Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
picked up Unforgettable Fire on vinyl the other day. forgot how good that album is. where has that stuff been the last 4 or so albums?
The reissue version of the vinyl sounds great.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
'The most interesting things will end up being those that have a certain duality, a certain internal argument going on within them which is certainly what’s happening with Bon Iver, with Florence and the Machine and with The Black Keys.'
From the emergence of Foster the People to the departure of REM, from 'Fallen Empires' to 'England Shakes', the past 12 months have seen some remarkable new bands take the stage and some striking releases from established acts.
As the year turned Bono and Edge called in to U2.com to reflect on some of the music they've loved in the past twelve months... and wonder at what the next year holds.
What acts or albums left their mark in the past 12 months ?
EDGE: I think the Bon Iver record will be remembered for a while, with it's combination of the new folk thing and a level of experimental production that sets it apart. Very compelling and powerful but also very innovative. The Florence and the Machine record, Ceremonial, is also in that category.
There’s a Scandinavian band called I Break Horses and I really like their record ‘Hearts’. It has hints of Cocteau Twins and of Sigur Ros but while it’s cinematic and organic it also has an electronica feeling… quite fresh.
Then, for great writing, there’s Foster The People. Compositionally this is so powerful, and thematically strong, with hooks and ideas which are clear and to the point. I’m enjoying that new record (‘El Camino’) just out from The Black Keys and another band, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, have an album called Up From Below, which is a sort of mad circus of a record, full of life, vitality and fun. It’s like you’re entering a carnival, the smells and tastes and sounds that are wrapped up in that record.
Sounds like you feel it was a good year for music?
EDGE: A great year. Things are moving in several different directions at the same time. There’s no unified cultural movement that everything refers to but several different trains of thought which are all very interesting. The most interesting things will end up being those that have a certain duality, a certain internal argument going on within them which is certainly what’s happening with Bon Iver, with Florence and the Machine and with The Black Keys.
BONO:… yes, The Black Keys, much more interesting than The White Keys.
EDGE:… stay with The Black Keys and you can’t go wrong. As any piano player will tell you, it’s almost impossible to play a bum note if you’re on the black keys.
BONO… and the same for the band.
EDGE: There’s also another Irish singer I’ve been getting into lately, James Vincent McMorrow...
BONO: Oh yes, ‘If I had a Boat’, what a song…
EDGE: His version of Stevie Winwood’s ‘Higher Love’ is really beautiful and he might even be from Malahide…
BONO:.. sure nothing good comes out of Malahide…
EDGE:… as I was about to say!
BONO: Actually, I think Edge is also big on M83
EDGE:…yes!
BONO: ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming’ was an important album but the one before that I loved too, ‘Saturdays = Youth’, that one really got to me.
I have to say, not just sticking with an Irish theme, but I think ‘Fallen Empires’ by Snow Patrol is an extraordinary album and for very subtle reasons. It’s a strange concoction of club culture and ecstatic rock. I find it very funny with some great lyrics and then it has all this organic, almost folksy energy but at a frenetic, speedy level… that’s been blowing my mind. Then the Coldplay album ‘Mylo Xyloto’ is great, they keep getting better.
For me Gavin Friday’s ‘Catholic’ is an amazing record, one of the albums of the year, and his song ‘Lord I’m Coming’ is my song of the year. It opens and closes the film ‘This Must Be The Place’ which premiered at Cannes and stars Sean Penn, Frances McDormand and Eve Hewson.
Of the acts that are less well known I think that Burst Apart by The Antlers is astonishing and Edge has already mentioned Ed Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros – ‘Desert Song’ is ridiculously good. Bloodless Coup by Bell X 1 is fantastic and, of course, Foster The People – ‘Torches’ - joy as an act of defiance. It’s kind of psychedelic pop music but in the face of the times we’re living in, I find the bouncy, big grooves just a real tonic.
A host of wonderful female singer-songwriters were getting recognition this year, from Adele and PJ Harvey to Laura Marling and, sadly, the late Amy Winehouse.
BONO: When we were making No Line On The Horizon I met up with Polly Harvey and we were talking about poetry written by soldiers and people experiencing wartime and we were reading the same books. Her album ‘England Shakes’ is a very powerful piece of work and she has some very interesting people coming up behind here too like Lana Del Ray. Adele, of course, is stunning but the loss of Amy Winehouse is tragic, that could really make you depressed about the future if you think about it too much.
When Florence and the Machine took the U2360 stage, she used it like no-one else, what a performer. She was running around the circumference of it and just owning it, a remarkable creature and a very challenging album. Another one I’ve been appreciating which really sustains is ‘50 Words For Snow’ by Kate Bush.
EDGE: And we shouldn’t forget that Lisa Hannigan album (‘Passenger’), which is also pretty special.
Do you see particular themes emerging in music at the moment?
BONO: Something really exciting is that finally the rock band is melting into clubland and experimenting with sounds that are not normally deemed authentic for the rock band - synthesizers, experimental sounds - which you can hear in an album like that by The Temper Trap. That’s exciting, a new hybrid. But it remains ridiculous that black music and white music are still in separate genres - let’s hope in 2012 that kind of false division falls away.
Talking of which, what about Watch The Throne?
BONO: We should have mentioned that because when Jay-Z was on the road with us in Australia, Kanye was with him, working on that album. I remember they were high as kites on their music and words and Jay-Z was so confident they were doing something that was very special. That turned out to be right.
Like the PJ Harvey record, but in a completely different way, it was a record that captured the zeitgeist.
BONO: Yes, one in the UK, one in the US, and I wonder what will come out of this depression, recession, economic horror show we’re going through, I wonder how artists will respond to that. In the ‘70’s the recession gave us punk rock and The Clash and The Sex Pistols: bleak years of high oil prices, recession and unemployment, then you had this angry music which also had such a life-force and that life-force kick started our band
Sometimes forces outside the arts and culture, like an economic crisis, can ignite great music.
EDGE: I think they can, they can fill the vaccum and it’ll be interesting to see if the new folk will become more mainstream. For example, look at the big albums in the UK over the last year and the beautifully crafted, golden talent of Adele is there but standing aside from this is this other movement - this intimate music, hand-made in real-time - like Mumford And Sons, Noah and the Whale, Laura Marling and Bon Iver. It’ll be interesting to see if that starts to seep into the mainstream because in the face of this upheaval, where people feel disenfranchised, as if they’re not able to control their own destiny, things that are more homespun, tangible and sound more real can be more reassuring.
BONO: You might be right on that Edge, that perhaps in a noisy, driven, neon-lit media world this intimacy is where the conversation is, which would be quite radical.
