" ~~~ U2 ~~~ "

norm

:thumbup: :thumbup:

As a U2.com subscriber, we wanted you to be first with some breaking news - this Sunday the band's 360° Show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will be filmed for a dvd.

As they're drafting in more cameras to create a great film, the band has decided to allow it to be streamed live on YouTube.

It'll be officially announced later today but at 8.30pm (PT) on Sunday, wherever you are in the world don't miss the chance to see the show live and uninterrupted online. See a clip on You Tube.

As well as being able to watch the show, we'll bring our subscribers news as the week progresses from our video reporter on the ground. We'll also have bulletins from Director Tom Krueger and other exclusive video footage from backstage over the weekend.

Stay tuned, should be quite a night...

best wishes,
The U2.Com Team

http://member.u2.com/news/title/live-on ... his-sunday

Bathgate66

norm wrote:

:thumbup: :thumbup:

As a U2.com subscriber, we wanted you to be first with some breaking news - this Sunday the band's 360° Show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will be filmed for a dvd.

As they're drafting in more cameras to create a great film, the band has decided to allow it to be streamed live on YouTube.

It'll be officially announced later today but at 8.30pm (PT) on Sunday, wherever you are in the world don't miss the chance to see the show live and uninterrupted online. See a clip on You Tube.

As well as being able to watch the show, we'll bring our subscribers news as the week progresses from our video reporter on the ground. We'll also have bulletins from Director Tom Krueger and other exclusive video footage from backstage over the weekend.

Stay tuned, should be quite a night...

best wishes,
The U2.Com Team

http://member.u2.com/news/title/live-on ... his-sunday

beat me to this, norm!

i'll be watching
even if only to see how very little , if at all,
the entire production has changed since giants stadium.

norm

Bathgate66 wrote:

norm wrote:

:thumbup: :thumbup:

As a U2.com subscriber, we wanted you to be first with some breaking news - this Sunday the band's 360° Show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will be filmed for a dvd.

As they're drafting in more cameras to create a great film, the band has decided to allow it to be streamed live on YouTube.

It'll be officially announced later today but at 8.30pm (PT) on Sunday, wherever you are in the world don't miss the chance to see the show live and uninterrupted online. See a clip on You Tube.

As well as being able to watch the show, we'll bring our subscribers news as the week progresses from our video reporter on the ground. We'll also have bulletins from Director Tom Krueger and other exclusive video footage from backstage over the weekend.

Stay tuned, should be quite a night...

best wishes,
The U2.Com Team

http://member.u2.com/news/title/live-on ... his-sunday

beat me to this, norm!

i'll be watching
even if only to see how very little , if at all,
the entire production has changed since giants stadium.

c'mon bath you know it will be essentially the same show you saw...funny though, i watched a couple vids from the tour and am now starting to get excited to see the show...and one is all i need

Bathgate66

NewsOK
October 19, 2009

By George Lang


U2 fans will be talking about "the claw" for years, and how the Irish band brought a gigantic stage set to Norman that almost made Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium feel like an intimate venue -- well, maybe a basketball arena. But even with that imposing, "in the round" superstructure towering over Owen Field, the emphasis Sunday night was on U2's performance -- all the visual flash was in service to the band, which performed a lengthy set spanning 26 years -- or, as Bono said early in the set, the length of time since the group's last stop in Norman.

"It took us 26 years to travel one mile," Bono said, referring to the band's performance at Lloyd Noble Center in 1983. And throughout the concert, Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. took huge leaps through U2's musical history, opening with three songs from this year's No Line on the Horizon -- "Breathe," "Get On Your Boots" and "Magnificent," before hurdling backward to 1991's "Mysterious Ways." While the group was highlighting its new songs whenever possible, U2 kept the crowd of 60,000 fans happy to the point of mass, ecstatic dancing when the group deployed its acknowledged classics such as "Beautiful Day" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

This was an audience ready to play along: toward the end of "Still Haven't Found," Bono sang two lines of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me," and the stadium finished the first verse and chorus for him. Perhaps because the mood was right and the crowd was primed, U2 added two songs it had not played in previous shows on the tour, 2000's "In a LIttle While" and the new "Unknown Caller," a dramatic, half-chanted song partially constructed from computer commands. But after that deep plunge into the new disc, the band came roaring back to familiar territory with two of its most haunting songs, the Biblical melodrama "Until the End of the World" and a mesmerizing version of "The Unforgettable Fire."

