U2 plays ‘Bad’ in Pittsburgh. Filmed from the point of view of the man they dedicate it to on the night, and wrote it for all those years ago. I’d somehow rather wish they’d kept the mystery alive, but it’s sweet watching him enjoy the song so much.

Preview of a Multicam DVD project for U2′s Hannover concert. Fanmade concert videos generally do a better job of conveying the atmosphere at shows than official product. High five the crowd.

“The city conducts a symphony, the search through shit for melody, a single scrap of dignity, in the junkyard of humanity, on the burning rubble and the sulphur sky, we look for clues yeah, you and I…” – Bono *

“Boy falls from the sky” is a song steeped in Icarus-metaphor written by Bono and The Edge for their upcoming Spider-man musical. It was recently performed on GMA by the musical’s leading man, Reeve Carney. I thought it was a dreadful performance.

Last night in Coimbra, Portugal, U2 played the song live themselves for the first time. Guess what? I like it heaps. Especially the final verses and driving finale. Guess that means that throwing Bono’s voice – in full on angst mode – and possibly The Edge’s guitar effects at a song will do miracles. I hope they release the musical’s soundtrack as played and sung by U2.

* Those are pretty old style lyrics from him, really. Unforgetable Fire-era, almost. Referencing the elements. A bunch of cliches, but he sings them so well. :-)

Posted via email from Caroline

25 years I’ve been following this band and every time I think ‘ok, that’s enough’, they’ll come and surprise me. Miraculously coming back on the road some 10 weeks after Bono’s spinal surgery seems to have rekindled their love of performing. I don’t remember seeing such joy and enthusiasm on a U2 stage. I’ve seen ‘driven’, ‘intense’, ‘run of the mill’. But ‘joyous’ is another thing. Myself and friends went to Frankfurt and Hannover to see them play and both nights were uplifting and exciting and.

In Hannover I managed to get access to the band’s sounddesk for me and my friends. It’s got a little stage in front of it where guests of the band can watch the show. It’s the best place in terms of view and sound. And gawk at luminaries. We got the German Bundespraesident. I know… rock and roll, right? But Wim Wenders was there too. We all sang ‘Happy birthday’ to the man.

All photos taken with a Lumix DMC-TZ7, post processing in Photoshop Express and Camerabag on iPad

Ten years ago, you hadn’t heard of blogging. It was before weblogs were even called blogs, before permalinks and Adsense, before people who have never run a community started calling themselves ‘social media experts’.

Maybe you weren’t even online back then. But we were and we were blogging. U2 were in the studio recording ‘All that you can’t leave behind’. They’d set up a webcam sending out pictures every few minutes. They’d built in a delay, because god forbid we’d see anything untoward. We were a small group of fans from Holland, Australia, USA and Sweden who had first met each other on IRC and then met up ‘in real life’ on the road during the Popmart tour in 1997. We were online 24/7, grabbing pics from the webcam and archiving them. We’d done the same during ‘Pop’. Back then occasionally there’d be some kind of response from the studio on our comments. Little messages posted on cardboard cutouts. It’s too long ago to remember the details. But it was fun. It could have been the start of a beautiful band-fan relationshop online. But U2 never really did take to the internet like we – early adopters – hoped they would.

U2log.com was one of the first ever blogs, one of the first ever single subject blogs, one of the first ever team blogs. (Hi team! How are you all these days?) I’m proud of that. Ahead of the curve means you’ll suffer the dialectics of progress at some point. We did satire, we did proper reporting, we tried to filter fact from fiction, we strived to be anti-agenda, independent, secular, different. We loved Pop^*.

We are past our prime, I’ll be the first to admit. I’ve been running U2log.com mostly on my own these past couple of years. I’m always on the verge of kicking it in the head. I’m not the fan I used to be and there are many reasons I shouldn’t be doing this: Other sites are doing it so much better. I know too much, I know too little. I have other interests I should focus on. Still, I can’t let it go. Yet.

U2log.com is ten years old today. There’s a tour about to start. One more for the road.

^* And screw the lads for being so insecure about that album. *grin*

Whatever they say to hype their albums about reinventing themselves, going back to their roots, incorporating dance or electronica, U2 always end up sounding like U2. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I can never remember the titles of U2′s previous two CDs. They weren’t bad and contained some great songs, but they weren’t memorable to me as albums. No Line on the Horizon is.

