Originally posted by RUMMY:Their last “great” album - in terms of how it was anticipated and received in its moment, at least. Sure, they had their haters back then but that group seemed much smaller than it does now.
In terms of subsequent albums, NLOTH was overshadowed by its epic tour, SOI suffered from the Apple thing, and SOE was too connected to its predecessor.
I don’t listen to it all that much anymore (maybe I should) but “Bomb” had (and deserved) its time in the sun!
"Discotheque next. Still no Mofo. And they dropped the Pop intro, Bono didn't like it"
Originally posted by MattG:Yesterday I discovered something I was totally unaware of. It's finding little bits like this that keep me deep-diving into U2's live history.
I was extremely bored at work and randomly remembered that the Interference forum has setlist parties dating all the way back to the Vertigo Tour. I thought I'd randomly click through some from around the time Discotheque debuted; it was the first random/cool moment from the tour I could think of, and I also know they'd been soundchecking Mofo so I wanted to see if there was any buzz about that.
I find the 2005-09-20 Chicago show's setlist party, where I know Discotheque appears. Following the setlist party, I see posts saying, essentially -
[..]
And I'm like....What? The Pop intro?
Obviously, Discotheque opened the encore in the Zoo Station slot, preceded by the ZooTV slot machine video. So I start thinking...did U2 change that intro video for a show?
I go back to 2005-09-17 Toronto, the night Discotheque actually premiered, and I don't see anything on U2gigs mentioning changes during the show. Weird. But I'm not done digging!
The boot is available on our show page, but I hit the 'easy button' and went to YouTube to find the precise moment in the show. And.....lo and fuckin' behold.
Instead of a ZooTV slot machine video, you can hear the sound of radio static come through the PA. A radio dial tunes through some indistinct stations, until it tunes in clearly on....Pop Muzik!!!!!!!!!
It doesn't look like there's easily available video of that night so there's no way to know how different the visuals were in the arena unless someone was there - but wow, I was blown away! I would've thought for sure this would've been memorialized in at least a note on the setlist page!
1:26:53 if the video does not start there automatically.
[YouTube Video]
How many of you guys knew about this? I'm genuinely curious!
A completely revamped version with no crescendo and a lot of just drum'n'bass, and of course Bono's vocals in full power (he does the "But you know you're SOMEwhere else instead" in full chest voice instead of falsetto, that's amazing). Better than any Popmart version. Incredible stuff. 
Originally posted by miryclay:I was there (Toronto4). The place went nuts. No one was expecting that.
Do you have any recollection of what Matt was asking about the visuals? Originally posted by LikeASong:Do you have a link to that setlist party from Toronto, @mattg? 🙏🏼
Originally posted by MattG:[..]
https://www.u2interference.com/forums/f280/toronto-iv-setlist-watch-and-party-part-ii-do-not-post-u2-com-setlist-139942.html
This is where the debut actually happens. The discussion about dropping the Pop intro is all from the Chicago I setlist party, shouldn't be hard to find from there.
Not a lot of talk about the Pop Muzik intro as it was happening, because we didn't have Twitter etc to keep us updated in real time!
The first setlist party I remember (and I remember it vividly) was Honolulu '06, with U2gigs updating the setlist via SMS 