SOE- 27: And SOE it Begins

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I have to say that the Bono interview worried me much more than the Edge one.
I admit, I don't want to judge lyrics out of context too much. But the opening line that he is so proud of... Just worries me. The bits added because of the political shift... Worry me.

I hope that I end up being way off and musically it all fits smoothly. But right now, I am not as solid as i was up to now. I really like the first 3 songs we've heard, so I'm hopeful.

Still a long wait to find out.
 
Registered Dude said:
They opted to defer releasing an album at the end of August 2016
JT tour began just shy of eight months later, in May 2017
Click to expand...

The significant date for the JT Tour, I suppose, is actually December 2016. It was in the band's Christmas video that they hinted at it (which indicates the decision had already been taken to do the tour), and the formal announcement came in January 2017.

So by August 2016 they know SOE won't make it, but by December they're confident enough to commit to JT30.
 
Nick66 said:
I think SOE was delayed b/c the band started second guessing themselves again, and I think TJT tour was a contractual/business decision as a result of delaying SOE. How much Bono's health is mixed in with all that, I can't say.
Click to expand...

I agree. It is worrying to me that a band so established and respected are second-guessing everything. It shows inconfidence and insecurity, which is not good, and makes me feel a bit sad, because it is coming across as that this band can't accept the truth - they're older and of a different generation as to what is popular. They should be doing all this for themselves and their loyal fans, not the charts etc. I never got this impression with bands like REM, a band who were around at a similar time to U2. In their latter stages, they seemed to just get on with it.
 
Sorry, on what fucking planet are people doubting the health scare story? And what right do people feel they have to doubt this? Seriously, you honestly believe these people would fabricate a FUCKING FATAL HEALTH ISSUE to cover a case of cold feet.

Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.
 
dan_smee said:
Sorry, on what fucking planet are people doubting the health scare story? And what right do people feel they have to doubt this? Seriously, you honestly believe these people would fabricate a FUCKING FATAL HEALTH ISSUE to cover a case of cold feet.

Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.
Click to expand...

I certainly don't. But it wouldn't surprise me if others did. Which is obviously very morally wrong of course.
 
Axver said:
I'm not a member there so it doesn't display the key part of the post. What is it?
Click to expand...

There was a poster on Reddit that stated Bono's been receiving a lot of right wing extremist death threats after his comments on the Charlie Rose show about Trump being the worst thing to happen to America. Allegedly there was a near successful attempt on his life in the weeks after the iHeart appearance. They didn't want to go public with it as so not to encourage additional attempts.

I don't know if I buy it or not, but that's what they're claiming.

This screenshot may load of his full post:
78757c3af536b0b87a1f8d18679c8bf9.png
 
Jarvio said:
I agree. It is worrying to me that a band so established and respected are second-guessing everything. It shows inconfidence and insecurity, which is not good, and makes me feel a bit sad, because it is coming across as that this band can't accept the truth - they're older and of a different generation as to what is popular. They should be doing all this for themselves and their loyal fans, not the charts etc. I never got this impression with bands like REM, a band who were around at a similar time to U2. In their latter stages, they seemed to just get on with it.
Click to expand...

Yep. R.E.M.'s last tour (2008) was great because they'd made a very good album that also tapped into the politics of the day with great wit and sarcasm yet also peppered with a solid pop song or two and they also brought back a lot of the early less obvious Murmur->LRP songs at the shows and cared not a jot I guess, because they love those songs.

It'd be a like a U2 set with Twilight, I Fall Down, Surrender or Stories For Boys popping up every so often as well as the more standard IWF, Out Of Control, NYD etc. They'd also defaulted to the guitar led setup again on Accelerate and employed virtually no keyboards live, so it made sense.
 
the atu2 post quotes a reddit post from the u2news subreddit that seems to have since been deleted.



don't believe this - not really a "health scare" as the band describe it, is it?

