Wide Awake in Europe VS. Wide Awake in America

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yeah I think it was just Import to begin with but now its just a properly available part of the catalogue. Didn't Imports actually chart a fair bit back then too? i mean people actually BOUGHT music back then :wink:

but Hollow Island, I think it's just ASOH that's a soundcheck. Bad was recorded in Birmingham or something, and had the final guitar note 'fixed' because Edge fucked up.

edit - hey what do you know u2 wanderer has everything I just said right there
..:: U2 Discography - Wide Awake in America EP / U2 - U2Wanderer.Org ::..

Didn't 'That's Entertainment' by The Jam get to no.1 only available as an import or something? Import was just an excuse for Magpie and Our Price to charge double:lol:
 
Didn't 'That's Entertainment' by The Jam get to no.1 only available as an import or something? Import was just an excuse for Magpie and Our Price to charge double:lol:

'That's Entertainment' got to 21, however another single, from 1982; "Just Who is The 5 O'Clock Hero?" got to #9 on import alone, mostly because it had an unreleased song on the b side called "The Great Depression" which was rather good and they were probably the biggest band in the land back then so people lapped up those 7" releases..

I think WAIA started off as import but it was 1985 and vinyl was dirt cheap back then, y'know 4quid an album, unlike now... where it has risen to match CD and not the other way alas...
 
djerdap said:
Why would something considered to be a demo be crucial in one's assessment of the song?

Expectations. You can't tell me that you would go about listening to Sgt. Pepper for the first time the same way that you would approach something unheralded. In the same way, we expect something different from WOWY than we expect from Drunk Chicken. Mercy is the rare demo that has been accepted by many fans as among the very best songs the band has written, so it's easy for people who are disappointed by it to just say "it's a demo they left off fucking HTDAAB, whatever" and move on. A lot of people do that here and, yeah, no, the song isn't a demo.

Makes sense? I'm genuinely asking; I feel like we're getting way off topic here.
 
Wide Awake in America and it's not even remotely close.

And the one that runs away with the money is Bad (live). It's often preferred over the studio version, and gets played on the radio more than the studio does (I believe).

Other than a minority opinion, I don't think any specific live track is known by the general consensus to be better or more played than the studio version.

Or I'm crazy.
 
1- Mercy (Live)
2- Moment of Surrender (Live)
3 - Every Breaking Wave (Studio)
4 - North Star (Studio)

Then we could have had a real comparison.

Many of us felt this was something that U2 was going to release anyway. I think this would have been awesome.
 
Best live version of MOS ever, and honestly, it's a better track than Bad in my opinion.
I don't care for Mercy. But it's the definitive MOS.

Europe > America.
 
wow, i'm honestly going to have to give that another listen then if you're calling it that! I love that song but LIVE i always thought its not the best way to end a gig so its always clouded my judgement of whether its actually any GOOD - haha
i remember hearing it live in cardiff and thinking "okay, cool pretty faithful rendition, but it doesn't feel like the gig'll be over in 7 minutes :reject:" but i'll go find this EP online again and if you're right then so be it :hmm::lol:
 
Depends on what do you mean by "full-fledged". It's a very loose demo that obviously hasn't gone anywhere. But it is based on some cool melodies. I still hope we'll see a more evolved version of it on the Achtung Baby Super Jumbo Deluxe Adam's Cock set.

We'll get 10 mixes of Salome instead, I know.

always loved that tune. made a video of it back in 1999. I have a picture of an interferencer giving him the tape. now it lives on the tuber. along with you, I hope we get an evolved version.
 
And the one that runs away with the money is Bad (live). It's often preferred over the studio version, and gets played on the radio more than the studio does (I believe).

Funny this... I had always heard that the version of "Bad" on WAIA was not actually live, per se. It was a recorded soundcheck that later had audience applause added in. So What is really "live"?

That said, WAIA "wins" but because of what others stated - this really isn't a fair comparison. Add in two new tracks, and the two live tracks ("Mercy" and "MOS" are perfect) for WAIE and then it's a competition.
 
Hmm, that is interesting. Either way, it was still a live take. I know that Edge messed up the final note in the song, but they just covered it up in mixing and editing. So that could be the response, yeah, I guess it's still live.
 
yep. pretty much what I already said earlier in this very thread...:crack: there's a link to the all the info up there :up:
 
no probs :wink: sorry its just been a week of making some posts and being convinced they just fade into the background on this iste
 
LemonMelon said:
"Demo" is a derogatory term in these instances. Obviously, it wasn't a demo; it nearly made the album. Referring to it as a demo makes it easier to take lightly, however. If you consider it a full-fledged U2 song, you have to measure it against other full-fledged U2 songs. If you measure it against Heaven And Hell, it wins, obviously. You'll find that 95% of the people who consider it a demo dislike the song, just as 95% of people who dislike Passengers are loathe to consider it a U2 album. In this way, their favorite band remains infallible.

