Michael West ([email protected])
Mon, 27 Jul 1998 10:42:04 +0100
Right, just recently I seemed to have abandoned my penchant for discovering all of U2's best performances.
Now, I am interested in finding out about U2's worst, particularly ZooTV and Popmart. This isn't my way of
flaming U2, let's make that clear. It's just that, if the only U2 concert I had ever been to had been below
par, or worse, I would have been crest-fallen. Is there anybody on Wire who has come away from a U2 concert
genuinely disappointed at what they had witnessed? A strange question, I know, but then, I've got a fetish for
questions anyway, so it doesn't matter to me.
I, like many other people on Wire, would like to see U2 alter their respective set-lists a great deal
more for the forthcoming tour. It's getting to the stage where all the Popmart bootlegs sound the same! In my
opinion, there are a handful of songs that must be retained, the real crowd-pleasers. Songs such as One,
Streets, Pride, New Years Day, SBS. However, I would love to see The Unforgettable Fire and Ultraviolet in
there as well. The "problem" with U2, as I'm sure many of you will agree, is that they simply have too many
superb songs that work in a concert environment, this ensures that many people are going to be disappointed as
their personal favourite is left out. Probably the only way of rectifying this situation is increasing the
length of each concert to about four hours! This isn't going to happen, but I certainly wouldn't be
complaining!
Regarding Bono's voice, it seems quite clear to me that it is worse now compared to years previous. I
don't profess to be a voice expert, but in my opinion, Bono's voice appeared to be at it's peak during the
ZooTV tour, evidence of this would be the Dublin and Sydney shows. In the earlier years, Bono tended to rely
on pure power alone, and there was nothing wrong with that, at the time. These days, he seems to have struck
a balance between power and subtlety, but the cigarettes don't seem to have helped. I could waffle on for
ages, but I'd only bore you to tears, (if I haven't already!).
That's enough from me for now, e-mail me if you want to discuss anything or simply want to chat...
Cheers,
Michael
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Jul 27 1998 - 02:43:31 PDT