U2 - RTE Radio, National Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, 2-26-1980

So far, I've posted U2 stray tracks collections chronologically until the end of the 1990s. I plan to keep on going with that. But I recently came across this very early U2 concert, and I find it so fascinating that I want to post it straight away.

The Irish band U2 was formed in 1976. The band members were young, and it took them a couple of years to get their act together. But by 1979, they were seen as an up and coming act. Their very first single, "Another Day," was released (only in Ireland) on February 26, 1980, the same day as this concert. The band took a big risk and booked the National Stadium in Dublin, a venue that could hold 2,000 people. The show was also broadcast live on an Irish radio station. The gamble paid off. The show was well attended and was a big success. Even better, a record company executive attended the show and was so impressed that he offered the band a contract. They signed a four album deal with Island Records a month later, after working out the details. Their first album, "Boy," would come out in October 1980, nine months after this concert.

So this was a pivotal show in the band's history, arguably the most pivotal show they ever did. Only one song from this concert has been officially released, "Cartoon World." That presumably was put on a deluxe edition of the band's debut album "Boy" because there wasn't a good studio version of it. But the whole show is very much worth hearing. I checked, and there are no other bootlegs of shows this early with good sound quality. This is still a bit rough, but it's way ahead of the rest.

The recording had two big problems, however. The first is that the beginning of the first song was cut off. The second is that the end of the second to last song, "Out of Control," was also cut off, and all of the final song, "The Electric Co.," was missing. So I used other versions from slightly later to fill in the missing bits. For "The Electric Co.," I used an unreleased version recorded in the Netherlands in October 1980. By that time, the band was much more popular and playing to larger crowds, but they were still unknown in the Netherlands so they were playing to a smaller crowd that fits more with the sound of the rest of the songs here.

What's most interesting to me about this concert is how many songs were played that are unknown now to all but the most die-hard U2 fans. "Silver Lining," "Speed of Life," "The Magic Carpet," "Trevor," "Pete the Chop," "The Dream Is Over," "Cartoon World," and "Jack in a Box" are all songs that didn't get released at all at the time. "Another Day," "Boy-Girl," and "The Electric Co." only came out on singles. By the way, "Silver Lining" is almost exactly "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" but with different words, and "Trevor" got reworked into "Touch."

By the way, don't confuse "Pete the Chop" with a later B-side called "Treasure (Whatever Happened to Pete the Chop.)" The story there is that the band's manager loved the song "Pete the Chop," figuring it had a poppy sound that could give them their first hit. However, the band disliked it because they thought it was too poppy, and stopped playing it in concerts. The manager kept bugging them about it, asking "Whatever Happened to 'Pete the Chop.'" Somehow, that inspired them to write a new song about the missing song. Although it's a different song, it does contain some bits from the earlier song. Personally, while it's a nice song, it doesn't sound like a super poppy, should-have-been-a-hit song to me.

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

01 Silver Lining [Early Version of 11 O'Clock Tick Tock] [Edit] (U2)
02 Speed of Life (U2)
03 The Magic Carpet [Life on a Distant Planet] (U2)
04 talk (U2)
05 Stories for Boys (U2)
06 Trevor [Early Version of Touch] (U2)
07 talk (U2)
08 Another Time, Another Place (U2)
09 talk (U2)
10 Another Day (U2)
11 Pete the Chop (U2)
12 The Dream Is Over (U2)
13 Cartoon World (U2)
14 Jack in a Box (U2)
15 Shadows and Tall Trees (U2)
16 talk (U2)
17 A Day without Me (U2)
18 Twilight (U2)
19 talk (U2)
20 Boy-Girl (U2)
21 Out of Control [Edit] (U2)
22 The Electric Co. (U2)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256751/UTwo_1980_RTERdioNationlStadiumDblinIreland__2-26-1980_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any color photos of the band in concert from 1980. Instead, I used a black and white one taken at the Arcadia Ballroom, Cork, Ireland, on March 1, 1980. I used the Pixbim program to colorize it. That didn't do much since it's a complicated image, so I did most of the colorizing myself in Photoshop. One can see from the photo what a dramatic showman lead singer Bono already was at that time.