DVD Review

Along with the re-issue of the Under A Blood Red Sky album comes the concert DVD, Live at Red Rocks, which features tunes from the CD as well as several other early U2 tracks that didn’t make the cut. If you are one of the millions of U2 fans out there, I highly suggest picking up the the DVD of this historic concert video.

Red Rocks is a breathtaking outdoor venue that is part desert Americana and part Greek auditorium. U2 planned ahead to record this specific concert “in the sunshine,” as Bono points out, but insistent rain and thick fog didn’t let up. What transpires is a testament to how much devotion rock music inspires in normal people and can be looked at now as proof of a young band’s rise from post-punkers to cultural icons. The crowd was undeterred by the weather. Fans reveled in the rain, cheering and dancing and singing along.

Well, that’s one of the things that make this particular historical record so charming. Another is Bono, who had apparently been born from his mother’s womb with a level of uncanny confidence and flamboyance that would make Liberace and Elvis blush with shame. He arrives on the stage wearing hair that I believe he borrowed from John Cryer (Ducky), though it may have been inspired by a very well-tended soufflé. Whatever the cause of this goofiness, it hardly detracts from the stage presence of this kid who twenty-five years later still prances and jigs and generally cheerleads a crowd in ways that are so utterly Bono it’s hard to believe he wasn’t practicing this stuff in the mirror when he was two years old. His act is part Tina Turner, part Freddy Mercury, and part TV evangelist. And it really whips some of the never-made-it-to-radio tunes represented here into powerful little epics.

The band, not yet sure of their image on stage, simply stick to the work at hand. And with that they do a masterful job. It’s easy to see how U2 has lasted so long, considering the fine musicianship and knack for exploration evidenced by The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. as they careen through highlights from the albums October, Boy and War.

Some of the real highlights left off the CD but performed here are “Surrender,” a song I’d nearly forgotten, “Two Hearts Beat as One,” another of the great political songs of their early career, and “Seconds,” a call-and-response with fine harmonic leanings.

Altogether, the concert is extremely watchable. The energy never dies down and the re-mastering work done for this re-issue makes it seem like new (well, except being set in the 80s).

As a signpost of how the punk movement quickly progressed in directions often overlooked, Live at Red Rocks helps to show that the quick simplicity and political rage of ’77 doesn’t necessarily purify down to growling L.A. hardcore. There were, in fact, many more ways to get the message across.