The Best of the Innocence and Experience Era

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Hey all. Stopping back in for a bit.

SOI and SOE to me are the band's best work since POP. I would take them way over Bomb and No Line.

IMO they are painfully close in quality.

SOI has top tier songs like:
EBW, Raised By Wolves, Sleep LIke a Baby, and The Troubles.

SOE more than matches it with:
Love is All..., Lights, Summer of Love, Red Flag Day, Little Things, Landlady, Love is Bigger and 13

They both have some good solid listens, but not greatness:
SOI - California, Iris, Volcano, Reach and Cedarwood
SOE - Best Thing, Get Out and The Blackout

And they both have a couple stinkers
SOI - Miracle and SFS
SOE - American Soul and The Showman

Both have an amazing bonus track that should have been on the albums, Crystal Ballroom and Book of your Heart.

I lean towards SOE a bit. I think its a bit more consistent and has more high tier songs IMO. But both are very solid albums which land in the middle of U2 catalog for me.

This is something I could have written.
 
we’ve had two solid albums of music and three really fun tours. Enjoy these moments while they are here because we don’t know when the next time they will come around again.


This captures it. The past 4 years have been amazing as far as U2 goes.

Dan, I agree with your original post wholeheartedly. Invisible, The Troubles, LIAWHL, Little Things, Blackout, Love is Bigger... all standouts to me.

All 3 tours were fantastic. I saw 2 shows each. One thing I loved about I+E and E+I was the stage layout. The catwalk was genius as far as getting closer to the crowd (and vice versa). If a person wanted to, it was super easy to get within spitting distance of the band, or to travel back and forth from the main stage to the e-stage. For me, that made for a stress-free experience.

As for SOI vs SOE, I’m firmly in SOE’s camp. SOI has some highlights but overall hasn’t aged as well. SOE is still on rotation for me. SOI has some highlights, but the lows are deeper. I can listen to SOE straight through with fewer cringe-y moments. American Soul is the only big trip-up for me, and even that was fantastic live. However on SOI I skip California and Volcano every time, and some others are just ok.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this era.
 
As with so much of U2, an era of noteworthy peaks and missed opportunities (I’d argue Bono’s bike accident did more damage to SOI than the iTunes thing as it took the wind out of their promo sails/sales).

As this thread is about the peaks:
Invisible
California
Raised By Wolves
Cedarwood Road
Brilliant arena tour design
Bono walking on to People Have The Power
The EBW/October/Bullet/Zooropa/Streets segment from Euro IE
Perfect Streets execution on JT30 - they didn’t need to do anything complicated, they just needed to do it right, and boy did they
Exit!!!
Little Things live
Little Things studio
All Jimmy Fallon performances - Best Thing, Bullet, and Angel of Harlem
The Blackout
Love Is Bigger
Red Flag Day
The BBC special
Acrobat!!
Reviving Staring At The Sun and hearing audiences applaud at Bono mentioning “an album called Pop”
Acrobat!!
Honorable mentions to new versions of NYD and Dirty Day, neither of which completely won me over, but I love that they’re still trying new things.

A pretty great 4 years, all told.
 
I'm a sucker for NLOTH, neither SOI nor SOE improved on it, to me eno is the secret weapon.

that BBC concert was great too. really great.

As for the last 3 tours they were definitely enjoyable but something doesn't sit quite right with me, it feels like the business venture has become too obvious (thanks live nation) but they're also not getting any younger so...
 
Great topic Smee!

It’s no secret that this is one of my favorite eras in U2’s career. I really enjoyed the concept and I really feel that the songs were strong as a whole. Combine that with the real life stuff that Bono went through, it’s really a fascinating era.

I’d say my top songs...ones that I’ll continue to return to years down the road are:

Iris
Cedarwood Road
Reach Around
Troubles
Lights Of Home (Strings Version)
Summer Of Love
Little Things
Blackout
Love is Bigger

With that said, I can see myself continuing to play both albums in full As I really don’t dislike anything from the era.
 
