Speaking of cartoon characters… I mean, of course, U2 July 18, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
… this I like:
What started out as a mildly interesting post-punk band rapidly became a grandiloquent exercise in religiosity as mass entertainment.
Then it got worse.
And this I don’t:
Rock’n'roll bands tend to be random blooms that wither quickly. The survival of U2 is a fascinating aspect. Edge has been able to parlay with Bono’s flitting imagination, allowing his own art to prosper. Larry has a signature rattle on the snare and, wisely, Adam plays the straight guy. It works perfectly. And yes, they have a moral dimension that keeps their singer motivated and makes those stadium-sized platforms a necessary place to deliver the pitch. What’s not to admire?
Did you see this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7511370.stm
I think U2 get a bad time often. It’s seen as daring and sophisticated to dismiss them. Well, bollocks. In fairness to them, they have engaged with serious political issues - and achieved stuff - instead of sitting on their holes. They may often be religious and pretentious - but at least they’ll say what they think more than most, and are nowhere near as vacuous as supposedly cooler artists like that junkie bogbeast you can’t escape from these days, who belongs in gaol.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7511370.stm
Fuck. I had a big comment sticking up for U2 on the basis that they at least have some political and moral substance, but seem to have forgotten to submit it. Oops.
Or my comments are caught in the spam filter.
That Bono guy is really annoying…What’s up with the sun glasses? Has he ended world poverty yet?
Still Garibaldy, in fairness to Linehan in the article in the IT he slates them for the music. Which I think is very reasonable indeed…
Bakunin, interesting question re sun glasses. I’d say it was a post-40 year old man thing… but perhaps not…
I had a big comment sticking up for U2 on the basis that they at least have some political and moral substance
(a) not much
(b) what kind of artistic criteria are those?
EJH,
You’re assuming I give fuck about artistic criteria
Besides, “art” doesn’t get created in a vacuum.
WBS and Bakunin,
I read somewhere they’re partly due to an eye condition. As for the music, where are their contemporaries now? And unlike others, they don’t just produce more of the same, but experiment. Which again is worthy of admiration.
WbS: “I’d say it was a post-40 year old man thing… but perhaps not…”
Possibly, but it is also “I’m a rockstar, ya know” kinda tosser mentality. I also confused the title of another post with this one, think it is started with “public health..” and dunno, U2….”public health…..warning”.. Apols. to all the U2 fans out there… Honest I am.
Garibaldy,
I’m new to this CLR, and I can say I’ve learned some things from you re: the WP and such. But, geez, U2. The drummer and bass player are horrible (maybe the worst in Rock). The guitarist spent years playing one riff (granted, he did it well) and the singer…oh, the singer.
Ahh…my position is that anyone who writes a forward for Jeffrey “Mr. Neoliberalism” Sachs should have his head examined and be dismissed outright. Bono — he could be pope some day.
What’s the difference between Bono and Mary Robinson? Nothing.
It is funny that you bring up their contemporaries. I would argue that the others got it right — show us your moves and go away, don’t stick around until you get eye conditions and stuff. What kind of rock and roll is that?
That kind of you Bakunin, but in fairness, Bono did say at one point that he voted WP, so perhaps that causes me to view him with rose tinted glasses. I enjoyed their concerts that I’ve either been at or couldn’t help but hearing. At the end of the day, Bono and U2 may well be meglomaniacs, do-gooders, religious nutters, bland musically, and now tax dodgers and the rest but they’re still better than the complete intellectual and political vacuums that make up most of the music industry. Who is worse - Bono or Pete Doherty? For me, there’s only one answer.
Garibaldy,
“Bono did say at one point that he voted WP”
As I recall, Bongo said that he’d voted for de Rossa which, as history would sadly prove, was not always the same thing as voting WP. It would be different if Bono were to say in 2008 that he votes WP but that ain’t gonna happen.
Bono’s politics are patronising, right-wing, myopic and a failure in their own terms. The most obvious example of this is that Make Poverty History has failed to begin to do what it wanted to do. In an article in the Evening Standard in June 2005, the Bono declared, “I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all… They haven’t asked me to represent them. It’s cheeky but I hope they’re glad I do.” [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4629851.stm]
Interesting view of representation. It strikes me that Sir Bono promotes himself as an expert on Africa- and its saviour- in the same way as Albert Reynolds does in relation to NI. I could say more but I’d only descend (further?) into polemical abuse.
