“We invite people to bootleg our shows. We invite people to make CD copies, we’ve no problems with that, but if some guy is gonna make money off the back of this, we’re gonna find out where he parks his car…” (Bono; source: KROQ Radio USA, October 2000)

“We’ve never had a problem with bootlegs or people recording our shows for their own use. Our problem has always been people ripping off our fans with inferior recordings that they sell at exorbitant prices” (October 30, 2000; source: <http://www.u2.com/news/article/733>, official site accessed March 14, 2010).

One of my favourite concert recordings is an early one from 1981 which was a planned broadcast on FM (BBC) but sourced from the pre-FM tapes:

• U2′s concert at Paris Cinema Studio in London, England, on August 23, 1981 (FLAC – via Qualitybootz).

The setlists from that leg of the October European tour can be found here.

The Band and Robertson also have an important page in the history of rock and roll due to their work with Bob Dylan during the tomato-throwing switch-over to electric in the tour of 1965-66 (following on Highway 61 Revisited, with “Like a Rolling Stone”). Also legendary are the tunes they recorded with Dylan in The Basement Tapes (1975), which were recorded in the same era as Dylan’s Planet Waves (1974), also with The Band.

Secondly, Robertson’s first solo piece is significant for collaborations with two soon-to-be superstar icons and a then up-and-coming Canadian producer. In 1986, Peter Gabriel was recording the most popular album of his career, So (1986). Gabriel’s backing vocals for “Fallen Angel” on Robertson’s album made this one of the most memorable pieces on this release. Also in 1986, U2 was recording its monumental The Joshua Tree (1987), and U2 joined Robertson on two main tunes: “Sweet fire of love” and “Testimony”. The collaboration of both Gabriel and U2 likely had something to do with the fact that Robertson’s album was co-produced with Daniel Lanois, who was the main producer for both So and The Joshua Tree. Lanois left his mark on all three albums, which do have the bass-heavy and atmospheric feel characteristic of most Lanois productions (which I like).

“Sweet fire of love” is the better of the collaborations with U2, I would say. The song is heavily marked by the presence of U2. The song opens with the clear, syncopating echo of The Edge’s guitar and Bono soon starts to supply a counterpoint to Robertson’s intense musical cries. It’s not long before Bono is the lead and Robertson supplies the counterpoint. Throughout, the drumming style of Larry Mullen is unmistakable, and the walking bass of Adam Clayton is noticeable as well. Very well done is Robertson’s own guitar playing as the song closes, which complements and duels with the Edge. Bono’s cries of “sweet fire of love” help make this song what it is.

Read more about Robbie Robertson and about The Band (the photo of Robertson above is from that excellent site).

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The release of the remastered edition of Joshua Tree (original 1987) is coming up in a few days and the 2 or 3 disc editions (“deluxe” and “superdeluxe”) include the original B-sides, along with a few previously unreleased songs. One of these songs is “Wave of Sorrow” which, as Bono explains, is based on Bono and his wife’s time working in Ethiopia during famine. In this video (from ILike.com) Bono explains the song and even does his own impromptu performance of it!

I’m looking forward to the remastered edition. The Toronto Exhibition Joshua Tree tour performance is still burned in my memory, so this will all bring back very good memories. It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed! I think I’m still 18.

So I requested and received a review copy of Stephen Catanzarite’s Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall (New York: Continuum, 2007). This book is part of a larger series of album-focussed books known as 33 1/3. You can read more about this series on the 33 1/3 blog here. Catanzarite approaches the album track by track, delving into the human relations and religious themes he sees reflected in the music. As he proceeds, he creates fictional narratives, stories about human relationships, that he sees as reflecting a message communicated to him from the tracks on U2′s album. His central argument is that Achtung Baby is a many-faceted reflection on the condition of “fallen” humanity (fallen in the Adam and Eve sense).

I have mixed reactions to this book. On the one hand, this is a well-written piece and there are some insightful observations regarding the lyrical and musical aspects of this experimental album by U2. There are times when Catanzarite describes the musicality and instrumentation of Achtung Baby in an eloquent (if somewhat overstated) way:

“The melodies throughout are simply stunning — and stunningly simple — but cast against, around, and on top of complex arrangements overflowing with guttural howls, jarring chimes, trashy beats, and sheets of decadent noise. The guitar riffs, masterfully rendered and brilliantly layered, and also regularly and deliciously off-kilter. The bass lines are solid but frayed, made all the more engaging by their Anglified funkiness. The beats are straightforward and harsh here, tasteful and restrained there. . . And then there are the voices. The passion and elegance, beauty and grace, desperation and longing, lust and regret, truth and confusion communicated in each and every note vocalized on Achtung Baby prove two important things about music. First, no instrument is more potent or versatile than the human voice. Second, you don’t always have to sing on key to make music of enduring beauty and relevance” (p. 5).

The strengths of the book lie in its lively writing style and in Catanzarite’s ability to offer some interesting insights like these. The final chapter of the book also delves into more of what I would have expected from a book of this type, as Catanzarite discusses the cultural context and influence of the album. More of this cultural analysis, rather than (or at least alongside of) theological reflection, would have strengthened the book, in my view.

There are times when Catanzarite’s own admittedly impressionistic take on Achtung Baby rings true to me (and potentially other listeners), as when he describes “One” as “a love song that reaches beyond romance, a kind of post-modern blues ballad that rises swiftly and powerfully above the banal” (p. 18). He then goes on to a very intriguing and, to me at least, accurate description of the “sonic elements” of this track which match with this overall theme that he identifies.

