Breaking Waves…Mapping the Magazine and More

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2026-03-08)

The “Days of Ash” themed issue of Propaganda magazine is still in shipment to select subscribers in some areas. Canadians in the Montreal and Toronto areas started receiving them late on Friday, but its likely some are still on the way. Fans in the Netherlands saw them arriving at homes on Saturday but it seems as they have not yet started arriving in other European countries (they have been shipped from the UK by Royal Mail.) We suspect we’ll continue to see copies arriving at the homes of some fans for the next few days.

As we’ve done in the past for limited numbered items, we’re going to try to map out where that magazine lands over time. We’ve set up a survey using Google to collect some information to enable us to set up a graphical map with the magazine locations. If you are interested in having your copy pop up on a map down the road, fill out the form here. We’ll keep the form open for a few weeks to give everyone a chance to get their copies! (We are not collecting email addresses, and it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two to fill out the form.)

XSNoize posted a great podcast with Steve Lillywhite this week. You can watch them talk about Lillywhite’s career for an hour on video. There is a lot of focus on U2 content throughout the podcast. It’s a good conversation. You can watch it here.

The film Adam Clayton narrates and hosts, Ballroom Boom had an international debut at Craic Fest in New York City last night. Although Adam wasn’t able to make the film debut, the film’s director Billy McGrath was present to talk about the film.

McGrath has known U2 since their earliest days when he worked as a manager for the up-and-coming band The Atrix who were contemporaries of U2’s in the late 1970s scene. The Atrix would have played many of the same gigs as U2, and featured alongside U2 on the Just for Kicks compilation released in December 1979. He shared a number of stories about those early days, and the venues both bands would play in.

This film started life under another name, Ballroom Blitz.It focuses on the showbands that used to play across Ireland, performing other peoples hits. The film aired as a two part series on RTÉ under the original title. The RTÉ has a blanket agreement which allowed the use of a lot of clips of showbands performing these international hits, but when it came to an independent release those songs became very expensive to license. Eventually the two hour program was cut down to an 85 minute film, and additional footage was filmed for this new cut, including new scenes with Adam Clayton shot last May in Ireland.

Keep an eye out for other appearances of the film. McGrath mentioned hoping to have it show in a Galway film festival later this year, and that there was plans to show it at the Electric Ballroom in London on April 20th.

Gavin Friday is out on tour in support of his Ecce Homo album, and over the past few weeks he’s released a number of singles from the album, featuring remixes and recreations of some of the songs from the album.

The newest release came out on Friday, “Cabarotica Youtharella” and features remixes of “Ecce Homo”, “Cabarotica” and “When the World Was Young” by Daybreakers, Jon Pleased Wimmin, Michael Heffernan and Rick Wade. “When the World Was Young” was dedicated to Bono, Guggi and Lypton Village when the album was released, and speaks of growing up on Cedarwood Road. The remix of “When the World Was Young” was mixed by Jon Pleased Wimmin, who we chatted with back when he remixed U2’s “Love is All We Have Left”. (We also interviewed Daybreakers, who remix “Cabarotica” here, back in 2018 when they remixed “Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way”.)

More information on the latest release can be found at Gavin’s site and you can listen to the tracks here via a series of visualizer videos.

Friday has two shows left on his current tour, Trento in Italy on March 10 (Auditorium Santa Chiara) and Dublin in Ireland on March 12 (Vicar Street).

It’s International Women’s Day and we’d like to take a second to draw attention to “Song of the Future”. Two women inspired U2 to create the song. Sarina Esmailzadeh, who’s name is used in the chorus, was killed in Iran at the age of 16 during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. That movement was born in Iran Jina Mahsa Amini died after an arrest for not wearing a hijab. A dedication of the song reads “Jina Mahsa Amini was inspiration to so many 1999-2022. Sarina Esmailzadeh was inspired 2006-2022.”

So we’re going to sign off with a link to that song. Give it a listen.

Many thanks to both Kelly and Edith for their contributions here.

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