~~~***U2 line up New Album***~~~

Bathgate66 wrote:

http://www.ew.com/ew/listing/tv/wtw/0,6115,fri_3__,00.html?cid=email-ThisWeekend-20061124-TV-Show


Entertainment Weekly
FRIDAY, November 24, 2006
Tonight's Best TV

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'RECORD'-BREAKING ARTISTS BONO AND THE EDGE
MUST WATCH OF THE WEEK
SERIES DEBUT
11PM - MIDNIGHT

Off the Record (HBO, TV-14) Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart ain't no Mike Wallace, but his new rock & roll chat show has potential, especially if he can continue to score guests as candid as U2's Bono and The Edge. The cocktails help too. Plied with margaritas, the pair dish on The Edge's trademark guitar echo, the influence of Patti Smith on Bono's political activism/savior complex, and the group's mercurial songwriting process (''It could have been a great song,'' says Bono of the mostly improvised U2 classic ''Bad''). It's like VH1's Storytellers, but with F-words...because, after all, this is HBO. B+ — Jeff Jensen

this show was fantastic. ! Cant belive i had the opportunity to attend this recording - and missed it ! I especially enjoyed how they randomly talked about each particular song and its origins. ( ie : Bad, Bullet The Blue Sky ,.. )

desire, live ? :eek: and, as always- BAD-- one of the best live songs ever.

Bono makes emotional plea to NZ
27 NOVEMBER 2006
By CATH BENNETT
http://www.sundaynews.co.nz

U2 front man Bono made an emotional plea for One Tree Hill to be
replanted after visiting the spot that sparked one of the band's most
famous songs.

His Irish supergroup became passionate about the Auckland landmark
after their Kiwi roadie Greg Carroll took them there in the early '80s.

When the Wanganui sound engineer died in a motorbike accident, Bono
wrote the song One Tree Hill in his honour and dedicated the album on
which it appeared, The Joshua Tree, to Greg.

Bono was gutted to return more than a decade later to find the tree
gone.

The 125-year-old Monterey pine was felled in October 2000, six years
after Maori activist Mike Smith attacked it with a chainsaw.

Standing where the tree once dominated the Auckland skyline, Bono said:
"Somebody plant a tree on that beautiful hill.

"Someone take some seeds up there."

U2's return to New Zealand - for packed concerts on Friday and Saturday
at Auckland's Mt Smart Stadium - coincided with the 20th anniversary of
Greg's death.

Reminiscing about the Kiwi roadie he loved like a brother, Bono told
fans: "We spent some time here when our friend was lost in a car
accident.

"We went to the tangi - the funeral for Greg.

"It was a really important and very moving occasion to be with him and
his family.

"I've often thought that if in Ireland we had that, I'd have been there
for a few weeks when my father Bob died."

U2 played One Tree Hill at both their Mt Smart Stadium gigs.

The band's manager Paul McGuinness, whose sister Katie dated Greg, said
it would not be possible to play Auckland without the song.

"We asked Greg's family to come as our guests. We've kept in touch with
them."

Greg hooked up with U2 when they were in the country in 1984 on their
Unforgettable Fire tour.

He joined as a soundman, and became Bono's personal assistant, touring
Europe and North America.

Greg, nicknamed G-Dub, was knocked off his motorbike by a drunk driver
and killed in Dublin in 1986. He was 26.

A devastated Bono, drummer Larry Mullen and several members of the U2
entourage brought his body back to New Zealand for his tangi at Kai iwi
Marae, near Wanganui.

The three-day tangi was led by Greg's uncle, Maori music legend
Dalvanius Prime. Bono read a poem and sang.

Dalvanius' sister, Barletta Prime, said: "It was just so fabulous of
the band to bring him home."

Greg's aunt Barletta said he loved the time he spent with U2.

Greg was a devoted member of the Ratana Church, and after the tangi
Bono and Larry visited the religion's temple, Te Temepara, before
heading back to Auckland to visit One Tree Hill which Greg loved.

At the time, Bono said: "In the short time we had together Greg became
flesh and blood, he felt like my brother.

"He was one of those guys of whom you say, 'He's too good for this
world.'

"We haven't and I don't think we will ever get over his loss."

THE SKINNY ON 'WINDOW IN THE SKIES'
November 28, 2006

Thanks to @U2 Forum member George for finding details of the "Window In
The Skies" CD release on the web site of UK collectibles store EIL.com.
It looks like the now standard 2-CD and DVD single release. B-sides
include "Tower of Song" from the I'm Your Man film, live versions of
"Zoo Station" and "Miss Sarajevo", and an "Extra Special Effects"
version of "The Saints Are Coming."

EIL.com: 2-CD single set and DVD single

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=382187
http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=382188

see all U2 items at EIL.com >>

http://eil.com/Weblink/ExtSearch.asp?DiscArtist=U2&adtype=U-2a

http://www.u2.com/trivia/?contest_id=7


for the deluxe new album

Pete the Chop (whatever happened to him?) was on the b-side of this release.


It's in the Sky and you can see through it in 2007.


What is the bonus track on the UK edition of ‘U218 Singles’.


This is the song in which Bono insists he is 'not a hopeless case'.


