More U2 from Moscow

MOSCOW, August 26 (Itar-Tass) - The legendary Irish U2 rock group brought the house down on Wednesday during their first guest performance in Moscow. More than 40,000 rock lovers gathered at the Luzhniki stadium despite rain to watch three hours of rock extravaganza. All the tickets to the show had been sold out.

The Snow Patrol opener band played as a warm-up. The audience gave them a very warm welcome. But the house burst into applause to greet the U2 leader Bono when he appeared on the stage. The U2 musicians started their concert with the “Beautiful Day” hit. For the next three hours they performed their most famous hits and songs from their new CD “No Line on the Horizon”.

Addressing the audience from the stage, Bono said that he was very pleased to be in Moscow where U2 had never been before. He told the audience that he had met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who produced a very good impression on him. In the end, Bono wished everybody peace on Earth.

Torrential rain didn’t spoil the show. The audience paid no attention to the whims of nature. They enthusiastically sang along to their favourite tunes and danced to the U2 hits. They had waited for U2 for so many years.

The appearance of Yuri Shevchuk, the leader of the Russian DDT rock group, was a surprise. Together with Bono, they sang a song titled “Don’t Come Knocking.” The Irish musician thanked those who had bought tickets to the ‘red zone’. All the proceeds gained from the sale of tickets to those places will be transferred for the treatment of children ill with AIDS.

Activists Detained at Moscow U2 Concert

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Rights group Amnesty said five of its activists were detained while distributing flyers at a U2 concert in Moscow on Wednesday, which ended with a celebrated Kremlin critic joining the Irish rock stars on stage.

Police detained the five volunteers who were distributing leaflets and displaying banners for holding an unsanctioned protest at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium, the head of Amnesty International in Russia Sergei Nikitin told the Interfax news agency.

“I am very sorry about what happened … it overshadowed the concert,” Nikitin said. He said the activists were later released without charge. Interfax quoted an unnamed police official as saying two activists were detained.

At the end of their concert, U2 invited Russian rock star turned Kremlin critic Yury Shevchuk to join them on stage for a rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

 

Shevchuk has become a significant figure in Russia’s opposition movement since he delivered a rare public rebuke to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in May.

Shevchuk’s appearance with a guitar at an opposition protest at the weekend attracted 2,000 people, making it one of Moscow’s biggest protests in years.

U2 frontman Bono met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday to try to convince him to support his efforts to combat AIDS. He did not make any public criticism of the Russian leadership during his trip.

A spokeswoman for U2 said the band did not yet have the details of the detentions and could not immediately comment. An Amnesty spokesman said he could not immediately comment.



U2 Rocks Moscow !

A day after he traveled to Sochi on the Black Sea to meet President Dmitry Medvedev, Bono joined the rest of the band onstage at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium. The show was U2’s first-ever in Russia; the group had been one of the few major international acts who hadn’t played in the country, where Western music is hugely popular.

As the band took the stage, the skies opened with torrential rain - especially ironic since “Beautiful Day” was among the first songs. Most of the 50,000-plus crowd stayed dry, though, since the seating area at the stadium - used primarily for soccer - is covered by a roof. The band, as well as the throngs of fans in the dance-floor area, weren’t so lucky. Only the drum kit seemed reliably protected from the rain, while Bono, Edge and bassist Adam Clayton played under the raindrops and got soaked in the process.

Bono treated the crowd to an a capella version of “Singing in the Rain,” though most fans seemed more familiar with the words to U2’s own hits like “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “One” and “With or Without You,” which brought virtually the entire house to its feet.

Bono, at first, directed the political references for which he’s known to places located far from Russia. At one point, the band played “Walk On,” a song dedicated to jailed Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. Between songs, he thanked President Medvedev for his “gracious” reception.

But Bono gave his warmest shout-out (subtitled into Russian on the giant screen above the stage) to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he said was at the show (the two have known each other for about a decade). The crowd’s response was less enthusiastic - though credited with ending communism, Gorbachev is deeply unpopular in Russia for bringing about the end of the Soviet Union.

The band followed the praise of Gorbachev with “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” - which could be interpreted as a veiled reference to Russia’s interrupted move to democracy since Gorbachev left office in 1991. In case anyone missed the point, Bono later led the crowd in a chorus of Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” during a break in “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

The Russian politics got heavier in the encores, when Bono, playing acoustic guitar, invited Russian rocker Yuri Shevchuk onstage to join him for a version of Bob Dylan’s classic, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Shevchuk, whose band DDT started out in the underground under the Soviets, has been one of the very few Russian musicians to publicly criticize the Kremlin for rolling back democratic freedoms. Shevchuk confronted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about the issue at a meeting with artists and writers earlier this year. He’d signed an appeal with several other activists this week calling on Bono to raise the issues in his meeting with President Medvedev. It wasn’t clear from official Kremlin accounts if Russian domestic policies came up in that session, however. Bono started that meeting saying he hoped to bridge the musical gap between himself, a Led Zeppelin fan, and Medvedev, who is known for his love of Deep Purple (a group Bono and the rest of U2 had jokingly belittled in interviews with the Russian press this week). Medvedev resolved the issue by saying that he likes Led Zeppelin, too.

