, remixes, & a few live albums also. It's a lot of material! Some of it's really good! Much is so-so, as you'd expect from a band in its fourth decade. I'm guessing my ballot is more or less finalized now, but I'm still moving songs around, with a big change this morning after relistening to 1987's finest.

I promise to be underwhelmed if your top three is the opening three tracks from The Joshua Tree, in order.

I've never liked "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". No relistens can redeem ending a sentence with a preposition.

There was a tv show on the ten-year anniversary of Live-Aid and they interviewed the girl Bono pulled from the audience. She was pretty embarrassed about it, didn't seem to have been too happy about being picked and complained about Bono being "all sweaty."

really regretting not putting 'an cat dubh/into the heart' on my ballot. Been listening to 'Boy' today a lot and it's just magnificent.

Speaking of that, I hope people are giving "Twilight" its proper respect on their ballots.

i did!

I feel a little bad I hosed a lot of the early stuff on my ballot, since it meant a lot to me at one point, but Fire/Joshua Tree/Achtung/Zooropa are my adult faves by far.

xpost Actually, in part to humor Larry, the click tracks the band/producers use, as such, are usually in the form of percussion, tambourines, etc, that often even get left in the final mixes. They're organic, not just some drum machine pittering away.

Once again re: Marr et al., what Marr was saying about Keith Richards and "Jumping Jack Flash" was not at all that he had Keith's playing in mind, but specifically that when it came to "Bigmouth" he wanted to write a rousing, unabashed anthem in the vein of "Jumping Jack Flash." I mean, almost every guitarist is influenced by Keith, to some degree, but Marr is not really that guy. Edge, on the other hand, is, especially when it comes to his "lead rhythm" approach (which is also not unlike that of Pete Townshend). Just saying. It's kind of a pointless point of contention, anyway.

Per Larry, I think lots of drummers would notice odd shifts in tempo and stuff, but given the guy's largely been relegated to timekeeping mode, I can imagine he's more sensitive than most. The click track, btw, is less for the drummer and more for the rest of the guys, who may be working on overdubs or redoing parts separate from the drum tracks. The click lets them all sync up smooth when they mix the whole track together.

Bono's proclamations on "official" live tracks are ripe for results thread title, e.g. "Sing this with me, this is 40 top U2 songs".

I say "sing this with me, this is 40" entirely too often for my own scrutability by, well, anyone at this point.

I just sent my ballot, and hope that a few of you made room for, well, "Your Blue Room."

not much of a song, but it's a nice atmosphere

DOn't know that song, but is the title another Bowie reference?

Thanks for the click track explanation btw Josh.

he wanted to write a rousing, unabashed anthem in the vein of "Jumping Jack Flash."
IIRC he refered to this song as the kind of comeback/return song he wanted Bigmouth to be.

ah, from wikipedia:

Johnny Marr is said to have wanted an explosive, searing single, along the lines of The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", to announce that The Smiths had returned from hiatus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS4hJabqRc4

Your Blue Room is a Passengers song and it's one of my favourite discoveries here. I'm afraid I cut it late on though. 'Nobody else is going to like that', I thought.

If someone said that the first 3 tracks from The Joshua Tree were their 3 favourite tracks then I would not feel able or willing to argue with them, at all.

I think that by my own particular lights, which I have no desire to shine harshly in others' eyes, they may be the greatest 'first 3 tracks' ever to appear on an LP in the pop era.

"With Or Without You" wrecked me this morning; it had been years since I'd listened to it, but what a track, so strange sounding a single, as the band knew well. I thought of your points re. the Irishness of the band when listening to the synths in the opening of the song this morning, pinefox.

Those synths introduced Brian Eno to a lot of people.

"Your Blue Room" live...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1RBxyTeanI

synths? I thought the whistling melody at the start was the Infinite Guitar; unless you mean the beautiful tinkling sound.

to Josh in Chicago: sure, Marr said that specifically about 'Bigmouth'. But that's just one instance of his attitude to Keith Richards. Look up any interview asking who his favourite guitarists are. I don't think there's much doubt that KR would be a model for him. This is not controversial stuff. It's what you Americans call 'Marr 101', or maybe '102' or '202' or whatever (we do not have these educational terms in my country).

To be sure, we can also name as major guitarists for Marr Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Nils Lofgren (am I imagining that?), Roger McGuinn, Bert Jansch, and others. But not, I think, The Edge.

btw also, Bono wrote 'silver & gold' after an encounter with KR and, I think, Ron Wood where he realized he 'didn't have any songs' and missed the rest of the band. (I think it was a bit feeble of him not to have reflected more on his own band's particularity pre-1985/6.)

To be sure, we can also name as major guitarists for Marr Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Nils Lofgren (am I imagining that?), Roger McGuinn, Bert Jansch, and others. But not, I think, The Edge.

John McGeoch! Marr has said so himself.

