EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG

Last Saturday, I finally got around to watching the DVD version of 'U2 - Zoo TV Live from Sydney' I had received as a X-mas gift over two years ago. It struck me afterward, that the direction the band headed after 'The Joshua Tree' was/is considered by a lot of folks to be where they jumped the proverbial shark. I actually find it to be one of the impressively creative periods (up until 2004's 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb' and 2005/2006's Vertigo tour) a band has had.

Over the next few days, allow me to illustrate my viewpoint using the magic of YouTube and three of their concert DVD's. Starting with...

'Zoo TV Live from Sydney'

Originally released on VHS in 1994, the DVD version was finally released in 2006. The 'Achtung Baby' and 'Zooropa' albums the tour supported proved to be an amazing musical departure from the material found on both 'The Joshua Tree' and 'Rattle & Hum'. In actuality, the word 'departure' would be much less accurate than this period being called a full-fledged 're-invention'.

While the albums virtually crucified everything the band had become in the 80's and it's resulting success, the ZOO TV tour provided a physical manifestation of that concept and took on the ills of living in an information age...before it even exploded further in supernova fashion w/ the developments of the world wide web. Sonically and aesthetically, both the music and incredible stage set-up challenged that 'EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG.'

Mind-numbingly bombastic performances of tunes like 'Until the End of the World' and 'The Fly' served as the perfect backdrop to a barrage of imagery ripped from satellite TV and the distraction/influence found within it's signals...or maybe it's the other way around. The very concepts of race, sexuality, politics, popular culture and all the preconceived notions that come along with them, were thrown in concertgoers faces nightly in a similar fashion as barrage of images found on the 500+ TV channels we feed off daily. It was both a musical statement and one of...well, one of just about every other level as well.

The success of both the albums and tour under auspices of such a drastic transformation of a band...a band that had become so embedded in the collectively global conscience...is something I find inspiring to this very day. I'm still blown away over the fact that, at the same time they were challenging the relevance of rock music and the musicians that play it, they were making themselves MORE relevant than what they had already become.

Enjoy the beginning of said revolution/re-invention to the completely appropriate track by earlier tour openers Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. 'Television, the drug of a nation'...