You mentioned the Lisa Hannigan record and I’ve heard her play a couple of times this year, and it’s been amazing. On Christmas Eve, I was with Glen Hansard and a bunch of Irish bards and minstrels performing on Grafton Street in Dublin, singing for the homeless of our city. Afterwards we went back to this room and there was an extraordinary session where I heard rawness of talent that I haven’t heard for a while: Damien Rice singing from a special and sacred place, and Mundy and Glen Hansard and Liam O'Maonlai, singing in Irish, and Declan O’Rourke with a remarkable song called Galileo. It was just the passing of the guitar from one to another, ten minstrels in the room. I wasn’t sure if I fitted in that club but I liked being there.
I played a couple of songs acoustically but earlier in the year both Edge and I played at the memorial to Steve Jobs and also at the Hollywood Bowl for the Bill Clinton Foundation. It’s quite something hearing our own songs, like Sunday Bloody Sunday or A Man and Woman, so stripped down and I think it showed us some clues for the future.
We’re working on three albums at the moment and we haven’t decided what order we’re going to put them out but ‘The Songs of Ascent’ have the kind of beautiful intimacy that we’re speaking of now. They fit into this moment, the mode of some of these artists that I was hanging out with on Christmas Eve.
We shouldn’t leave music in 2011 without mention of the end of REM, your fellow travellers for more than thirty years…
EDGE: That really came out of the blue. We were with Michael a week before and he wasn’t giving any hints, which is great because he wanted their fans to hear it first, but I’m still thinking to myself that maybe in a few years time they’ll do some stuff together! What’s the point in breaking up except to be back together again! I’m being selfish I suppose, I would love to see them doing some more work together.
BONO: Those three new songs of theirs are part of the great soundtrack of 2011. One of them, ‘Hallelujah’, is just breathtaking and then there is ‘We All Go Back To Where We Belong’, which for me, again, is one of the great songs of the year…
2011 also saw the passing of Steve Jobs, not a musician but someone who helped transform music for everyone.
EDGE: What was wonderful about what Steve achieved was that in a time when other media, from video games to YouTube, were starting to draw all your time and attention, the arrival of iTunes and the iPod meant your computer became your music library. It was ubiquitous, music was everywhere again. It was so important that music didn’t just become a ‘60’s, ‘70’s, ‘80’s thing which might have come to an end as an important cultural force in the ‘90’s. Today music is as healthy as ever - it’s really just the economics that have taken a hammering and we’re hopeful that will be corrected at some point.
BONO: And Apple will continue to be a guiding light because of the reverence at the heart of what they do. The reverence for design, to make things of beauty in an age where that is rare, and the reverence for music, like the reverence for The Beatles you see when you look at their home page. That will stay with them.
I think we’ll see a whole revolution in artwork, photography and lyrics as albums metamorphose into apps. The experience of listening to music will become a looking experience as well as a listening one, as it was in the ‘70’s with gatefold sleeves except that now the gatefold sleeve will be digital on your ipad or plasma screen. I’m excited about the future but saddened that Steve will not be around to see it.
Are the changes in the digital landscape of music, from iTunes to Spotify and Facebook, informing the way the band are thinking about upcoming releases?
EDGE: There’s a lot of pressure to start thinking in terms of just one song because that’s the trend. Even on the big records people tend to just buy the one song. It’s a throw back to the period before the LP when everything was the 45. We’ve been kind of holding out against that because we love the album as a format, it’s what we grew up with, so for us it will still be album thinking for the next little while.
BONO: But they better be good, we aren’t going to put one out unless we think every song on it is vital.
EDGE: And we’re greedy! We want to have impact on many levels. We want the impact of a collection of songs that people go away and live with, which get under their skin, but we also want the impact of a 45, the great single that reaches places and people that a long player wouldn’t.
We’ve been talking about PJ Harvey’s ‘England Shakes’ as one of the most important records of the year which shows that it’s still possible to make great albums, to allow the songs to go out there and fight for their own place in the culture. The ultimate of course is to have an album of tunes that are so compelling that they not only fit into what people are liking but actually change what people are liking – that’s our ambition.
Recent U2 studio albums have come roughly every four years… any clues on when the next one might arrive?
BONO: We don’t know yet but we’ve got three albums we’re working on. Our good friend Chris Martin says, ‘Well, why can’t you put the three of them together and put them out now?’ He makes a lot of sense but that’s just not how we work! I’d like to think that if things continue to go as well as they have with Brian Burton - aka Danger Mouse – then we’re going to shock some people with the new sounds and songs we’ve got.
A few months on, have you had a chance to stand back and reflect on the U2360 phenomenon?
EDGE: It was an amazing experience from beginning to end. I still remember the moment I first saw this stage we were going to be playing on, it was jaw-dropping to see it standing in the stadium in Barcelona. It also turned out to be a dream to work with because the sound in the stadiums was always way better than we’d been able to achieve in the past. We managed to do something different with presenting a band live and that’s a great feeling.
BONO: I also remember that opening night and even when things were falling off the stage and falling off the musicians, songs smashing on the ground right in front of us, mistakes everywhere, I just couldn’t get the smile off my face. I knew it worked! We put our audience at the centre of the show, that’s what happened in 360, they were the production. After a while this mega-structure disappeared, we were left as four musicians in this gigantic crowd with waves and waves of emotions spiralling around us and inside us. I’ll never forget walking out to David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ each night and into our own space station … and then taking off! I don’t know how we’re gonna top that, we’ll have to go indoors I think, do something smaller.
I’d like people to understand – and I think they do – that most of the cash that came through the tills was spent on the production and on the people that gave it to us but we still came away so spoiled and over-rewarded. But I’ve heard conversations with fans of other bands and they say ‘I went to see this other band and of course they didn’t need any of those tricks, they didn’t need any of those lights or any of that production stuff...' But the ticket was the same price I try to tell them…
People understand the team and technology and passion that went into putting up and pulling down that tour every night, and the U2 crew really shone like they never shone before. But those seven million people who came to the shows, they really are who we work for and as I say - and I mean it every time – they’ve given us this incredible life. At a moment when a lot of people are not having a great time because of this economic climate, here we are given this incredible, successful tour. We have to thank people.
And the band finally got to play Glastonbury?
BONO: On a day off on a North American tour which is mental! But that was an audience that really let us in when the whole place was looking like it was going to get washed away. People were very generous to us… even those protesting. I admire people who get organised and are agitators although in this case I’m not sure they understood the issues that were involved: you know there was a thing going around that U2 are in a tax haven, which of course we’re not. One of the centrepieces of the Irish economy is our tax competitiveness and Irish people are fighting to keep it that way, so no thinking Irish person would deny an Irish company the very thing we offer international companies but you know people don’t look into it that deeply.
Glastonbury wasn’t a normal U2 show, it was much more gritty and edgy and the stage was like an ice rink so I couldn’t really move around. But it was a statement of intent on our part, that we still want to meet a new audience and we don’t mind going into a muddy field in the rain to find them. We want to keep things fresh for our old audience by finding newer ones. The one-hour BBC special of our set is something we’re very proud of.
How long does it take to re-enter earth’s orbit after two years on the space station ?
