‘He didn’t sail across the Atlantic in an ocean liner or a yellow submarine. He didn’t come in on a third-class ticket looking for a job in Hell’s Kitchen. He didn’t climb up out of steerage with all his potatoes in a single suitcase. But John Lennon was an immigrant all the same.’
As for U2, they are going through the motions and letting the stage do their work for them and even so, when the song and the sound come together, tonight “I Will Follow”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Pride In The Name Of Love” and “Elevation”, they absolutely justify Tomas’ deep affection.
Given the choice between giving U2 the benefit of the doubt, and just about anybody else the benefit of the doubt, I would undoubtedly go with anybody else… which doesn’t mean I’m right. For the eight nights at Madison Garden, still in mid-residency, U2 did many things better than they have before but is it enough? Meanwhile, Young Fathers were enough.
The set combined a fair number of songs from the new album, Song s of Innocence, with a nice mix of hits and obscurities. Among the latter were the first live version of “October” in about 25 years, played on the small stage with only Edge on keyboards.
Ben Ratliff in the New York Times claimed “Bono delivered speeches, interior dialogues and eventually pitches for his anti-poverty and AIDS prevention organizations, ONE and (RED). But the concert was an achievement, integrated and sure-footed”
The most anticipated concert of the year, even if, like me, you haven’t enjoyed much of anything they’ve recorded since 2000, even if that, seeing them in the relatively small confines of MSG is an honor. The last time I saw them at this venue,October 2001, the encore. “One” was accompanied by “a backdrop that scrolled the names of all the victims of the Sept 11 attacks, including lists of NYPD and NYFD casualties” (as Ben Walden put it). I’m going on Sunday and I can’t wait.
But you know how bands always say they have to tour to compensate the fact they are not selling albums anymore? As you can see on this graph, the compensation is barely achieved. If you compare bands’ album revenue in the 80’s, today’s successful bands can hardly compensate by touring.
We’re on the verge of irrelevance. You have to make stuff relevant to you and where you’re at, make an honest account of what you’re going through. If that’s relevant to other people, great. But we don’t know.’ So why do U2 now think they could be relevant with this new music? Looking at their recent setlists they play a lot of these innocent songs, while the Stones play ‘Sticky Fingers’!
‘And we pay a fortune in tax. Just so people know, we pay a fortune in tax; and we’re happy to pay a fortune in tax, people should. But that doesn’t mean, because you’re good at philanthropy and because I’m an activist, people think you should be stupid in business and I don’t run with that.’
The setlist hits me as better despite a surfeit from the current one. Both “Mysterious Ways” and “Better Than The Real Thing” remain, plus they finally roll out “One” (if missing one night since 2010 can be defined as finally).
Er, I love U2 live even if I can’t much take em on record but really… to evoke his childhood this way is to provoke nausea in most people. I get it though, it is like Smallville and wee little Bono is the Superboy dreaming of saving the world.
He’s often said he doesn’t deserve the life he has and he is forever grateful for it. I’ve seen 26 shows and EVERY SINGLE TIME he’s thanked the fans for giving the band a great life. Bono knows and admits his megalomania. Without it, there is no U2.
The band was filming the upcoming clip in Belfast last Wednesday and Thursday, and the residents have already labeled it as ‘disruptive’ and in ‘poor taste’… The Belfast telegraph reports that the filming was causing a lot of trouble
Is Bob Lefsetz as good as he thinks he is? I dunno, man, he is a bit of a twit. In the past two weeks he made demonstrably wrong claims. It is as though he makes the axiom, the axiom is right, and he ignores it when it doesn’t suit his purposes.
It is just bad news, it’s just nasty stuff, forcing people who can’t afford it to dig deeper is U2’s MO, they always do it and now they’ve done it again. Hell, even Taylor Swift gave the presale codes free to her fanbase, don’t U2 have enough money where they are forcing us to dig even deeper; U2 have only one thing to tell us: shut up and pay me. Innocence postponed.
