new to the board...

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

wolfeden

Refugee
Joined
Jan 15, 2004
Messages
1,347
Location
calm down, cold resides with me. I flee to decembe
Greets...

I've been mesmerized by U2 since 1984, when 'Pride' from The Unforgettable Fire burst onto my radio and changed my whole world.

This band had such tremendous influence on who I was as a teenager, a musician, a young adult; so many things I am today are a direct result of the bands' influence on me. I come from Irish and Scottish families and was swept up in the stupidity of the Boston Irish for awhile, glamourizing the IRA and 'the Resistance' and having no idea whatsoever of the truth, of the history.
Then, as I sat watching R&H in the theater on its opening night, the band played Sunday Bloody Sunday as a sobbing dirge that soon exploded into rage -- directed at people exactly like me. It was their well-deserved slap to my face that drove me to learn the reality, to research my family's history and to take up this study even as far as to minor in Irish History in college. My bookshelves groan under the weight of texts I'd never have laid eyes on if not for U2.

Because of U2, I became active in Amnesty International. From their example and from Propaganda I gained the conviction to volunteer for human rights causes. From their influence I was a member of ACT UP! and the AIDS Action Committee, demonstrating during the terrible times in the 1980s while I lost friends and family to the disease. With each memorial service I went home and played "40" and cried, but each time it was Bono's voice that gave me the strength to keep at it. Achtung Baby was my steadfast companion through many college nights....

I admit to being one of the many who drifted away after Zooropa. I thought I'd become too jaded and so had they. I found myself endlessly drawn to bands clearly influenced by U2.. James, The Tea Party, Live.
I never stopped listening to my collection but wasn't really paying attention to them anymore...

9/11... As a fire/rescue EMT I was deeply affected, losing colleagues and friends both. I joined the Red Cross in hopes of being able to help, but soon it was all to clear that there was nothing, nothing for us to do there. I found myself going back to the U2 that had always provided solace somehow... October, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree. When I was never more certain that there was no God, no Deity, I found a spark to hold onto in their music (even though I am not Christian). Electrical Storm's release so close to the anniversary mark lent the song all kinds of meaning and imagery I'm not sure the band meant to attach to it, at least for me. I started paying attention again, started listening again. Beautiful Day, Walk On... and then I started noticing all of Bono's political involvement, and suddenly it was right back with me like I'd never walked away.

So who am I? Anything in my life, you can point to it and I'll relate it to U2 somehow. I'm a bass player who learned to play by ear, listening to Mr. Clayton. I'm a parent who always grasped the emotional load of "Mothers of the Disappeared" but never cried listening to it until I had a child of my own. I'm a college graduate who once made a habit of drinking too much alone in my room listening to "Love is Blindness" on infinite repeat. I'm the Irish history student who brought Rattle&Hum to class just for the Bloody Sunday rant. I'm an emergency medical technician who once came home after a horrific December 23rd car crash with multiple fatalities involving substance abuse and sat in my truck screaming and crying to "Bad" instead of going inside.
They're four men who took what they had and what they believed in and made this amazing future for not only themselves, but for all of us listening as well.


note bene: this is the same intro I used for myself over at @U2, corrected where I typoed or whatever.
 
Back
Top Bottom