EDGE: No idea! Only our friends and families could tell you that. I thought I was absolutely normal the minute I got home but everyone else around me might have a different story…
BONO: When Edge got into the beekeeping, then I thought he was going to be fine!
Some wonderful bands have toured with you over the years and sometimes the younger ones will mention the ‘U2 chat’. What’s your advice for bands starting out now ?
EDGE: What we would have been about early on as a band was trying to crack performing live and then trying to attract a record deal. Now people release their own records, so there’s not the same emphasis on the record label as before, it’s a whole different world. But in the end it’s the songs that will be here long after we’re gone.
BONO: One song. Jimmy Iovine said a genius thing to me once: ‘People want to go straight to the ‘70’s when they haven’t gone through the ‘60’s.’ In the ‘60’s there was incredible songwriting craft at work - The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Hollies… - with such a focus on the song. So in the ‘70’s, when the hard rock and punk rock bands came along, they were informed by the discipline of the great songs. But if you forget about the '60's and start at the '70’s you lose that dimension. So my advice would be that one song can change your world, one song can change the world.
Away from music, this was a notable year in history…
BONO: A momentous year, the millennium really began in 2011 in Tahrir Square. The power model of the past was inverted, that was the pyramid with the power at the point and the people at the base. That’s been turned upside down, ironically, in the land of the pyramids. Now the most powerful thing is the base and the top has to listen or be made irrelevant. That connectivity between people that social media makes possible has been the driver in this: in the information age it’s very hard to hide if you’re a despot or dictator trying to trick your people. Everything is in the open, transparency is the word in the year of the activist.
And activism and social change are always close to the heart of U2, most recently with the (RED) Zone on U2360. How did it work out?
EDGE: Yes, at the beginning of the tour we decided for the first time to get involved in the secondary ticket market with the (RED) Zone tickets. We allowed a small selection of tickets each night to be auctioned off with profits going to the (RED) Campaign. In the end that generated $12m for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It’s something we’re very proud of.
BONO: We are - and that money will support vital health systems in developing countries. It’ll keep many people alive.
I am really looking forward to what they recorded with Danger Mouse. Bono saying new sounds has me excited! I hope either that album or "Songs of Ascent" is the next album.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
After tens of thousands of votes, U2.com Subscribers have decided which tracks will appear on 'U22'.
We asked you to choose your top 22 live tracks after listening to 46 the band played on U2360°. Three months later, the result is the first crowd-sourced U2 live collection.
You didn't just cast your votes. You also engaged in impassioned argument on our boards about which tracks should appear, which should not - and why.
In the end the great divide was between those of you who wanted 'U22' to become a collection of the band's 'greatest' live tracks and those who wanted it to capture songs the band rarely perform, tracks hardly ever released live.
The results are fascinating - spanning nine albums and thirty years, excluding some of the most familiar songs and featuring some total surprises.
'This is really going to be a special CD.' said Adam, when we caught up with him this week. 'I wasn't expecting some of these tunes, it's a really fresh collection and it's going to make very interesting listening.'
So here's the 22 tracks. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see what happens next. And then get into the comments to give us your reactions.
1. Bad
2. Where The Streets Have No Name
3. Magnificent
4. One
5. Ultraviolet
6. Even Better than The Real Thing
7. With or Without You
8. Beautiful Day
9. City of Blinding Lights
10. The Unforgettable Fire
11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
12. All I Want is You/Love Rescue Me
13. Moment of Surrender
14. Until The End of the World
15. The Fly
16. One Tree Hill
17. Stay (Faraway, So Close)
18. Walk On
19. Zooropa
20. Elevation
21. Out of Control
22. Mysterious Ways
The tracks are now being mixed and sequenced while the editorial and design of the accompanying 24-page large format book (see above) is finalised.
Dammit norm, you beat me to it. I was just about to post this.
Anyone that is part of U2's fan club want to hook me up with a copy when it becomes available?
I kind of wish this was a commercial release. When was the last live commercial release...Under a Blood Red Sky?
I really like the track list.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Dammit norm, you beat me to it. I was just about to post this.
Anyone that is part of U2's fan club want to hook me up with a copy when it becomes available?
according to the provisions provided in sopa, i will be unable to do this
I wonder if it's too late for me to join and get one of these?
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Watching the Chicago dvd and drinking F.Ale.....what a great night!! And the baby's sound asleep!!
Haven't seen the DVD; I have the audio rip on my iPod.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Dammit norm, you beat me to it. I was just about to post this.
Anyone that is part of U2's fan club want to hook me up with a copy when it becomes available?
according to the provisions provided in sopa, i will be unable to do this
I wonder if it's too late for me to join and get one of these?
No, it is not too late. Anyone who joins in 2012 will get this as part of the subscriber package.
I expect these to be sent out in April or so (based on past years).
according to the provisions provided in sopa, i will be unable to do this
I wonder if it's too late for me to join and get one of these?
No, it is not too late. Anyone who joins in 2012 will get this as part of the subscriber package.
I expect these to be sent out in April or so (based on past years).
Sweet! Thanks!
Isn't there also a members only sale?
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
No, it is not too late. Anyone who joins in 2012 will get this as part of the subscriber package.
I expect these to be sent out in April or so (based on past years).
Sweet! Thanks!
Isn't there also a members only sale?
I'm not sure what you mean with "Isn't there also a members only sale." You can only get this U22 set when you're a member in 2012 and you get only one copy. It's not possible to order multiple U22 discs.
No, it is not too late. Anyone who joins in 2012 will get this as part of the subscriber package.
I expect these to be sent out in April or so (based on past years).
Sweet! Thanks!
Isn't there also a members only sale?
I'm not sure what you mean with "Isn't there also a members only sale." You can only get this U22 set when you're a member in 2012 and you get only one copy. It's not possible to order multiple U22 discs.
I know about getting only 1 copy of U22. I meant like a members only sale for U2's merch site.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
While at the Toronto International Film Festival for the screening of From the Sky Down, the new film about the making of U2’s 1991 classic and career saving record, Achtung Baby, a reflective Bono confessed, “U2’s been on the verge of irrelevance for 20 years.”
Now, what was the most common reaction to R.E.M.’s recent break up announcement? “Who cares? They haven’t been relevant for years.”
Jane’s Addiction, once an anarchic underground force, has just released a new record that opens with a bit of false advertising: “I’ve replanted my feet back in the underground.” It sounds more like Tool meets Muse and a desperate reach for modern rock radio.
And remarkably, the Rolling Stones have now been irrelevant for far longer than they were ever relevant (and that’s being charitable and conceding 1981’s Tattoo You as their last decent record). And it’s not like Mick Jagger wasn’t obsessed with trying to keep up with trends through the ‘80s and ‘90s and, sadly, failing.
Yes, it’s the great relevancy debate. But what is it to be relevant? Some criteria: First off, to be called “no longer relevant” you had to have once been relevant.