And the music? Well, tastes in music are all very personal but in my opinion it took them about 15 years to learn how to write a decent song and since then they’ve managed to turn out about 5 decent tunes.
I take an evening off to watch an array of not entirely amusing ‘comedy’ programme reruns on Dave and BBC 4 and I return to what?
The Bonocalypse…
Yeah, Justin, I think you’re right there. When asked Bono said that if asked his politics were closest to the WP (this remember was back in 89 or thereabouts) but that he didn’t entirely agree with them on everything although he’d vote for de Rossa.
Re the music, which was very much LInehans points in the first place. I’d rate a fair of Boy and October, almost none of their successive albums, bar perhaps some tracks off Achtung Baby (even the name makes me cringe) a bit of Pop, etc. Too big, too bloated, too smug, too mainstream and middle of the road. I don’t like his voice. The Chameleons, and Gawd, the Comsat Angels did the ringing chiming guitars more interestingly. The bass lines are pedestrian. Larry is a nice person in person, so I’m told.
Re Pete Doherty, there I agree with you Garibaldy - clearly worse than Bono… but if we’re talking about the intersection between British music media (yeah, NME, I’m looking at you), the tabloid press, fashion and whatever… then that’s a different conversation… which I’m really up for…
Let me contribute to that discussion by saying they should all fuck off and die.
There was only ever one tenable approach to U2.
Part 1: Go to U2 and Virgin Prunes gigs and leave after the Prunes.
Part 2: After 1980, never mention U2 again.
I can’t remember who wrote it, but U2 were memorably described, some time in the eighties, as ‘rock music for rugby players’.
Is that a none-too-veiled call for a dose of Paranoid Vision Garibaldy ?
I Will Wallow an’ all that… :->
Alas Seán I have no idea what you are on about. U2 song?
Nah, Paranoid Visions, Dublin’s own ‘punk’ band. And charting so I believe recently…
Crocodile… I never made it to the original U2/Prunes gigs… a pity really. The latter were quite something. I still have their album, but the original singles were brilliant…
I see. Punk. Bollocks. An infantile disorder.
Hmmm…. not quite getting the hang of this popular culture thing….
Back to Gramsci with you my friend…
As long as it’s not the New Left Gramsci but the Stalinist one, that’s fine by me.
Your obviously did not come of age between 1977 and 1982 Garibaldy! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive….
And highly political too, I should add. Throw in Two-Tone and all the other music that came in Punk’s wake and you have some soundtrack. And U2 were actually around the Dublin Punk scene well before Paranoid Visions, who were more of an 80s thing.
I certainly did not come of age then. But I can recognise an infantile delusional, 1970s version of hippy counter culture when I see it.
Punk = Hippy? Not at all. Quite the opposite. And delusional? I’d think that punk was probably the least delusional of all popular culture strands… V. true D&C. And good point re PV.
Incidentally, I’m never fond of the term Stalinist, even in its functional meaning.
I was suggesting that it was the same strands within society who were attracted to each counter culture. As for punk being delusional or not, I think it was very delusional (somewhat like the soixante huitards) regarding how change can be affected.
I tend not to use the S word myself. But in that case, I think its literal meaning - a supporter of Stalin as opposed to Trotsky - applies.
The Punks I knew were mainly a working class bunch, as were the Mods and Skins. Is there not a danger that when one dislikes a particular musical trend or way of dressing that we label it ‘middle class’ or even right-wing, whereas its really about personal taste?
I’m not labelling it anything except politically immature. Which I think it had in common with the hippies, or the anti-capitalist movement of the 1990s.
We must go back over that again some time G, re the supporter of Stalin. I tend to think that that wasn’t personalised, but was due to the weight of power accrued to Moscow, a dynamic that continued long after despite the changing complexion of the realities of Moscow itself, obviously particularly post 57/62 and then again later at various points. In a way it reminds me of the Gerry Collins ‘don’t bust up the [FF] party Albert’ back in the early 1990s. Party unity over all else whatever the nature of the person at the top of the pyramid.
D&C, again I’d agree. I was in Community School in Kilbarrack in the late 70s. Middle class tended towards metal/rock (Floyd - maaaan), working class to punk/two-tone. I once taught kids in Coolock, voluntary work, early to mid-1980s. All but two, the two being nice middle class boys, were reggae fans, the boys were metal heads. Not that there wasn’t a crossover of metal, particularly Motorhead/Lizzy…
Anyhow, I don’t think punk sought to change the world, just the context of those who were punks. Which could be bloody irritating to me back in the WP days…
Nothing like a discussion on culture to bring the Tankies out of the woodwork! So whats it to be, wooly jumpers and bad folk songs at drab pub socials for ever? By the way I’m not taking this seriously, and I like a bit of Luke Kelly as much as the next man.
