Classic Albums: U2 – The Joshua Tree (Eagle reissue)
Picture: C+ Sound: B- Extras: C- Main Program: B-
In the
beginning, U2 was a band with a difference and as much a part of New Wave with
as much Punk energy (without being Punk) as any band in the early-to-mid
1980s. However, by 1987, New Wave had
ended and their songs had not been big hits in the U.S. except Pride (In The Name Of Love). The
Joshua Tree arrived in 1987 and the band found the kind of huge critical
and commercial success that eluded them before, makes big bands into
supergroups and has made them a worldwide phenomenon since.
Unfortunately,
as I watched this Eagle Vision DVD reissue of this early installment of the Classic Albums series, they were
selling maybe the most important part of their soul to succeed by playing it
safe and doing this semi-bluesy Pop/Rock work with less energy, originality and
spontaneity than they began with. They
still stood for the same positive things and social issues, but to this date,
they dropped the ball in a way that made those problems worse & instead of
becoming the next Clash, they weighed down Rock by their lack of inaction.
The tree
on the cover of the album is more reflective of the vegetative state they
succumbed to. Songs like Where The Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
and the played-out With Or Without You
were not about much and not much more than love songs that had a little bonus
thinking involved. They announced early
on they were Christians, but this oddly never became the beginning of a new
Christian Left movement.
Like
ideas of live, religion, freedom, hope and peace, nothing becomes totally
developed on this album in any of those respects and has not with the band
since. Bono’s meeting with world leaders
only marginalizes him and he sincerely goes forward too naïve to realize how he
is being dishonored. Yes, Brian Eno
co-produced and deserves as much credit for this working as anything, but the
album is more about the end of anything good in the 1980s and the beginning of
darkness. Twenty years later, they are
sadly still oblivious to this.
The 1.33
X 1 image is about the same as the older cardboard-snapper version, while the
sound is not Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, but better PCM 16bit/48kHz 2.0 Stereo
like the original DVD release. There is
some brief text about the band, but that is all.
- Nicholas Sheffo
