acrobatphoto
Babyface
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2005
- Messages
- 21
I have been not only a musical fan of U2, but a historical and artistic fan of U2 as well. The albums are probably my least favorite thing about U2, other than the liner notes and Corbijn artwork. What gets me going, and countless other fans I suspect, is the energy U2 puts into their package. The Popmart concert in KMart, the Trabants hanging sadly over a ZooTV frame, the giant glow of a pantone red in the desert framework of the Joshua Tree Where the Streets Have No Name.
What worries me is that the stripping down of U2 has taken some of the theatre away from what makes U2...well, U2. Bono, the man, is about AIDS and Jesus. But Bono the singer, the entertainer, U2's Bono is a visual package of flag waving, stage jumping, costume changing, EGO. The Fly was a postmodern creation, reflecting (not ironically) Bono before Achtung. The black leather, the shades, are a costume for the Rattle and Hum man he had become. And that was, and still is, Bono. He doesn't work as a frail AIDS fighter, dead father singing, showman.
What does work is Arcade Fire. For those of you who haven't seen them, see them. Fly to montreal now and see them. Their music is spiritual, loud, layered, Talking Head's-ish. But who cares really, at the concert. On stage they yell, they climb walls, they wrap scarves around each other and fake funerals. They end the show by taking acoustic instruments and playing their way out through the crowd, going all the way around the floor, up into the balcony. They are a theatrical unit who can rock and truly change the way a critic thinks of the modern concert.
U2 did this, album after album. ZooTV defined a generation that breast-fed on the nipple of CNN. Popmart spotlighted the lines we stand in for early sales at Walmart and KMart. Elevation was a chapel for the world to grieve in, a simple place where 9/11 became an invisible backdrop on a barren stage.
What Vertigo is failing to do is to make U2 into the theatre they themselves invented. We are living in a time of wars nations don't want to fight, AIDS we don't care to fight, and religion we fight to ignore. We are living, at least in America, in a vertigo world, but this tour has its’ anchor down. We need fire, we need sweat, we need angry tears, not dead dad tears.
Arcade Fire isn't taking U2's flame, but they are using the heat U2 created in the 90's to revive the theatre that rock n' roll can produce. It's time U2 found their Fire again. Then, and only then, will they be unforgettable.
What worries me is that the stripping down of U2 has taken some of the theatre away from what makes U2...well, U2. Bono, the man, is about AIDS and Jesus. But Bono the singer, the entertainer, U2's Bono is a visual package of flag waving, stage jumping, costume changing, EGO. The Fly was a postmodern creation, reflecting (not ironically) Bono before Achtung. The black leather, the shades, are a costume for the Rattle and Hum man he had become. And that was, and still is, Bono. He doesn't work as a frail AIDS fighter, dead father singing, showman.
What does work is Arcade Fire. For those of you who haven't seen them, see them. Fly to montreal now and see them. Their music is spiritual, loud, layered, Talking Head's-ish. But who cares really, at the concert. On stage they yell, they climb walls, they wrap scarves around each other and fake funerals. They end the show by taking acoustic instruments and playing their way out through the crowd, going all the way around the floor, up into the balcony. They are a theatrical unit who can rock and truly change the way a critic thinks of the modern concert.
U2 did this, album after album. ZooTV defined a generation that breast-fed on the nipple of CNN. Popmart spotlighted the lines we stand in for early sales at Walmart and KMart. Elevation was a chapel for the world to grieve in, a simple place where 9/11 became an invisible backdrop on a barren stage.
What Vertigo is failing to do is to make U2 into the theatre they themselves invented. We are living in a time of wars nations don't want to fight, AIDS we don't care to fight, and religion we fight to ignore. We are living, at least in America, in a vertigo world, but this tour has its’ anchor down. We need fire, we need sweat, we need angry tears, not dead dad tears.
Arcade Fire isn't taking U2's flame, but they are using the heat U2 created in the 90's to revive the theatre that rock n' roll can produce. It's time U2 found their Fire again. Then, and only then, will they be unforgettable.
