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U2

inside_u2
NO ARGUMENTS: With The Joshua Tree, U2
became stadium-ready international
superstars.
There are two kinds of U2 fans: those of us who think of 1983’s War (Island) — the band’s third full-length and the one sporting “New Year’s Day” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” — as their big breakthrough, and those who feel the same way about 1987’s The Joshua Tree, the disc that followed the live Under a Blood Red Sky and the equally anthemic The Unforgettable Fire (all Island). Nobody’s really wrong: War certainly elevated U2 above their post-punk/New Wave peers and set them on the path to greatness, but it was with The Joshua Tree and the yearning masterstroke of “With or Without You” that they became stadium-ready international superstars and solidified their relationship with producer Brian Eno.

And so U2 have belatedly begun a deluxe reissue campaign with The Joshua Tree, available both as a two-CD set with a full disc of B-sides, rarities, demos, and the like, and a three-disc set that adds a DVD of a live show in Paris on July 4, 1987, a short documentary about their US tour that year, and a couple of videos — an alternate take of “With or Without You” and an interesting treatment of “Red Hill Mining Town” by director Neil Jordan. The bonus disc alone is worth it: U2 had some great B-sides (“Spanish Eyes,” “The Sweetest Thing”). It’s nice to have all those tunes collected in one disc along with a couple of rough demos (“Desert of Our Love” and “Rise Up”) that have Bono giving directions (“bass and drums,” he says to indicate a short bridge before the Edge re-enters on guitar) as he works his way through half-written lyrics.

Latest Articles

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Review: It Might Get Loud

Davis Guggenheim films his essay on the electric guitar
Some guitar teachers will tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to play the guitar. But Davis Guggenheim’s rousing new documentary, It Might Get Loud, reminds us that that’s not true at all.
By MIKE MILIARD  |  August 27, 2009
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The Big Hurt: Broken bones and stripper poles

The Big Hurt: Music news in brief
Only a few weeks ago, I was making fun of Aerosmith for their inability to present Aerosmith in their Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Presents Aerosmith tour.
By DAVID THORPE  |  August 18, 2009
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The Funn(k)y Drummer

What's the connection between comedy and percussion?
Johnny Carson was revered for his impeccable comic timing. It was "so precise," wrote one newspaper in his obituary, "that we wouldn't be surprised to find buried in his skull a quartz crystal." And why might that be? Perhaps because Johnny Carson was a drummer. In drumming, after all, timing is everything.
By MIKE MILIARD  |  August 13, 2009
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Smack downer

Hip-Hop Misogyny: It Ain’t What It Used To Be
I haven’t come hereto academically justify West Coast credos about assimilating hoes into housewives. Instead I’ve come to mourn the commercialization of misogynistic rap lyrics.
By CHRIS FARAONE  |  July 23, 2009
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Feel-good hits of summer

Wheat's strange beauty
Life is unabashedly beautiful for Wheat founders (and Taunton natives) Brendan Harney and Scott Levesque. That sentiment echoes throughout their latest release, White Ink, Black Ink (The Rebel Group) — which is surprising considering their track record with major and indie labels over their dozen years in the business.
By CHRIS CONTI  |  July 14, 2009
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The Jonas Brothers | Lines, Vines and Trying Times

Hollywood (2009)
For a group of guys who made their name as the boy band of whom no mom could disapprove, the Jonas Brothers have developed some pretty repellent ideas about the fairer sex. In what seems like every other song here, they whine about how crazy and needy and bitchy young women can be.
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  June 23, 2009
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The Jonas Brothers | Lines, Vines and Trying Times

Hollywood (2009)
For a group of guys who made their name as the boy band of whom no mom could disapprove, the Jonas Brothers have developed some pretty repellent ideas about the fairer sex. In what seems like every other song here, they whine about how crazy and needy and bitchy young women can be.
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  June 23, 2009
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The Jonas Brothers | Lines, Vines and Trying Times

Hollywood (2009)
For a group of guys who made their name as the boy band of whom no mom could disapprove, the Jonas Brothers have developed some pretty repellent ideas about the fairer sex. In what seems like every other song here, they whine about how crazy and needy and bitchy young women can be.
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  June 23, 2009
090626_jonas_list

The Jonas Brothers | Lines, Vines and Trying Times

Hollywood (2009)
For a group of guys who made their name as the boy band of whom no mom could disapprove, the Jonas Brothers have developed some pretty repellent ideas about the fairer sex. In what seems like every other song here, they whine about how crazy and needy and bitchy young women can be.
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  June 23, 2009
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Weird and wired

A small band of electronic music acts take on a rock ’n’ roll city  
  It is, of course, difficult to attach a single sound to a city. And Providence is no exception.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG  |  June 03, 2009
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Immaculate reception

The New England Patriots played host to a very different out-of-towner last week, as the Dalai Lama made a most incongruous visit to Gillette Stadium
Two Saturdays ago, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama sat cross-legged on the 50-yard line and gently intoned that "the path to happiness in the individual and with society is through inner peace."
By MIKE MILIARD  |  May 13, 2009
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Review: Fig Trees

