Saturday, July 12, 2008

YouTube Weekend: U2, "Night and Day"

I spent too much time in the sun today. This whole week, really. Wednesday afternoon mowing my lawn across town, Thursday and Friday afternoons mowing my mom's lawn and weedwhacking, this morning pulling weeds and transplanting tomatoes at my mom's, this afternoon planting tomatoes and sunflowers at my house, spreading mulch on everything, using up the water from the rain barrels, and finally filling and putting out the hummingbird feeder. So now I'm cooked, literally. Red enough in parts. Good thing my Farmer's Tan (and baseball cap) kept me from getting too burned.

I managed to not get a haircut today, so I'll carry around this shaggy mane for a while yet. I don't think the heat is going away anytime soon. If I had more confidence in the longevity of the electric clippers we have here, I might shave it all off again myself, for the first time since August 1998. Hmmm...once a decade isn't so bad...

YouTube Weekend time: I'm an old U2 fan from the early days, back when Bono was Bono Vox and only diehard fans knew his secret identity as Paul Hewson. This song feature's all of Mr. Hewson's vocal acrobatics. It's from the Cole Porter tribute/AIDS benefit album Red, Hot + Blue. When I first saw this video on the TV special connected with the benefit, it was introduced by Kyle MacLachlan, who started out doing something bizarre involving bird calls somehow related to a Cole Porter song.

I love the way everyone else in the band looks bored and disgusted. I'm wondering if any of them actually played the music in the song: the music all sounds synthesized, and the drums sound looped. (Until 2:33, then we actually see them playing their instruments instead of just holding them, and then it actually sounds like The Edge's guitar work.) There's also a great part (from 1:37 to 2:20) where Bono, standing next to Adam Clayton, steps forward to sing a verse, then steps back, then steps forward again to sing the next, almost as if to say "Oh, there's more? I forgot." Still, none of the attitude seems ad-libbed. I'm not sure what they - or director Wim Wenders - were getting at. In any case, I really like this song, and this version of it.

U2, "Night And Day":

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

just shave your head already, everyone knows you are thinning out quickly

Anonymous said...

No, don't....there's nothing uglier than white men with shaved heads. It's a look that is sexy in most black men, but just nasty-looking for white guys.....YUCK!