Paul Oakenfold's 'Perfecto Mix' of Even Better Than The Real Thing is among the cuts on 'essential dance', a CD free with the May issue of Q Magazine.

Oakenfold, 'does a Mondays on the reborn U2' according to the magazine, where Bono describes an early conversation with the producer.

'I remember Paul Oakenfold saying to me ,'Do you know what people are playing at the end of these huge raves in the middle of nowhere? They're playing With Or Without You! We were like, No way!

'But that was the connection, because U2 made ecstatic music. Whether you call it religious or not, the music was big and universal and it was open in a way that people off their nuts, who are not in raincoats any more and getting into all these drugs, were completely thrown by it.'


In a related - but slightly different - story in the British music magazine, the band's Lemon from the POPMART tour comes under the microscope.

In a feature on 'Rock Accidents Waiting To Happen.', the magazine warns bands to 'Never work with children or citrus fruits', describing that day in August, 1997 in Vallehovin, Oslo, Norway, when the unthinkable became the unopenable.

'One night during the POP tour the band's lemon (out of which the band emerged in a Spinal Tap tribute) refused to open. Without any back-up plan, U2 sent out the empty prop anyway and duly emerged from the back of the stage.

'It wasn't very George Clinton when it opened and there was no band there,' admitted Bono later. Later on in the gig, the ever-poetic vocalist began improvising the lyrics, 'Lemon breakdown/the lemon's broke...'


By the way, in case you missed this, U2.COM is brokering offers for the actual POPMART lemon, which is presently taking up space in a Belgian warehouse.

Can you see it as a converstion piece in your living room ? Maybe you run a restaurant with a popular music theme - or perhaps you have always wanted your own place in the history of rock.