"Love: Live from the Point Depot" - U2

Digital Album

Track Listing:

Background Information

In 2004 U2 worked with Apple’s iTunes store to put together a “digital box set” of U2 Recordings entitled “The Complete U2.” The set was only available through the iTunes music store for download, and included material from the first EP “Three” right through the most recent single “Vertigo”, including albums, singles and EPs. The initial launch of the set included 446 songs. The set retailed for $149.99 in the US, and a $50 coupon for the set was included in U2 Edition iPods which had also gone on sale in November 2004. Also included in the set were several rare recordings that were grouped together as albums. These “digital albums” were accompanied by new artwork designed by Four5One, the creative design firm which has done much of U2’s graphic design through the years. These album covers were embedded in each song on the “digital album” as well as being showcased in the digital booklet, designed by Shaughn McGrath, which accompanied the set in pdf format.

These rarities included in “The Complete U2” were marked as “album only” when the set went on sale. Thus you had to buy the entire set to get these rare tracks. An error in the launch of the set in the Canadian iTunes store left these songs available for individual purchase for the first three days the set was available on that store. The album was initially released in 2004 at 128kbs quality and as of December 20, 2007 was removed from the iTunes store and is no longer available to purchase. However in May 2009, when the iTunes Plus upgrades were made available, users who had previously purchased “The Complete U2” could upgrade the quality to 256kbs quality, but it still remains unavailable for new purchases.

“Love: Live from the Point Depot” was released as a digital album within “The Complete U2”. It is a recording of a concert from U2’s Lovetown tour that took place on December 31, 1989 at the Point Depot, in Dublin Ireland. The show began just as the clock ticked down to the new year, and the concert opens with U2 singing “Auld Lang Syne”, a traditional song sung at New Year’s Eve. The concert was broadcast internationally on radio in 21 countries, and fans were encouraged to tape a copy of the show. The 12th issue of Propaganda magazine arrived with a professionally designed cover for those fans who had taped the broadcast. This cover was also run in Hot Press Magazine (Ireland), Q Magazine (UK) and OOR Magazine (The Netherlands). The concert was widely bootlegged under a variety of titles, but this release as part of “The Complete U2” was the first official release of this show.

This digital album captures the entire show, the fourth in a series of hometown shows that had been sold out. The only piece omitted from this set is “The Times, They are A-Changing” which was a thirty second piece performed between “Dirty Old Town” and “New Year’s Day”. During the performance, Bono includes a snippet of “Exodus” in “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. At the end of “All Along the Watchtower” when Bono talks about those who are “mad to live” he’s using a quote from Jack Kerouac from his novel “On the Road”. Also during “Bullet the Blue Sky” there is a brief reference to “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” and a short instrumental snippet of that song. Also included in “Bullet the Blue Sky” is a short snippet of “The Money Song” from the movie adaptation of “Cabaret”.

B.B. King and his band joined U2 on stage for three tracks that evening including “When Love Comes to Town”, “Angel of Harlem” and “Love Rescue Me”. The voice you hear at the start of the recording is Dave Fanning, who counts down the final remaining seconds of 1989 using a big clock at the back of the stage and joined by the 5000 in attendance that night including friends and family of the band.

The Edge described the show in the liner notes for “The Complete U2”: “We planned to end our tour in Dublin on December 31st 1989 at the Point Depot. It seemed like an auspicious time and place to bring an end to the 80s era, and the show had all of the mixed feelings of that kind of occasion. Bono’s well known speech about having to go away and dream it all up again actually happened at the show two nights before, but such is the selective nature of memory that it took us a few days to figure out why we couldn’t find that speech in this show”.

The album cover, attached to the files released in this set, as well as being featured in the liner notes for “The Complete U2” was designed by Four5One°, who have been responsible for much of U2’s covers and related graphic imagery over the years.

Liner Notes

There are no traditional liner notes with this release that details the individual song information.

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