If it's the Infinite Guitar I'm thinking of (I'm not sure), then that's even more in comport with your point, since it would be the Edge & not Eno behind it.

I know the high, piercing notes are guitar; I'm talking about those swirls that are obviously keyboards adorning the verses.

Having said the above, I should turn around, think again and add: listening to Keith Richards doesn't really give you much of an idea what Johnny Marr sounds like.

One of JM's distinctions is that, though he was so classicist and in a sense derivative, I can't think of ANY prior guitarist that sounds like his great work -- the sound is a new signature. And I think the same is true of The Edge, for all the accusations of derivativeness etc that were thrown at him.

btw also, Bono wrote 'silver & gold' after an encounter with KR and, I think, Ron Wood where he realized he 'didn't have any songs' and missed the rest of the band. (I think it was a bit feeble of him not to have reflected more on his own band's particularity pre-1985/6.)

Not quite. "Silver And Gold" was written for Artists United Against Apartheid Sun City album and the original recording on that album is Bono + Richards + Wood. U2 later recorded their own version of it.

I was thinking of the both the high notes that evidently are guitar & the swirls; I don't have enough of a muso ear to tell the difference.

during the opening & opening verse, I mean

Yeah, that's Infinite Guitar at the start of "With or Without You," which was invented by Michael Brook and Daniel Lanois (roomates at the time), and which actual gets a credit in the liners of "The Joshua Tree." Though to be fair, it's not that different in concept from Frippertronics.

Marr also big ups James Honeyman-Scott a lot. This website is killer: http://www.smithsonguitar.com/

"“The main thing I took from Keith Richards was his musical ideology; that there is a nobility in playing rhythm guitar and being the engine room and steering the ship, all these very valorous concepts which he threw in the face of guitar culture in the early ’70s.”"

Elvis, I have the Sun City tape with the original version, though can't say I've played it much -- I still think the story is true, unless it's not.

Then there's the great U2 studio version whose solo is different again from the also fantastic 'play the blues' solo of R&H.

by 'solo' I mean 'lead guitar to fade'

I need to hear that again now.

Rare unexpected Edge guitar noise terrorism, btw, at the end of "One Tree Hill."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BK2MhvQiBo

Another thing I didn't vote for: I've really been digging A Man And A Woman. It would grace Electronic, speaking of Johnny Marr.

I just sent my ballot, and hope that a few of you made room for, well, "Your Blue Room."
--livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

I was tempted to make it my #1 just to give it a chance to chart. Nice to see I'm not alone in affection for this one.

& now I hear the little tinkling arpeggios more clearly---I'd never fixed on them before but now they're so loud.

I need to learn to listen to music as closely as you all.

Lots of Edge/U2/Sinead soundtrack collabs: "Heroine," "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart," "I'm Not Your Baby" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiWZ5bzcdaM&feature=related

the tinkling whatever they ares (keyboard I would think) are one of my favourite things in pop history.

I don't really like 'your blue room' but I quite like the very off-centre solo at the end (when I think Adam C talks).

I think 'one tree hill' is a bit botched, as a production - interesting things are buried, like the Edge playing the blues. It came out, for me, a bit more clearly when I heard the version they did on new year's eve 1989 and the Edge played those blue notes a bit more frontally. I like the track (it's in my top 20!) but really think it's muddy and a bit underachieved. I walked through St Stephen's Green listening to it last month and confirmed this view.

'a man and a woman' is a rarity, a late U2 LP track with real character, distinction; catchy, poppy, dramatic, corny -- very good indeed, I think, and slightly lost in most accounts of their career. I think there's a Yeats touch, as Buck Mulligan says, on it somewhere. 'Soul needs beauty for a soulmate' and, if I remember aright, 'rent' as in ripped?

Lots of good Edge guitar leads here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2kWgm-0xmM

What I've always liked about Marr is that even though he's open about his influences (sometimes explicitly so) it's never too obvious unless you trace it backwards. "The Queen Is Dead" title track was apparently a direct spin-off from VU's "I Can't Stand It" but I never would have guessed that until Marr pointed it out in an interview. Now it makes sense.

Seriously, check out that website I linked to. It has song by song descriptions of what he claims to be copping, and rarely does the final product sound anything like what he claims to be ripping off!

if that 'one tree hill' is the new year's eve one (at the Point) then that's nice.

the 'one tree botched' idea would support my other larger sense that The Joshua Tree is oddly experimental / improvised / live / organic / rough for a massive selling international #1 LP -- obviously Eno / Lanois the obvious explanation.

(though this thing can happen with oddly big records - in a different way, BORN IN THE USA is strangely rough too, for its status)

Then there's the great U2 studio version whose solo is different again from the also fantastic 'play the blues' solo of R&H.

Yeah, it's on the b-side to the "Where The Streets Have No Name" single. That version of S&G actually got some airplay - certainly here in LA.

Seriously, check out that website I linked to.

I'm well familiar with that website... Was going to post it here, but you beat me to it.