I thought combining my least favorite U2 albums into one would help me enjoy it – kind of like a U.S. Olympic Basketball Team of U2 albums – but I have to admit that finding even 10 songs from Zooropa and Pop was difficult. In fact, there’s only one song that I really like on either of these two albums (“Zooropa”). The rest is just filler, and I’ve had to resort to grabbing a cut from the “Batman Forever” soundtrack to get the list to 10 songs.

I won’t even try to assign meaning or interpretation to the choices. I just know that listening to them didn’t make me hurl. They are, in essence, the least objectionable songs on Zooropa and Pop. Listen if you want. I’m gonna go listen to a Nickelback album and jab my eardrums with icepicks.

1. Zooropa (Zooropa)
2. Numb (Zooropa)
3. Lemon (Zooropa)
4. Stay (Faraway, So Close!) (Zooropa)
5. The First Time (Zooropa)
6. Discothèque (Pop)
7. Staring at the Sun (Pop)
8. Gone (Pop)
9. Please (Pop)
10. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me (Batman Forever OST)

Listen on Spotify (except for “Discotheque,” which is not included on Spotify’s playlist. They probably hate it, too.)

I have seen most of my musical idols in concert – Paul McCartney, U2, R.E.M., Mike Viola – yet one band that I somehow missed seeing over the last 20 years is the Cure.

I was already in college when I finally discovered the group, and by that time they had already released their first greatest hits collection, 1986′s Staring at the Sea. I had missed the mostly inaccessible, Joy Division-influenced Goth sound of their earlier years; the Cure were about to enter a new pop phase, with radio-friendly songs such as “Just Like Heaven”, “Friday I’m in Love” and “Pictures of You.”

But I did get to experience the band at its creative (and arguably moodiest) peak. Sandwiched in between their two poppiest albums, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and Wish, was 1989′s Disintegration. It was cathartic, gloomy and creepy, but unlike their earlier Goth records, it was melodic and at times, lovely. It took the band to the top of the charts worldwide – something that few predicted.

I recently finished reading Never Enough: The Story of the Cure, a very well-thought-out biography of the band. I was expecting some fantastic tale of drugs, the occult and something involving sacrificial rites. I thought Robert Smith would be painted as a near-suicidal basket case. With the exception of the drugs (how boring!) and a few neuroses, though, Robert Smith seems pretty normal. The painful funeral dirges of Faith and Pornography during the early 1980s seem more of an experiment than it did a true extension of his personality. Once he had it out of his system, he moved onto other things – whether it was a stint in Siouxsie and the Banshees, a double album or sheer bubblegum pop.

And that’s perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this band. No one expected pop hits to flow from the band, but it happened. First it was the almost Disney-like sound of “The Love Cats,” then the sexy, jazzy “Close to Me.” But with Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, they unearthed a new experiment: ensemble pieces in which the band began with a simple concept, then added a new layer of instruments every few measures until one minute into the song, you had a full orchestra of sound. You wondered if it was an instrumental, until Smith interrupts with his unmistakable shrieks.

You can hear this pattern in “Just Like Heaven” and “Pictures of You”: ”Just Like Heaven” is a foot-tapping masterpiece, with a jangly guitar chiming throughout the simple but addictive chord progression. And “Pictures of You” is something we’d never expect from Smith and Co.: A love song, with such an outpouring of emotion – but of course, with a Goth twist: It’s a breakup song, or if you’re really fatalistic, a song about the death of a lover. You wonder how Smith could expose himself so much with words such as “There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more / than to feel you deep in my heart.” Goths don’t feel. . . Do they?

Indeed they do. Smith, his band, and his makeup and bird’s nest hairstyle now romanticize the Goth movement. I always felt that I could have made a good Goth (as if people in high school needed another reason to want to beat the crap out of me). I wouldn’t have gone for the makeup or vampire novels, mind you, but the black, the moping – I could have pulled it off. I was a teenage hypochondriac, for God’s sake. I had all the ingredients – the angst, the fear of impending death.

Now I’m in my 40s, and Robert Smith is over 50. He’s gained some weight (haven’t we all?) but still has his crazy hair, and at times you can catch him in makeup. His music still hasn’t grown old on me, and I’ve discovered that after a bad day, listening to a spin of Pornography helps me wallow in any anger or pity that I’ve accumulated over the course of the day. I may not be able to pull the hair off anymore, but maybe I’ll dress in black…

And I hated it.