Little Things is the hands down highlight. Best song they’ve done in years, just wish they would have played it more.

And of course, the prolific touring was just an absolute treat, relatively static set list aside. Was fortunate enough to see them multiple times on each tour, and even got to see them in Dublin and a few new places around the world. Plus it all happened during such a formative time in my life... really so many happy memories will be associated with this era.

Hope the boys take the time they need - I’ll be here still listening to all of the new music they’ve released and the fantastic live versions of new and old songs they’ve played over the years.
 
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Why?

Fucking lol. You're so trapped in your ideology that you're offended by two very simple and not even controversial 'political' moments. 'Largely built to capture casuals' I flew half way across the world for it.

trapped by my ideology? dude at this point your arguments are so consistently idiotic I dont know what to say.
 
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Honestly, these past several years have been awesome. We've seen some excellent songs, tours, and moments. Nothing, though, will beat watching the HBO concert when the band played in Paris after the terrorist attack. Absolutely triumphant and defiant performance, and featured the second best intro to Streets of all time (only the Super bowl beats it for me).

Hopefully we get a 2000s greatest hits album
 
SOI - SOE era has been Magical. Can’t think of a better word. Two really personal albums, 3 tours, poured their hearts out.

And I’m so thankful. Our 1st child was born- Evelyn Grace. Evaded cancer before she entered the world, thank God. Got the chance to share a new U2 album with her - SOI - and at 3 yrs old she still enjoys Iris, Joey Ramone and Invisible.

Had the moment of a lifetime on stage with the band on the i+e tour in Chicago, where I grew up a diehard Chicago Bulls fan. Always wanted to play basketball. I wore my Air Jordan’s that night. And really most importantly, met and immediately made a new and eternal friend that day in Shawn (harbinger on Interference). Tag team partner for life. We’ve met up for SOE shows since then.

My wife Linda and I took Evelyn to her first U2 shows for JT30 Detroit & SOE St. Louis. Was scared at first with this little person, wanting to protect her but have fun. She was amazing and did so well. Don’t think I’ve ever felt the way I did watching my child sing and go crazy recognizing songs from the Paris DVD she watched in her highchair.

Somehow won the chance to see the band play the Apollo. Still in shock. They still have it. I Will Follow & Electric Co in a small theater is about as good as it gets. Blackout would’ve been amazing in that setting. I believe the band knows they can squeeze more out of the small concert setting down the road.

I know all of this is really unusual and in no ways are these bragging points. I say these things because they - Edge Adam Larry Bono - are truly special people. Very trusting. Risk takers. And they gave a lot of themselves up to the fan base these past few years, unlike they ever have. I felt the love and the trust first hand and really all I ever wanted to do, like so many of us, was to have a chance to say thank you.

Unbelievable era. Their best? Maybe not, at least not as groundbreaking as JT or AB. But they probably pushed themselves harder than ever with families, health issues. And they still exceed the odds.

Really, magical. So glad they’re still together and doing what they do.

I will never count them out. What they sacrifice by touring and being away from their families has made our family stronger. Have made being a dad a lot more fun than I could’ve imagined. That’s how I’ll remember this era.
 

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The i/e Boston 1 show was the best concert I’ve ever seen in my life.

The albums are solid — some great songs, some not-so-great. The other two tours were great. 5 shows in 3 years. That’s great.

I’m very glad we’ve had these 4 years.

What songs do we think will survive this era and be played on subsequent tours, should we be so lucky?
 
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What songs do we think will survive this era and be played on subsequent tours, should we be so lucky?

Good question... not counting the SOI group of Iris/Cedarwood Road and a little bit of RBW early in the e+I tour, seems like the only 2000’s album they come back to semi-consistently on subsequent tours is the ATYCLB singles & Vertigo/ COBL. So I’m not really confident we’ll get a lot of these songs again. Just my gut feeling.