For lack of a better term, relevancy is to matter, and to do so beyond your own core audience. Because let’s face it, as highly regarded as R.E.M.’s first four records are, no one would have debated their relevancy if they hadn’t ever crossed over commercially. Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and the Fall are all great bands who consistently produced compelling and challenging work throughout their 20-plus year careers, but those bands were never subjected to the pressures and expectations bands like U2 or R.E.M. did once they crossed over commercially.
Yes, the irrelevancy charge is directed at artists who have broken through with some commercial success, been exalted, and then put out at least two straight crap records at which point the self-appointed watchdogs declare they’ve stayed past their welcome.
Then there’s the disproportionate amount of scrutiny directed at artists that dare to suggest that rock ‘n’ roll has some higher meaning. As a result, bands like the Who, the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., U2 and Rage Against the Machine have all been judged by a higher set of standards. Ever outspoken and idealists to the core, the Clash vowed to walk it like they talked it, but their slightest misstep brought out cries of: “Hypocrisy!” For years, the Who stood alone on the front line asking more from rock ‘n’ roll and from themselves than anyone, but as soon as they signed on with Schlitz beer to sponsor their 1982 farewell tour, the firing squad took aim. And why is it that the only way Rage Against the Machine can prove its sincerity is if they donate all of its money to charity?
Meanwhile, bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, and Pennywise (I could go on) pump out inoffensive, interchangeable product and no one bothers debating their relevancy. The Offspring, Nickelback, Foo Fighters, Coldplay and Linkin Park seemingly release the same records over and over, and it doesn’t inspire the type of venomous derision leveled at bands like U2 or Rage Against the Machine.
What’s the lesson here? Don’t stand for anything? Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve? Don’t take risks? Don’t challenge yourself, your audience or the status quo? Because to do so only makes you the target of the great levelers of the world who stand for absolutely nothing but the minute anyone who holds any set of beliefs stumbles along the way, they’re eviscerated.
Like the Who, U2 was always motivated by an underlying terror over becoming irrelevant. “It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition,” Bono has said. And yet, U2’s greatest crime has always been its willingness to admit its unbridled ambitions. “I do feel we are meant to be one of the great groups,” Bono said on U2’s first U.S. tour in 1981. That kind of drive sounded quaint until U2 actually became the biggest band in the world.
But then what? Artists who attain commercial success start to not only get judged like but start to act like they’re releasing a Hollywood blockbuster. Sales numbers become the sole judge for gauging success. Experimentation is sacrificed for the safe, tried and true. Chasing numbers instead of chasing the muse. The next one has to be bigger than the last. See: U2’s Popmart tour debacle.
It’s easy to blame “the man” and the expectations from the big bad major labels, but it’s as much a self-imposed creative shackling. It’s a kind of self-consciousness that short-circuits one’s natural evolution to the point of self-analysis-paralysis.
Look at Michael Jackson who consistently sold millions after Thriller, but those subsequent sales numbers paled by comparison. Not coincidentally, his records, videos and live performances just kept getting more desperate and grandiose in scope while the innovation and intimacy that was the cornerstone of Off the Wall and Thriller went missing on later releases like Dangerous and Invincible. Tellingly, MTV approached him at the time of Invincible about an Unplugged appearance reasoning that giving an intimate performance would be refreshing after the scandals and personal dramas of the past several years, but he didn’t want any of that. He became consumed with the presumption that grandiosity was the tonic, and he never let us in close again, did he?
After U2 reinvented itself (and resuscitated its career after the debacle of Rattle and Hum with Achtung Baby and the ensuing innovative Zoo TV tour, they were badly shaken by the commercial failure of 1997’s Pop. Their next two records, 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, while commercially successful, were conservative, close to the vest ventures and devoid of any experimentation.To their credit, they followed that up with 2009’s No Line on the Horizon which was, at least by comparison experimental, but flopped commercially. What’s troubling is that U2 has now disowned that record and talk from their camp suggests they believe they need to score big with their next record or they will become fully irrelevant.
“We’ve dodged and we’ve dived and made some great work along the way and occasional faux pas,” Bono went on to say in Toronto. “But this moment where we’re at, to me, feels really close to the edge of irrelevance. We can be successful, we can play big music in big places, but whether we can play small music, for radio or clubs, remains to be seen. And we have to get to that place again, if we are to survive.”
But how many artists that have broken through commercially even think about challenging themselves and evolving? There’s a reason the Clash were called “the only band that matters.” Few bands ever evolved, expanded and crossed genres with such stunning results as the Clash. Yes, there’s Radiohead, but they haven’t been interested in being the biggest band in the world since they knocked on the door with 1997’s OK Computer.
The better question is how many bands are allowed to have a career these days? How many are afforded the luxury of going through growing pains like R.E.M. and U2 did earlier in their careers. In today’s environment, U2 and R.E.M. probably would have been dropped from their respective labels before each broke through commercially on their fifth record. These days in order to have a sustainable career, it’s too risky to put innovation and experimentation at a premium. Bands aren’t given enough margin for error. One bomb and you’re on the chopping block.
Sure, bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers have had a career, but all were given the chance to develop and build a core following before the music industry was revolutionized. Since then, the more inherently adventurous album format has been rendered moot. The singles oriented market we have now has narrowed the creative scope and records are now mere collections of songs targeted for radio, commercials, TV or movie placement or for download.
What will become of bands like MGMT and Airborne Toxic Event, two great bands who had hits on their debut records and followed them up with strong but less successful offerings? Will they and bands like The Strokes, Arcade Fire and Kings of Leon be given the chance to suffer growing pains? If they stumble commercially, will they abandon experimentation for what’s safe and recognizable?
It got to be too much for R.E.M. who this year released its swan song, Collapse into Now and didn’t even bother with a farewell tour. Their last five records have been such a disappointment even their hardcore fans stopped listening. It’s the perils of having such a strong body of work in your canon to live up to. Michael Stipe explained R.E.M.’s breakup only like this: “The skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave.” Most of their long-time fans were relieved not unlike a sports fan when their favorite fading star finally hangs ‘em up. Watching your favorite band become irrelevant is kind of like watching Michael Jordan unable to elevate high enough to dunk in his final year in the NBA.
What we’ve seen the last ten years is an amalgamation of the record industry’s malaise with pop media’s obsession with tearing down anyone who climbs too high. Who dares to fly the flag for rock ‘n’ roll? Who dares to wear their heart on their sleeve? Why bother? It’s too much risk for not enough reward. Safer to pump out the tried and true and be spared the added scrutiny.
My guess is we’ve seen the last of the Great Rock Spokesman like Townshend or Joe Strummer. U2 may be the last great band to insist rock has some greater meaning. Personally, I think it’s a far more interesting world with U2, the Clash, Pete Townshend and Rage Against the Machine in all their bluster and wayward idealism. Because we’re at a point now where it feels like anyone who reaches a modicum of success is so fearful of failure all we get is a steady diet of bland soup churned out by inoffensive and interchangeable bands. Has rock ‘n’ roll reached a point where its stars operate solely to maintain status? Sad.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
It got to be too much for R.E.M. who this year released its swan song, Collapse into Now and didn’t even bother with a farewell tour. Their last five records have been such a disappointment even their hardcore fans stopped listening.
