Tag Archives: brian eno

U2’s “The Joshua Tree” Still Thriving @ 30 Years (1987-2017)

While it’s not exactly St. Patrick’s Day yet, today is surely a great day to get your Irish up because it is the thirtieth anniversary of the blockbuster album by U2 called “The Joshua Tree”. Yep. You fans of a certain age are probably shaking your head at the fact that is was on this day thirty years ago that you had added this one to your LP collection but its indeed true. The album was a hit almost immediately if I am remembering correctly and I remember hitting my local music seller shop to get a copy on CD. I had moved on from vinyl and was preferring this medium. Yes, I was a tried and true bleed for the Metal sort of guy but I really enjoyed the tunes that were playing on so many of the radio stations of the day. Back during this time, it was an album that EVERYONE I knew owned and it was easy to find this being the case since MTV was behind this album with a force that isn’t seen all that often in today’s media world. It came out on Island Records and was produced by both Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno and according to research has sold over 25 million copies since its release. That is some kind of accomplishment for sure.

Before I get any further I should stress how this is a toast and not a line by line overview of the release because that stuff is already well documented on its Wikipedia entry (provided at the close). I’m here to offer up some personal insight about what it meant to me as a fan. So in 1987 I was not only a fan of Metal stuff but I was also regularly playing my areas “circuit” but that didn’t deter my appreciation for this release. I had been a fan of U2 for a few years by then so I had some anticipation for this album and what it was going to bring to the table for their fans. There was no Internet yet so it was all traditional interviews in magazines like Rolling Stone or Billboard and the occasional news item on MTV. I mentioned hearing it everywhere and that extended into the seeing it everywhere since the MTV videos were numerous for this one. I think my favorite clips were “With Or Without You” and “Where The Streets Have No Name”. Below is the full original track listing so let’s review that and then I will line out the songs that were my favorites.
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David Byrne @ Prospect Park Bandshell (6/8/2009)

Logo - David Byrne Tour Marquee

Tonight would be the grand opening concert of the summer season for the Prospect Park Bandshell which is referred to as “Celebrate Brooklyn” when they do this sort of thing. It’s a fantastic series of free summer concerts that not only brings the music fans together but does something cool for the community around it. This season would start things off properly by having the event feature none other than former Talking Heads front man David Byrne.

prospect park bandshell
Prospect Park Bandshell

New York City had been stuck in a seemingly endless run of rainy days and tonight the forecast was for heavy thunderstorms and as you can well imagine, the last place that I would want to find myself would be is in a park under those circumstances. However as the day progressed the sky would clear and the temperature warmed up to a very comfortable level. If the rain held out until after the show was over we would all be in for a treat this evening as this was truly the perfect setting for an outdoor show. Tonight I was joining stalwart PiercingMetal.com photographer Peter Parrella and neither of us were on what we refer to as “official site business” but instead were planning on taking the whole thing in as fans of music. Of course, knowing me, I was surely going to use some of the experiences that went down for the Musings Blog since this kind of thing fits in this area very well.
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