Shuttlecock XVIII - SAVE US, REFU-JESUS
- Thread starter DaveC
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The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
OP
OP
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
the debut of the beatles didn't change the world? are you on crack?
kiwilad
Refugee
Then again if commercial considerations are foremost, you'd have to say the Spice Girls debut was a landmark. Is that the first time Spice Girls have been mentioned in Shuttlecock? ?
Please Please Me wasn't really an artistic statement. So for me it doesn't qualify. Same with the Stones' debut.
OP
OP
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
commercial considerations? artistic statement? it's the fucking debut album of the beatles!
please please me was the tipping point of the british invasion. it quite literally changed the world, quality be damned.
please please me was the tipping point of the british invasion. it quite literally changed the world, quality be damned.
lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
Yeah, I agree re: Please Please Me. The Beatles already broke big with their singles and could have kept doing so without an LP. I don't think the album itself is that notable.
kiwilad
Refugee
But as an album I don't think it is 'great'. Huge? Yes. Important? Landmark? Revolutionary? Yes.
But still not great.
OP
OP
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
it was recorded in half a day so i don't think it can be judged too harshly in terms of artistry.
kiwilad
Refugee
The Beatles only wrote half the songs. It was perfectly targeted and executed confectionary.
gtfo
OP
OP
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
i'm not trying to suggest that it's anything in terms of quality. i know half of it is covers, that was how almost every album was a the time. but you can't deny its importance - so many people (including lots of future musicians) around the world had their first taste of british rock listening to that album.
it was the domino that set off a whole lot more. it really doesn't matter if it had a double six on it.
it was the domino that set off a whole lot more. it really doesn't matter if it had a double six on it.
OP
OP
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
the experience of recording please please me in half a day clearly had a huge psychological effect on the beatles. of course they would have recorded an album eventually, but it would have been something totally different than please please me or with the beatles and they wouldn't have been the same band by the time they did. that changes so much.
LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
Add me in with those backing Please Please Me as rock's most important debut album. I live in a bubble wherein Velvet Underground & Nico inspired all of my favorites, but in the grand scheme of things, Please Please Me established a formula for rock LPs of the era and gave us the genre's single most important band.
cobl04
45:33
Pfft. I've only heard five Beatles albums. Are they the most important and significant band ever? Most definitely (although that completely ignores all the people of colour who were pushing musical boundaries long before The Beatles)
Do you need to know every single Beatles album/song inside out to talk about music? Fuck no. (Not that anyone here is claiming that, but it shits me when people take a view of 'unless you worship at the altar of The Beatles you're an ignorant fuck'.)
Do you need to know every single Beatles album/song inside out to talk about music? Fuck no. (Not that anyone here is claiming that, but it shits me when people take a view of 'unless you worship at the altar of The Beatles you're an ignorant fuck'.)
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
so back to notable/groundbreaking debuts. Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. He'd been around for a while with Them, and I guess there might have been some half-arsed company-dictated 'fuck off' LP, but Astral Weeks was the proper debut album. Recorded in a weekend with a bunch of musicians who'd never seen the material prior. Utterly legendary.
Of course he always hoed his own row, a fair way outside the pop mainstream, and after the 1980s seemingly increasingly buried inside the marble of his own overweening mythos, but he was very influential for a time, I'd argue. Mainly on American artists. Bruce Springsteen, for instance.
Of course he always hoed his own row, a fair way outside the pop mainstream, and after the 1980s seemingly increasingly buried inside the marble of his own overweening mythos, but he was very influential for a time, I'd argue. Mainly on American artists. Bruce Springsteen, for instance.
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Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
Well I mentioned it because BMP said VU & Nico was "unquestionably the most important debut album ever made and it's not even close".
I said nothing about its quality, as Dave points out, its the first album by the Beatles, how can it not be more important in rock music annals than basically any other debut?
cobl04
45:33
The most important debut album ever made is Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, without question.
cobl04
45:33
Can I be serious for a moment? I was going to post this in EYKIW but it'd be hijacked by normies.
Until the End of the World does not, and has not, ever got the love it REALLY deserves on this forum.
It was a staple on the i+e tour, and those of us who have seen it live on the last couple of tours know that it's an absolute monster, regularly featuring a Bono vs Edge catwalk showdown.
But I have always felt that the live version has struggled to capture the emotion that's present in the album version.
I will never, ever forget how I fell deeply in love with U2. It was Achtung Baby that did it. I didn't like it much on first listen, it was a little too out-there for my tastes at the time (I was in my mid-teens and hadn't been exposed to much music).
But there was something about Achtung Baby that captivated me like no record ever has since. I listened to nothing but it for over a fortnight. And whilst it was the more immediate tracks like Who's Gonna Ride... and Ultraviolet that originally brought me back, they weren't the tracks that helped shape me into the U2 fan (and it's not a stretch to say the person) that I am today.
It was Until the End of the World, more than any other song, that did that. I really can't put into words my feelings for this song, because it sounds silly. But this song enveloped me more than any song had ever done in my entire life prior to that point. Everything about it makes my fucking head spin at a million miles an hour.
I was a directionless teenager with a group of friends who I thought loved me, respected me, but it wasn't quite the case. So when I was at my lowest points the only thing I had to turn to was U2.
