November Playlist: Trip Through Your Wires

Timeless.

Saying you're a U2 fan is akin to saying you like breathing. While there are a few naysayers who aren't impressed, 80,000 of your closest friends at one concert can attest to the ongoing popularity of the boys from Ireland.

I was aware of the band in their early days, introduced like most via MTV playing Sunday Bloody Sunday and Gloria. And like most, I fell in love with the band when The Joshua Tree went huge.

They have been and still are in some cases, punk, earnest human rights advocates, arena rock, electronic, roots, disco and straight ahead rock and roll. Even they will admit they became so huge, they became parodies of themselves.

My play list will try to avoid the obvious, but sometimes the obvious are obvious for a reason.

Trip Through Your Wires - Filthy harmonica, and one of the most overlooked U2 tracks and most certainly the most overlooked track on the Joshua Tree album. Very bar band.

Bad - The drug addict song. The build up of drama in this song is intense and delivers.

Bullet the Blue Sky - song pretty much showcases the awesomeness of every single member of the band.

Angel of Harlem - People like to dis Rattle and Hum as some sort of vanity project, but it works. The band has said this was their learning period of the history of American music, and this tribute to Billie Holliday is as fine a sing a long song as any.

Far Away (So Close!) - There are days when my body craves this song. It creates in my mind a smoky bar with not a lot of patrons, the house band, and the girl who loves them.

All I Want is You - In the song Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own, Bono sings in tribute to his father, "you're the reason I have operas in me." All I Want is You is a prime example of a U2 opera, maybe even a symphony. Damn thing clocks in at about 7 minutes. It starts quietly, builds, swirls, soars, comes down, goes back up, and the coda takes you for a desperate ride courtesy of The Edge. Even the video is a swirling operatic storyline, the midget ringleader for an Italian circus in love with a trapeze artist. Someone dies, maybe two, who knows, it is completely ambiguous and up to you to decide what the hell happened.

Elevation - After their ride through the 90s doing European rock, electronica and disco, they claimed to apply for a role as the biggest rock band in the world. Application accepted. I still want to skate to this.

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me - U2 became so big, Bono felt the need to adopt an additional persona on stage, thus becoming The Fly. Do what ya gotta do. This song is from one of the Batman soundtracks, the video itself comprised of the members of the band becoming comic book characters. Hell hath no fury like a primary rendered Larry Mullen Jr!

Mysterious Ways - it's one of the first songs Dave and I shared in those early courtship days. It's an amazing tune that opens your eyes a little to a bigger world view. Plus Bono laying on a Moroccan tile floor is pure sex.

Numb - The Edge's only lead vocal hit. A weird monotone song off the wildly imaginative Zooropa, it goes through the emotions he was feeling from his divorce. Video by Godley and Creme, they of the extreme avant-garde closeup.

An Cat Dubh - Off the first album Boy, it's simply a loud, crashy tune that sounds like a polished mess. I have no idea what the title means.

Fast Cars - Track only found on special editions of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb that has a particular tango feel to it. I think I have stated before, if I ever make it to the point I need to pass a solo free dance, it will be to this.

Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl - As punk as they would ever sound, this song was featured as a bonus track on I don't know how many albums. On their last big US tour, they were hauling girls up out of the audience to perform a song request. This was the song the girl in Chicago requested.

Sweetest Thing - Bono misses a birthday, and writes a song in apology to his wife, becomes international hit. The video is delightful.