The First Time

As I spend more and more time travelling across the country on the train, I have been trying to find different ways for my ipod to keep me entertained and I took the spectacularly nerdy decision to work my way through entire back catalogues of artists.

It is rare these days to even listen to an album from start to finish.  I believe shuffle a cardinal sin.  A truly great album should have had the track listing agonised over.  There are plenty of examples of bands leaving off great tunes as they didn’t “fit” with the album (“hold me thrill me kiss me” was written for Achtung Baby, essentially a dark album about divorce).  I believe in the sanctity of the album creation.

Working through a back catalogue is fascinating as you can chart the evolution of the band.  I predominantly buy the first album of a band, viewing anything later as no longer fresh, but this is also because bands are under so much pressure to deliver immediately.  We rarely get bands making it super big on their 4^th or 5^th album.

First up was U2.  Judge me if you must, but they are the band that have had the single biggest impact on my musical taste.  I have welcomed listening again to the punk influence of Boy maturing into the intelligent anger of War.  The evolution into super group with the bad hair cuts but anthems of October and Unforgettable Fire (with a pretentious, but electric live album on the way) before Joshua Tree which catapulted the band in the US and helped create U2’s caricature.  The jarring industrial sound of Achtung Baby is an incredible relief after the sensibilities of Rattle and Hum.

But the most important of all their records will always be Zooropa.  It will likely always be my favourite record.  I bought it blind having heard about Bono’s duet with Frank Sinatra (on I’ve Got You Under My Skin – incredible).  I didn’t realise that this song would only be a b-side on the release of Stay (Faraway So Close). 

On the same day I bought Zooropa, I bought Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke.  As I read the book and listened to the album on loop I was transformed into another world.  I had never heard anything like this, it was what the future sounded like.  I believe it is still what the future should sound like.  The unique guitar sound on Numb, the intensity of Stay, the humour and filth of Lemon (particularly for a teenage boy).  The First Time became intensely personal, and The Wanderer introduced me to Johnny Cash for which I shall be eternally grateful.

And to think that the album was recorded in a short time (by U2’s standards) whilst they were in the middle of a 2 year world tour staggers me.  It is a great album to listen to at night, which is probably reflective of the time it was recorded.

I must admit I’m a little disappointed by the more recent U2 albums which seem to try and recall the techniques of Joshua Tree (and to a certain extent the ballads of Achtung Baby), but that’s because in my mind I’ve already heard the perfect record.  But maybe the band was right, as the “logical” step from Zooropa was Passengers, which I enjoyed but only as it made me feel avant garde at the time (I appreciate the irony) – Larry Mullen Jr described the band as having “disappeared up its own arse”.

It’s probably a brave/stupid thing to broadcast my passion for this discography, and I do sorely wish Bono wouldn’t make it so easy for people to poke fun at him, but I can’t deny my roots (I also feel enormously uncool to describe an album released in 1994 as my roots).  I have compounded the issue by being a real geek about the band, reading books, collecting CDs, recording live shows, calling at Edge’s guitar technician during soundchecks ("Dallas").  But being a nerd about music is important to me and these train journeys afford me the time to revel in it.