Anyway, WAIA.

The original mercy was obviously not a full quality rip. A fan got a CD from Bono, found the song on it and shared it. Reality is that nobody knows if it was the final cut of the song or not. Any assumptions are just that... assumptions.

Based on the lower quality of the sound, my assumption is that it was at the very least a version of the song that had yet to be mixed... and yes, there is a chance that it wasn't the final version of the song.

I could be wrong, but I certainly hope that wasn't the sound quality they planned to release.

So when most people refer to it as a demo, they're referring to it in that way because it is clearly unfinished.

Is it a demo in the true sense of the word? Of course not. Is it a finished product? Of course not.
 
I proposed something about never talking about Songs of Ascent here again. I propose the same for Old Mercy v. New Mercy. it's probably appropriate for EYKIW now.
 
The original mercy was obviously not a full quality rip. A fan got a CD from Bono, found the song on it and shared it. Reality is that nobody knows if it was the final cut of the song or not. Any assumptions are just that... assumptions.

What we have is actually a low quality rip of a CD that was itself made from a rip of a cassette tape. I don't think much is known about the source beyond that.

But you're point is well taken; we don't really know if what we have is the final version that was cut from HTDAAB "at the last minute," or really whether or not a "final" version that the band was satisfied with ever existed.

If that is the final version, then they made a good decision dropping it. I like it. It has the bones of a great song. It's just too rambling and it needed tightening up to have been on the album. It might have been a great b-side with a little work.
 
A shame they didn't include a version of Ultraviolet on the Europe compilation.

Like this:

Soon
Mercy (9/22/10)
Ultraviolet (Light My Way) (10/3/10)
Moment of Surrender (9/18/10)
 
It would have been better if they threw Your Blue Room and the one performance of Electrical Storm on it as well.
 
we don't really know if what we have is the final version that was cut from HTDAAB "at the last minute," or really whether or not a "final" version that the band was satisfied with ever existed.

If that is the final version, then they made a good decision dropping it. I like it. It has the bones of a great song. It's just too rambling and it needed tightening up to have been on the album. It might have been a great b-side with a little work.

From the Blender interview, Nov 04 (that was conducted that summer):

We have convened today to discuss the state of the U2 nation, their intriguing take on the world, and their eleventh studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. But before we can contemplate the latter and its bewildering title, U2 has some business to attend to and politely invites Blender to sit in on an impromptu band meeting.

"We're not fully agreed on what to do here," Bono explains, "so maybe you should vote, too."

The problem, if it can be called that, lies in the album's running order. After numerous attempts, U2 have yet to find a satisfactory flow, leading them to believe that there may be too many songs. So, right now, they must decide which tunes should be sacrificed.

As it stands, the album is three seconds shy of an hour and, as Bono says, "too much of a good thing is a bad thing," so drastic measures need to be taken.

"I have a theory," Mullen begins, and a reverential silence descends as the drummer -- traditionally the first band member to be shouted down in these situations -- states his case. After just five minutes, it has been unanimously decided that the track "Mercy," a six-and-a-half-minute outpouring of U2 at its most uninhibitedly U2-ish, must go.

Hence a song that any self-respecting band would be proud to call a single becomes what Bono immediately anoints "the best B-side you've ever heard."

Later, another more experimental candidate entitled "Fast Cars" ("an Irish/Mexican vibe") gets evicted, and the album becomes a lean and lithe 11 tracks.
 
It's crazy that they dropped Mercy and let songs like Yahweh on the album.
 
It's crazy that they dropped Mercy and let songs like Yahweh on the album.

"Yahweh" is fine. I would have made "One Step Closer" a b-side to "Sometimes...", kept "Fast Cars" and "Mercy", and perhaps dumped either "Crumbs..." or "Miracle Drug". Those two on one album is like having "Babyface" and "Some Days..." one one album. One of them is great, but both make the album weaker.
 
"Yahweh" is fine. I would have made "One Step Closer" a b-side to "Sometimes...", kept "Fast Cars" and "Mercy", and perhaps dumped either "Crumbs..." or "Miracle Drug". Those two on one album is like having "Babyface" and "Some Days..." one one album. One of them is great, but both make the album weaker.

:down:
 
We live in a world where "A Man and a Woman" survives, but "Mercy" and "Fast Cars" get tossed in the bin.

Think about that for a minute.
 
We live in a world where "A Man and a Woman" survives, but "Mercy" and "Fast Cars" get tossed in the bin.

Think about that for a minute.

:lol: i liked that song a lot when the album first came out but this did make me laugh a lot
 
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