Sure, you can quote me, use any name you want..one problem: I've replied in a couple of different threads so here are some highlights:
I am put in mind of the hand-written sign that Woody Guthrie used to put on his guitar for his performances: "This machine kills fascists." As Woody was no stranger to controversy himself, and his politics generally swung to the left-hand side of the dial, I am sure that his defenition of "fascist" didn't just mean Hitler. It must have meant anyone who feels they are oppressed or imprisoned in any way at all.
I can imagine the liner notes on this new CD containing a huge disclaimer, written with invisible ink: "THIS MACHINE KILLS TERRORISTS." Only for U2, as for Guthrie, the defenition of a terrorist can likewise be exapanded as well. The band's music being too big to be claimed by any political party to the right or left of the pendulum, whatever country it is you listen to them in, 'terrorism' is defined by simple universal human suffering. Therefore, a terrorist is, first and foremost, anyone who destroys the human soul. From this, all other terrorism grows. For the terrorist is dead to himself. He or she destroyed themselves long ago--though not in the redemptive way U2 has spoken of in the past. Yet, can a terrorist still "die to himself", as Bono sung long ago in those distant, gauzy, hopeful days of the early 80's,, in the "War" era, an era not that long ago in terms of time but in a sense now so long ago that photos of the band--and of ourselves, if we were alive at the time--can almost be rendered in sepia? An era whose music this album may evoke? Can they still be redeemed? It is matter of coice--butm as Bono has hinted over the years, sometimes the choice is not ours. He himself may be the clearest proof of that. I would like to think the band has not given up hope--that angry as they are, they believe still.
(Therefore, I await "Yahweh" with great interest!)
What is the "Atomic Bomb" of the title? It is not a physical thing, though the band may be suggesting that it can rapidly become one if we all don't get our collective act together, and reliaze that we are, indeed, "one but not the same." And in the current gepolitcal Great Game, there are no true saints or sinners. ALL are guilty, at one time or another. Rather, the Bomb is like Pink Floyd's Wall, a smothering kind of spiritual state the worldis in right now that is eating away at it like a cancer.
What is this "new wall"?
Fear. It could be the fear of the impending "clash of civilizations"--or that's the line our politicians feed us. Am I the only one who think that this Party Line that is being fed to us daily, is a load of bunk? He is right, after all--poverty is the number one breeder of terrorism. Or it could be a fear as small as the lurch in your stomach every time you read theheadlines these days. In which case, the album could, indeed, be a "weapon" in the war on terrorism. At least theat's what the band hopes. "A song that i can sing in my own company"--music as confort in troubled times--the first small step toward banishing fear. Inwhich case, millions of these little weapons in the hands of oridnary people could indeed over time become powerful "weapons" of a sort.
Ignorance--likesise, I am hoping for some great couplets on this album; War-style preaching, I hope it's back!
Religious fanaticism--and ALL are guilty here. There are those in the American gov't who claim to be Christians, and scan pew the inflammatory rhetoric with the best.
I love how on "War" the tracks were arranged to illustrate all the different ypes of war: from the broadness of the hesdlines (SBS) down to the smallest, most seemingly insignifigant, but in the end most imprtant type of war, the one that starts allothers: the war the rages daily in an individual soul (40). I am hoping the tracks on HTDAAB are arranged this way as well.
it is an indulgent fantasy: Edge displaying a sign taped to his guitar every night, when the tour begins: "THhs machine kills terrorists". I wonder how many would understand the reference. A pipe dream, "I'm afraid. It would be great theater, in the grand U2 tradition, but sadly impossible...the music should be enough...
Let the world know i say
