Joshua Tree (Remastered / Expanded) (Super Deluxe Edition) (2CD/DVD) [Box set, Original recording remastered, Extra tracks]

U2 | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 20, 2007)
• Original Release Date: November 20, 2007
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Box set, Original recording remastered, Extra tracks
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Interscope
• ASIN: B000WTNCQS
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,343 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Where The Streets Have No Name

2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

3. With Or Without You

4. Bullet The Blue Sky

5. Running To Stand Still

6. Red Hill Mining Town

See all 11 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Luminous Times (Hold On To Love)

2. Walk To The Water

3. Spanish Eyes

4. Deep In The Heart

5. Silver And Gold

6. Sweetest Thing

See all 14 tracks on this disc

Disc: 3

1. I Will Follow [DVD]

2. Trip Through Your Wires [DVD]

3. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For [DVD]

4. MLK [DVD]

5. The Unforgettable Fire [DVD]

6. Sunday Bloody Sunday [DVD]

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

From the Artist

The 3 disc box-set format contains The Joshua Tree CD, the bonus audio CD (both as above), and a Bonus DVD. This package also includes a 56 page hardback embossed book, featuring previously unseen Anton Corbijn photos, handwritten lyrics by Bono and liner notes by Bill Flanagan, Bono, Adam Clayton, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Anton Corbijn, Steve Averill, David Batstone, René Castro and a special essay by The Edge. Content for the Bonus DVD: U2 Live from Paris - filmed at the Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris, on July 4 1987, on the European leg of The Joshua Tree tour.

Product Description

The 3 disc box-set format contains The Joshua Tree CD, the bonus audio CD, and a Bonus DVD. This package also includes a 56 page hardback embossed book, featuring previously unseen Anton Corbijn photos, handwritten lyrics by Bono and liner notes by Bill Flanagan, Bono, Adam Clayton, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Anton Corbijn, Steve Averill, David Batstone, René Castro and a special essay by The Edge.

Content for the Bonus DVD: U2 Live from Paris - filmed at the Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris, on July 4 1987, on the European leg of The Joshua Tree tour.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

175 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic album gets the royal treatment, November 20, 2007

By 

Giacomo Holdini (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Joshua Tree (Remastered / Expanded) (Super Deluxe Edition) (2CD/DVD) (Audio CD)

Nearly 21 years after the original release of The Joshua Tree, the CD version of the album has finally gotten its due. In what must be considered an embarrassment of packaging riches, this new "Super Deluxe" 20th Anniversary Edition of the album more than does justice to the original album art (poorly served on previous CD releases), and the music has been given a spanking new mastering, supervised by none other than The Edge. The "Super Deluxe" edition comes in a sturdy, 6" x 8" x 1.5" box with fully restored cover art. Inside is a 56 page hardcover book containing liner notes, lyrics, pictures, single-sleeve art, technical information, and a number of essays, including ones by Bono, Daniel Lanois, Adam Clayton, Anton Corbijn, Brian Eno, and The Edge. An embossed envelope contains five more Corbijn photos, printed on 5" x 7" sheets of textured, "antique" paper. The three discs all come in their own mini-LP gatefold sleeves: the album disc is in a quasi replica of the original LP sleeve, whereas the bonus CD and DVD are in similar sleeves featuring alternate photos. No detail has been overlooked - even the CD labels are patterned after the spindle label on the original LP. This is a truly "super deluxe" package.

But what about the sound? While the original 1987 mastering was never great, much of what has been lambasted over the years as murky sound is really intrinsic to the original recording and/or mix. It is important to note that this is a remastered version of the original mix, not a remixed version of the original session tapes. Thus, the overall qualities of the original mix remain, such as dense atmospherics and an ambient soundscape. However, this version improves matters. There is a substantial increase in volume, but generally not to the point of clipping. A visual analysis of the waveforms reveals only a handful of clipped peaks throughout the album. Comparison between this release and the mastering on Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's Gold Ultradisc II release (out of print) reveals very little difference between the two, which indicates to me the engineers on this remaster used discretion with their techniques, and did not go overboard. Overall, instrumental textures are fuller, and bass response is improved. Also, the continual tape hiss that was present even in between tracks on the original CD has been removed. (Some hiss intrinsic to the original analog tapes remains, but is reduced from the original mastering.) Generally speaking, all but the most critical and particular listeners can feel confident they are getting the best sounding version of this album yet released with this new mastering.

The 14-track bonus audio disc contains a number of b-sides and unused tracks from the period that have previously been available elsewhere, but have never been collected in one place before. Six of the fourteen tracks were either previously unreleased or were very rare prior to this release. The songs range from excellent to barely worthy of release ("Drunk Chicken"), but are all worth having if you are any sort of completist. For those who have always imagined that The Joshua Tree was the best double album never made (an erroneous notion, as Edge makes clear in his essay), the bonus disc provides them the perfect opportunity to construct their own version of the fabled opus.