Totally disagree with this. The last 2 R.E.M. records were both brilliant, and arguably two of the best albums they've ever done. Yea that's right, I said it.
"I try my best to chug, stomp, weep, whisper, moan, wheeze, scat, blurt, rage, whine, and seduce. With my voice I can sound like a girl, the boogieman, a Theremin, a cherry bomb, a clown, a doctor, a murderer. I can be tribal. Ironic. Or disturbed. My voice is really my instrument."
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
The actual anniversary was Friday, but it seemed worth taking a moment to mark the 25th birthday of U2's towering achievement, the album that made them the actual biggest band i the world, and the best one they ever made, The Joshua Tree. Well I remember standing in (a very long) line outside the Music Plus record store in my southern California suburb after school to buy it the day it came out, and well I remember how seemingly everyone I knew was soon listening to it incessantly, taking every song, every lyric, every melody to heart. It was the unifying piece of music to emerge in the late 1980s, and even the most popular albums of subsequent years had a hard time replicating its inclusiveness. U2 may have already been somewhat self-parodic by then, and they certainly became far more so immediately after, but The Joshua Tree is for the ages.
Happy Birthday.....
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Thanks for the reminder! I wish I knew it was Friday. Will have to listen to it today.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
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g under p
Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,198
After Joshua Tree i can remember this cover.....
......I still have it in my all U2 bin in the attic somewhere.
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lz95sZQ ... re=related
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
From the emergence of Foster the People to the departure of REM, from 'Fallen Empires' to 'England Shakes', the past 12 months have seen some remarkable new bands take the stage and some striking releases from established acts.
As the year turned Bono and Edge called in to U2.com to reflect on some of the music they've loved in the past twelve months... and wonder at what the next year holds.
What acts or albums left their mark in the past 12 months ?
EDGE: I think the Bon Iver record will be remembered for a while, with it's combination of the new folk thing and a level of experimental production that sets it apart. Very compelling and powerful but also very innovative. The Florence and the Machine record, Ceremonial, is also in that category.
There’s a Scandinavian band called I Break Horses and I really like their record ‘Hearts’. It has hints of Cocteau Twins and of Sigur Ros but while it’s cinematic and organic it also has an electronica feeling… quite fresh.
Then, for great writing, there’s Foster The People. Compositionally this is so powerful, and thematically strong, with hooks and ideas which are clear and to the point. I’m enjoying that new record (‘El Camino’) just out from The Black Keys and another band, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, have an album called Up From Below, which is a sort of mad circus of a record, full of life, vitality and fun. It’s like you’re entering a carnival, the smells and tastes and sounds that are wrapped up in that record.
Sounds like you feel it was a good year for music?
EDGE: A great year. Things are moving in several different directions at the same time. There’s no unified cultural movement that everything refers to but several different trains of thought which are all very interesting. The most interesting things will end up being those that have a certain duality, a certain internal argument going on within them which is certainly what’s happening with Bon Iver, with Florence and the Machine and with The Black Keys.
BONO:… yes, The Black Keys, much more interesting than The White Keys.
EDGE:… stay with The Black Keys and you can’t go wrong. As any piano player will tell you, it’s almost impossible to play a bum note if you’re on the black keys.
BONO… and the same for the band.
EDGE: There’s also another Irish singer I’ve been getting into lately, James Vincent McMorrow...
BONO: Oh yes, ‘If I had a Boat’, what a song…
EDGE: His version of Stevie Winwood’s ‘Higher Love’ is really beautiful and he might even be from Malahide…
BONO:.. sure nothing good comes out of Malahide…
EDGE:… as I was about to say!
BONO: Actually, I think Edge is also big on M83
EDGE:…yes!
BONO: ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming’ was an important album but the one before that I loved too, ‘Saturdays = Youth’, that one really got to me.
I have to say, not just sticking with an Irish theme, but I think ‘Fallen Empires’ by Snow Patrol is an extraordinary album and for very subtle reasons. It’s a strange concoction of club culture and ecstatic rock. I find it very funny with some great lyrics and then it has all this organic, almost folksy energy but at a frenetic, speedy level… that’s been blowing my mind. Then the Coldplay album ‘Mylo Xyloto’ is great, they keep getting better.
For me Gavin Friday’s ‘Catholic’ is an amazing record, one of the albums of the year, and his song ‘Lord I’m Coming’ is my song of the year. It opens and closes the film ‘This Must Be The Place’ which premiered at Cannes and stars Sean Penn, Frances McDormand and Eve Hewson.
Of the acts that are less well known I think that Burst Apart by The Antlers is astonishing and Edge has already mentioned Ed Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros – ‘Desert Song’ is ridiculously good. Bloodless Coup by Bell X 1 is fantastic and, of course, Foster The People – ‘Torches’ - joy as an act of defiance. It’s kind of psychedelic pop music but in the face of the times we’re living in, I find the bouncy, big grooves just a real tonic.
A host of wonderful female singer-songwriters were getting recognition this year, from Adele and PJ Harvey to Laura Marling and, sadly, the late Amy Winehouse.
BONO: When we were making No Line On The Horizon I met up with Polly Harvey and we were talking about poetry written by soldiers and people experiencing wartime and we were reading the same books. Her album ‘England Shakes’ is a very powerful piece of work and she has some very interesting people coming up behind here too like Lana Del Ray. Adele, of course, is stunning but the loss of Amy Winehouse is tragic, that could really make you depressed about the future if you think about it too much.
When Florence and the Machine took the U2360 stage, she used it like no-one else, what a performer. She was running around the circumference of it and just owning it, a remarkable creature and a very challenging album. Another one I’ve been appreciating which really sustains is ‘50 Words For Snow’ by Kate Bush.
EDGE: And we shouldn’t forget that Lisa Hannigan album (‘Passenger’), which is also pretty special.
Do you see particular themes emerging in music at the moment?
BONO: Something really exciting is that finally the rock band is melting into clubland and experimenting with sounds that are not normally deemed authentic for the rock band - synthesizers, experimental sounds - which you can hear in an album like that by The Temper Trap. That’s exciting, a new hybrid. But it remains ridiculous that black music and white music are still in separate genres - let’s hope in 2012 that kind of false division falls away.
Talking of which, what about Watch The Throne?
BONO: We should have mentioned that because when Jay-Z was on the road with us in Australia, Kanye was with him, working on that album. I remember they were high as kites on their music and words and Jay-Z was so confident they were doing something that was very special. That turned out to be right.
Like the PJ Harvey record, but in a completely different way, it was a record that captured the zeitgeist.