Critics liked U2 going out on a limb, daring to shed their serious, introspective image in favor of a more modern, materialistic persona. Achtung Baby was supposed to be U2 mocking themselves. I saw it more as U2 selling out, flipping off its legions of fans who took them almost as seriously as they took themselves. (Little did I know that they would continue their slide into hedonism with the next few albums, but that’s my next post.)

Over the past 20 years, I have tried to approach the album from some new perspective, to try and appreciate something about it and hear what everyone else seems to hear. And it’s never worked. The album has quickly gone from unlikeable to boring without any goodness in between.

So screw the new, more modern version of U2. I wanted The Joshua Tree II. But how do I do that, given the feedback, distortion and overprocessed vocals and preening?

Enter the Super Deluxe Version of Achtung Baby, which not only unearthed unreleased tracks but also unveiled an early mix of the album, dubbed the “Kindergarten” version. It was more of a stripped down sound – more direct, less industrial and well, nicer.

Granted, there are some songs that are just unfixable. Despite its popularity, I absolutely despise “Mysterious Ways.” It was U2 at its funkiest, but it was like listening to the Carpenters do heavy metal. It just never worked for me, and it became the whipping boy for my hatred of U2 during the 1990s.

1. “Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk/Korova” – adding this cut, which mimics the beginning of my revised Joshua Tree - an eerie instrumental that has a slightly European feel.
2. “Zoo Station” (Kindergarten mix) – gone is Bono speaking through a bad PA system. It still sounds industrial, but much more melodic.
3. “Even Better Than the Real Thing” (K) – Not a big fan of this song, but at least the Kindergarten version is different enough not to remind me of the original.
4. “One” (Achtung Baby) – same classic version. The Kindergarten version is more acoustic and feels more like a rough demo. This song is way overplayed, but it’s classic U2.
5. “Until the End of the World” (K) -
6. “Lady with the Spinning Head” – The B-side to  ”One,” you can hear early versions of this song, which eventually morphed into “Ultra Violet (Light My Way)”, on the Axtung Beibi outtakes CD.
7. “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” (K) – This was an average song on the original recording; the Kindergarten version blows me away. It’s an example of how sometimes a song can be perfect early on in the recording process, and messing more with it just makes it worse.
8. “So Cruel” (AB)
9. “The Fly” (AB) – The first song I heard from Achtung Baby. It was futuristic, somewhat techno – definitely a sign of things to come  for the rest of the album – but the soaring chorus has always grabbed me.
10. “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” (AB) - The original album’s only saving grace, it’s U2 with the clanging guitars and Bono’s impassioned voice.
11. “Acrobat” (Original) – I’m not crazy about this song either way, so I’ll stick with the original.
12. “Love Is Blindness” – Ditto.

I’m finding that I can more than tolerate this version. It’s an easier transition to their later material, with a mix of old and new. Perhaps if U2 had eased me into their new sound, I might not have rebelled so much.

Up next: I try to salvage Zooropa and Pop. It won’t be pretty.

Listen to The Revised ‘Achtung Baby’ on Spotify

You make a movie, of course.

I should have seen it coming – U2 as movie stars, having the ego big enough to release a movie about themselves and their love of – gasp! – American music. Didn’t they understand that the reason we listened to them and Duran Duran all these years was because American music sucked?

I saw “Rattle and Hum” in the theater several times, even sitting through Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America” five times that summer just so I could see the trailer for the U2 movie. And while I enjoyed the movie – it was like being at a concert – the soundtrack, which consisted of some new music interspersed among live cuts, was weak. Save for the tear-jerker “All I Want is You,” the new material embraced the twang and tuneless patterings of the heartland of American music.

And given the lack of singles and B-sides during this era, there’s not much here to work with to improve Rattle and Hum. One of the problems with the album is that it can’t make its mind up whether it’s a live album or a studio album. Just when you think it’s a studio album, you hear the crowd noise as U2 launches into a cover of a 60s tune or one of their old hits.

