U2 - Inside Out- Non-Album Tracks (1978-1979)

I think U2 is a great band. Unfortunately, they've gotten a bad reputation due to some of Bono's behavior as well as musical and non-musical mistakes they've made in their later years. But I'm not going to let all that get in my way of enjoying their music, especially their great run from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.

So this is the first of many albums of stray tracks I plan to post from them. One thing many people don't know, unless they're serious U2 fans, is that the band has tons of high quality songs that never made it to any of their studio albums. In fact, for every studio album they're released, there is usually another album's worth of stray tracks, and sometimes even two!

This collection of stray tracks is strange because it dates from such an early point in U2's history, before their first album, 1980's "Boy." U2 was formed in 1976, but by all accounts they were pretty bad at first. They started out a mere local covers band, doing songs by some "cool" (by punk/new wave standards) artists like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and David Bowie, but also doing songs by some very "uncool" ones like the Eagles, Peter Frampton, and the Moody Blues! It took a while for Bono to establish himself as a lead singer, and for the whole band to figure out how to write and play quality original material.

So this album is the sound of U2 still figuring out their sound. For instance, the first song "Inside Out" is pretty good, but it could easily be mistaken for an obscure garage rock song from 1966! Frankly, this very early U2 is merely okay compared to their later greatness. But I want to include all the original songs I could find (assuming the sound quality was good enough) because this material remains very little known. (I believe all the songs here are originals, except for "Glad to See You Go," which is originally by the Ramones.)

U2 has generally overlooked this phase of their career with their archival releases, so only four of the ten songs here have been officially released (not counting the two bonus tracks, which have been released too). The sound quality here isn't always outstanding, but all but one of the songs are studio recordings, so at least it's pretty decent.

Note that I've made major edits to the first two songs, "Inside Out" and "Tonight." That's because the only versions of these songs from U2's very first time in a recording studio that have been made publicly available are incomplete. In both cases, I'd guess we have about 3/4ths of the song before it gets abruptly cut off. So I've tried to flesh out the ends of the songs by repeating some parts from earlier in each song.

This album is fairly short, at 31 minutes. But it reaches a more typical album length if you include the two bonus tracks. I've only added them as bonus tracks because they are early versions of songs that made it onto U2's 1980 album "Boy." However, they're interesting versions, done in the studio and released on singles at the time, so they're worth hearing.

Also note that one song here, "Speed of Life," is actually from 1980. I've included it here because I have a different version (with vocals) that I'm putting on my next stray tracks album.

01 Inside Out [Edit] (U2)
02 Tonight [Edit] (U2)
03 Street Mission (U2)
04 The Fool (U2)
05 Glad to See You Go (U2)
06 Boy-Girl (U2)
07 False Prophet (U2)
08 Alone in the Light (U2)
09 Lost on a Distant Planet [The Magic Carpet] (U2)
10 Speed of Life [Instrumental Version] (U2)

Out of Control [Single Version] (U2)
Stories for Boys [Single Version] (U2)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256673/UTwo_1978-1979_InsdeOut_atse.zip.html

U2 only had one official release prior to 1980, and that was a three song EP called "Three." So I've used the cover of that for my album cover here. However, I removed the name "Three" as well as the name of the three songs (which were above and below the main artwork) and replaced some of that text with my new title. (And by the way, the boy in the main photo, Peter Rowen, is the same boy who would be on the cover of the "Boy" and "War" albums, as well as some of the band's other releases.)