day four - top 'o the mornin' to ye

going to do this in a bit of a new format, because i think it was getting too image heavy and it also got kind of boring just writing reviews, which wasn't entirely the point of this exercise anyway

listened to:

U2- WAR
The Undertones - the Very Best of the Undertones

so i've sort of hit a point on my cd rack where there's some vague alphabetization going on - this probably will happen periodically, though largely any organization i once had has long been forgotten. oddly enough, it may as well have been grouped by country, as i picked two irish bands. this morning.

i may or may not be in a minority here, but War is my favorite U2 album. it has my favorite song by them - "2 hearts beat as one", for whatever it's worth - and just, overall, has the most i like from U2. which is nothing against their other stuff, not at all. joshua tree was probably the album that really got me into U2, but then War made me like them. i guess it might be easy to argue that, oh, well, he likes War better because it's not the "popular" album. - not true, and sort of a dumb argument, as War had as many popular singles as Joshua Tree. and it was this, as well as the unforgettable fire, that got them on live aid. i like War because it captures U2 at an intensity they haven't really matched since. yeah, it doesn't hurt that there are bits that make me think of joy division (a sort of obvious, but generally uncited influence on AT LEAST early U2). and... yeah. it also, probably, is the least pretentious, least self conscious album they ever did (sorry, it is, and sorry, they started to get really pretentious at some point).

okay. i said i hate greatest hits compilations but now i'm about to say how much i like one. the very best of the undertones IS a greatest hits album. however, in the typical way the Rhino records compiles these things, it's not a typical one, and is not only exhaustively complete. full disclosure: i only really knew the undertones for teenage kicks, which is a brilliant song and, to be honest, creates enough of a legacy in and of itself.

25 tracks! holy crap! from punk - though the more melodic variety, in the mode of the buzzcocks - to post punk where you can start to hear their influence on bands like REM (well, early REM) to U2 (hey! how'd they get in here...). 25 tracks, but kinda short still. what i like the most about the undertones is fergal sharkey's voice. that slight vibrato makes even the early punk records of theirs, with the spit and the venom, sound less like the generic spit and venom of all the other early punk records. and they have a song that's an ode to the mars bar! the freaking mars bar!!

i want a mars bar.....