Here’s the original album:

1. “Helter Skelter” (live)
2. “Van Diemen’s Land”
3. “Desire”
4. “Hawkmoon 269″
5. “All Along the Watchtower” (live)
6. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (live with The New Voices of Freedom)
7. “Freedom for My People” – Sterling Magee, Bobb Robinson and Macie Mabins
8. “Silver and Gold” (live)
9. “Pride (In the Name of Love)” (live)
10. “Angel of Harlem”
11. “Love Rescue Me”
12. “When Love Comes to Town” (with B. B. King)
13. “Heartland”
14. “God Part II”
15. “The Star Spangled Banner” – Jimi Hendrix
16. “Bullet the Blue Sky” (live)
17. “All I Want Is You”

So by my count, that’s two covers, six live cuts, and two songs that aren’t even written or sung by U2. WTF?

I prefer the studio cuts; very rarely does a live album live up to all the overdubs and professionalism of a studio album. I used “Heartland” for my Joshua Tree redux, so that leaves us with ”Van Diemen’s Land”, ”Desire”, ”Hawkmoon 269″, ”Angel of Harlem”, ”Love Rescue Me”, ”When Love Comes to Town”, ”Heartland”, ”God Part II” and ”All I Want Is You”.  That’s a start.

“Silver and Gold” is a curious song; written back in 1985, it was left off of The Joshua Tree. Its raw, blues-tinged feel is a perfect fit on Rattle and Hum, especially since a live version was included on the soundtrack. Use the studio version, which was a B-side to “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and we have another track.

I’ve also thrown two B-sides on the album – “Hallelujah (Here She Comes)”, which sounds like a rewrite to “Angel of Harlem,” and “A Night at the Heartbreak Hotel.” The result is not a great album by any means, but I think it’s an improvement.

1. Desire
2. Van Diemen’s Land
3. Hawkmoon 269
4. Silver and Gold
5. Angel of Harlem
6. Love Rescue Me
7. When Love Comes to Town
8. Hallelujah Here She Comes
9. A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel
10. God Part II
11. All I Want Is You

Next: Can I make a version of Achtung Baby that I like?

There was a compromise, of course, with elements of both U2′s old sound and its new American sound filling the album, but the compromise – a single album – meant that there were plenty of B-sides. Most of U2′s singles from this album were almost EPs in and of themselves.

But that hasn’t stopped U2 fans from playing “What if?” and creating their own double album from all the leftover tracks, even trying to interpret the band’s comments on those B-sides. For instance, Bono argued that “the album is almost incomplete. ‘With or Without You’ doesn’t really make sense without [B-sides] ‘Walk to the Water’ or ‘Luminous Times’. And ‘Trip Through Your Wires’ doesn’t make that much sense without ‘Sweetest Thing.’”

For the running order, I’ve followed some of the advice offered at the U2 fanatic forum interference.com.  There is a mini-suite dedicated to love and obsession on Side 1; “Walk to the Water” references the thrill of finding a new lover; “Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)” is about the doubt and desperation that slips in during the difficult time in a relationship. “With or Without You,” their monster smash, now takes on a bleaker tone when Bono exclaims “I can’t live with or without you.” “Spanish Eyes”? Someone new has caught Bono’s eye.

This playlist follows the age-old maxim of “Twice as much of a good thing is twice as better.” Sometimes that’s a good thing (More beer!), and sometimes it can be overkill (More wasabi!). I’ve taken almost all the B-sides and unreleased material from The Joshua Tree sessions and put on one album. Hell, I even put “Trip through Your Wires” on there.  If you loved the original, you’ll probably love this; if you felt Bono was becoming a bit overbearing at this point, you may want to pass.

1. Beautiful Ghost
2. Where The Streets Have No Name
3. Silver And Gold
4. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
5. Walk To The Water
6. Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)
7. With Or Without You
8. Spanish Eyes
9. Bullet The Blue Sky
10. Running To Stand Still
11. Red Hill Mining Town
12. In God’s Country
13. Heartland
14. The Sweetest Thing
15. One Tree Hill
16. Deep In The Heart
17. Exit
18. Race Against Time
19. Mothers Of The Disappeared

Listen to The Joshua Tree Double Album on Spotify

I was 18, at that dangerous intersection of life where teen angst meets free thinking and introspection. Everything had to have meaning to me. I was contemplating life beyond proms and algebra, thinking of life, death, God and the universe. And here came U2, nearing their creative peak, singing about life, death, God and the universe. It was a perfect storm.

I drank the Kool-Aid and became a U2 disciple, went to their concert at the Omni in Atlanta, wrote about it for the student newspaper, and received a Georgia College Press Association award for Best Music/Concert Review. I realized I liked to write, and I pursued a career in journalism. And here I am, 25 years later, writing about the same album.