Spotlighting new material can be challenging to a band with a three-decade history, but the new songs from No Line intensified in the live setting, particularly a discofied "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" and the show's closer, "Moment of Surrender." But U2 also brought an uncommon intensity to some older material, especially during a fiery version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" that was performed against images from this year's election protests in Iran. The Edge's guitar work on "Bloody Sunday" was possibly his most energized of the evening, with Clayton and Mullen barreling through the song's martial rhythm. And the band closed out the main set by devoting "MLK" and "Walk On" to jailed Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with Amnesty International volunteers walking the massive circular runway carrying masks bearing the imprisoned politician's face.

While the Black Eyed Peas performed an energetic set of recent hits including "Boom Boom Pow," "I Gotta Feeling" and "Meet Me Halfway," the opener was the equivalent to a slick, Auto-Tuned pep rally for U2 -- this is a group that has dominated the singles charts for most of 2009, but while the Peas had much of the crowd moving throughout their 45-minute segment, even a seemingly unstoppable dance-pop machine was merely a prologue for the stars of the evening. All in all, U2 played a long main set -- 19 songs -- and came back to play some of the most popular songs of its career, including "One," "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "With or Without You," with Bono singing into and swinging from a glowing circular microphone that dangled from the center of "the claw." Sure, it looked like an alien landing, but U2 cleverly used the dimensions of its enormous stage to bring a human focus to the band and its performances.

© NewsOK.com, 2009.

Brisk.

Whats so great about these guys, only heard whts been spammed on radio. But i decided to actually listen to 'one of the best albums ever' i.e Joshua Tree. I halfway through and dont really see whats thats great, its not the worst thing ever but still what the hell... 140 million records :S

bigbadbill

I live exactly 3.4 miles away (northeast) from the Rose Bowl. I'll be dropped off at Arroyo and Rosemont, and I'll be going for a 1.5 mile trek to the front gate of the Rose Bowl.

Poncier

Bathgate66 wrote:

NewsOK
October 19, 2009

By George Lang
Perhaps because the mood was right and the crowd was primed, U2 added two songs it had not played in previous shows on the tour, 2000's "In a LIttle While" and the new "Unknown Caller," a dramatic, half-chanted song partially constructed from computer commands. .

© NewsOK.com, 2009.

George Lang needs to do a touch of research.

I'll give him a bit of a pass on "In a Little While". Played 5 times in Europe this summer and 10/3 in NC prior to OK, but Unknown Caller while having disappeared from the set for the 7 shows prior to Norman Bates, OK was played in 29 of the previous 32 shows.
What did he look at a couple of recent setlists to determine what the entire tour had entailed?

Bathgate66

Poncier wrote:

Bathgate66 wrote:

NewsOK
October 19, 2009

By George Lang
Perhaps because the mood was right and the crowd was primed, U2 added two songs it had not played in previous shows on the tour, 2000's "In a LIttle While" and the new "Unknown Caller," a dramatic, half-chanted song partially constructed from computer commands. .

© NewsOK.com, 2009.

George Lang needs to do a touch of research.

I'll give him a bit of a pass on "In a Little While". Played 5 times in Europe this summer and 10/3 in NC prior to OK, but Unknown Caller while having disappeared from the set for the 7 shows prior to Norman Bates, OK was played in 29 of the previous 32 shows.
What did he look at a couple of recent setlists to determine what the entire tour had entailed?

great call.
did you write to him yet, to set him straight Poncier ?

Poncier

Couldn't be bothered.

norm

sunday!! :thumbup:


don't forget to look for me on youtube!! :wave:

Poncier

I'll be sawing logs by the time U2 takes the Rose Bowl stage.
Enjoy the show Norm.

washedinblack91

Brisk. wrote:

Whats so great about these guys, only heard whts been spammed on radio. But i decided to actually listen to 'one of the best albums ever' i.e Joshua Tree. I halfway through and dont really see whats thats great, its not the worst thing ever but still what the hell... 140 million records :S

IMHO joshua tree is not their best album. try listening to other ones. a lot of casual listeners think Ten is their best which may or not be true (I don't think so and I know a lot of people here think it isn't either). My favorite album of U2's happens to be Zooropa. they have a ton of albums so maybe you'll find something worthwhile. i'm not sure anyone knows why U2 is so popular, I don't even think U2 knows why either or maybe you just won't like anything they do. :P

norm

U2 and Bono adapt to changing times
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Ap Music Writer Fri Oct 23, 10:58 am ET

Even while maintaining its status as one of the few musical acts that can still fill stadiums, U2 is struck by how quickly its world is changing — musically and politically.

