6 Degrees of My iPod: The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby through Machines of Loving Grace?
How’s this for weird for you? I listened to The Joshua Tree this morning (technically, I skipped “Bullet the Blue Sky” because I’m so tired of that song) after listening to Passengers. I listened to a few random tracks after that and then wound up listening to Machines of Loving Grace’s Concentration. MLG is probably best known for a song they had on the soundtrack to The Crow, one of the essential ’90s soundtracks and musical collections.
After listening to 45 minutes of MLG, a band that mixed hard rock and industrial influences, I was ready to listen to Achtung Baby. Bono or The Edge once said Achtung was the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree. For some reason this morning, I couldn’t go from one straight into the other. I needed a hard rock/industrial band to act as the bridge. I’m not sure how it is I could go from The Joshua Tree to Concentration, but Concentration to Achtung seemed a natural transition.
Achtung is by no means an industrial record, but it does seem to foreshadow music from bands that would come later. The Eno influence has to be considered there, plus Europe has had a much more accepting attitude toward techno and dance music than America. This is a really good example of a band experimenting the right way. They tried new sounds and approaches to recording without completely abandoning what was good about them from the start. It’s a damn difficult equation to balance, and U2 got it right.
Many bands don’t stretch themselves far enough, sounding just different enough to ruin a good song. Other bands go too far. Bob Dylan might be able to write a great instrumental record, but do you want him to? How about a Jimi Hendrix record where our hero plays (okay, played… happy?) only piano? Where is the satisfaction in that? Sure, listeners should evaluate each album on its own merits but music doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Again, it’s about balance.
So with that little tributary, we’re back to Achtung Baby. We talked about this on B-Sides the other night: what’s your favorite track from this one? Your participation is politely commanded and greatly appreciated.
Filed under: Tags: U2
It is probably cliche to say so, and I know I won’t win any cool points by saying it, but I gotta go with “one.” A beautiful, meaningful, powerful, poetic song. Not only my favorite off of Actung Baby, but one of my favorite U2 songs ever.
I pretty much always skip over “zoo station” though it has grown on me over the years, and I’ve been known to skip past the second track as well. “Even Better” is a decent song actually, but I almost universally get so excited about hearing “one” that I wind up hitting skip somewhere in the middle.
The rest of the album is gold to my ears.