In some ways, The Joshua Tree was a continuation of The Unforgettable Fire, with the same atmospheric elements, strings and the Edge’s guitar sound. But there was a new grittiness emerging from the band as Bono explored the roots of American music. I liked almost every song on the album. Almost.

“Bullet the Blue Sky” was played on one chord and featured very little melody and some spoken word preaching from Bono. But it’s a favorite among fans and is an integral part of the album, whether I liked it or not.

But there is no excuse for “Trip Through Your Wires,” an off-key, unimaginative blues song that is like nails on a chalkboard. It’s a giant turd on a spotless floor, a zit on the face of a supermodel. It must. Go.

I think everything else is perfect.  But like The Unforgettable Fire,  The Joshua Tree could be longer. With something like this, you just want it to continue for as long as possible. So I’ve taken away one track away and added three B-sides and outtakes to the album – songs that either add to the feel of the album or are considered some of their better B-sides.

The first new addition is placed at the beginning of The Joshua Tree: “Beautiful Ghost/Introduction to Songs of Experience” is an eerie instrumental that picks up where The Unforgettable Fire left off. Halfway through the song,  Bono conjures up some spirits by quoting a William Blake poem: “Hear the voice of the Bard/who present, past and future sees/whose ears have heard the Holy Word/that walk’d among the ancient trees.” If ever there was an ancient tree, it’s the Joshua Tree.

This sets the tone for “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the first song in what fans call the Holy Trinity of the album. This is followed by “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and the amazing “With or Without You.” No need to break those three up.

Now the original track list had the fading peaceful final sounds of “With or Without You” interrupted by the jarring drums and bass of “Bullet the Blue Sky.” I felt that needed a bit of a transition. So I added “Spanish Eyes,” the B-side to ”I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” It’s a smoldering, urgent, passionate number that would serve as a bridge to the stark, gritty “Bullet the Blue Sky.”

It’s pretty much the way it is on the original throughout the next few songs: “Running to Stand Still,” “Red Hill Mining Town,” “In God’s Country.” In place of “Trip Through Your Wires”, I’ve thrown a bit of a curve, choosing “Heartland” from U2′s next album, Rattle and Hum. It was recorded during The Joshua Tree sessions but was scrapped at the last minute. It sticks out like a sore thumb on the rootsy Rattle and Hum. It fits much better here.

Some may say that the result is too heavy and serious, but that’s what I like about this album. This is just more of it.

1. Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs Of Experience
2. Where The Streets Have No Name
3. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
4. With Or Without You
5. Spanish Eyes
6. Bullet The Blue Sky
7. Running To Stand Still
8. Red Hill Mining Town
9. In God’s Country
10. Heartland
11. One Tree Hill
12. Exit
13. Mothers Of The Disappeared

Listen on Spotify

This time, it’s Davy Jones, co-lead vocalist and tambourine player extraordinaire for the Monkees. Jones, who unlike his predecessors (Whitney, Amy Winehouse) lived a full life – enough to participate in several reunion tours and guest appearances on TV shows.

The Monkees were a caricature, a knock-off of the Beatles, an attempt by America to capitalize on the success of the Fab Four by copying them exactly. Jones (the cute one, a.k.a., Paul) was even brought in to add to the Anglophilia. They were the original ripoff artists, the New Edition to the Jackson Five, “We are the World” to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, the “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

But holy crap, it worked.

Granted, they had the force of the Brill Building songwriters behind them (Carole King, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart), but like the Beatles before them, they proved everyone wrong by being talented, charming, and successful. Their resume is impressive: “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” and “Daydream Believer.” Of their major hits, Jones sang lead only on “Daydream Believer,” but his face epitomized Monkeedom.

He was youthful – no, boyish, standing only 5 foot 3 – and almost androgynous, his good looks bordering on pretty and his long hair a little too long in the back. And he never did grow up. Even in his 60s, he still exhibited the ageless naivete that we came to love when he was in the Monkees.

I must have been about 6 when I discovered my sister’s More of the Monkees LP and played it on my Mickey Mouse turntable.  I placed Mickey’s gloved arm/stylus on the record, and the opening strains of “She” screeched out of the lo-fi speaker. It sounded foreign and somewhat unpleasant at first, with a chorus of “She” sung slightly off-key to a pulsing keyboard.