Who’d have thought it D&C?
Got to say most popular culture is politically immature. That’s its strength… it’s great to get away from politics sometimes.
We can happily go over it sometime if you wish, but the way he talked about Trotsky made it clear where his sympathies lay.
Fuck woolly jumpers and folk songs too D&C. It’s all about the cinema. And There were Roses by Tommy Sands as well perhaps. And who’s in the woodwork?
I don’t have huge problems with popular culture being politically immature to an extent (although the complete depolitisication of popular culture in this day and age is certainly a serious impediment to any revival of the left in even social democrat form) but people make great claims for punk in terms of its politics.
Popular culture…
Politically immature…
punks and hippies…
Garibaldy, what you give in one quarter, you take away in another.
The Shah sleeps in Lee Harvey’s grave!
[...] speaking of popular culture…As reported on designboom and in the Guardian… recently, when asked [...]
The Garibaldy giveth and the Garibaldy taketh away Bakunin?
See ‘Setting Sons’ The Jam, 1979. Eton Rifles, Little Boy Soldiers, Private Hell….politically immature? Written by a 20 year old Paul Weller and better than most stuff he has done since then. (David Cameron named Eton Rifles as one of his favourite songs recently and Weller’s response was ‘then he’s missed the fucking point!’).
But of course I like the music first and foremost. Hence Shaun Ryder talking about his jeans being a loose fit is still a great song, no matter what the bard of Little Hulton was on at the time or indeed on about.
Ah, Tommy Sands, yes, but also on your side politically Garibaldy, no? Outlet records and all that?
Unlike yourself D&C, I’m not that interested in the music. I don’t know much about Sands’ politics, but the song itself is of interest to me, as a stunning and moving evocation of the damage sectarianism has wrought on NI.
Of the fifty or so punks in Dublin in mid-1977 ( defined by music rather than costume), I’d say forty were middle-class. We got our news of musical developments through the British music papers and from the John Peel show in those days. There was no music radio in Ireland. The NME and Sounds were cultural and political journals for the young and literate. Trinity College played a big role in the promotion of punk in Ireland, their ents committee organising, for example, the Clash gigs in the Exam Hall in October ‘77 that were roughly the equivalent for Dublin of the Manchester Free Trade Sex Pistols gig. You could get, say, a Ramones single if you ordered it from Tommy in Pat Egan’s and came in on Saturday morning to pick it up. There you might meet someone else who knew who Tom Verlaine was or who could compare Giovanni Dadomo to Nick Kent.
I am only too aware that every sentence in the preceding paragraph reads like a piece of social history from the Victorian or Georgian eras. That’s the milieu, though, that U2 and the Prunes came from.
There’s no disputing the class divide between ‘punks’ and those more broadly who listened to punk music, but the crossover in terms of audiences at gigs was greater. Not least because, as with myself and my mates, we were 15 in 1980 so we weren’t exactly manning the barricades three years earlier… but we had the singles, Prunes etc and we listened to the music. And the support for U2 was - sorry - nearly hegemonic as early as 1980/81 amongst working class kids as well…
Funny thing, I always saw the NME as very middle class at the time whereas Sounds I saw as much more clued into working class, in part because it still championed the second wave of punk, the NWOBHM, etc, etc long after NME had decided they were passe.
Incidentally, I’m a bit older than the next wave again of people who got into US hardcore in the mid 1980s onwards. But that too was a scene with a strong social mix, albeit tending towards middle class. And as ever the metal element there was stronger again (Metallica etc opening the door back to that genre). While we’re talking about fans, although not one explicitly myself in terms of hanging out with them, the metal scene in Dublin has to be one of the friendliest bunch of people I ever came across.
I’m not labelling it anything except politically immature.
1. It’s pop music, not dialectical materialism.
2. What can we define as politically mature, just of purposes of comparison?
Sounds was a step or two ahead of the NME in 76/77, wbs, but lost its way completely by the time the odious Garry Bushell was championing fascist ‘oi!’ bands like Skrewdriver. Mmm.. Garry Bushell - wonder what ever happened to him.