(edited for clarity)
 
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Registered Dude said:
the atu2 post quotes a reddit post from the u2news subreddit that seems to have since been deleted.



I dont think we should believe this.
Click to expand...



It doesn’t fit with the way the band are talking about it. Anything could be true, and all of it is obviously bad news.

Obviously they don’t want whatever it is public, and that is 100% fine. No one has a right to question it - this is an ‘accept and move on’.
 
Ok, my attempt here to break up the health scare talks. I mean, there's nothing that can change that now. He had a scare, we don't know the details, he seems ok now, or they wouldn't be touring now with another tour in the works.

So I mentioned being concerned with some of the lyrics mentioned in the Bono article.
One that i think is really good is -
'Now you're at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars, so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive

Pretty cool stuff there.

The one that worried me was the opening line of - "There's nothing to stop this being the best day ever."

So i went back to look at all the other opening lines. and it does give me some hope. Some of my favorite songs have some lyrics that I would have thought could be really bad. And some songs i don't like that much have some cool opening lines. So That eases my mind.
Here is a list of the opening lines:

I was on the outside when you said
You said you needed me
I was looking at myself
I was blind, I could not see


And I try to sing this song, I
I try to stand up
But I can't find my feet
I try, I try to speak up
But only in you I'm complete

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away

And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of morning
Light in the distance

I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
That hold me inside.

Not sure what song is really considered the "opening" of Rattle and Hum. Would be either Van Diemen's or Desire

Van D.
Hold me now,
Oh hold me now
'Til this hour
Has gone around

Desire
Yeah, lover I'm off the streets
Gonna go where the bright lights
And the big city meet


I'm ready
Ready for the laughing gas
I'm ready
Ready for what's next

Zooropa vorsprung durch technik
Zooropa be all that you can be
Be a winner
Eat to get slimmer

You can reach
But you can't grab it
You can hold it, control it
No but, you can't bag it

Lights go down, it's dark
The jungle is your head, can't rule your heart

I know a girl who's like the sea
I watch her changing every day for me

I was chasing down the days of fear
Chasing down a dream before it disappeared


So Zoo Station and Zooropa would have both worried me. But they are two incredible songs. The Miracle has a cool opening line, but i don't love the song. - Also, i hadn't listened to it for a while, but NLOTH has an incredible opening line. And i love that song. ONe of my favorites.

My hopes are being restored. :wink:
 
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dan_smee said:
It doesn’t fit with the way the band are talking about it. Anything could be true, and all of it is obviously bad news.

Obviously they don’t want whatever it is public, and that is 100% fine. No one has a right to question it - this is an ‘accept and move on’.
Click to expand...

Right. I'd be wondering why this thing would still be on the down low if it actually happened too. You'd think something like that would leak out in short order or keep him from greeting fans for awhile (which has happened a few times on this tour, minimum).

Jarvio said:
I agree. It is worrying to me that a band so established and respected are second-guessing everything. It shows inconfidence and insecurity, which is not good, and makes me feel a bit sad, because it is coming across as that this band can't accept the truth - they're older and of a different generation as to what is popular. They should be doing all this for themselves and their loyal fans, not the charts etc. I never got this impression with bands like REM, a band who were around at a similar time to U2. In their latter stages, they seemed to just get on with it.
Click to expand...

Or, just maybe, it's difficult enough to write one song at any given time, much less one after already releasing 14 albums worth of ideas in the world. I'd probably be second guessing myself or struggling for new-ish ideas if I were in my 50s and doing this for a few decades too. Being insecure about new stuff is overanlyzed on here since we'll read every interview and put our own spin on it, but every musician has that to some extent. If people think that's not an issue or shouldn't be one, I doubt they've tried writing a song before.
 
If that Reddit thing is actually true - which, well, it's Reddit, so I hope we're all taking it with a lot of grains of salt - then it would explain the band's reluctance to go ahead with the St Louis show without a full complement of police and security.

