U2 - Achtung Baby [purchase]
One blog post does not contrition make. I speak of my dereliction towards U2 over the years. I need to acknowledge and affirm their musical supremacy as part of my pre-New Years absolution (or is that resolution?)
Bono - of course, a major force for many things worldly: active, vocal, often right. U2 as a band: incredibly tight. I recall I "met" U2 at about the 1985 Live Aid event. I had heard of, but not listened much to them before. Then - off and on for 30 years- they've been on the edge of my radar. Bono - always in the news, so it's hard to ignore his [critical, in multiple senses] sound/voice. As for the band as a whole, various albums/outputs have caught my attention as being damn fine, but never enough to "convert" me to being a U2 <fan>.
Always excellent? Yes.
At the top of my list? Rarely.
Respected? Always.
There's an element of intelligence to U2's music [partly stemming from their respect for the world at large] that over-rides most any faults in personalities or musical composition that touches on their brand/style.
The official video for U2s <Until the End of the World> is such a today-relevant parody. It's the end of the end [well ... the end of 2017 AD at least]... And the lyrics come from years ago ... well before we were in the position we are in today. My words begin to sound like the verbage coming out of the White House yesterday. I mean ... say what [junk]?
On another level, if you follow the MSM (need I spell it out: main stream media), you'd be right to think the <end of the world> is right around the corner: from the US > N. Korea; from the Middle East > Jerusalem; from Africa > Boko Haram or other unknowns; from the UK > Brexit. Seems like they are all "off their rockers" - but they won't be paying the price from deep inside their radiation-proof bunkers. The justified/mitigated cost is the 50-300,000 collateral victims figured into their equations. Or so it seems.
But at least it's not the end of the world - some of us WILL survive. This is the message that U2 returns to time and again.
The end .. it's not over until ...