Strikes a delicate balance among solemnity, wry humor, and rage
Here's a first: an AIDS documentary nested inside an opera that's obsessed with albino squirrels, figs, palindromes, and Pythagoras.
By SHAULA CLARK  |  May 06, 2009
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The Big Hurt: Crashing Pumpkins

Plus Lynched Beatles, and a misleading Baby
I recently had the "was that real, or did I dream that?" feeling about the upcoming Spider-Man musical featuring songs by U2, and I happily concluded that it was a dream.
By DAVID THORPE  |  April 13, 2009
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The worst word

How F**K became our top taboo term -- and why we need it to stay that way
Then it happens: you look up at the TV screen and see Bono, the lead singer of U2, step up to the podium to accept a statuette for recording the Best Alternative Music album. "We shall continue to abuse our position," he says, "and fuck up the mainstream."
By TIMOTHY GOWER  |  April 07, 2009
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Make it new!

A refresher course from the indies
Not to make too big a deal out of this or anything, but holy shit this spring is huge. Think about it: it's the first spring following a long, drawn-out winter made longer and more drawn-out by a grueling two-year election that overturned eight even longer years of dreary uncertainty and near-constant suckage.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR  |  June 16, 2009
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Dance, monkey!: Bobby Collins

Bobby Collins on crazy-eyed Limbaugh
Every week we put a comic in the hot seat. This week's victim is....
By SARA FAITH ALTERMAN  |  March 12, 2009
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U2 | No Line On the Horizon

Interscope (2009)
You don't need me to tell you whether the songs on the new U2 album reflect the social, political, economic, and religious turmoil that seems it's been defining global affairs since before we can remember.
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  March 10, 2009
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Fleecing, stealing, shilling, and sucking with impunity

The Big Hurt: Music news in brief
Over the busy holiday season, a tremendous wealth of worthless music-news tidbits slipped through the cracks, unnoticed by a lethargic, goose-sated America.
By DAVID THORPE  |  January 06, 2009
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Y'all come back now . . .

Diminishing returns in 2009
I've always liked the idea of there being some weight to the "nines," meaning: if you're a year, and you're going to perch yourself at the very edge of a decade, you'd better be ready to represent.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR  |  December 31, 2008
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Local influence

WFNX is keeping it close to home
In a day when so much radio seems less and less local, WFNX remains in touch.
By JIM SULLIVAN  |  December 03, 2008
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Fast-breaking music

You heard it here first
WFNX has always been a maverick radio station.
By TED DROZDOWSKI  |  December 03, 2008
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Same as he ever was

David Byrne on working with Brian Eno, the new music industry, and his time in Providence
Thirty-four years after forming the legendary band Talking Heads with fellow Rhode Island School of Design students Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, David Byrne returns to the area to perform “The Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno.”
By MICHAEL ATCHISON  |  November 26, 2008
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No chopped liver

 Wait Wait in Boston
NPR's weekly quiz show, Wait Wait....Don't Tell Me , visits the Wang Theatre with some recognizable panelists.
By JEFFREY GANTZ  |  November 14, 2008
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Retro, active

The return of Von Doom
It’s hard not to dig Von Doom’s sound for someone like myself, who went a bit apeshit for the lovelorn, melodic, and melancholy noise of early ’90s indie rock, from stalwarts Buffalo Tom and Dinosaur Jr. to obscure stuff like St. Johnny and Seaweed.
By CHRIS CONTI  |  October 29, 2008
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Wilderness | (k)no(w)here

Jagjaguwar (2008)
This could prove strenuous, but the album is more contemplative than didactic — a (k)no(w)here that’s difficult to study but easy to inhabit.  
By DEVIN KING  |  October 28, 2008
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30 lists

Looking forward and looking back, list-style
30 things mentioned in the first issue of the Newpaper, 30 things that we miss, 30 things that weren't around 30 years ago, and more.  
By PROVIDENCE PHOENIX STAFF  |  October 23, 2008
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Bob Dylan Unboxed

Everything you wanted to know about Tell-Tale Signs but were afraid to buy
This October, Columbia Records is releasing Tell-Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006 , a collection of recordings by Bob Dylan that are different from recordings issued on the seven studio albums he released in that period.  
By GUSTAVO TURNER  |  October 15, 2008
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Bakst hits the road

M. Charles, a bright light amongst columnists, will be missed at the Other Paper
We echo the words of BeloJo columnist Bob Kerr when he wrote last week that local readers will miss M. Charles Bakst when he retires after more than 40 years.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE  |  September 10, 2008

Pedal pushers

A Place To Bury Strangers have it in for your earbones
The history of rock is littered with crazies who have craved nothing more than volume on top of volume, who have short-circuited themselves in the pursuit of the purity of noise.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN  |  September 08, 2008
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We had joy, we had fun

Dominic and the Lucid release Season of the Sun
It’s hardly rare for bands to borrow local talents to add flair here and there to a record, but Dominic and the Lucid have gone above and beyond the usual guest spots.
By SAM PFEIFLE  |  August 20, 2008

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