I still remember so incredibly vividly, I guess I was 15 or so, walking to a park that my friends said they were at, but they were on the other side of the suburb, and they sent me there as a laugh, to get a laugh, because they didn't respect me. And I still remember calling one of my mates and hearing they were somewhere completely different. And sucking up the humiliation and starting the walk from where they weren't to where they were.
Until the End of the World, Bono and U2 were with me then. And there was something so powerful about that. Something about Edge's guitar, Larry's drums, Adam's bass, Bono's vocals and lyrics, that said to me fuck them, even if they are arseholes, there's more to life, and here's an example of it.
0.00000001% of musical history has come up with something as powerful and as resonant as the third verse of Until the End of the World.
In waves of regret, and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
No two lines in music history have ever been delivered better than how Bono sings those lines.
I'm drunk, and I'm gonna go to bed. Night all.
Until the End of the World does not, and has not, ever got the love it REALLY deserves on this forum.
It was a staple on the i+e tour, and those of us who have seen it live on the last couple of tours know that it's an absolute monster, regularly featuring a Bono vs Edge catwalk showdown.
But I have always felt that the live version has struggled to capture the emotion that's present in the album version.
I will never, ever forget how I fell deeply in love with U2. It was Achtung Baby that did it. I didn't like it much on first listen, it was a little too out-there for my tastes at the time (I was in my mid-teens and hadn't been exposed to much music).
But there was something about Achtung Baby that captivated me like no record ever has since. I listened to nothing but it for over a fortnight. And whilst it was the more immediate tracks like Who's Gonna Ride... and Ultraviolet that originally brought me back, they weren't the tracks that helped shape me into the U2 fan (and it's not a stretch to say the person) that I am today.
It was Until the End of the World, more than any other song, that did that. I really can't put into words my feelings for this song, because it sounds silly. But this song enveloped me more than any song had ever done in my entire life prior to that point. Everything about it makes my fucking head spin at a million miles an hour.
I was a directionless teenager with a group of friends who I thought loved me, respected me, but it wasn't quite the case. So when I was at my lowest points the only thing I had to turn to was U2.
I still remember so incredibly vividly, I guess I was 15 or so, walking to a park that my friends said they were at, but they were on the other side of the suburb, and they sent me there as a laugh, to get a laugh, because they didn't respect me. And I still remember calling one of my mates and hearing they were somewhere completely different. And sucking up the humiliation and starting the walk from where they weren't to where they were.
Until the End of the World, Bono and U2 were with me then. And there was something so powerful about that. Something about Edge's guitar, Larry's drums, Adam's bass, Bono's vocals and lyrics, that said to me fuck them, even if they are arseholes, there's more to life, and here's an example of it.
0.00000001% of musical history has come up with something as powerful and as resonant as the third verse of Until the End of the World.
In waves of regret, and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
No two lines in music history have ever been delivered better than how Bono sings those lines.
I'm drunk, and I'm gonna go to bed. Night all.
iron yuppie
ONE love, blood, life
Might be his best lyric, I'll say that. Very effective use of religious allusions toward an interpretive end.
intedomine
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
it's the worst kind of bullying, that sort of exclusion or isolation of an individual. You'd hope that those friends have changed since then and are remorseful.I feel UTEOTW gets an appropriate level of praise (there are about 4 other songs on AB that I feel suffer a shortfall in appreciation on here), but it does have lyrics that are wonderfully adaptable to personal circumstance, and delivered in such a way by Bono that they can really ring true
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
It should never be left off a set list.
cobl04
45:33
Remarkable, how well he used to mesh religion seamlessly into his lyrics. Like, UTEOTW is clearly based off Bible stories, and yet, it's still so easily shared with those like myself who aren't religious.
iron yuppie
ONE love, blood, life
Well I think it has everything to do with the nature of those allusions: when he takes the dark, existential stuff as inspiration, he turns in some really strong lyrics. When he looks toward the grace/joy stuff, he gets cliched in a hurry.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
It's a very interesting song, riffing off the whole idea of Judas's role in things (ie. he is one who betrays, but his betrayal is necessary to the story, if you didn't have Judas, you'd have to invent him). You absolutely don't have to be religious in the slightest to get the song, of course. It's allusive, that's all.
There's a foreshadowing maybe in God Part II's lyric 'don't believe the Devil, don't believe his book, but the truth is not the same without the lies he made up'.
There's a foreshadowing maybe in God Part II's lyric 'don't believe the Devil, don't believe his book, but the truth is not the same without the lies he made up'.
cobl04
45:33
Must have been something pretty special to experience U2 when they were actually up top. Jealous of some of our ~older~ members here.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
But that's just the lyrics part of course. It's a fucking monster. A fucking epic monster of a song. Those waves of regret and joy are palpable, literally in the music (puts me in mind of The National's, ah, oceanic climax in the original, rough-as-guts album version of Terrible Love).
My first U2 show, I had bad seats where I couldn't see much but I was just happy to be there of course. Back then it was still my favourite U2 song and I knew there was a chance it could be played but it wasn't a regular back then. I was ecstatic when I heard that intro.
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
I think they said they were shipping in December if memory serves (as the post above shows I am very old and the memory isn't what it used to be)
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