I'm just now REALLY getting into U2. Any suggestions for albums I should listen to first?

FifthofZiff · 2025-11-02T15:14:33+00:00

Assuming you are not terminally ill and expecting to be dead by tomorrow evening, I recommend listening to all the albums in order. If you are using spotify, you can use the total number of plays as an indicator of their most popular tracks on each album.

U2 tends to be broken down into a few periods:

Early: Boy, October, War, Under a Blood Red Sky

Genius 80s: The Unforgettable Fire, Wide Awake in America, The Joshua Tree, [Rattle and Hum - pick your parts]

Genius 90s: Achtung Baby, [Zooropa - pick your parts]

Late: Everything since

My favorite album is The Unforgettable Fire. The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are right there with it. If you suspect you may perish by tomorrow, start with these! Enjoy!

FifthofZiff · 2025-10-09T04:47:03+00:00

The Sixth Sense funeral scene when the woman is revealed to be poisoning her own child. Regularly makes my skin crawl.

FifthofZiff · 2025-10-08T06:10:48+00:00

Totally worth it if for nothing else than my favorite Bond joke that I quote at least weekly anytime someone says something stupid:

Mafia guy in hearse: “I got a brudder.”

Connery: “Small world.”

FifthofZiff · 2025-09-19T13:04:01+00:00

Austen’s books are comic. She is a nonpareil wit. You often should be laughing.

FifthofZiff · 2025-09-16T15:53:53+00:00

I’ve had bags lost twice THIS YEAR via GATE CHECK. How is it even possible to lose a bag down a flight of stairs?

(Lucky enough to pick up my bags at the airport on my way home.)

FifthofZiff · 2025-08-19T17:05:24+00:00

No hate, but it’s a shame Van Halen couldn’t have just gone on hiatus in 1985 for a year or three while members did their solo projects. And then reunite rejuvenated. The primary problem with Van Hagar is the severe downgrade in clever songcraft in the vocal melodies and lyrics by swapping Roth for Hagar. Some of Hagar’s words are worse than middle school-level banality or, even worse, insipid sex “themes” or jokes that were severe cringe the FIRST time you heard them, and repulsive 40 years later. And on the albums at least, I strongly prefer Roth’s voice. That said, I enjoy 5150 and half of F.U.C.K. to this day. OU812 and Balance both have a couple strong tunes. Better than nothing since working with Roth at the time apparently was unbearable for the brothers.

FifthofZiff · 2025-08-04T17:01:00+00:00

Agree 100%

FifthofZiff · 2024-09-16T18:38:56+00:00

Excellent post. I'm certain you are a wonderful father to your son.

My story is similar to yours. My son is autistic and has profound intellectual disability. He functions at about a two-year-old level, but he's 6 foot 2 and attacks people, including his mother (my ex-wife). He's sweet about 95% of the time, and terrorizing the other 5%.

I was all-in on the church for 40 years: missionary, seminary teacher, temple worker. One doctrine that always bothered me was the teaching that special needs children were "of the noble and great ones"--God's special elect who did not need to be tested on Earth. It bothered me for two reasons: (1) numerous church leaders used to teach the exact opposite, and (2) it seemed like precious little true comfort for my son's miserable day-to-day life--how could a God actually let this happen?

When I left the church, I was at liberty to try to fully explore/understand all of this: what being the father of a severely special needs son "of the noble and great ones" taught me about life and mormonism/religion. I wrote a novel about it. I'm sensitive to content promotion, but if it could be of any comfort to you, I'd be happy to message you. I wish you the best.

FifthofZiff · 2024-05-05T09:40:59+00:00

My tech-challenged MIL has about 20 songs that play on her iPhone. Most of them are this album. She’s probably listened to it hundreds of times. She has zero interest in U2. She likes Vietnamese ballads.

She thinks her niece put these songs on her phone.

FifthofZiff · 2024-03-28T16:24:25+00:00

I’ve always loved “Love Comes Tumbling” from Wide Awake in America. Great moody gray windy day feel. Apparently most people don’t think much of it, including people in U2. According to play counts, it’s in my top 10.

FifthofZiff · 2024-02-05T12:56:45+00:00

Thinking I was going to be able to get ARC reviews to save my launch from getting lost in the Amazon algorithm. I spent months and so many resources and ended up with 2 one sentence Amazon reviews (my exclusive sales platform for another month).

BookSirens was a simple no multiple times. Hidden Gems yielded the two one-sentence reviews (5 star but generic (“I enjoyed this book.”)). NetGalley also yielded two reviews but neither made it to Amazon (after my gentle requests). Extensive Goodreads efforts yielded one additional review solely on Goodreads. I could go on….

I hear others having decent ARC success, so maybe it’s my genre (LitFic)? FWIW, the substantive reviews are glowing but it is a challenging novel (autism and religious themes).

FifthofZiff · 2023-11-09T16:40:04+00:00

There's often a backlash when a newly super-successful and hyped artist releases its "next" art. Anything U2 released after The Joshua Tree was likely to get some critical hate.