Anyway, cheers for reposting it in a readable form here, PRB216. :up:
 
womanfish said:
Ok, my attempt here to break up the health scare talks. I mean, there's nothing that can change that now. He had a scare, we don't know the details, he seems ok now, or they wouldn't be touring now with another tour in the works.

So I mentioned being concerned with some of the lyrics mentioned in the Bono article.
One that i think is really good is -
'Now you're at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars, so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive

Pretty cool stuff there.

The one that worried me was the opening line of - "There's nothing to stop this being the best day ever."

So i went back to look at all the other opening lines. and it does give me some hope. Some of my favorite songs have some lyrics that I would have thought could be really bad. And some songs i don't like that much have some cool opening lines. So That eases my mind.
Here is a list of the opening lines:

I was on the outside when you said
You said you needed me
I was looking at myself
I was blind, I could not see


And I try to sing this song, I
I try to stand up
But I can't find my feet
I try, I try to speak up
But only in you I'm complete

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away

And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of morning
Light in the distance

I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
That hold me inside.

Not sure what song is really considered the "opening" of Rattle and Hum. Would be either Van Diemen's or Desire

Van D.
Hold me now,
Oh hold me now
'Til this hour
Has gone around

Desire
Yeah, lover I'm off the streets
Gonna go where the bright lights
And the big city meet


I'm ready
Ready for the laughing gas
I'm ready
Ready for what's next

Zooropa vorsprung durch technik
Zooropa be all that you can be
Be a winner
Eat to get slimmer

You can reach
But you can't grab it
You can hold it, control it
No but, you can't bag it

Lights go down, it's dark
The jungle is your head, can't rule your heart

I know a girl who's like the sea
I watch her changing every day for me

I was chasing down the days of fear
Chasing down a dream before it disappeared


So Zoo Station and Zooropa would have both worried me. But they are two incredible songs. The Miracle has a cool opening line, but i don't love the song. - Also, i hadn't listened to it for a while, but NLOTH has an incredible opening line. And i love that song. ONe of my favorites.

My hopes are being restored. :wink:
Click to expand...

My issue with his lyrics are the 40 billion words/syllables he crams into the songs now. It forces him to do his rapid fire delivery that he's picked up since post Pop, and is probably one of the main reasons U2 songs have lost a bit of their sonic magic. There's just too much Bono, and Edge is forced to just scratch his strings instead of filling in the space with something a bit more interesting.

I can't judge the lyrics without the context of the melody, but reading all those words....doesn't leave a lot of hope.

I think we're in store for a lot of Vertigo style songs for the RAWK, and then classic Edge chimes for the slower songs (SFS style)
 
PRB216 said:
There was a poster on Reddit that stated Bono's been receiving a lot of right wing extremist death threats after his comments on the Charlie Rose show about Trump being the worst thing to happen to America. Allegedly there was a near successful attempt on his life in the weeks after the iHeart appearance. They didn't want to go public with it as so not to encourage additional attempts.

I don't know if I buy it or not, but that's what they're claiming.

This screenshot may load of his full post:
78757c3af536b0b87a1f8d18679c8bf9.png
Click to expand...
Anything is possible, but Bono has dealt with death threats at many different stages of his career so I wouldn't think that would give him enough pause to halt an album and rewrite songs.

I also don't think they'd be able to keep something like that under wraps, whereas a private medical procedure is protected in most countries.
 
Back to the music, Bono' s quotes confuse me and leave me worried for one reason (well, a few, but one that Ill focus on here). On the band's major successful releases, let's pick JT, AB, and TUF for a minute, they were both echoing the zeitgeist of whatever was happening production-wise at the time while also channelling or borrowing aesthetics from classic acts. Sure, AB had an industrial feel that was familiar from Depeche Mode, the Madchester groups, NIN, and others, but they were also riffing off Kraftwerk, Neu!, Einstuertzende Neubauen, and Bowie for a lot of that sound. Same with JT/TUF and the Dylan/Elvis/Van Morrison/Stones/Lou Reed influences. Point is, the last three records have hit only one of those areas- the contemporary production quirks are all there, but there's not much hanging on the skeleton besides that. I don't know what's inspiring, at a deeper level, the sound they're going for. Maybe the well is dry, but it sounds similar here on this one- we got teases with callbacks to stuff like The Clash on a song or two of SOI, but none of it sustained and none of it formed a cohesive sound. I hope I'm wrong, but the more I hear about this record the less interested I get.
 
