One Year Ago Today

11 o'clock tick tock: it was all downhill from there for u2

reading some slobbering praise of the inexcusably heinous u2 by a fucking moron on a newly-independent bike forum, i was once again reminded that for a band that's been around for 33 mostly-awful years, they hit their high point very early on, after only one year.  '11 o'clock tick tock', produced by martin hannett, was the absolute zenith.  u2, in their role as feckless joy division sycophants, got martin hannett to produce the single with the hope that he would produce their album.  imagine boy and october produced by martin hannett instead of relentlessly radio-friendly careerist steve lillywhite!  for people of the right age, boy was a cool album.  since nobody could see the frightening future, it was easy to overlook the bits that felt a little off, and the joy division-for-dummies zeitgeist was a step above lots of the shit beginning to bubble up everywhere around that time.  i liked october for its rushed, amateurish feel; more time only would have made it more pretentious.  what would martin hannett have been able to do with those two records?  could martin hannett have been the one to beat some reality into bono's bloated, empty head, screaming 'no, no, no you fucking useless twat!  shut up!!!  no, no, no, do it again.  try again, paul!  fuck you!' until bono finally realized that he's basically an idiot and shouldn't do such a professional job of proving it every fucking time he opens his mouth?  would martin hannett have saved us all from the dublin messiah scattering crumbs?  we'll never know.  ian curtis died at 23.  bono will probably live to be a thousand.  if u2 had had the good sense to die in a fiery, lynyrd skynyrd-style plane crash after the recording of and before the release of october, they probably would have been remembered fondly as earnest, idiot-little-brothers of joy division and not the shameless and vile rawk monster they have become.