[Jim Macdonald]

Maurice,

I agree totally with you.  If there's one band that does it for me more than
Midnight Oil, it would be U2, and that's a pretty tall order.

It always seemed like U2 was one step ahead of me and my tastes.  When I was just
getting idealistic, they started making dark love songs and using electric sounds. 
When I started having broken hearts, they got all ironic on me and techno.  Just as
I was getting into that, they got anthemic again.  But, I've always adored U2 as a
profound band, where music, meets passion, meets lyrics, meets a band all in one
great amazing union.

I listen to a song like "So Cruel", and I've felt it so many times.  You don't think
great profound thoughts in the moment of agony.  You find yourself so hopeless to
come up with words, that the best you can do is say small little phrases like in
"One" especially when you're trying to give that eloquence yourself.  And, it's the
words, mixed with a voice, mixed in a musical background.  The lyric fits the song
and the voice.  

Perhaps, because I see U2 and Midnight Oil as sacred cows, I get upset when someone
sets the one against the other, it's like setting up one part of my soul against
myself.  We need more bands like both, and it feels too much like a petty civil war
when the one is against the other.  The bands are different to be sure.  U2 has a
different scope and range than Midnight Oil, a bit of flare for to laugh in the
glitter, and walk the tightrope of pretentiousness, while Midnight Oil prefers the
route of sincerity.  Both are so much a part of my own soul that it would be like
losing my left or right arm, although I'd almost sooner be without either one of
them than one of the bands.

The funny thing is, the new U2 song, "Electrical Storm" hasn't grown on me yet.  I
guess I'm not quite in that phase right now.  Midnight Oil's "Breathe" album first
had that effect on me, but now that's the first album I turn to when I want to
listen to Midnight Oil and show off the sides of the band I most love.  

Both groups have strong lyrics, strong music, a strong sense of the deconstructive
and reconstructive mission of rock, and a strong tight band.  Most of all, both have
an unrelenting passion that drives their music.

Jim Macdonald



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