If I could build a time machine to take me to see any band in any concert in history, it would be a trip to the early 90s to see U2 anywhere on their legendary Zoo TV tour. New to DVD, U2 - Zoo TV, Live From Sydney (shameless Amazon.com affiliate link) catches the lads in Sydney during the Zoomerang leg. Rewatching the film in the 21st century is interesting: on one hand, it’s almost shocking how post-modern and “meta” U2’s whole ironic kill-your-television thesis was. But on the other, true cultural desensitivization & alienation via media saturation came, in the end, more from the internet and less from cable and satellite TV (”everything you know is wrong”, indeed).

Zoo TV was less a rock concert than a thoughtfully directed theatrical event. Bono donned multiple costumes and personas throughout each show: a drunken rock star clad in leather and flay shades, a paramilitary in fatigues, a gold lamé cowboy hat-wearing megachurch televangelist blasting millions of U2 bucks into the audience, finally emerging as MacPhisto, a kind of washed-up wasted devil tired of life but still up for a good time.

Regardless, what’s amazing is that despite all the high-mindedness and avante-garde video art contributed by Brian Eno and Emergency Broadcast Network, U2 still managed to put on a truly ass-kicking rock concert and get millions of people around the globe to come and love every second of it. And for me to buy the DVD.

(second time)

Related Posts:

• Blue Man Group: The Complex Rock Tour Live
• The Dork Report for January 27, 2007
• The Musical Box - Highline Ballroom, New York

Written by Chad Ossman

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Movie (DVD), Music. You can follow any responses to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.