In some cases, Catanzarite’s tendency to think of religious themes actually does work. In particular, he is on solid ground (and not floating around in heaven somewhere) in identifying religious themes when he explores “Until the End of the World”. After all, this song is, expressly, Judas’ perspective on Jesus’ whole obsession (in Judas view) with the coming end — lighten up, Jesus! It is certainly not far-fetched when we hear Catanzarite stating that the “fuming riff of a panoramic guitar reveals the landscape of damnation” (p. 30) now faced by Judas as he reflects back on what he has done. And in some of the performances of this tune at concerts, Bono (as Judas) takes on the role of Satan himself in the final battle between good (Edge representing God with a sword-like guitar) and evil. Ancient combat myth meets rock and roll.

However, it is the very narrow and specific manner of interpreting Achtung Baby within a religious context that I find, well, restrictive and limiting. I do agree that art is about the viewer’s or listener’s take on things, and that what one person sees or feels, another will not. Nonetheless, this book can be too focussed on one person’s religious take on the album (and less so on the album itself), which makes it hard to identify with it if you do not hold its religious perspectives or presuppositions (namely Christian and, more specifically, modern Catholic). (Particularly problematic for me, for example, were Catanzarite’s a-matter-of-fact statements regarding gender and the “mystery of womanhood”, which reflect a particular modern, though traditional, Catholic perspective on the supposed inherent differences between the sexes). The concept of the entire book is that Achtung Baby represents U2′s (or at least Catanzarite’s) take on the fallen condition of humankind, and Catanzarite frequently quotes from religious writers, including recent popes.

It should be stated that Catanzarite does not do this theologizing by subterfuge. Rather, he opens the work by stating that he will approach things from a religious (Catholic) perspective, and, as he states explicitly, “I have superimposed my own particular narrative over the songs on Achtung Baby” (p.96). This focus on a particular mode of religious interpretation together with the accompanying novelistic tendencies sometimes left me behind and I found it hard to identify with Catanzarite’s take on the album. It’s not that I believe there is a true meaning that everyone must find in Achtung Baby, but there are ways of describing our own individual takes that may be less specific or self-contained, and more in touch with the variety of other takes that are possible in listening to an album like U2′s Achtung Baby. There’s more than religion in Achtung Baby, baby.

UPDATE: Over on the @U2 site, there is another review of the book, as well as an interview with Catanzarite.

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One band that very few seem to remember (at least in North America), even if they were teenagers in the 1980s, is The Alarm (full discography). The Alarm was a contemporary of both U2 and Simple Minds, and there was a fair bit of interaction among members of all three of these bands in the early 80s. Bono was known to appear on stage at Alarm concerts, and vice versa for Mike Peters, the lead singer of The Alarm. The Alarm opened for U2′s War tour in 1983. There was a sense in which The Alarm was Wales’ U2, Simple Minds was Scotland’s U2, and, well, U2 was Ireland’s U2.

All three bands were punk-influenced (as is clear in the Alarm tune you are listening to now and the cover of Declaration [1984] to your right) with a touch of new wave and a Joy-Division-like somberness at times. All formed and began recording in the late 1970s or early 80s. All were played on “alternative” stations, such as CFNY (now “the Edge”) here in the Toronto area.

By 1983, both U2 and the Alarm were known for their politically-charged anthems. U2 and the Alarm were also known as excellent, lively concert performers. I can remember how overwhelmed I felt at one particular Alarm concert at Massey Hall when I was about 16 or 17. The energy at an Alarm concert was hard to match!

Although there are similarities among the three, each nonetheless had its distinctive character (and I’m not just talking about the Alarm’s regretful hair-dos). While U2 went on to mass stardom and Simple Minds continues to have radio play (on retro stations) as a result of their hits (such as “Alive and Kicking”), The Alarm is largely forgotten here in North America. This is the case even though Mike Peters has continued to record both under his own name and with bands such as Coloursound, along with members of the Cult (Bill Duffy) and the Mission (Craig Adams). Most recently, Peters has now formed a new Alarm (official site here — a video will start playing), called “Alarm MMVI”, which charted in the UK with “Superchannel”. The loss of memory of the Alarm is unjustified in some ways.

Listen as you read: “Eye of the Hurricane” (audio snippet)

The Alarm quite quickly progressed from the very basic, punk-influenced marches (and, yes, you can march to just about every early Alarm track) of 1983′s self-titled EP to a more well-refined alternative sound by 1987′s Eye of the Hurricane (© IRS). There are also continuities, though, in the sense that from beginning to end the Alarm had an intriguing sound marked by a combination of both acoustic and electric sounds (harmonica was not uncommon). The new incarnation of the Alarm XXVI harkens back to the 1983 sound more so than 1987, by the way, with its more direct, garage-band sound.

In some ways, the Strength (1985) album was a clear transition from the earlier, more basic sound which was still heard in “Sixty-Eight Guns” (on Declaration [1984]), to the more refined and produced sound of Eye of the Hurricane. This fourth album seemed promising in breaking the band to a larger audience, and it did so to some degree. The single “Rain in the summertime” which you are listening to now did get considerable radio play at the time and hit #6 on the US charts, according to the Wikipedia article. It was a bit harder to get Alarm concert tickets as a result. The album is an interesting combination of acoustic and electric as expected, and yet synthesizers were added and stand out quite prominently here (understandable for 1987). Two more, commercially less-successful albums followed (Change [1989] and Raw [1991]) before the group disbanded. As mentioned, Mike Peters continues to record but is basically unknown in North America, and he has remixed all of the Alarm CDs, adding b-sides and other rareties to each.

UPDATE: Little did I know, but it seems that there have been two, recent documentary-style reality shows by the BBC that follow the daily family life and struggles (including the struggle with cancer) of Mike Peters and his wife and two children. Go to the Alarm “news” section: The Peters’ Family BBC Documentary.

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