First U2 album I brought was The Joshua Tree back in July of 2002. My family had gone to Sioux Falls to do some shopping, and I'd just started getting into U2 a couple of months before that, so I decided that this trip would be a good time to start on my U2 collection. I remember looking in the U2 section and seeing their 1980-1990 collection and The Joshua Tree, and I was debating over which one to get...even talked it over with my sister some. She suggested the best of, 'cause I knew more stuff off of there, but I was looking at the list of songs on The Joshua Tree, and I remembered hearing about how classic an album that one was-my family owns the vinyl version of that album-and I remember on some portion of a wall there was a big picture of the band looking the way they did in the Joshua Tree booklet picture, so I took that as a note to buy that one.
I remember the car ride home was a very windy one-it was a nice day and so we had our car windows down, and the wind was really whipping about that day. I say this about the wind 'cause I was listening to the U2 CD on my CD player, and I remember when it got to "Exit", I didn't know at that time that it started off so quietly, so I couldn't hear the opening with the wind being so strong, and I thought there was something wrong with the CD or my batteries or something, LOL. Once we got home, I played the CD again, and that's when I realized there was nothing wrong, that that's how the song was.
As for my thoughts...well, I loved the first three songs right off the bat, 'cause I remembered hearing them all the time when I was little, and I'd always liked those songs-it was particularly nice hearing "With Or Without You" again, as that's always been one of my absolute favorite U2 songs (still is). I remember that "Running To Stand Still", "Trip Through Your Wires", and "Exit" grabbed me right away-I even played "Trip Through Your Wires" for my sister one evening, 'cause I thought she might like it, considering some of the music she listens to. And I remember liking "Red Hill Mining Town" the more I heard it. The lyrics to "One Tree Hill" awed me right away, too, 'cause they were so poetic. And "Bullet The Blue Sky" really became one of my favorites upon seeing all the live performances of the song that I've seen thus far on TV-they do really cool things with that song live.
Okay, long post over now, but yeah, that's the whole story surrounding my first U2 album. I think it really says something about how much this one means to me that I remember that many details about it-it's my favorite album because it's the first one I'd brought. I love all their other albums, too-it was great discovering those as well, 'cause there's so many great songs on all of them, but The Joshua Tree will always be a bit special because of the reason I stated.
Angela