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

not sure where postal workers fit into the Irish class system

Either second class or parcel post, depending on weight iirc.

The other thing you learn in that book is that, appearances aside, Bono is apparently very smart.

Bono has talked some nonsense on stage and all that, but he's clearly intelligent. His sheer eloquence reminds me of Seamus Heaney's. Both have done whole books made of interviews, and I daresay neither needed a lot of rewriting to smarten up the sentences. They are phenomenal characters in this respect.

Adam is disarmingly, unapologetically posh.

Favorite moment in the American-football "Stuck in a Moment" video is him reading the Irish Times sports section through the game.

that's not posh, that's knowing good sports writing

and say what you like in other regards about bono, i don't think his intelligence is much in question.

hey, i was only referring to his unfortunate styling when asked if he was "attractive". i totally believe that he's smart! that's a relief and a disappointment at the same time, really.

in ireland there are so many social factors that rival or outright beat (class) for importance

so otm. nonetheless, Bono's definitely middle-class imo.

not sure why Stoneybatter got a mention there? none of them are from around here iirc.

xp Eno was once asked about being seen as "the only intellectual in pop" and asked to name some others and he said "Bono, believe it or not." Bono loves having theories about things and some of them are nonsense but some of them are astute and you can always sense a sharp brain whirring away. He just has a bad filtering system and a fatal weakness for florid hyperbole.

^^^ the terrific thing about Bill Flanagan's book is how Flanagan collects enough of Bono's theories for the reader to judge how many of them are ridiculous.

U2 were my first real live Irish people whose names I knew. Before I listened to U2, I wasn't really sure what Ireland was like beyond the fact that it was very lush and green. I was a middle school kid in the Rust Belt and we had really only received formal instruction about one group of Europeans, The Explorers. Well, Explorers and Pilgrims. Maybe curriculum has changed since I was a kid, but we learned about the world in Geography class, not History class. The two intersected woefully rarely.

(I'm not proud of this or anything, just wanted to give some perspective re: Irishness from someone who knew literally nothing about Irishness before U2.)

Dunphy's UNFORGETTABLE FIRE says that Bono grew up in Stoney Batter.

oh right... i thought he was from Glasnevin

My mistake, I haven't read that book in over 2 decades:

he mentions Stoney Batter but says B's parents lived in Stillorgan then Ballymun, 'only a few minutes' drive from Stoneybatter'. I think he went to school in Glasnevin.

Bono grew up at 10 Cedarwood Road: Ballymun to the east, Glasnevin further south it appears.

'running to stand still' was supposed to be about a Ballymun estate I always thought.

It's all further out of Dublin than I imagined.

The father took early retirement and moved to Howth - funded by rock music I suppose.

anglo shares, cushy pension, sure they were all doing it matt

oh plz

Well it's true I refuse to bother with U2 post Passengers, but dude would have to have fallen off a lot. Taylor Swift outside a studio is like, anti-singing.

Hi all. I'd cleared the decks for a single-day countdown tomorrow but that's just been scuppered. Am now working tomorrow, at least the morning, so things will be slightly delayed. There was a bit of scepticism about the single-day thing anyway.

On the plus side we're now past 40 ballots, so how long / to count down these songs?

Still got 2 hours plus to vote no? Am on it.

Single-day countdowns are no fun. Spread it out a bit if you have time.

Deadline's in three-and-a-half hours, yes. Voting closes at high noon over Joshua Tree.

I'm going to stick to that, get the abacus out tonight.

How many you planning to reveal? 2-day rollout seems right. 10 per day for five days (Prince) seemed a bit too drawn out.

Depends what the hierarchy looks like - I honestly haven't started on it yet so I don't know. I'm guessing 40 ballots means a top 40 will work - there'll be no trawling through days of ties.

40 ballots is a good turnout

If it's 40 I'll probably do 20 on Monday and 20 on Tuesday.

hmm i'll try v hard to get one in just to shore up the middle

Twenty years ago, Bono described Achtung Baby as “the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree” while Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that “stripped-down and defying its old formulas, U2 has given itself a fighting chance for the 1990's.” The album won a Grammy® Award for Best Rock Performance and became one of the most significant records of the nineties and of U2’s career.

To mark twenty years since its 1991 release, an anniversary edition of U2’s Achtung Baby is due on November 1, 2011, in the United States (internationally, October 31, 2011).

Recorded over six months at Hansa Studio in Berlin and Windmill Lane in Dublin, Achtung Baby is U2’s seventh studio album. Produced by longtime U2 collaborators, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno with Steve Lillywhite, Achtung Baby was engineered by Flood and led by “The Fly.” The album spawned four other singles: “Mysterious Ways,” “One,” “Even Better Than The Real Thing” and “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.”

The Achtung Baby archives have unearthed some previously unreleased songs from the recording sessions. With a raft of unreleased material, video, remixes, b-sides and documentary footage discovered, a full album of demo and early versions of the final 1991 tracklisting has also been revealed. Five physical editions including vinyl, CD, DVD and digital options will be made available. Full details of all formats are at achtungbaby.u2.com.

Earlier this year U2 returned to Hansa Studio in Berlin to discuss Achtung Baby in From The Sky Down, directed by Academy Award®-winning director Davis Guggenheim (Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth). The film has been selected to open the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8 and will be included in the anniversary edition.

Voted!

80s: 13
90s: 7
00s: 0
10s: 0

AB 4
JT 3
R&H 3
ATYCLB 3
POP 3
Various 4

Two hours left, 43 ballots received.

http://monsterrebellion.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/bono_zoom.jpg

Now I too have done my part for democracy.

The sun is over the meridian. Thanks to all 44 of you who voted. Will get to counting.

Unnnhhh ... why oh why did I decide to attempt to use the .xls after all? I am not competent. In fairness it does get easier as you go along.

^ my way of saying that no way am I going to have this ready to go tomorrow. It'll be a Monday/Tuesday countdown by the looks. I'll try to think of some nice feature for the rundown in the meantime.

PS I am halfway through and eight points cover the top three.

hmm, not sure i'd want to predict what somgs those might be

with or without you
When love comes to town
Dancing queen

lol

looking thru my ballot it seems I like TUF and Boy exactly the same amount, TJT easily outstrips them both tho.

!!
http://achtungbaby.u2.com/?utm_source=Publicaster&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EMLU2COS_201100803_AchtungBaby&utm_term=http%3a%2f%2fachtungbaby.u2.com%2f&AID=1613

dan. try that again
http://achtungbaby.u2.com/images/top_image.jpg

i like the sound of this new doc/ DVD.

That looks like a Sears catalogue from 1981.

Without the bra section, surely.

It looks like a disassembled Transformer.

I hate that all these acts keep releasing awesome looking boxed sets years after I've more or less sworn off paying for expensive, awesome looking boxed sets. I'm looking at you, too, Smiths Pink Floyd, etc.

I do want these Achtung Baby extras -- but I bought the CD singles as they came out, and I have the LP on the original vinyl, still pretty pristine. It is funny that those things are now 'de luxe'.

The dvd would mean most to me because my really fantastic Achtung Baby video cassette won't seem to play on my video player.

not sure I can justify this one at all:
http://www.rhino.co.uk/store/products,the-smiths-complete-deluxe-collectors-boxset_39767.htm

again, some of us had the vinyl first time round!

pf i have it in my head that just about everything you possess is an antique, I can quite easily imagine a mahogany ipad

It looks like a disassembled Transformer.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, August 5, 2011 4:36 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

LOL!