This 1987 single featured a b-side which, much later, became a single itself and is also featured on U21989 Singles.

Poncier- hats off to you- you're good !

backstage with Clapton :

http://www.u2.com/news/index.php?mode=full&news_id=2071

A worldwide jaunt winds down but not fans' enthusiasm -- despite a
cultural gap here and there.

Bruce Wallace

It had been eight years between U2 gigs in Japan, so perhaps it
shouldn't have been surprising that the restrained Tokyo audiences the
quartet remembers from previous tours have since morphed into a
dancing, bouncing, singalong, air-punching mob.

Then again, who in the world is going to sit through "Vertigo"?

But from the opening guitar riff and cascading piano chords of "City
of Blinding Lights" that kicked off these shows, the crowds in this
city with the most blinding lights anywhere showed a rarely exhibited
exuberance and joy. They embraced a band that until this week had
wondered whether it had ever cracked Japan the way it owns the rest of
the planet.

The Tokyo crowd's extroversion came more easily, of course, because
the four Irish musicians played with their own exuberance and joy
while wrapping up one of the most successful rock tours ever mounted.

The odyssey began 19 months ago in San Diego (after a press preview in
L.A.) and will end more than 100 shows later — with a final gig in
Honolulu on Saturday. Salting set lists with material from 2004's "How
to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," the latest studio album, and "Boy,"
their first, released 26 years ago, the band wound down this tour
extended by having to cancel 10 shows last March due to an illness in
the family of an undisclosed band member.

The "Vertigo" tour has incorporated the rock concert innovations of
the last few years: video screens that deliver intimacy to the back of
the hall; the wall of lights that can take you via video to Africa in
the middle of "Where the Streets Have No Name"; the political
sloganeering superimposed over a rumbling rhythm section.

The three Tokyo-area shows had an even greater in-your-face feeling
because the band actually squeezed its outdoor staging into the
20,000-capacity Saitama Super Arena. U2 arrived in Japan having played
nine outdoor shows in the Australian and New Zealand spring, traveling
with two long ramps that end in pods, extended like antennae from the
main stage deep into the audience.

It was from these "B" stages that Bono showcased the three maikos —
apprentice geishas — whom he had met in Kyoto on the weekend and who
ghosted across the set during "Mysterious Ways." The walkways allowed
Bono and the Edge to ramble through the audience, making it even
harder for the Japanese audience to resist the summons to dance.

It is less certain if Bono's political messages had the same
penetration with the crowd. The singer has used this tour, as always,
to proselytize for African debt relief and trade justice, spending
part of his time over eight days in Japan on a media blitz to raise
awareness of the "Hottokenai," Japan's chapter of the "Make Poverty
History/One" campaigns.

Japan is the world's second largest aid donor, and Bono chose flattery
rather than confrontation during a short meeting with Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, praising the country's international development record.
But Japan's nongovernmental organizations must operate in a culture
beset by widespread political apathy and little tradition of
individual activism.

The "Vertigo" tour has made a point of trying to inspire them. While
the set lists frequently switched songs through the first hour, the
block before the first encore was solidly political content, running
from "Sunday Bloody Sunday" through "Bullet the Blue Sky" and
culminating with the anthem "One." The band used this part of the show
to scroll the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Japanese, on
the wall behind them.

The temperature in the arena rose little through the message moments.
Japan was one of the only stops on the tour outside Europe and the
Americas, which may account for some of the usual tricks falling
flatter than expected. Bono opened the show waving a Japanese flag, a
move that might pull roars in Australia but that sends mixed signals
in a country currently watching conservative politicians pass a law
compelling students to face the flag and sing the national anthem
every morning.

Similarly, "Sunday Bloody Sunday" has gone from its roots in the Irish
Troubles to a prayer for peace in a time of Middle East bloodshed. But
although Japan has a small contingent of troops in Iraq to show
solidarity with its U.S. ally, the Buddhist country is mostly an
observer in the combustible collision between Christians, Muslims and
Jews. The antiwar chants of "No more!" lacked the passion you'd hear
from a Western crowd.

Nor, for all its excitement, could the crowd muster much of a singing
voice when Bono offered it the mike. From Dublin to São Paulo, crowds
roar their lines back at the band.

But here, that instinctive Japanese reserve appeared to kick in. After
one lame effort, Bono sucked his thumb and laughed at them.

Yet the pleasure of a U2 gig often lies in small, unexpected moments:
the Edge's subtle altering of a well-known riff, a cover or a new song
(U2 played the first live version of its upcoming single "Window in
the Skies" in Tokyo) or Bono's signature drift from a U2 song into a
snippet from the rock archives.

In Tokyo, the singer came out of "Beautiful Day" for a moment to sing
a verse of "Presence of the Lord" from Blind Faith, Eric Clapton's
band after Cream disbanded. Clapton was in the crowd (he has his own
set of concerts here this month), standing stoically at the back of
the hall near the mixing board, and didn't recognize the tune at first.

Then, suddenly, he did, jumping forward to tap a colleague on the
shoulder.

"That's my song," Clapton said, gesturing at the stage.

"When was the last time you played that song?" he was asked.

"I haven't even heard it for 20 years," he said. "But it's a great
idea!" Ah. Tired of U2?

Tired of life.