The Joshua Tree: Twenty Years

In the car, friends and I were enjoying U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” on the radio. All three of us were shocked when the DJ’s post song comment was that The Joshua Tree’s 20th anniversary was to be marked with a re-mastered deluxe, 2-disc re-issue. Twenty years? We goggled. How could it be that long? We each recalled what our life was when the album came out. I was in college. I bought the cassette at Ohlsson’s Books and Records on Wisconsin Ave. in DC. I listened to it with friends on the commute to distant work sites like Burke, Virginia. We alternated it with Erasure’s The Innocents, and usually were smoking cigarettes in the car. When I think of the particulars, twenty years doesn’t seem so outlandish.

I think Joshua Tree is U2’s best album. It’s thoughtful without the preachiness that marred Rattle and Hum, or the egotism and flash of Zooropa. My husband, G. Grod, asserts that their best album is Achtung, Baby. How about you? Does Joshua Tree’s reiusse bring back 20-year-old memories? And what do you think of it compared to Achtung, Baby?

3 Responses to “The Joshua Tree: Twenty Years”

  1. carolyn Says:

    i saw U2 in concert on their joshua tree tour. i drove up with someone from college but we mangled our “meet up after the concert” conversation and i wound up stranded in minneapolis; had to go with my high school best friend (who had met me at the concert) to st. kate’s (where she was going to college), wake up half the girls in her dorm and get them to roadtrip me back to school. crazy.

    bono spread a big red flag on stage and lay down on it to sing sunday bloody sunday. and the edge threw one of his shoes into the audience and afterward the kid in the audience who caught it drove around and around outside waving it in the air.

  2. Sydney Says:

    U2 albums are like ice cream flavors… they ALL have so much to offer! How could I choose just one? Any why would I want to? U2… 28 years of YUMMMM!

  3. weirleader Says:

    20 years?! Yikes! I’m getting old…

    I would have to call Joshua Tree hands-down the best U2 album. Other albums had good stuff, but none have consistently interested me in all their tracks (not to mention that none have remained on my “all-time favorites” list for the past 20 years)