The concert presented on the DVD goes a good distance toward filling a gap that has existed in the U2 catalog for the last two decades - namely the absence of a full-length concert video from The Joshua Tree Tour. This video (the liner notes say it was filmed, but industrial-size video cameras are clearly visible onstage) features the entire concert U2 performed in the Paris Hippodrome on July 4, 1987, minus three cover songs (the concert openers "Stand By Me" and "C'Mon Everybody," and a rendition of "Help!" that they played between "Electric Co." and "Bad"). The band is in top form, playing a classic lineup of their songs, many of which have not been heard on later tours. Notably, they did not perform "Where the Streets Have No Name" at this concert, an omission that occurred a number of times on the European leg of the tour. The video direction is refreshingly plain, avoiding the overly moody lighting Phil Joanou employed in Rattle and Hum (the Paris footage was directed by Gavin Taylor), and without the short-attention-span jump cuts of the band's recent concert videos. The sound is an excellent LPCM stereo mix - not surround, it's true, but every bit as good as you would expect from a live album on CD. The sound is actually better than either the live tracks on the Rattle and Hum CD, or the fan club only release of the 1989/1990 New Year's concert at the Point Depot.

The documentary, "Outside it's America," basically plays like Rattle and Hum's little brother, only in color and not as well shot - and, frankly, not as interesting. On the other hand, it does not have the myth-making posturing that so marred Rattle and Hum. Both this documentary and the concert video show a more human, down-to-earth, less "god like" side of the band. Still, the documentary has a lot of footage that will likely be of interest to die-hard fans only. (It is worth noting that the documentary was directed by Barry Devlin and Meiert Avis, not Phil Joanou, and therefore is not an assemblage of rejected Rattle and Hum footage, as has been speculated elsewhere.) The two music videos are fair makeweights, but are hardly essential. The selling point of the DVD is without question the concert video, which many fans will find invaluable, making this set an easy choice over the two-disc Deluxe edition.

On the whole, this is an outstanding issue that more than makes good on its promises. Thoroughly recommended.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny, November 20, 2007

By 

D. Reyes - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joshua Tree (Remastered / Expanded) (Super Deluxe Edition) (2CD/DVD) (Audio CD)

This is worth every penny. The remastering sounds nice, on both the Joshua Tree and B-sides disc.. It's finally nice to have a great sounding version of "Deep In The Heart."

The Bonus DVD disc is where it's at though. You get a concert and a mini tour diary/documentary that totally sheds another light on the Joshua Tree era U2. If you weren't a serious fan in 87 you more than likely assumed, from what you saw of them, that U2 took themselves too seriously and weren't really fun at all.

The concert shows U2 in a different light than how Rattle and Hum showed them on film. The mini tour documentary shows them having fun, and seeing this now is so wonderful.

This was a wonderful package and hopefully older albums will be remastered and presented in this manner as well. I sure hope the WAR album is next!

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good package, November 20, 2007

By 

Rubén (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joshua Tree (Remastered / Expanded) (Super Deluxe Edition) (2CD/DVD) (Audio CD)

Note: this is a tentative impression, as I just brought the box home today. I won't comment on the music, as it's all been said before...

I was debating whether to get this super deluxe version or go 1 tier down to the double-CD level (the single CD was not a choice since I wanted the b-sides and alt. takes, etc.). I never got his on vinyl but have had the original redbook CD for years.I know there've been several audiophile editions over the years (MFSL, etc.) but they've been out of print and 2nd hand go for very steep prices. So I was curious if the sonic improvements would be worth it. In a nutshell, the sound is noticeably better, with a definite more visceral bass and "presence," but the improvement is not earth-shaking. It would have been nice to have this as a hybrid SACD or a DVD-A, but those formats have not been widely accepted. A 5.1 mix in addition to trad. stereo would have been nice too. Hence the 4 and not 5 stars. Quick first impressions:
Package: Nice black box (not too big) holds contents in a manner that makes them easy to remove. The 2 CDs and the DVD are each in their own black cardboard sleeve that folds open (as opposed to an open sleeve that makes it easy for the disc to fall out).

Extra CD: no comments yet.
DVD: the concert was videotaped, not filmed. I'm guessing for TV, as the aspect is small-screen. Can't comment on the sonics, but on my TV it sounded very well recorded. The additional documentary (on film) follows the band around on tour. The usual backstage banter, rehearsals, mixing with the Calif and Arizona locals, etc. Interesting and artfully made, but not sure this would bear repeated screenings...One video is in grainy and shadowy B/W while the other, in color, is a bit more straightforward, with the band in some coal mine (canary and all).

The book: very handsome and classy with essays and pix - some new insights, but again, not sure it's worth it.

The package of 5 cards: I guess they're suitable for framing. Apparently from the same photo session that yielded the album cover. Not necessary.

Bottom line: the live concert on the DVD is definitely worth it. Especially if (as expected) it won't be available separately for the foreseable future.