I’m not religious, I don’t bleed for Africa, I’m not keen on stadium rock. What turned me on to U2 was as much their military beat as a certain Celtic mysticism, their affinity with the European landscape, their singer’s do-or-die delivery and their big ideas.

For some fans, Achtung Baby is the touchstone in assessing a new album’s worth. For others it will always be Pop. My U2 is more ephemeral, present in moments found across their vast back catalog. You can hear echoes of these moments all over NLOTH.

“Moment of Surrender” reaches levels of intensity on par with “Bad” or “Please.” There’s a dash of “Van Diemen’s Land” with “White as Snow.” You’ll hear some Zooropa in “Magnificent” and “FEZ-Being Born,” the latter of which harks back to The Unforgettable Fire, while the first is the 00′s “Gloria”. “Unknown Caller” has roots in The Million Dollar Hotel. “Breathe” comes from the same songbook as “Gone.” And you may hate the single, but “Get On Your Boots” is probably their most Achtung Baby-like track in 20 years, and the title song borrows a riff from “The Fly.”

This is U2 doing what they’re best at: being U2. Except in “Stand Up Comedy,” where they attempt to be Led Zeppelin. Give it up, lads.

Boy
The Electric Co
11 o’clock tick tock
An Cat Dubh

October
Tomorrow

War
Seconds
Surrender
New Year’s Day

The Unforgettable Fire
The Unforgettable Fire
Indian Summer Sky
Wire
Exit
A Sort of Homecoming
Bad

The Joshua Tree
Exit
Red Hill Mining Town
Bullet the Blue Sky
b-sides:
Lumimous Times
Silver and Gold
Spanish Eyes
Deep in the heart
Walk to the water

Rattle and Hum
God Part II
Hawkmoon 269
b-side
A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel

Achtung Baby
Zoo Station
Love is blindness
b-side:
Salome

Zooropa
Zooropa
Stay
The First Time
Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car

Pop
Mofo
Miami
Please
If You Wear That Velvet Dress

Passengers – Original Soundtracks 1
Your Blue Room

All That You Can’t Leave Behind
Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of
Kite

Best of 1990–2000
Electrical Storm

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own
A Man and a Woman

U218
Window in the skies

Not yet on Spotify, but will be there soon:
No Line on the Horizon
Moment of Surrender
Cedars of Lebanon
No Line on the Horizon
Magnificent
Fez-Being Born

1. Moment of Surrender
2. Cedars of Lebanon
3. No Line on the Horizon
4. FEZ-Being Born
5. Magnificent
6. White as Snow
7. Unknown Caller
8. Get On Your Boots
9. I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
10. Breathe
11. Stand up comedy

I didn’t at first but now I’ve heard the album a few times, I’m starting to hear the influences that were mentioned to me over the last few months. Kraftwerk (Being Born particularly, but No Line as well) more so than Portishead. Bits and pieces remind me of the Babel-soundtrack, but that’s obviously the band’s recording sessions in North-Africa paying off. A lot of the songs feature piano, which always reminds of Bowie.

Moment of Surrender takes me to a similar place as Kite did, but darker, more raw. It works on the tear ducts even if I’m not sure why. Must be something in the vocal.

A propos of nothing… I don’t think I’ve ever heard a rockband’s lyrics been picked on quite as much as U2′s. So Bono’s King of Clunk. You know, they do advise newsreaders to speak with a quirk. Why? Because it makes you listen.

I’m clearly in full U2-apologist mode and thus no fun anymore. Hey, I used to write in to the NME’s reader’s column to defend them. At least I gave up on that in the 80s.

McGuinness, who controversially believes ISP’s facilitate music pirating and are thus robbing artists (“…entrepreneurial, hippy values seems to be a disregard for the true value of music.”), had claimed the experiment was a failure and U2 wouldn’t be following their example. Bono disagrees with his manager. According to him Radiohead are ‘courageous and imaginative in trying to figure out some new relationship with their audience.’ Now that’s an example U2 might want to try and follow. Perhaps they could pick Trent Reznor’s brain.

The full letter will appear in today’s edition of the printed version of the NME.