Those of us who don’t shy away from being known as boomers understand the notion of pop music as a societal change propellant, for we saw it happen before us. It first flowered in the early 1960s through the scratchy folk observations of Bob Dylan, grew in San Francisco’s hippie gardens, reached full bloom at Woodstock, and then died at Altamont. While in the decades since, there have been occasional isolated flickers of attempting to raise social consciousness, a prime example being Marvin Gaye’s cry of “What’s Going On,” pop has overwhelmingly been aptly named for the past fifty-plus years. Like bubble gum, it contains no nutritional value. Even as a blown bubble quickly explodes, pop similarly self-destructs whenever it tries to expand its sphere of influence beyond the immediate. It also quickly loses flavor, demanding something new to tickle the next set of itching ears. As Paul Simon so accurately put it, every generation throws another hero up the pop charts.
Enter U2. Whether one finds the Irish quartet exhilarating or exasperating, Bono and company have never shied away from discussing the day’s topics, no matter how much blowback they have received. Be it faith, the strife in Northern Ireland, apartheid, Martin Luther King Jr., U2 has been putting it out there since its first EP in 1979. I freely and unapologetically note I am a diehard fan of the band and have been once since I first heard “I Will Follow” in 1980.
Like most über-successful bands entering their golden years, U2 has adopted in part, if not altogether, the residency method of concert presentation, with the fans invited to make an event of it by coming to Las Vegas to see the show. Currently inaugurating the multi-media extravaganza that is the Sphere in Sin City, on October 8 Bono changed the band’s 1985 tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. “Pride (In The Name of Love)” into a memorial to the Israelis butchered at the Supernova Sukkot music festival in Re’im during the onset of Hamas’ satanic brutality against innocent citizens.
Bono changed the lyric referencing Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination...
Early morning
April 4
Shots ring out in a Memphis sky
Free at last
They took your life
But they could not take your pride
to:
Early morning
October 7
The sun is rising in the desert sky
Stars of David
They took your life
But they could not take your pride
To bring the massacre more in focus, consider this first-hand account of the slaughter.
Transcript from one of the festival survivors about what happened:
— Yam Peleg (@Yampeleg) October 9, 2023
"I was there at the festival, there were rockets so people got nervous and everyone started to leave,
We drove towards the main road, where we saw many cars standing in what looked like a traffic jam, at the… https://t.co/X10iuJWkmt
Please read the whole post.
Bono’s willingness to speak up stands in stark contrast to the near-universal silence from the entertainment industry regarding Hamas’ unforgivable assault. John Ondrasik, better known as the man behind Five For Fighting, notes:
With few exceptions, the deafening silence of Hollywood and the Music Industry, in their refusal to condemn the massacres and atrocities by Hamas Terrorists, speaks to their moral cowardice and exposes the hypocrisy of their self-anointed “human rights” flagbearer monopoly.
Whether others will join Bono and John Ondrasik in addressing this atrocity remains to be seen. Sadly, I wouldn’t bet on it.
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