BONO: Yes, one in the UK, one in the US, and I wonder what will come out of this depression, recession, economic horror show we’re going through, I wonder how artists will respond to that. In the ‘70’s the recession gave us punk rock and The Clash and The Sex Pistols: bleak years of high oil prices, recession and unemployment, then you had this angry music which also had such a life-force and that life-force kick started our band
Sometimes forces outside the arts and culture, like an economic crisis, can ignite great music.
EDGE: I think they can, they can fill the vaccum and it’ll be interesting to see if the new folk will become more mainstream. For example, look at the big albums in the UK over the last year and the beautifully crafted, golden talent of Adele is there but standing aside from this is this other movement - this intimate music, hand-made in real-time - like Mumford And Sons, Noah and the Whale, Laura Marling and Bon Iver. It’ll be interesting to see if that starts to seep into the mainstream because in the face of this upheaval, where people feel disenfranchised, as if they’re not able to control their own destiny, things that are more homespun, tangible and sound more real can be more reassuring.
BONO: You might be right on that Edge, that perhaps in a noisy, driven, neon-lit media world this intimacy is where the conversation is, which would be quite radical.
You mentioned the Lisa Hannigan record and I’ve heard her play a couple of times this year, and it’s been amazing. On Christmas Eve, I was with Glen Hansard and a bunch of Irish bards and minstrels performing on Grafton Street in Dublin, singing for the homeless of our city. Afterwards we went back to this room and there was an extraordinary session where I heard rawness of talent that I haven’t heard for a while: Damien Rice singing from a special and sacred place, and Mundy and Glen Hansard and Liam O'Maonlai, singing in Irish, and Declan O’Rourke with a remarkable song called Galileo. It was just the passing of the guitar from one to another, ten minstrels in the room. I wasn’t sure if I fitted in that club but I liked being there.
I played a couple of songs acoustically but earlier in the year both Edge and I played at the memorial to Steve Jobs and also at the Hollywood Bowl for the Bill Clinton Foundation. It’s quite something hearing our own songs, like Sunday Bloody Sunday or A Man and Woman, so stripped down and I think it showed us some clues for the future.
We’re working on three albums at the moment and we haven’t decided what order we’re going to put them out but ‘The Songs of Ascent’ have the kind of beautiful intimacy that we’re speaking of now. They fit into this moment, the mode of some of these artists that I was hanging out with on Christmas Eve.
We shouldn’t leave music in 2011 without mention of the end of REM, your fellow travellers for more than thirty years…
EDGE: That really came out of the blue. We were with Michael a week before and he wasn’t giving any hints, which is great because he wanted their fans to hear it first, but I’m still thinking to myself that maybe in a few years time they’ll do some stuff together! What’s the point in breaking up except to be back together again! I’m being selfish I suppose, I would love to see them doing some more work together.
BONO: Those three new songs of theirs are part of the great soundtrack of 2011. One of them, ‘Hallelujah’, is just breathtaking and then there is ‘We All Go Back To Where We Belong’, which for me, again, is one of the great songs of the year…
2011 also saw the passing of Steve Jobs, not a musician but someone who helped transform music for everyone.
EDGE: What was wonderful about what Steve achieved was that in a time when other media, from video games to YouTube, were starting to draw all your time and attention, the arrival of iTunes and the iPod meant your computer became your music library. It was ubiquitous, music was everywhere again. It was so important that music didn’t just become a ‘60’s, ‘70’s, ‘80’s thing which might have come to an end as an important cultural force in the ‘90’s. Today music is as healthy as ever - it’s really just the economics that have taken a hammering and we’re hopeful that will be corrected at some point.
BONO: And Apple will continue to be a guiding light because of the reverence at the heart of what they do. The reverence for design, to make things of beauty in an age where that is rare, and the reverence for music, like the reverence for The Beatles you see when you look at their home page. That will stay with them.
I think we’ll see a whole revolution in artwork, photography and lyrics as albums metamorphose into apps. The experience of listening to music will become a looking experience as well as a listening one, as it was in the ‘70’s with gatefold sleeves except that now the gatefold sleeve will be digital on your ipad or plasma screen. I’m excited about the future but saddened that Steve will not be around to see it.
Are the changes in the digital landscape of music, from iTunes to Spotify and Facebook, informing the way the band are thinking about upcoming releases?
EDGE: There’s a lot of pressure to start thinking in terms of just one song because that’s the trend. Even on the big records people tend to just buy the one song. It’s a throw back to the period before the LP when everything was the 45. We’ve been kind of holding out against that because we love the album as a format, it’s what we grew up with, so for us it will still be album thinking for the next little while.
BONO: But they better be good, we aren’t going to put one out unless we think every song on it is vital.
EDGE: And we’re greedy! We want to have impact on many levels. We want the impact of a collection of songs that people go away and live with, which get under their skin, but we also want the impact of a 45, the great single that reaches places and people that a long player wouldn’t.
We’ve been talking about PJ Harvey’s ‘England Shakes’ as one of the most important records of the year which shows that it’s still possible to make great albums, to allow the songs to go out there and fight for their own place in the culture. The ultimate of course is to have an album of tunes that are so compelling that they not only fit into what people are liking but actually change what people are liking – that’s our ambition.
Recent U2 studio albums have come roughly every four years… any clues on when the next one might arrive?
BONO: We don’t know yet but we’ve got three albums we’re working on. Our good friend Chris Martin says, ‘Well, why can’t you put the three of them together and put them out now?’ He makes a lot of sense but that’s just not how we work! I’d like to think that if things continue to go as well as they have with Brian Burton - aka Danger Mouse – then we’re going to shock some people with the new sounds and songs we’ve got.
A few months on, have you had a chance to stand back and reflect on the U2360 phenomenon?
EDGE: It was an amazing experience from beginning to end. I still remember the moment I first saw this stage we were going to be playing on, it was jaw-dropping to see it standing in the stadium in Barcelona. It also turned out to be a dream to work with because the sound in the stadiums was always way better than we’d been able to achieve in the past. We managed to do something different with presenting a band live and that’s a great feeling.
BONO: I also remember that opening night and even when things were falling off the stage and falling off the musicians, songs smashing on the ground right in front of us, mistakes everywhere, I just couldn’t get the smile off my face. I knew it worked! We put our audience at the centre of the show, that’s what happened in 360, they were the production. After a while this mega-structure disappeared, we were left as four musicians in this gigantic crowd with waves and waves of emotions spiralling around us and inside us. I’ll never forget walking out to David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ each night and into our own space station … and then taking off! I don’t know how we’re gonna top that, we’ll have to go indoors I think, do something smaller.
I’d like people to understand – and I think they do – that most of the cash that came through the tills was spent on the production and on the people that gave it to us but we still came away so spoiled and over-rewarded. But I’ve heard conversations with fans of other bands and they say ‘I went to see this other band and of course they didn’t need any of those tricks, they didn’t need any of those lights or any of that production stuff...' But the ticket was the same price I try to tell them…
People understand the team and technology and passion that went into putting up and pulling down that tour every night, and the U2 crew really shone like they never shone before. But those seven million people who came to the shows, they really are who we work for and as I say - and I mean it every time – they’ve given us this incredible life. At a moment when a lot of people are not having a great time because of this economic climate, here we are given this incredible, successful tour. We have to thank people.
