26 / male /
Wroclaw, Poland, EU
U2 - fan since 1995
ActungZooPopPassengers -
NLOTH -
Boctobar -
UF/JT -
RH/HTDAAB -
ATYCLB -
Like me. I'm 24. The first U2 song I consciously loved was HMTMKMKM in the summer of 1997. The first U2 song I consciously loved while consciously knowing it was U2 was WOWY in the summer of 1998. I saw the video on TV in my grandmother's apartment in Istanbul. Within the same two days, I saw the WOWY, SBS, and Angel Of Harlem videos and I loved them. My brother had JT and UABRS on cassette, and soon after I got the Best Of 1980-1990 2-disc edition when it was released that November. With the Batman Forever Soundtrack, JT and UABRS on cassette tape, and the Best Of 1980-1990+B-Sides in hand, 1999 came, and I will always, always remember that Spring and Summer:
February 1999: Achtung Baby(Disc-Go-Round, Dayton, Ohio)
March 1999: Pop(Second Time Around, Dayton, Ohio)
June 1999: War(Borders, Chicago), The Unforgettable Fire(some second hand place in Chicago), October(same second hand place in Chicago)
July 1999: Boy(somewhere in New York), Rattle And Hum(Best Buy, Dayton, Ohio)
August 1999: Zooropa(CD Connection, Dayton, Ohio), Wide Awake In America(Best Buy, Dayton, Ohio)
and sometime after that I got JT and UABRS on CD(Disc-Go-Round, Dayton, Ohio).
and sometime after that I got Passengers(Disc-Go-Round, Dayton, Ohio).
I never had any of the WTF moments with AB or Pop or Zooropa. I loved them all from the first listen. The only time I came close to WTF was the first time or two I heard Mofo, but that soon passed, and even before it passed, it was 'WTF this is badass' and not 'WTF this is crap'. I remember even before I had AB, I heard Mysterious Ways on the radio and loved it. Even before I had Pop, I saw 30-second clips of the Discotheque and Staring At The Sun videos, and I loved them. There were some growers - I remember the first time the brilliance of Please finally hit me, even the album version. But I never had any of the difficulty accepting that mid-late 90s stuff that some old-school fans did. I never had a problem with the Lemon falsetto or the monotone Edge-vocal on Numb, I never had a problem with the Discotheque video. None of that. Anyway, suffice it say, I remember fondly collecting every U2 album out up to that point and loving all of them from day 1.
I also remember checking out ZooTV Sydney, the AB Interference video, and the Rattle And Hum movie on VHS from my local Hollywood Video(R.I.P. November 2007) in 1999 and watching them back-to-back-to-back one Saturday afternoon. I had a u2 desktop theme at the time that had snippets of some Rattle And Hum live performances as its sounds(minimize, maximize, etc), namely Pride and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, so I'd heard 15 seconds of those two live performances before, and watching the movie was cool because I finally got to hear those 15-second clips I'd heard a zillion times put in the context of the full performances(I saw the R&H movie before I had the R&H album). I remember thinking R&H totally kicked ass. I remember being transfixed, mesmerized, hypnotized by ZooTV. ZooTV was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was like they created their own little world. The Interference video made U2 look like the most badass band in the world to me through my 14/15 year old eyes. I remember it giving context to quotes I already knew and loved("When you're sixteen you think you can take on the world - and sometimes you're right"). I copied all three to blank VHS(dualdeck VHS) tapes(this was still a little before DVD exploded). I remember feeling the same way when I was given the Popmart Mexico City VHS that year for my birthday.
I've always been glad that I got into U2
before ATYCLB, because ATYCLB spawned a whole new generation of U2 fans and made U2 uber-popular again, but I had a little pocket of time between 1998 and 2000 when they were
my band(you guys know what I mean). The faction of the U2 fanbase that got 'in' during the Passengers/Pop time period are sort of black sheep in the fanbase.
I've learned a lot about pop culture from that show...