Charismatic front man Bono, in a reflective mood as U2 closes the North American leg of its "360" tour, notes the different, more polarized atmosphere in the United States since the band performed its anthem, "City of Blinding Lights," at President Obama's inauguration in January.

"I didn't think it could come to this so quickly, after the joyous occasion of that election," Bono says in an interview on board the band's plane, as they jet to another stop on the tour. "I thought America was looking good. ... Things are getting a little rough now."

Bono says he's been in touch with Obama and is confident the president will deliver on promises made during the campaign, including the singer's favorite issue: funding to fight AIDS in Africa. "The Obama administration is just getting going. (He) has promised to double aid over the next years, because even though (President George W.) Bush tripled it, ... the United States is still about half as what European countries give as a percentage, and I think he knows that's not right."

Meanwhile, Bono the rock star and the rest of U2 are struggling a bit themselves — as incongruous as that might seem for a band that will have performed to millions of people before its tour wraps overseas next year. (U2 ends its North American tour on Wednesday in Vancouver, British Columbia.)

Like other bands in the digital age, U2 is struggling to grab new listeners. Its members admit to frustration at the average album sales for its most recent release and wonder, as bassist Adam Clayton put it, whether the idea of an impassioned rock 'n' roll fan is becoming a thing of the past. (One experiment — U2 is broadcasting one of this weekend's concerts in Los Angeles on YouTube.com.)

"The commercial challenges have to be confronted," Clayton says during an interview backstage at "Saturday Night Live," as awaits the band's performance on the show's season kickoff. "But I think, in a sense, the more interesting challenge is, 'What is rock 'n' roll in this changing world?' Because, to some extent, the concept of the music fan — the concept of the person who buys music and listens to music for the pleasure of music itself — is an outdated idea."

The band's latest CD, "No Line on the Horizon," debuted at the top of the charts when it was released in March and has sold a respectable 1 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But the CD, which features more electronic music experimentation from U2, is the group's lowest selling CD in more than a decade. It represents a marked drop from 2004's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," which has sold 3.2 million copies to date, and 2000's 4.3 million seller, "All That You Can't Leave Behind."

"No Line" is also an album that hasn't had that one signature hit.

U2's last CD had "Vertigo," which wasn't a huge song on the pop charts, but became so ubiquitous thanks to Apple's iPod commercial that it might as well have been a No. 1 smash.

The first single from "No Line" — the driving, upbeat "Get on Your Boots" — didn't have a similar platform and didn't crack Billboard's top 30 singles pop chart. Meanwhile, "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" was featured in a Blackberry ad as part of the new partnership between the mobile device and U2 but was not released as a single.

Songs from the new album are clearly resonating with die-hard fans. "Get on Your Boots" drew one of the more frenetic responses from the crowd during a recent concert in Foxborough, Mass., outside of Boston, as did the anthemic show closer, "Moment of Surrender." Yet the album hasn't had the impact for which U2 had hoped.

While noting that signature U2 songs such as "Beautiful Day" and even "One" weren't massive or immediate hits, Bono does acknowledge disappointment that the band didn't quite "pull off the pop songs" with the new work.

"But we weren't really in that mindset," he says, "and we felt that the album was a kind of an almost extinct species, and we should approach it in totality and create a mood and a feeling, and a beginning, middle and an end. And I suppose we've made a work that is a bit challenging for people who have grown up on a diet of pop stars."

Some would argue that the Irish rockers — Bono, Clayton, The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr. — remain pop's biggest act. They are entering their fourth decade of music-making with a string of awards, from Grammys to Billboard to Golden Globes, tens of millions of records sold and a social impact that few musical acts can ever hope to achieve. Still, they find themselves in the same challenging position as most pop groups today, who must seek new ways to connect with music buyers in a declining industry and an increasingly fractious entertainment world.

"Music exists in an environment where people are multitasking, and I think that's a very different environment," says Clayton, who grew up appreciating jazz but realized "it was for people who took life a certain way, but it wasn't part of the modern world for me.

"I worry that the world of rock 'n' roll that I grew up in is destined to end up that way."

U2, of course, is hardly in danger of becoming a band that only gets heard in obscure clubs or on niche radio stations.

Its "360" tour is a massive undertaking that has the band performing in the center of stadiums, hence the "360" title. The production, which includes stages that take days to dismantle, has been one of the top grossing tours in the country since it kicked off in September, despite a price tag that runs upward of $250 (at least 10,000 tickets for $30 have been made available for every show).

And when the band played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., last month, it broke attendance records with a crowd of about 84,500 fans.

