Dearly Devoted Rubie

The album, the Zoo-TV tour, the Zooropa album. All of them are marks of my teenage years and U2 fandom. My cousin gave me an imported regular copy as a present and it's the version I have owned since.

I clearly remember spotting a digipak copy of the album in a department store when I was 12, but my parents wouldn't buy it to me. Today, thanx to iluso (¬¬) and his collecting skills, I finally have my digipak.

Achtung Baby is the seventh studio album by Irish rock band U2, released on 19 November 1991. Stung by criticism of their previous album, Rattle and Hum, the album was a calculated change in musical and thematic direction with the incorporation of alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial influences. It was the band's most dramatic change since The Unforgettable Fire album.

I just might add that this album is one of my favorites and that songs like One, Until the End of the World and The Fly form part of the "soundtrack of my life", a term cleverly engineered by Manato.

It was compared with The Who's Tommy and with Pink Floyd's the wall and it reminded me of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and Dream Theater's Metropolis (pt. 2). An ambitious conceptual album for the first half of the first decade of the XXI century. The seventh album of a band that went political against the war policies of president Bush and decided to tell us the story of Jesus of Suburbia, his alter-ego St. Jimmy and Whatshername, the girl who held his heart like a hand grenade.

This album came out in September of 2004, and 4 years later, I'm posting about it because Manato bought me a copy of it on the iTunes Store. No, it's not that after four years I didn't have the album, in fact, I bought my copy on CD Universe when it became available, went to the concert when the American Idiot Tour hit MX City and even bought a set of Green Day printed blank CD's, where I gave away a copy of the album.

So, what's the big fuzz about this particular gift that was possible through an iTunes gift card Manato bought? When the album came out, iTunes didn't have an option to burn CD's without a pause between them (and if it had it, it was really obscure) and 8 of the 13 songs comprising the album have smooth transitions between them, that when not burned correctly kind of ruin the album, so Apple released the album with these songs blended together, rendering the album a 9 track record.

I once found that the French import of the album contained this mix but I couldn't buy it, so I later tried to download the files and failed too. I had finally given up when Manato offered to buy it for me through iTunes. I'm listening to the album as I type and trust me if I tell you that the experience is really different, I even like the mix better. Instead of 3 or 4 minute radio friendly songs, I'm listening to 5 to 9 minutes long songs, that more closely resemble the classic conceptual albums listed at the beggining of this post.

So, I burned my legally downloaded album on an oficially printed CD and I'm rediscovering Green Day's American Idiot thanks to Manato.

The other day I was talking with some students about the anthem of the Institute and they complained about not being able to learn it because at the ceremonies, the quality of the sound is very poor. I told them that the anthem is available online with lyrics and all but unfortunately it was on wma protected format, so it wasn't useful.

I wrote to the webmaster of the page requesting for a useful file and they answered the next day, thanking me for my feedback and correcting the file on the page. The day after that, I received a second e-mail telling me that there was a CD containing the anthem available for me, all I had to do was pick it up.

I went to pick it up the next day and they gave me a couple of CD's, one for me and one for the principal of my school, so they use it on the ceremonies. Now, after showing of the lab to the Humanistics chief, I feel like receiving first graders with the anthem next semester.

BTW, happy b-day biogirl!

U2.com dixit

Twenty years after its original release, The Joshua Tree has been remastered for release in a series of special formats. As well as a fourteen track bonus-CD of b-sides and rarities, the 2007 release features a live concert DVD from Paris in 1987, liner notes from band and producers and previously unseen photos in a limited edition booklet.

And the Magi left my copy at the Pond!

This is one of my favorite U2 albums and I must say that the contents of the box and the concert are worth all the trouble. There's no track of this CD that I don't like but I happen to specially like "Red Hill Minning Town" because it reminds me of a winter sometime around 1995 when my family and I were driving back from Acapulco and there was snow between MX City and Cuernavaca.

Anyway, I have listened to the bonus CD and there are some interesting tracks like "The Sweetest Thing" in its original B-side version and Silver and Gold.

Thank you Trout for this great present!

It was 1995 when U2 joined Brian Eno, Luciano Pavarotti and Howie B. among others and labeled themselves Passengers.

U2 recorded Miss Sarajevo with Pavarotti and it became the only single of the record, being performed live by the tenor, Bono, the Edge and Brian Eno in one of the much criticized "Pavarotti and Friends" concerts.

In addition to the "Pavarotti and Friends" performance, the song was played once on U2's 1997 Popmart Tour in Sarajevo with Brian Eno. It became a regular song during the Vertigo Tour and here in MX City we got to hear it, with Bono performing the tenor part.

Pavarotti died today and sure he will be missed. Pavarotti will be remembered not only for popularizing opera (that's taking opera to the masses), but for his humanitarian work with War Child and several UN issues.

So long maestro.