Classic or Dud: U2

Not really bothered about reading his U2 review or even listening to the album, but I'm just wondering... does David Fricke still have that haircut that makes his head look like the shape of the helmet of a penis?

Would be funny if one of the rhythm section decided to do a Bill Berry at this point. Maybe funnier if they actually carried on

Xpost at least as of a Robyn Hitchcock concert in manhattan a few years back, yes he does still have that haircut

Fricke looks like a cross between Johnny Ramone and Skeletor.

http://www.programmingthenation.com/production_stills/David_Fricke.jpg
"Five stars. You're welcome."

(To be fair, he always seems like a nice guy, and he's one of the few older critics who still goes out to shows all the time.)

Greates Marky Ramone tribute act ever

I dunno. Could also read that as the Greatest Tom Scholz tribute act ever.

Would be funny if one of the rhythm section decided to do a Bill Berry at this point. Maybe funnier if they actually carried on

― Master of Treacle, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 12:25 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think U2 could quite comfortably carry on if Adam Clayton left. Maybe less so if Larry Mullen left.

I think at this point they could carry on if they all left.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, HoloBono and the U2s!"

We are all U2, that is why they are called U2.

this is not "No Line on the Horizon" by U2

Indeed!

Anyway, I won't have to deal with this until I get a new laptop
― Dominique, Thursday, September 11, 2014 5:46 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^i really love this, the new U2 album as something you're gonna have to man up and face someday, like death and taxes

I thought I'd lost my mind during the 'ba ba barbara, santa barbara' part

does this album sound weird, or do iTunes files just sound bad?

so when I download the latest version of itunes this is gonna be in my library?

if you download it before Oct 13, yeah. I think so.

dud

ughhh it's on my ipod touch

Nelson Muntz should have been on the cover of this album, basically

You can miss it if you have automatic downloads turned off in iTunes, I think.

yeah I don't have that turned on (why would I want anything automatically from iTunes)

oh wait, there is a little cloud icon with an arrow, so i think it's in my library but i have to download it to get it? anyways this is so fucking stupid

It's on my wife's iPhone, she's never plugged it in to iTunes or ever synced it. It just appeared on her phone.

the album is now part of your default consciousness, and you only need to remember that you've heard it

My new perspective on this is that U2 is the perfect musical equivalent of Apple, so if you own an Apple product and use iTunes, you deserve to have a new U2 forced on you and are not allowed to complain about it.

complaining was cool last week. this week, it's cool to listen to the whole album and enjoy it.

it sounds like it was recorded in a glass bottle, it's so airless/dead sounding

complaining was cool last week. this week, it's cool to listen to the whole album and enjoy it.

That, my friend, will never be cool.

They should have given out Zooropa for free to help the global audience to one last chance to rediscover this gem and thus correct one of the great misjudgements in the history of human art.

http://www.whoisu2.com

They should have given out Zooropa for free to help the global audience to one last chance to rediscover this gem and thus correct one of the great misjudgements in the history of human art.

OTFM. It's amazing how many people I know (c. pre-nu-U2) like "everything but 'Zooropa," or got off the boat with "Zooropa." "Zooropa" is amazing. Even "Pop" is mostly good. I think what really bristles about this latest marketing gambit is that U2 is finally so rich and so powerful - which really didn't happen til the post nu-U2 era - that they can do whatever they want, and what they choose is ... whatever it takes to get more.

As a friend noted:

in the book 'U2 by U2', Bono says of The Unforgettable Fire, the band’s fourth album, “all we had to do was to keep doing what we were doing and we would have become the biggest band since Led Zeppelin.” And though Bono said they were “reapplying for the job of the best band in the world” in 2000 they have often substituted “biggest” for “best.”

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/10599301_10152707347799214_8572691908702938605_n.jpg?oh=ec8debc3b5711692bdd81e180ebb64e4&oe=548BA421&__gda__=1422905812_cb5edaff3d10e2e4cb47b9be0793102a

Didn't realise Morten Harket was into U2 then. Subtle A-ha influence?

from the Torygraph

The Irish band’s 19-album back catalogue sold 6,744 copies in the last week ...based on data from then Official Charts Company. That compares with 697 sales the previous week. Almost all of the extra sales were digital downloads, with fewer than 60 U2 albums sold on the high street.

well there is the beautiful day / sun always shines on tv thing so... xp

nobody that likes their own music would behave in such a way

I know that the internet is filled within whining whiners who like to whine but all the complaining about a free album irritated me to no end. (I guess I am whining about this... Whatever.)

I got the album on my computer, listened once and (apparently unlike everyone else) had zero problem making it go away once I realized it was boring and I'd never listen to it again.

Yeah it's kind of incredible. I don't like it but I dunno I'll probably keep it just for shits & giggles

Not feeling the album so much, it's probs my least fave of theirs from what I can tell (disappointing bc NLOTH was really good and has some epic U2 jams) but it's an amazing troll effort.

hey look, free albumdog shit i threw into your front window! i think it's a useful case of tech company overreach because the intrusion is more personal. if you don't think tech is monitoring and selling everything it can around "you" to the highest bidder or you're ok with it because oh em gee it's so cool there's nothing to say really. it isn't about the thickness of u2 "the band" that makes "rock music" it's about the truthiness of this band being applied to current "benevolent" consumer ideology which relies on the maxim that you can't be ungrateful for or criticize something if it's free.

Very well put. That is one major aspect why I think it is odd some people find all the upheaval odd.

But the second one is the tech side - or rather, ethical side - of it: Apple showed a complete disrespect to its users personal digital space. Just days after the news broke that dozens of accounts had been compromised and had their private photos stolen, here comes Apple flipping you the finger, saying: "You know what? We can do it the other way around too! We'll put something in your personal cloud, something you didn't ask for, without your consent, and something you can't get rid of! And we'll break it to all our users as if they won the fucking lottery, haha!"

If you don't understand why people take issue with that, then I don't know what to tell you.

I know that the internet is filled within whining whiners who like to whine but all the complaining about a free album irritated me to no end. (I guess I am whining about this... Whatever.)

It's not a 'free album'. It's an album that is rammed down your throat. A real free album would be: go to apple.com/U2 and click download, and presto, you have a free album! It can only be a free album if you have the choice to grab it or not.
I don't care if people see this as anal or nitpicking. I didn't ask for a fucking U2 album being buried in my iCloud, taking up space, unable (at the time) to get rid of.

I get shit sent to me or pushed from Apple and a dozen other companies all the time. Apps on my machines, icons that pop up, things that disappear, new OS that supplants the old OS but does a worse job, etc. There are a dozen things I have no control over that Apple (and google and facebook and others) are changing or pushing or adding or taking away all the time. I think of the new U2 album no differently than I think of Apple maps or whatever, just another shitty app I won't use. If Apple really fucked up it's in not forcing people to listen to it from start to finish the first time their new iPhones are booted up.

For a company struggling to uphold that iCloud is secure to use for your private things, opening it up themselves and shitting a new U2 album in it is the dumbest thing to do. It is not the same as apps who push you stuff about software updates or whatever.

But aren't google, facebook, apple et al. constantly invading your privacy? Or threatening to? Or doing so without you even knowing it? They all have equally onerous terms of service. They know where you are, they know what you look at on the web, they send you targeted ads, etc.

I do admit the timing was absolutely terrible, in terms of doing this right after the iCloud was breached (though not hacked, Apple is quick to note!). Would have been perfect if there were Bono nudes in there.

if facebook automatically friended everyone with bono, would you be okay with that?