"Where the Streets Have No Name" is one my absolute favorite track-ones ever. Those first chords fading-in is one of my favorite sounds in the entire world. The first 90 seconds of that song always make me feel like anything can happen, and when it does, it will be something awesome. Which I guess is pretty much all you can ever ask from the first song on your album.
The weather earlier this week was gorgeous - sunny and crisp and warm. I'm talking leave-your-jacket-at-home warm. I always keep "The Joshua Tree" in my car's CD player so that when a wonderful sunny day hits, it will be there ready to go. It doesn't even have to be warm out. The album actually sort of works better as a fall album than a summer album, but it has to be sunny for it to to be at its peak.
One of the other reasons I love listening to this album on sunny days while cruising along is that two summers ago my husband and I went on a trip to Ireland. It was amazing, the scenery was ridiculously gorgeous, I developed a taste for Jameson, and when we were on a bus tour of the west coast of the country, our tour guide played this album. At first I was shocked; it seemed like it must be somehow cliched for an Irish person to actually enjoy U2. But then I realized that despite Bono's self-important weirdness and The Edge calling himself The Edge, most people in Ireland really truly love U2 because they made some great frickin' records. That and it was a sunny day and were driving and it really just fit the moment beautifully.