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BEAL said:
My issue with his lyrics are the 40 billion words/syllables he crams into the songs now. It forces him to do his rapid fire delivery that he's picked up since post Pop, and is probably one of the main reasons U2 songs have lost a bit of their sonic magic. There's just too much Bono, and Edge is forced to just scratch his strings instead of filling in the space with something a bit more interesting.

I can't judge the lyrics without the context of the melody, but reading all those words....doesn't leave a lot of hope.

I think we're in store for a lot of Vertigo style songs for the RAWK, and then classic Edge chimes for the slower songs (SFS style)
Click to expand...

I'm trying to keep in mind that when he rattles off a long string of lyrics, that it will be broken up in the song itself.

So like this part:

There's a song called "Get Out of Your Own Way" where I've tried to use some biting irony to reflect the anger out on the streets "Fight back, don't take it lying down you've got to bite back. The face of liberty is starting to crack, she had a plan until she got a smack in the mouth and it all went south like freedom. The slaves are looking for someone to lead 'em, the master's looking for someone to need him. The promised land is there for those who need it most and Lincoln's ghost says get out of your own way."

That could be 2 or 3 or more verses. Which then comes down to how it flows with the song. Still don't like the Lincoln's ghost part either way. But we've had worse.
 
So for a tracklisting, we have:


Love Is All We Have Left
The Blackout
You're The Best Thing About Me
It's The Little Things That Give You Away
Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way
Get Out Of Your Own Way
The Showman
The Lights Of Home
Summer Of Love
American Soul


And then 1 or 2 of Landlady, Tightrope, Much More Better, Where The Shadows Fall, or Red Flag Day?


Probably go with MMB to keep it as clunky as possible.
 
dan_smee said:
Sorry, on what fucking planet are people doubting the health scare story? And what right do people feel they have to doubt this? Seriously, you honestly believe these people would fabricate a FUCKING FATAL HEALTH ISSUE to cover a case of cold feet.

Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.
Click to expand...

Who here is doubting that Bono had a health scare? Who is saying they "fabricated" a health scare story?
 
I don't mind any of the lyrics really that have been posted.

The fucking titles though. I'm a big fan of love and the power of love, but I could never bring myself to ever say Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way.
 
You either have reading comp issues BVS, or you're being your usual obtuse self.

In fact, I said many times in this thread I didn't think U2 was lying about Bono's health, and that I frankly didn't know how Bono's health figured into U2's schedule.

What I did say is that didn't buy the excuse that Trump was the reason the record was delayed. U2 is the one who offered that as a reason for the delay. They said it loudly, and often.

Hope you're enjoying Songs of Ascent.
 
Nick66 said:
You either have reading comp issues BVS, or you're being your usual obtuse self.

In fact, I said many times in this thread I didn't think U2 was lying about Bono's health, and that I frankly didn't know how Bono's health figured into U2's schedule.

What I did say is that didn't buy the excuse that Trump was the reason the record was delayed. U2 is the one who offered that as a reason for the delay. They said it loudly, and often.

Hope you're enjoying Songs of Ascent.
Click to expand...



I quoted you directly.

Now who's having comprehension issues?

Don't be a dick, Nick
 
I find it hard to believe that an actual assassination attempt would be kept private within U2's security detail. There's no way there wouldn't be some report made to the police (pretty sure it would be illegal to not report it), and then it would be hard for that to be kept under wraps.

Not buying it.
 
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