It wasn’t until the refrain – “Why am I standing here, missing her, and wishing she were here?” – that I heard my first augmented chord – a slight shift of the E chord so that the fifth note changes from a B to a C. It’s just enough movement to create tension and longing in the music. And then I heard my first shift from a major chord to a minor chord in that same refrain. More tension, more change in emotion; they were two easy progressions that moved me so much, I knew I had found my sound. I played that refrain over and over.

That same chord progression is also featured in the choruses of Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” and ELO’s “Twilight” (one of my all-time favorites), and I hear augmented chords on the Beatles’ “Oh! Darling” and “From Me to You”. The Beach Boys and Queen used them.  I trace my love of pop music to that one song, and I thank Boyce, Hart and the Monkees for giving it to me.

This admission is coming from a very white guy who grew up in northeast Georgia, where absolutely zero African Americans lived. I encountered racism quite a bit growing up, and it angered me. I argued with people so much about their attitudes that I was called a n— lover. But I didn’t care. I listened to Prince and Michael Jackson, and experimented with new sounds coming from artists such as Kurtis Blow, Newcleus and Run-DMC (I know, hard to believe).

But let’s face it, I’m pretty white bread. I liked Duran Duran, thought the British Invasion was the second coming of Jesus, and tried to dress and style my hair like David Bowie. And Whitney Houston played to me. She was a pop artist who didn’t care who listened to her music. Hell, the more, the merrier. Gold and platinum records are color blind.

Her first two hits were smooth and sexy ballads – “You Give Good Love” and “Saving All My Love for You” were smash #1 hits. But the upbeat songs at the time were pure bubblegum. “How Will I Know?” could have easily been a Debbie Gibson song, and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” was right down the middle of the road – so much, in fact, that she was criticized by some African Americans as “selling out.” So much for Ebony and Ivory.

But the voice – oh, you could not deny The Voice. The Voice was not distinct, just amazing. If you heard an unfamiliar song performed by a female with an unworldly, angelic voice, your first guess was Whitney. Mariah? Christina Aguilera? Beyonce? All Whitney wannabees. And it was 100 percent her – no computer manipulation. As ickmusic tweeted last night, she was a ” pure, real, natural voice of an angel. Suck it, you autotuned, talentless hacks today.”

After Whitney, I moved on to Sade and Anita Baker, and I continued to skirt around the edges of R&B for the rest of the decade. I left her, Prince and Michael Jackson toward the end of the decade as I plunged into the alternative music scene. I gritted my teeth during the “I Will Always Love You” phenomena (It’s on the radio again?) and shook my head at her incoherent babbling and bizarre antics during her drug-riddled phase with Bobby Brown.

I prefer to remember Whitney as she was on the wall of my bedroom in the 1980s (see above). Up until a few years ago, the poster was still hanging there along with U2, R.E.M., and my other obsessions from the 1980s, an African-American goddess among my Caucasian idols. On visits back to my parents’ house, I would go into my old room, and she would stare at me with those sultry eyes, still young but oh so provocative.

And I would smile, remembering my crush and silently thanking her for letting me love her.

It was late 1984, and I was in the living room playing Nerf basketball and listening to the radio from my parents’ coffin-sized wood-paneled stereo. The DJ announced the new single from the group, “Pride (In the Name of Love),” from the upcoming album The Unforgettable Fire. I had heard of the group – probably through my UK-published Rock Yearbook that I received each year for Christmas. But in the pre-Internet days, you couldn’t really hear what was going on across the pond.

I wasn’t immediately taken by “Pride,” but once I got The Unforgettable Fire that Christmas (along with the 1984 Rock Yearbook), I played the album nonstop. And with that, U2 became my first musical obsession.

The Unforgettable Fire was a musical departure for U2, who had previously relied on a post-punk, anthemic sound designed for arenas (“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “New Year’s Day”). Luckily, I caught them at the right time. I was 16, looking for music that had meaning (Isn’t that what most 16-year-olds were looking for? See shoegazing). The band’s previous release, 1983′s War, was too angry. But the synthesizers, strings, and the Edge’s minimalist delayed guitar playing sounded haunting and mysterious. I started to understand the meaning of terms such as “atmospheric” and “textured” in reference to music.

There were problems with the album. For one, there were a few inferior tracks. “4th of July” was an Eno experiment – about two minutes of the Edge making weird noises on his guitar. A second, “Elvis Presley and America,” was an improvisation based on a slowed-down version of the opening song, “A Sort of Homecoming.” It was over six minutes long and was pretty much the same thing over and over. Both songs were on the second side, flanking the best song on the album, “Bad.” It took a lot of fast-forwarding to jump over these songs; they just didn’t get better with time.