Let’s give Bruce Springsteen this much at least: given the opportunity to release his inner Bono, to go to that place where low culture reaches high, he didn’t falter.
I liked some of their earlier stuff, but to be perfectly honest, that Bono pisses me off. He’s made his name out of working with and talking about starving people in Africa. I don’t particularly like what he does. It’s phony
U2 are gonna spend the week on Jimmy Fallon, pushing the product no doubt. An album Songs Of Innocence, that is probably the best of the century and still not that great. In Rolling Stone, U2 make the case that they work and rework songs (deep into the ground) because they care so much. Unfortunately, any spontaneity whatsoever is completely destroyed by the years and years of work. Still, five days on Fallon, some of it should be worth the while.
‘When people pick on Spotify: Spotify are giving up 70 percent of all their revenues to rights owners. It’s just that people don’t know where the money is because the record labels haven’t been transparent.
‘I think it goes in cycles, honestly, and I think that we’ve just been through a particularly low cycle point for guitar-based music, and electronic dance music has been kind of the focus’, he declared. ‘But I think it’s about doing something fresh and novel
I still contend that ITunes will not be killed by streaming it will be killed by price. What Lefsetz skips out on is that people who are not music fans will not shell out ten bucks a month. If a CD cost as much as a Mocha Grande, sales would return and fast.
U2 (in red) is the band which promotes the most its latest album without any doubt, whereas the Rolling Stones hardly played their latest effort and were rather stuck in some 60s nostalgia… they surely played all these 60s hits. Springsteen had about the same attitude, to a lesser extent.
If U2 released the album normally, well, maybe it would have sold 2M copies worldwide, maybe not. But it certainly and under no circumstances would have been downloaded 26M times. That is a huge number. Who cares how many people deleted it? An irrelevant number
Not only U2 has received the big bucks from Apple – reportedly $100 million, and if you don’t call this prostitution I don’t know what it is – to release their album and deliver it for free in every iTunes account of the planet, but there are about to make some big announcement?
The only time the invasion of your privacy is important is when your privacy is most neccessary to you: so, yeah, nobody cares until they do and when they do care your lifes safeguards, your privacy and I am not even suggesting illegality at all here, is common knowledge. then you are screwed.
Negativland withdrew the single, then chronicled the controversy in a magazine/CD, ‘The Letter U and the Numeral 2’ and a book, ‘The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2’, but re-released the single in 2001 under the new name ‘These Guys are from England and who gives a shit’… Hilarious
A lot of people are up in arms because they don’t like U2. I don’t have an opinion on the band itself, but I do think the method is a little bit in your face.’… ‘‘When you sign up to use an Apple product, you’re giving them your information, so this album is part and parcel of that. But that still doesn’t mean they need to use that information in such an invasive way.’
Consider the new U2 album the Village Voice of rock. When I used to have to pay a coupla of bucks for VV I would read it cover to cover but once it became free, I treated it with indifference. If it didn’t cost anything, what exactly was its value to me?
Horizon was a terrible album and Songs of Innocence isn’t. There is something disquieting and a little disturbed about it. U2s stories of innocence isn’t giving them much pleasure. It isn’t a happy album. Perhaps because when it gets past punk and surf, it finds a dead mother, priest pedophiles and bloody Sundays.
Giving the album for free on ITunes? Now that is pure genius. U2’s, Bono’s, biggest fear was the album not charting, maybe going gold and then disappearing and god bless the little Irish get, he forestalled the bands decline and fall as a recording artist by giving the sucker away
No messing: the end of the first act, when Spiderman battles Green Lantern, every promise Julie Taymor has made as a savant of the theatre is potentially answered. To say it is eye popping is to understate: Lantern and Spidey literally swing from the rafters and while the wire are visible, it is beautiful in ways Cirque De Soleil never ever is.