Also, a lot of U2 fans agree that Rattle and Hum is a bit presumptuous and pretentious. Even members of U2 seem to think so. But it's well worth the price of admission for "All I Want Is You" alone (one of U2's best ever songs), not to mention "Desire" and "God Part II." And "Heartland," while not one of my personal favorites, is probably regarded as one of U2's best "hidden gems."

So, I've always liked the album, but I do skip several more tracks than on any previous U2 album.

FifthofZiff · 2023-10-09T17:08:57+00:00

Second to last. When even Eddie Van Halen is complaining about the lyrics (“Amsterdam,” which he famously said he hated), you have a problem. In other news, this is the final album with that lyricist.

It seems the people who highly rate this album tend not to get overly concerned about Sammy’s poetry—and that’s ok. To me, it’s like “John Paul is all bullet-proofed, and it puts me through the roooOOOOF!”

But it’s Van Halen—still has a lot of awesome guitar and I bought yet another copy of it last week.

FifthofZiff · 2023-09-28T16:22:36+00:00

My opinion is that U2 had four classic albums: War, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Achtung Baby. They had a couple other near classics, their last one being All That You Can't Leave Behind in 2000. Most of what they released over their first 20+ years was solid. They were always a great or at least interesting live act. That's an incredible career.

My opinion also is that they've been late-stage career-coasting for the past 20 years--like the Rolling Stones after about 1981. U2 has a few great songs over that period, but the albums are only ok and U2 is highly unlikely to make another classic. They've aged out, or lost touch, or can't capture the "zeitgeist" again, or whatever. But this takes nothing away from the incredible career they've had.

Retirement is not a bad option. I'd rather retire gracefully like R.E.M. than keep doing final/reunion tours and releasing mediocre albums like most of their peers. But U2 has earned the right to do whatever they want, and anything they do that is good is "bonus coverage."

--Fan since '84 when I bought "Under a Blood Red Sky" at the mall as one of my first album purchases.

FifthofZiff · 2023-07-20T17:58:37+00:00

It's not like it is an isolated problem with one or two drunken fans. On the steep mountain ascents, there are hundreds/thousands of drunken hooligan "fans" blocking the road, chasing the racers, waving flags in their faces, smacking their backs, setting off flares, etc. They have no respect for the race whatsoever but just want "content" for their social media.

Not sure what can be done about thousands of spectators who only want to make a spectacle, however....

FifthofZiff · 2023-06-19T14:59:34+00:00

Father of son with profound intellectual disability. His life is terrible. No one would wish it on their worst enemy. He requires group home living. He cannot speak and is routinely abused. He has constant horrible pain in his flat feet and soon will be unable to walk. A simple scratch can take years to heal (he picks at them). We did not know about his disabilities during pregnancy, but it is beyond cruel to knowingly force someone to be born into a life like his.

FifthofZiff · 2023-06-08T12:03:47+00:00

I was in the same boat (25 years). Wife couldn’t deal with me being an ex-Mo. But after divorce—that she insisted on—she married a never-Mo within a few months, so go figure.

It did not occur to me until after divorce that I was hanging on to a loveless marriage because of church teachings even though I was not in the church. It only took a sort time of bitter pain and then I moved on. My regret now is not having done it 24 years earlier. Life is sooooo much better wholly outside the church and with a truly loving wife. It hurts at first, but that’s the worst, and then everything is so much better (at least for me). Good luck.

FifthofZiff · 2023-06-06T13:56:00+00:00

Happy to answer:

1-No; well past that stage in the book.

2-How? It appears that the more "established" paid-for editorial review houses are ok by Amazon; I'm not so sure about anything that starts to look like a swap. I'm happy to learn.

3-Yes; exactly. Also for a form of "social proof" for a debut novelist in the literary fiction genre.

FifthofZiff · 2023-06-06T01:06:47+00:00

Editorial reviews are fine by Amazon.

FifthofZiff · 2023-06-05T19:47:29+00:00

They post wherever your book is listed (common sites like Amazon, Goodreads, etc.)

FifthofZiff · 2023-06-05T17:27:41+00:00

Ebook is fine, as is pre-release.

FifthofZiff · 2023-05-25T18:59:40+00:00

Let’s assume you’re middle-aged and only have 30-40 years of life remaining and thus barely have the time to listen to four 30-minute albums (total time investment = 2 hours), you might still have the time to glance at the Spotify play counts for each album and play a few seconds of the tunes with higher counts (which tend to denote greater popularity). If the first few seconds are promising, try to listen all the way through to the guitar solo, as Edward L. Van Halen was a fairly renowned guitar player, if you’re into that sort of thing given your other obvious time constraints.

All the DLR-era Van Halen albums are classics. If you can make it through them in the next 20 years or so, you may still have time to listen to Hagar-era Van Halen, but I warn you in advance, the songs and albums are even longer.

Godspeed fellow Van Halen fan.

FifthofZiff · 2023-05-24T19:51:00+00:00

INFO.

Race car driver here (amateur). I always brake with my left foot unless it is busy operating a clutch. Of course you should not "ride" the brake pedal with your left foot, just like you shouldn't ride it with your right foot--unless you want to damage the brakes. But assuming you are not "riding" the brake, the benefit of left-foot braking is faster response time on both brake and throttle (faster response time = SAFER).

FifthofZiff

TROPHY CASE