Second, it wasn’t long enough – only 10 songs timing in at about 42 minutes. I found myself listening to it repeatedly because it seemed, well, unfinished. And the group has admitted as much, saying they felt rushed during the recording sessions and as a result, left some things incomplete. However, there were several demos and concepts of songs that didn’t make it onto the album: “Boomerang I,” “Boomerang II,” “Love Comes Tumbling,” “The Three Sunrises,” “Bass Trap,” “Yoshino Blossom,” “Sixty Seconds in Kingdom Come” and “Disappearing Act.”

Some of these songs made it to B-sides and other EPs. Others were unearthed when U2 re-released the album in celebration of its 25th anniversary. Several are easily better than “4th of July” and “Elvis Presley and America” and lend to the somber, airy feel of the album.

Reworking the album

Here’s the original tracklist:

1. “A Sort of Homecoming”
2. “Pride (In the Name of Love)”
3. “Wire”
4. “The Unforgettable Fire”
5. “Promenade”
6. “4th of July”
7. “Bad”
8. “Indian Summer Sky”
9. “Elvis Presley and America”
10. “MLK”

The first four songs are golden – one of the best starts to an album – but it makes the album somewhat top heavy. My goal is to make the whole album longer, getting rid of inferior tracks, and spreading the better tracks throughout the album to make it a more consistent experience.

I took the two best B-sides – “The Three Sunrises” and “Love Comes Tumbling” – and added two instrumentals. One, “Bass Trap,” is considered by most U2 fans to be superior to “4th of July.” A second, “Yoshino Blossom,” is an instrumental that sounds very similar to their hit “New Year’s Day” from the previous album, War. But the name contributes to the theme of the album (The Unforgettable Fire was taken from an art exhibit about the bombing of Hiroshima).  It suggests a renewal from the unforgettable fire, devastation of Hiroshima.

I also placed “Pride,” a song that references. the Rev. Martin Luther King, next to “MLK,” another song about the civil rights leader. It gives more weight to the second part of the album, ending it on a more positive note.

So here is the new, improved Unforgettable Fire, longer, more consistent and improved:

1. “A Sort of Homecoming”
2. “The Three Sunrises”
3. “Wire”
4. “The Unforgettable Fire”
5. “Promenade”
6. “Yoshino Blossom”
7. “Indian Summer Sky”
8. “Bass Trap”
9. “Bad”
10. “Love Comes Tumbling”
11. “Pride (In the Name of Love)”
12. “MLK”

Listen on Spotify

Then came 1991′s Achtung Baby, a 180-degree departure from their previous material. It was brash, cacophonous, and full of weird electronic noises. And the serious U2 I knew and respected suddenly began to embrace materialism. It got worse with each successive album – remixes, drum machines, ridiculous song titles (“Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car”). I’m all for new musical directions, but with this direction, the band seemed to develop a new swagger. Bono took on new personas during his concerts, wearing white pancake makeup, sunglasses and gold suits. The Edge looked like a member of the Village People during the video for “Discotheque,” wearing a sleeveless shirt, cowboy hat and handlebar mustache. It was as if your best friend suddenly decided to start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Their last three albums have been more subdued, and at times they’ve reverted to the old guys I used to know. But the scars are still there, and I’ve never truly forgiven them for it.

Over the past five years, U2 has begun to release remastered versions of their albums, starting with 1980′s Boy. And with some albums, they’ve released a boatload of B-sides and unreleased material.  I hadn’t paid attention to them until recently. But along with those remastered albums, I found a whole underground of U2 fans on interference.com‘s forums, discussing how they would make new track listings with the B-sides, getting rid of inferior tracks and making the whole album better. Some have burned CDs of the new albums, and that’s now the only way they listen to the albums.

The Joshua Tree could be a double album! The Unforgettable Fire could feature even more of producer Brian Eno’s atmospheric experimentation! Achtung Baby - considered by many to be their finest album – could I actually like Achtung Baby?

So I’ve jumped in the fray. Over the next few posts, I’ll revisit U2 from The Unforgettable Fire through their most recent release, No Line on the Horizon, playing Marty McFly in my time machine and remaking each album the way I want to. Because I can.