"In many ways, U2 has had such an enormous amount of success over the years we're almost proof against that," the band's longtime manager, Paul McGuinness, says, talking about U2 and the music industry's decline. "We're still selling a lot of recorded music, but it's a much smaller part of our business than playing live. This tour, by the time it's finished, we would have played ... to roughly 6 million people."

It is during live shows when U2 feels the most connection with its audience. Despite the stadium shows and the immense stage structure, the band insists that this time, the set up has created perhaps a greater intimacy with fans than the group has enjoyed in the past. They are literally surrounded by fans.

"The staging itself is something we've tried to do for a long, long time. The idea of playing 360 — it's never been done successfully, ... where everybody gets good sound and good visuals, and we managed to achieve that, I think," says Mullen, who, like the rest of his band mates, is affable and thoughtful as he talks about U2 backstage at "SNL."

"The thing about U2 has always been its audience, and in this environment, I think the audience is so important, and the reaction is so important," he says.

On tour, U2 can best gauge fan reaction to the new material. Last month at the cavernous Gillette Stadium near Boston, it was almost as frenzied and passionate as the reaction U2 gets for its classics. A roar came from the crowd as the band opened the show with "Magnificent," and the energy kept building as U2 performed four more new songs, including "Get on Your Boots."

"Judging by the reaction to the album, live, I feel like it has really connected," The Edge says. "There's a lot of records that make great first impressions. There might be one song that gets to be big on the radio, but they're not albums that people ... play a lot.

"This is one that I gather from talking to people. ... Four months later, they're saying, 'I'm really getting into the album now.'"

U2 is still hustling to promote the CD. When it was released in March, the group did "Good Morning America" and an unprecedented five-night appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman." More recently, U2 appeared on "SNL."

"I love to see an outsized band like U2 behaving like they're in the kindergarten and just doing what you do with your first album — taking it to the market, setting up your table, selling your wares, selling it out the street corners, giving out fliers," says an animated Bono, breaking into a wide grin behind his trademark sunglasses. "I think selling out is when you stop believing enough in your music to put yourself out to explain it to people."

U2's Blackberry partnership includes an application that allows users to download the CD and photographs, liner notes and more.

Yet the band is also careful not to be too unwieldy when it comes to attempting new avenues to promote its music.

"We're trying to do everything we can on that front without having to change what we're about artistically: The music stays sacrosanct," The Edge says. "We are much more focused on being the best than being the biggest."

And that means perhaps making the kind of album that doesn't guarantee hits but does guarantee surprises and new ideas, which "No Line" has delivered.

"The biggest danger for a band like U2 is accepting that you've reached a certain age, and, therefore, you can just actually sit back," says Mullen.

"That's not what we signed up to do. We want to make relevant, great music, and Bono has said numerous times, 'One crap album and you're out,'" he adds. "We've avoided it so far."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091023/ap_ ... s_music_u2

Bathgate66

norm wrote:

'One crap album and you're out,'" he adds. "We've avoided it so far."

guess he forgot all about " Pop " .

teskeinc

just in from the Vegas show, very good. light show was spectacular.

Bathgate66

Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois Remember the Making of U2's Unforgettable Fire

It all makes sense now, what with 25 years of history behind us, but at the time U2's decision to tap Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to produce the pivotal follow-up to their breakthrough album War was far from the most obvious course of action. Eno, after all, was a cerebral sounding board and problem solver splitting his time between his own projects and happily throwing a playful spanner into the works of others. Lanois, on the other hand, was far from a known quantity, a few years away from the defining work he would go on to do with such acts as Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, and Emmylou Harris. Yet somehow the unlikely combination of this band and these producers worked.

In advance of the 25th anniversary re-release of The Unforgettable Fire, the classic 1984 album Eno and Lanois ultimately made with U2 and the first of their many fruitful collaborations, we tracked down the two busy producers to talk about how they began their now quarter-century relationship with the band.

Pitchfork: Daniel, the story goes that Brian Eno recommended you produce U2 after they first came to him.

Daniel Lanois: Brian and I had been working in Canada in a town called Hamilton. We'd been making ambient records [including On Land and Apollo] for a few years, some very cool records. But I'll be real straight with you. During that ambient music-making chapter, I was pretty isolated. Nothing had really come my way that was illustrious, in terms of invites. I had poured my soul into these ambient works with Eno, and a lot of phone calls were coming in-- David Bowie was calling, Iggy Pop the next day. None of them to me, all to Brian. Brian was pretty much in the fast lane of record making at that point. He was pretty much on the pulse of things in New York City, and then he said that he wasn't producing records anymore. He was finished with it, and was therefore not interested in working with U2.