Through it all they were a fountain of, even costing me a couple of friendships with mutual acquaintances along the way, and I need them and am beyond excited they will be back. So Bono the answer is: we want another U2 album if only because it is much more fun picking on you than on Chris Martin
The concept, founded by Bono, is just self-promotion, buy any (RED) product and a certain percentage goes to Bono’s Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, meaning that not a penny comes out of Bono’s pocket. And that’s his genius, he passes for a humanitarian without giving away his money
Like all of us, rock stars go through highs and lows, peaks and valley, just when you have the world you lose it all and just when things can’t go get any worse, everything clicks into place… for awhile. Here are some career peaks!
Between the four of them the only direction this is leading is all the way down to zero. And while pop punk is an OK direction for One Direction I guess, it is still a little irrelevant right? As for Madonna, It has been well over a decade since Madonna met William Orbit and actually created
Money grubbing luddite McGuinness is retiring from managing U2 to manage a company that manages U2 and Madonna. That warm fuzzy feeling is nausea at this bizarre two step by the too smart for his own good plank. Why not just say I’ve sold U2 to Live Nation and will manage them from there?
Pharrell’s joyous all dancing all smiling, all aboard performance was the best and Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go”, tailor made for the Oscars, a big bland musical theatre pastiche that, not unlike self evident influence “Wicked”, is simply not good enough musically to matter
A handful of real good singles by U2 (yes, really), Beck, Miranda Lambert, The Civil Wars, and some albums that really stink (hi Eric Church!) have a couple of good songs. Altogether 102 songs and listen to em all here:
The top four are all singles which is something a little different for me. Not sure if it is a reflection of the overall weakness of album releases or just a simple chance happening. That Lana cover gives darkness whole new levels of meaning.
Personally, I’m shocked. A good U2 song. Wow. If the rest is this good it will be their best album since All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Maybe Rolling Stone can give it 6 stars out of 5. Damn, there goes the obituary till another day.
So right now it should be available. I will of course review it and I hope it is very good, really I do. Plus I support” “Red” and if a million people download it,. that’s some nice moolah. Of course, the assumption is that it will suck big time.
Chuck D wants a national holiday for MLK and will win this one: “Talking MLK, gonna find a way Make the state pay, I’m looking for the day” from 2002 and still an accurate reminder why Hip Hops golden age is over because that should be enough for any song except PE were going after the anti-immigrant Arizona bill as well – A-
Cool – The Time – Near the start of their career, Morris and the guys came out with this ten minutes of pure groove which sounds so like early Prince, the DNA is the exact same; the call response hasn’t changed since then – A
At the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the band were honored with the Sonny Bono Visionary Award (an oxymoron if ever I hear one) all know that a vision without a promise is just a fantasy,’ said Bono. ‘We’re not interested in that.’
Janie Jones – The Clash – On the list of greatest songs forever, the Clash looks at 1960s party girl scandal girl and wonders what it has done to do with the 9 to 5 world; political sleight of hand let’s them know – A+
Written by Phil Spector along with Brill Building giants Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, Bono has he work cut out for him trying to match Darlene loves heartwrenching take , that it has become a holiday staple in this version is purely because only a band with the heart and sincerity could even try to match it
Talk about timing being everything, the Nelson Mandela movie, “Long Walk To Freedom” was having its premiere the night Nelson died and U2, who I would love to claim opportunism but can’t because, well, I don’t believe it was, have their stinky “Ordinary Love” saved from the fag ends of the pop bonfire
This is what David Fricke wrote about this terrible song in Rolling Stone: “”It’s about the seeds of dreams, and U2 play it perfectly: down-to-earth, while looking up.’. The truth is, the lyric, apparently taken from Nelson Mandela’s love letters to one of his wives, is asinine and the track is a Church organ in search of a song and not finding it
In 2009, guaranteed entry because the three consecutive years I did not get a number through the lottery. Trained with music and ran the last six miles (typically the hardest for me) with music which definitely brought me to the finish line.
Did I mention that with the exemption of the circe-y flying stunts bits, the entire thing is a disaster? The music on the top of the list will turn you deaf; in a career of terrible songwriting, Bono and the Edge reach the bottom of the barrel on this atrocious piece of music.
