Country Medley

Although my favorite U2 album is probably Achtung Baby, and I admire much of the work they've done since that album, sometimes I wish I could go back in time. By 1987-1988 the band was showing the first hints of emerging from its incredibly earnest shell. They were learning not to take everything so seriously, but they hadn't yet embraced irony and excess and cool facades. They also hadn't lived twenty years of mega superstardom. They were a few years older than I am now, on a big tour of the American southwest, and infatuated with all kinds of American music - particularly country. This recording was made in some little bar in Arizona, when Bono and the Edge decided to get up and have a little impromptu fun with some old country classics. There's much ad libbing, and it either foreshadowed or coincided with U2's incarnation as the Dalton Brothers, a country and western band that "opened" for U2 a few times. The recording is a bit rough, but it's something that would never, ever in a million years happen today. That's why I like it so much.


That's Adam Clayton, a.k.a. Betty Dalton, in the wig


DOWNLOAD the country medley MP3 here


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