And the band finally got to play Glastonbury?
BONO: On a day off on a North American tour which is mental! But that was an audience that really let us in when the whole place was looking like it was going to get washed away. People were very generous to us… even those protesting. I admire people who get organised and are agitators although in this case I’m not sure they understood the issues that were involved: you know there was a thing going around that U2 are in a tax haven, which of course we’re not. One of the centrepieces of the Irish economy is our tax competitiveness and Irish people are fighting to keep it that way, so no thinking Irish person would deny an Irish company the very thing we offer international companies but you know people don’t look into it that deeply.
Glastonbury wasn’t a normal U2 show, it was much more gritty and edgy and the stage was like an ice rink so I couldn’t really move around. But it was a statement of intent on our part, that we still want to meet a new audience and we don’t mind going into a muddy field in the rain to find them. We want to keep things fresh for our old audience by finding newer ones. The one-hour BBC special of our set is something we’re very proud of.
How long does it take to re-enter earth’s orbit after two years on the space station ?
EDGE: No idea! Only our friends and families could tell you that. I thought I was absolutely normal the minute I got home but everyone else around me might have a different story…
BONO: When Edge got into the beekeeping, then I thought he was going to be fine!
Some wonderful bands have toured with you over the years and sometimes the younger ones will mention the ‘U2 chat’. What’s your advice for bands starting out now ?
EDGE: What we would have been about early on as a band was trying to crack performing live and then trying to attract a record deal. Now people release their own records, so there’s not the same emphasis on the record label as before, it’s a whole different world. But in the end it’s the songs that will be here long after we’re gone.
BONO: One song. Jimmy Iovine said a genius thing to me once: ‘People want to go straight to the ‘70’s when they haven’t gone through the ‘60’s.’ In the ‘60’s there was incredible songwriting craft at work - The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Hollies… - with such a focus on the song. So in the ‘70’s, when the hard rock and punk rock bands came along, they were informed by the discipline of the great songs. But if you forget about the '60's and start at the '70’s you lose that dimension. So my advice would be that one song can change your world, one song can change the world.
Away from music, this was a notable year in history…
BONO: A momentous year, the millennium really began in 2011 in Tahrir Square. The power model of the past was inverted, that was the pyramid with the power at the point and the people at the base. That’s been turned upside down, ironically, in the land of the pyramids. Now the most powerful thing is the base and the top has to listen or be made irrelevant. That connectivity between people that social media makes possible has been the driver in this: in the information age it’s very hard to hide if you’re a despot or dictator trying to trick your people. Everything is in the open, transparency is the word in the year of the activist.
And activism and social change are always close to the heart of U2, most recently with the (RED) Zone on U2360. How did it work out?
EDGE: Yes, at the beginning of the tour we decided for the first time to get involved in the secondary ticket market with the (RED) Zone tickets. We allowed a small selection of tickets each night to be auctioned off with profits going to the (RED) Campaign. In the end that generated $12m for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It’s something we’re very proud of.
BONO: We are - and that money will support vital health systems in developing countries. It’ll keep many people alive.
I am really looking forward to what they recorded with Danger Mouse. Bono saying new sounds has me excited!
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
http://www.u2start.com/topic/8415/Pearl-jam/
Love this site even more now.
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Anyone that is part of U2's fan club want to hook me up with a copy when it becomes available?
I kind of wish this was a commercial release. When was the last live commercial release...Under a Blood Red Sky?
I really like the track list.
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
according to the provisions provided in sopa, i will be unable to do this
I wonder if it's too late for me to join and get one of these?
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
No, it is not too late. Anyone who joins in 2012 will get this as part of the subscriber package.
I expect these to be sent out in April or so (based on past years).
Isn't there also a members only sale?
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
I'm not sure what you mean with "Isn't there also a members only sale." You can only get this U22 set when you're a member in 2012 and you get only one copy. It's not possible to order multiple U22 discs.
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
The Battle to Stay Relevant
While at the Toronto International Film Festival for the screening of From the Sky Down, the new film about the making of U2’s 1991 classic and career saving record, Achtung Baby, a reflective Bono confessed, “U2’s been on the verge of irrelevance for 20 years.”
Now, what was the most common reaction to R.E.M.’s recent break up announcement? “Who cares? They haven’t been relevant for years.”
Jane’s Addiction, once an anarchic underground force, has just released a new record that opens with a bit of false advertising: “I’ve replanted my feet back in the underground.” It sounds more like Tool meets Muse and a desperate reach for modern rock radio.
And remarkably, the Rolling Stones have now been irrelevant for far longer than they were ever relevant (and that’s being charitable and conceding 1981’s Tattoo You as their last decent record). And it’s not like Mick Jagger wasn’t obsessed with trying to keep up with trends through the ‘80s and ‘90s and, sadly, failing.
Yes, it’s the great relevancy debate. But what is it to be relevant? Some criteria: First off, to be called “no longer relevant” you had to have once been relevant.
For lack of a better term, relevancy is to matter, and to do so beyond your own core audience. Because let’s face it, as highly regarded as R.E.M.’s first four records are, no one would have debated their relevancy if they hadn’t ever crossed over commercially. Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and the Fall are all great bands who consistently produced compelling and challenging work throughout their 20-plus year careers, but those bands were never subjected to the pressures and expectations bands like U2 or R.E.M. did once they crossed over commercially.
Yes, the irrelevancy charge is directed at artists who have broken through with some commercial success, been exalted, and then put out at least two straight crap records at which point the self-appointed watchdogs declare they’ve stayed past their welcome.
Then there’s the disproportionate amount of scrutiny directed at artists that dare to suggest that rock ‘n’ roll has some higher meaning. As a result, bands like the Who, the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., U2 and Rage Against the Machine have all been judged by a higher set of standards. Ever outspoken and idealists to the core, the Clash vowed to walk it like they talked it, but their slightest misstep brought out cries of: “Hypocrisy!” For years, the Who stood alone on the front line asking more from rock ‘n’ roll and from themselves than anyone, but as soon as they signed on with Schlitz beer to sponsor their 1982 farewell tour, the firing squad took aim. And why is it that the only way Rage Against the Machine can prove its sincerity is if they donate all of its money to charity?
Meanwhile, bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, and Pennywise (I could go on) pump out inoffensive, interchangeable product and no one bothers debating their relevancy. The Offspring, Nickelback, Foo Fighters, Coldplay and Linkin Park seemingly release the same records over and over, and it doesn’t inspire the type of venomous derision leveled at bands like U2 or Rage Against the Machine.
