EXP
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2015-06-12 - Montreal
 Tour: Innocence and Experience tour
Songs played: 25
Audio recordings: 1
  3. Originally posted by Bloodraven:[..]
    that's why I don't understand the complaining about setlists... I'm excited that they play the songs whenever they want as long as we get a nice bootleg out of it.

    In other words: give me a couple of great shows including all the songs I really want to hear, and then feel free to play whatever you want on the rest of the tour, since I'll enjoy it anyway.



  7. Originally posted by bartajax:[..]
    No it means it was America's reaction to Popmart. Not the tour itself, which got recived a lot better in other countries.
    But you're right, they let America decide that they should go onto a safe way and make ATYCLB.

    Besides that, they should give some songs a rest.


    ????????? Blaming a country for an artistic direction seems absurd to me but hey what do I know...

    I never understood all the hate. This is the album that brought them back to relevancy in a big way. I'll bet a lot of their younger fans were also introduced to them through Beautiful Day. Like the album or not, you have to respect its place in U2s history.
  8. Originally posted by MoFoNYR15:[..]


    ????????? Blaming a country for an artistic direction seems absurd to me but hey what do I know...

    I never understood all the hate. This is the album that brought them back to relevancy in a big way. I'll bet a lot of their younger fans were also introduced to them through Beautiful Day. Like the album or not, you have to respect its place in U2s history.
    I'm not blaming a country. But the fact that Pop and Popmart weren't well recived in some parts of the world and mainly the US made U2 go back to basics and create a more ''normal'', radio friendly (got no other words for it really) sounding album.

    And yes it brought them back to relevancy, I probably wouldn't be here if they hadn't released ATYCLB. So I do respect it but still don't like it and when someone (in this case Ahn1991) is acting like it's the best album I can go against that.
  9. Originally posted by MoFoNYR15:[..]


    ????????? Blaming a country for an artistic direction seems absurd to me but hey what do I know...

    I never understood all the hate. This is the album that brought them back to relevancy in a big way. I'll bet a lot of their younger fans were also introduced to them through Beautiful Day. Like the album or not, you have to respect its place in U2s history.
    Just to add to your point:

    People can blame certain audiences or countries for Pop's flop and U2's lack of experimentation to that degree since then, but the thing is, that's how the recording industry works. U2 could have kept getting weirder and weirder and pushing the boundaries of what they could do, but from their perspective their audience didn't like where they were going.

    I recently watched a video of John Mayer giving a workshop at Berklee (where he went to school for a couple years) and the presentation was basically given to a bunch of up-and-comers like John Mayer once was. At one point he asked the question "how many of you think the casual music listening audience is dumb? It's okay, raise your hand" - a few people did. He basically ended up making the point that the music listening audience is WAY smarter than the artist, and it all comes down to how they're going to receive the art you're creating. You might think you have the biggest hit, and when an audience thinks it's garbage, it IS garbage - that's the way it works.

    The point I'm making in relating this to Pop isn't that Popmart and Pop were garbage, but it was a direction that U2's audience didn't ultimately like. Even if Pop is regarded by the hardcore fans as challenging and awesome, and I've read articles since about how it's U2's last great album, it doesn't matter. They were losing sales, they could see the reaction to their direction in the lack of crowds every night, and basically they probably thought "we've gone too far from what connected us to our audience." Hence All That You Can't Leave Behind. Even though many around here consider it a success, it doesn't matter. It wasn't. You can't call the majority of U2's concert or album-buying audience dumb or conservative when they had such a massive impact on the flop of that campaign. Just because we like Pop, doesn't mean that everyone else did, or more importantly, should.

    I also love the fact that U2 refused to believe that ATYCLB was a step back. I love that they've never said that they made a simpler album because Pop was received badly. The way they see it, it was the next step on their journey, and I agree with that.
  10. Just to clarify something on the Popmart myth. I think we are generalizing too much when we say "America didn't understand Popmart but it was a success in Europe". It sounds like an euphemism for "Americans were too dumb to understand the irony but us cool Europeans did", which I don't agree of course. There were very successful shows in the U.S. at the end of the 1st leg and in the 3rd leg, and on the contrary, Popmart sunk like the Titanic in the first early German shows. Popmart gained momentum right about the London gigs and then it was very successful, including the U.S.
  11. At the end of the day, I think most people had their fill of U2 doing a huge overblown schticky tour (let's not forget that 91-93 were not exactly "normal" years of touring for this band), and chose to express that in different ways.

    I don't think its for lack of understanding the subject matter; I think it's for lack of there wanting to be a "subject matter" to a concert at all. Which, honestly, is something I struggle with a lot in my own fandom.
  12. The way I see, do it or don't. Don't half ass it. I think with the current tour they've sort of got that conceptual thing halfway and then they sort of drop it in favour of playing certain hits that would'nt fit into the narrative they establish in the first half. How do you go from playing Raised by Wolves and Sunday Bloody Sunday the way they are and mysterious ways a little while later? There's no flow at that point to me.

    I think it's very obvious that Bono took many ideas from The Wall. I read an interview with them and he mentioned seeing roger water's show and said it blew his mind. The Wall is like the epitome of a concert with subject matter - I would've loved to see U2 do an entire show like that.

    Does it mean they have to? No. But if you are going to do that, make a great show out of it and make it sensical.
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