With that said, taking a wild stab, I’ll guess Invisible, Every Breaking Wave, Blackout, Love is bigger, Gooyow are most likely to come back.

I’d personally like RFD, EBW full band, Little Things, Crystal Ballroom, Reach around to get played
 
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Potentially for next year:
Raised by Wolves
Cedarwood Road
Best Thing
Get Out
The Blackout
Love is Bigger
13

Beyond that:
Ordinary Love
The Miracle (in snippet form only, like Moment of Surrender)
Every Breaking Wave
Get Out
Little Things (once they give it a long rest like it's a song from Pop)
The Blackout
 
This cycle of 2 albums x 3 tours featured some great highs but also some significant lows.

I feel that especially for the SOE tour, Europe really got a much better shake of songs (especially by the end of the tour) than the US did. The thing that was impressive about the SOI tour was even though it was a fairly rigid setlist, they played a lot of different deep cuts through the tour mostly during the B-Stage segment and a lot of those performances were really solid (Two Hearts, . I am not a fan of either of the last two albums but I thought at least in 2015, they made the new material that I mostly didn't care for come off a lot better live than on the album. I think the Paris broadcast/home video is the best official live release of theirs since ZooTV.

The JT30 tour just seemed cynical. It was great hearing some of those deep cuts but they blew it with the pre-recorded horns for Red Hill Mining Town and the piped in Pavarotti vox for MS. I really thought there was a notable decline in Bono's overall energy that tour vs just a couple years before.

The SOE LA show I caught this year (2nd night) was just not a great show with the rehashed Cederwood Road 1st set and mediocre 2nd half (Acrobat being the exception). The BBC and club shows and the last month of the tour were the real highlights of 2018 for the band, imo.
 
Having just watched the October/BTBS from Paris 2015 on a whim, I’m inclined to agree with the Independent article that suggests this might have been the best time to have ever seen U2.

Bono in conversation with his younger self, the media narratives of both, Bono and “Bono,” fighter planes vs private planes and all shrouded by sometimes startlingly provocative imagery (bodies floating in the Mediterranian in the shape of the EU stars as Bono briefly sings Ode to Joy - think of the timing that tiny moment requires). It’s a really layered and sophisticated piece of rock theater, they’re really the only big band I can think of who can pull these sorts of things. If it’s possible, I feel Bono doesn’t get enough credit for his stagecraft and what he pulls off every night.
 
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This might be the best I+E setlist on paper. Now that a few years have passed, need to check out some bootlegs with a fresh perspective at some point.
-European Leg
-Only performance of All I Want Is You on that leg
-Electric Co.
-Shine Like Stars in WOWY
-Plenty of snippets during the whole show
 
This might be the best I+E setlist on paper. Now that a few years have passed, need to check out some bootlegs with a fresh perspective at some point.
-European Leg
-Only performance of All I Want Is You on that leg
-Electric Co.
-Shine Like Stars in WOWY
-Plenty of snippets during the whole show



The only thing that show is missing is “Bad”
 
The only thing that show is missing is “Bad”

Yeah that would really top it off. None of the five shows that included All I Want Is You on the US leg had Bad in the same show either.
 
Not sure what's so great about that setlist. For one, I'll say it a million times, but "shine like stars" is the most overhyped thing on this forum, I've never given a fuck if I heard or not. It's lame on Rattle & Hum and I've always felt that way. "Hear us coming" is a far greater addition to its respective song.

As for the rest of the setlist, I'd rather have gone to the Los Angeles show where they played Volcano and The Troubles than this London show. Hell, the LA show I went to had Angel of Harlem, When Love Comes To Town, All I Want Is You, Electric Co, and closed with 40 instead of One. I'll take that over the London show too.
 
The Europe shows have October > Bullet > Zooropa > Streets, whereas the US shows have a lame Mother and Child Reunion snippet into Streets.
 
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