What’s the lesson here? Don’t stand for anything? Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve? Don’t take risks? Don’t challenge yourself, your audience or the status quo? Because to do so only makes you the target of the great levelers of the world who stand for absolutely nothing but the minute anyone who holds any set of beliefs stumbles along the way, they’re eviscerated.
Like the Who, U2 was always motivated by an underlying terror over becoming irrelevant. “It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition,” Bono has said. And yet, U2’s greatest crime has always been its willingness to admit its unbridled ambitions. “I do feel we are meant to be one of the great groups,” Bono said on U2’s first U.S. tour in 1981. That kind of drive sounded quaint until U2 actually became the biggest band in the world.
But then what? Artists who attain commercial success start to not only get judged like but start to act like they’re releasing a Hollywood blockbuster. Sales numbers become the sole judge for gauging success. Experimentation is sacrificed for the safe, tried and true. Chasing numbers instead of chasing the muse. The next one has to be bigger than the last. See: U2’s Popmart tour debacle.
It’s easy to blame “the man” and the expectations from the big bad major labels, but it’s as much a self-imposed creative shackling. It’s a kind of self-consciousness that short-circuits one’s natural evolution to the point of self-analysis-paralysis.
Look at Michael Jackson who consistently sold millions after Thriller, but those subsequent sales numbers paled by comparison. Not coincidentally, his records, videos and live performances just kept getting more desperate and grandiose in scope while the innovation and intimacy that was the cornerstone of Off the Wall and Thriller went missing on later releases like Dangerous and Invincible. Tellingly, MTV approached him at the time of Invincible about an Unplugged appearance reasoning that giving an intimate performance would be refreshing after the scandals and personal dramas of the past several years, but he didn’t want any of that. He became consumed with the presumption that grandiosity was the tonic, and he never let us in close again, did he?
After U2 reinvented itself (and resuscitated its career after the debacle of Rattle and Hum with Achtung Baby and the ensuing innovative Zoo TV tour, they were badly shaken by the commercial failure of 1997’s Pop. Their next two records, 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, while commercially successful, were conservative, close to the vest ventures and devoid of any experimentation.To their credit, they followed that up with 2009’s No Line on the Horizon which was, at least by comparison experimental, but flopped commercially. What’s troubling is that U2 has now disowned that record and talk from their camp suggests they believe they need to score big with their next record or they will become fully irrelevant.
“We’ve dodged and we’ve dived and made some great work along the way and occasional faux pas,” Bono went on to say in Toronto. “But this moment where we’re at, to me, feels really close to the edge of irrelevance. We can be successful, we can play big music in big places, but whether we can play small music, for radio or clubs, remains to be seen. And we have to get to that place again, if we are to survive.”
But how many artists that have broken through commercially even think about challenging themselves and evolving? There’s a reason the Clash were called “the only band that matters.” Few bands ever evolved, expanded and crossed genres with such stunning results as the Clash. Yes, there’s Radiohead, but they haven’t been interested in being the biggest band in the world since they knocked on the door with 1997’s OK Computer.
The better question is how many bands are allowed to have a career these days? How many are afforded the luxury of going through growing pains like R.E.M. and U2 did earlier in their careers. In today’s environment, U2 and R.E.M. probably would have been dropped from their respective labels before each broke through commercially on their fifth record. These days in order to have a sustainable career, it’s too risky to put innovation and experimentation at a premium. Bands aren’t given enough margin for error. One bomb and you’re on the chopping block.
Sure, bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers have had a career, but all were given the chance to develop and build a core following before the music industry was revolutionized. Since then, the more inherently adventurous album format has been rendered moot. The singles oriented market we have now has narrowed the creative scope and records are now mere collections of songs targeted for radio, commercials, TV or movie placement or for download.
What will become of bands like MGMT and Airborne Toxic Event, two great bands who had hits on their debut records and followed them up with strong but less successful offerings? Will they and bands like The Strokes, Arcade Fire and Kings of Leon be given the chance to suffer growing pains? If they stumble commercially, will they abandon experimentation for what’s safe and recognizable?
It got to be too much for R.E.M. who this year released its swan song, Collapse into Now and didn’t even bother with a farewell tour. Their last five records have been such a disappointment even their hardcore fans stopped listening. It’s the perils of having such a strong body of work in your canon to live up to. Michael Stipe explained R.E.M.’s breakup only like this: “The skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave.” Most of their long-time fans were relieved not unlike a sports fan when their favorite fading star finally hangs ‘em up. Watching your favorite band become irrelevant is kind of like watching Michael Jordan unable to elevate high enough to dunk in his final year in the NBA.
What we’ve seen the last ten years is an amalgamation of the record industry’s malaise with pop media’s obsession with tearing down anyone who climbs too high. Who dares to fly the flag for rock ‘n’ roll? Who dares to wear their heart on their sleeve? Why bother? It’s too much risk for not enough reward. Safer to pump out the tried and true and be spared the added scrutiny.
My guess is we’ve seen the last of the Great Rock Spokesman like Townshend or Joe Strummer. U2 may be the last great band to insist rock has some greater meaning. Personally, I think it’s a far more interesting world with U2, the Clash, Pete Townshend and Rage Against the Machine in all their bluster and wayward idealism. Because we’re at a point now where it feels like anyone who reaches a modicum of success is so fearful of failure all we get is a steady diet of bland soup churned out by inoffensive and interchangeable bands. Has rock ‘n’ roll reached a point where its stars operate solely to maintain status? Sad.
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Totally disagree with this. The last 2 R.E.M. records were both brilliant, and arguably two of the best albums they've ever done. Yea that's right, I said it.
-Tom Waits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9crVHnOc ... re=related
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
I approve of this message.
Eddie Vedder- 7/16/11
Brad- 4/21/12 (RSD Performance), 4/27/12, 8/10/12
Flight To Mars- 5/23/12
RNDM- 11/27/12
PEARL JAM- 12/6/13 I have finally seen Pearl Jam live!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry42AY3efqw
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo8OFQvGWVQ
Eddie Vedder- 7/16/11
Brad- 4/21/12 (RSD Performance), 4/27/12, 8/10/12
Flight To Mars- 5/23/12
RNDM- 11/27/12
PEARL JAM- 12/6/13 I have finally seen Pearl Jam live!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=115b_xOj ... re=related
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsMsmiwx ... re=related
Eddie Vedder- 7/16/11
Brad- 4/21/12 (RSD Performance), 4/27/12, 8/10/12
Flight To Mars- 5/23/12
RNDM- 11/27/12
PEARL JAM- 12/6/13 I have finally seen Pearl Jam live!
http://www.atu2blog.com/davy-jones-u2-c ... cussion%29
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Very cool.
Eddie Vedder- 7/16/11
Brad- 4/21/12 (RSD Performance), 4/27/12, 8/10/12
Flight To Mars- 5/23/12
RNDM- 11/27/12
PEARL JAM- 12/6/13 I have finally seen Pearl Jam live!
Happy Birthday.....
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
......I still have it in my all U2 bin in the attic somewhere.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)