Would you agree that there’s a gap there in the teen media these days? Reading one of the music mags in the late 70s/early 80s required you to engage with political ideas every week whether you wanted to or not. Maybe pop music makes nothing happen, but the NME and Sounds of those years discounted the idea that you could be interested in music and youth culture without thinking about politics. Now it’s all about downloading ringtones and ‘the 10 coolest tattoos in rock’.
I suppose the continuing involvement of Bono or Geldof in political debate - whatever we think they’re achieving - is explained by their age: they, like us I suppose, will never see music as just about entertainment.
Yeah, I’d completely agree re SOunds. Mind you after Bushell left it picked up a bit before finally expiring around 87, wasn’t it?
THere’s a massive gap. It’s amazing how little thought there is in contemporary youth culture. And back-handed compliment or not about Bono and Geldof I couldn’t agree more. It is an age thing, and a consumerist thing…
While we’re identifying intergenerational ironies: one of the comprehension texts on this Year’s honours Leaving Cert English paper was by the great Jon Savage.
Garibaldy - if people make great claims for punk in terms of its politics this may have something to do with the complete depoliticisation of popular culture in this day and age; punk wasn’t great, but it was better than this.
But there’s a larger point with regard to punk’s revoultionary pretensions. I’m very much in the ‘bliss was it in that dawn to be alive’ camp with regard to punk - it may not have been a revolutionary movement in any sense, but it certainly feltlike one, & I don’t think that’s to be dismissed. Looking back on it now, I think the mid- to late 70s were, if not a revolutionary moment, then certainly a moment when it seemed possible to talk about a revolution: it felt as if capitalism and the government were on the back foot. I think punk picked up on & amplified (and distorted) that feeling, a bit like a smaller-scale version of the Movement of 1977 in Italy.
one of the comprehension texts on this Year’s honours Leaving Cert English paper was by the great Jon Savage.
I assume it was incomprehensible?
I went to see that Joy Division film not long ago. Having suffered the enormous claims made by the commentary, climaxing with the statement that Joy Division had revitalised and transformed Manchester, I was not at all surprised to learn that Savage had been the author (especially given that one of his ludicrous old next-week-brings-the-fall-of-capitalism pieces was on screen for a while - he’s been getting away with it for thrity years now. Annoyed as well as surprised, though,since if I’d known of his involvement I’d have given the film a miss.
Him and fucking Morley on the same show. Pair of fucking charlatans.
‘ I was not at all surprised to learn that Savage had been the author (especially given that one of his ludicrous old next-week-brings-the-fall-of-capitalism pieces was on screen for a while - he’s been getting away with it for thrity years now. Annoyed as well as surprised, though,since if I’d known of his involvement I’d have given the film a miss.’
Just as well that paragraph wasn’t on any exam papers, ejh ( Q2. Was ejh annoyed or not? Discuss)
Morley, Savage, Ian Penman and others may have been infuriatingly obtuse on occasions, but they paid their young readers the espect of assuming they were intelligent. Compared to the brainless advertorial of teen mags now, that’s quite a compliment.
they paid their young readers the espect of assuming they were intelligent
No they didn’t. They quoted obscure passages that they didn’t understand so that their readers could exhibit the same pretensions as they did.
God, I wish the teenagers I know now would exhibit a few more pretensions and a lot less apathy.
Great discussion. Listen even Smash Hits during the Miners Strike had more politics in it than teen and music mags now. I vividly remember reading the lyrics of the Council Collective’s Soul Deep in said mag; ‘we afford to the let the government win, it means death to the trade uni-ons’!
Check out the Council’s Top of the Pops appearance of December 1984 on Youtube.
I’m a bit younger than the original Dublin Punks obviously. But I heard a lot about the Black Catholics, remember them?
Jesus feckin’ Hewson! just look what I set off mentioning Paranoid Visions… I only brought them up, Garibaldy, as they used the same phrase as you - F O A D - around the time of their U2 parody EP - I Will Wallow… I think it was even on FOAD Records, as I recall.
It was your use of the phrase that set off a Pavlovian remebrance of PV’s very existence.
Can’t agree with you less about punk though, after all that
Sounds entertaining. I’ll try and find it some time. It seems none of the middle aged people here agree with me about punk
U2? Not as good as the Joshua Trio.
Only vaguely D&C.
Black Catholics: briefly caused trouble - their raison d’etre - at Dublin gigs c. ‘79/80. Then discovered hash and mellowed out. Probably chartered accountants now.