Brian Eno: I had never worked with that kind of music before, and I was not completely convinced that I would be the right person for it. I thought, well, I can handle the ideas side of it all right, but can I handle the actual traditional production side alright? I knew Dan was very good at that side of things, and very good at working with bands, getting the best out of the players and so on, so I said, "Why not have both of us? We'll sort of overlap in some parts, but we actually sort of serve different functions as well." That was how that working relationship started.

DL: I said to him that I would be interested in working for them because I was looking to sink my teeth into rock'n'roll. He said, well, perhaps an introduction can be made, because Brian felt that I had something to offer. Beyond my appetite to do good work, he felt that I had something to offer because I had a burning desire. So he accepted a meeting, and we went to Ireland with the idea of getting me on the U2 record.

BE: We had never actually produced anything of anybody else's before, though we had worked together quite a lot. We knew each other well, and we had some respect for each other's different talents. That seemed to me like the ideal situation. We could just do the bits we were sort of comfortable doing.

DL: They were oblivious to my existence, so in the end, he agreed to co-produce it with me.

Pitchfork: U2, particularly at that time, was totally at odds with the kind of music you were making. Why do you think they looked to you as producers?

BE: I think they were very keen on the Talking Heads stuff that I had done. I think they also, dare I say it, liked some of my music! [laughs] The main thing, actually, was that they wanted to go somewhere else.

DL: They wanted to do something different. U2 has been listening to New Gold Dream by Simple Minds as a point of reference, a record they liked. The panorama of the ambiance appealed to them. I think that Bono wanted to get to a place that was wider than stripped-down rock'n'roll, so we allowed ourselves the flexibility to embrace the colors that Eno and I had been developing.

BE: I had this phone call with Bono-- he is the greatest salesman of all time, you have to bear that in mind-- where I said to him, look, what I'm worried about is that I might change things rather unrecognizably. People might not particularly like the new you that comes out of this. And he said, well, actually we want to be changed unrecognizably. We don't want to just keep repeating what we've done before. He said if we wanted to, we're on track for being a band that just does the kind of records we've done so far. He said we want to do something different from that. He said we wanted to be more-- I forget the word he used, but "cutting edge" was the meaning. I thought, OK, as long as you appreciate that there's a risk involved in that.

After that conversation was when I came up with a plan. I thought, well, I knew that Danny was a great producer, and even if nothing about the working relationship between me and the band worked out, they would still have a really good producer in him. In fact, it worked out very well.

DL: The entire record has soft edges, but I suppose it can be viewed as...when you see great photographic images printed from film, the raw edges surrounding the portrait are part of the beauty. The medium presents itself, and therefore the restrictions become part of the dedicated work. I still love that about restrictions. I think we did the best we could with what we had to work with. We had very few tools, and there were no outside influences. We were huddled up as a team, and we got what we got because of what we brought to the table. Part of me likes a more ragged, jagged guitar sound or performance, but our work might not have been as innovative had we followed in the footsteps of what came before. We were very proud of what we had hit on.

Pitchfork: Daniel, you're more of a traditional musician than Brian is, and you obviously bring something different than he does to the albums you work on.

DL: We are similar in the sense that we love soul music, using "soul" as a broad banner for anything that feels right, that has a sense of purpose to it. That's ultimately what we love in records, as a human race. We want to be lifted. But Eno's an incredible catalyst, and has a way of quickly presenting another way of looking at things. That's really his genius, and he's still the best at it. Of course, he might spontaneously come up with a fresh way to look at things, but when the shop door closes, Lanois is still sweeping up!

Posted by Joshua Klein on October 23, 2009 at 5:40 p.m.

(c) Pitchfork, 2009


interesting that the band looked to the simple minds for inspiration.

ive seen them multiple times in mid 80s.
they sounded really really good at radio city music hall on a few occasions.

norm

http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/entertainmen ... _200901023

Bathgate66

norm wrote:

http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/entertainment/massive_stage_created_for_u2_concert_200901023

where do we go to exactly to watch on youtube?

youtube wi have a link on the main page i assume ?
or do we need to go thru u2.com ?

norm

Bathgate66 wrote:

norm wrote:

http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/entertainment/massive_stage_created_for_u2_concert_200901023

where do we go to exactly to watch on youtube?

youtube wi have a link on the main page i assume ?
or do we need to go thru u2.com ?

http://www.youtube.com/U2

norm

and this is where i'm sitting!!