Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2

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Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll? features new writing in the growing field of U2 studies. Edited by Scott Calhoun, with a foreword by Anthony DeCurtis, Exploring U2 contains selections from the 2009 inaugural gathering of "The Hype and The Feedback: A Conference Exploring The Music, Work and Influence of U2." In keeping with U2's own efforts to remove barriers that have long prevented dialogue for understanding and improving the human experience, this collection of essays examines U2 from perspectives ranging from the personal to the academic and is accessible to curious music fans, students, teachers, and scholars alike.

Four sections organize 16 essays from leading academics, music critics, clergy, and fans. From the academic disciplines of literature, music, philosophy, and theology, essays study U2's evolving use of source material in live performances, the layering of vocal effects in signature songs, the crafting of a spiritual community at live concerts, U2's success as a business brand, Bono's rhetorical presentation of Africa to the Western consumer, and readings of U2's work for irony, personhood, hope, conservatism, and cosmic-time. Official band biographer Neil McCormick considers U2 as a Dublin-shaped band, and Danielle Rhéaume tells how discovering and returning Bono's lost briefcase of lyrics for the album October propelled her along her own artistic journey.

This thoughtful and timely collection recognizes U2's music both as art and commentary on personal journeys and cultural dialogues about contemporary issues. It offers insights and critical assessments that will appeal not only to scholars and students of popular music and culture studies but to those in the fields of theology, philosophy, the performing arts, literature, and all intellectually curious fans of U2.

Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2 Review

First my bias. I am a college professor, avid U2 fan, and co-presented at the U2 conference in 2009. Our conference paper did not make it into this volume. Having read these essays cover to cover, I fully understand why. Most of these essays are heavyweight: brilliantly insightful discussions of U2 from multiple academic disciplines not easily accessible to the casual fan. The book is an intellectual gem with a depth of riches for those willing to mine.

Beth Maynard's analysis of the U2 concert experience as leitourgia describes what U2 live means to me better than anything I have ever read - and gave me a new word. Christopher Endrinal's explanation of multiregister and multilayering in U2's music in the 1990s totally elevated my appreciation of music intricacies about which I had no clue (three voices in "The Fly"). Each essay presents new concepts, challenges, and rewards: Ricoeur and selfhood, fallen angels, antilanguage, rhetoric of the auspicious, U2 in space-time.

For the engaged fan with no interest in the more intellectual discussions of U2, there are three must-reads: DeCurtis's introductory overview, Neil McCormick's description of U2's formative environment (Dublin late 1970s), and Danielle Rh�aume's detailed account of the return of Bono's briefcase (lost before October).

I have nearly every book written about U2. In my opinion, this book is the seminal work in the U2 canon interpreting U2's gift to humanity.

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