As the show headed into its third hour Wednesday and the group played its last encore (”Moment of Surrender”) dedicated to the victims of the wildfires that swept Russia this summer), the rain let up, releasing the crowd into a cool August evening.



U2 Vs Madonna

 

The Irish rock band U2 and its vocalist Bono brought a bonus of some millions of euros to Helsinki’s tourism and restaurant entrepreneurs. The capital could not accommodate all fans, which is why hotel rooms were sought as far away as in Riihimäki and Lahti. On Monday, the wind was blowing plastic mugs, cigarette stubs, and earplugs around Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium. Workers were unfastening the screws from the aluminium coatings which had been covering the stadium surface.

Apart from impressed fans and two days’ dismantling work, the megaband U2 left behind them in Finland millions of euros. Thanks to a total of roughly 100,000 visitors to the two concerts, especially hotel and restaurant entrepreneurs were all smiles. Even the ferry traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn as well as the demand for taxi rides picked up.
     
What this means in euros for Helsinki’s economy, nobody is willing to calculate accurately.

”The share of tourism will inevitably be millions of euros. How many millions, I cannot tell”, says Veli-Matti Aittoniemi, the Executive Vice President of Matkailu- ja ravintolapalvelut MaRa (“Tourism and Restaurant Services”).

The number of foreign visitors to the two concerts was roughly 6,000 to 8,000 per gig: Estonians had bought 5,000 tickets for Saturday’s concert, while a total o f 10,000 tickets had been sold to Russia and Sweden. Half of the Finnish fans came from outside Helsinki.

The 12,000 hotel rooms in the Greater Helsinki area were all sold out. Those visitors who were looking for accommodation had to search for lodging in Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Riihimäki, and even in Lahti, nearly 100km away.
     
”Top performers like U2 are such a draw that they are bound to attract tourists. Those who come from outside Helsinki go to restaurants and shops. They easily spend the same amount of money per day for other things as they pay for hotel accommodation”, says Aittoniemi.
     
The sales of the hotel chains, including the Stockholm-based Scandic, the Finnish Sokos Hotels, and the Restel hotels, increased by 15 to 30 per cent compared with a regular weekend in August.

The 2,400 rooms in the Scandic hotels in Helsinki and Tuusula were fully booked aleady a week prior to the two gigs.”The demand was exceptionally high and the impact of the concerts was wide. One could feel already outside the confines of the ring roads that something was happening in Helsinki”, describes Scandic director Christian Borg.

According to Borg, the demand was equal to that of Madonna’s gig in Helsinki in August 2009, but this boom continued one day longer. The first rooms were booked in October, when the tickets to the gigs came on sale.”A second peak occurred in July during the summer holidays, when people began to plan their trips”, says Borg.
     
The sales of the restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the Olympic Stadium and those in the city centre doubled or tripled, reports Jouko Heinonen, Divisional Manager at HOK-Elanto, the largest regional cooperative retail chain in Finland.

Drinks accounted for some 80 per cent of the chain’s restaurant sales. When we calculated the amount of sales, we noticed that Bono was 1.5 times more profitable than Madonna. Large crowds of people were out and about and they were in high spirits. Large numbers of out-of-own people had also come to attend the concerts”, Heinonen notes.

In Helsinki’s Royal Restaurants sales were up by 10 to 15 per cent.”It naturally has an effect on everything, when 50,000 people are moving in the city before and after the gig. The weekend was excellent”, Kasperi Saari, Managing Director of Royal Restaurants, says happily. 

 

Security for U2 show in Moscow

Moscow, Aug 25 (PTI) Russia will provide unprecedented security for the maiden show of the legendary Irish rock band U2 in the country at a stadium here by deploying over 2,000-strong police force.

Under their 360 degrees global tour, U2 is visiting Russia for the first time.

“Some 2,100 policemen and Interior Ministry”s troops will be providing security at the Luzhniki Stadium. Officers of the canine team and their dogs will inspect the stadium several hours prior to the concert,” Moscow police spokesman Viktor Biryukov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

About 85,000 spectators would have to pass metal detectors installed at the entrance to the stadium, where the group will perform tonight.

Extra security arrangements are being made at Moscow metro”s oldest Red Line passing through the stadium area and for six hours tonight transfer to the key transit station for the Ring Line ”Park Kultury” route will be closed.

Biryukov said such security measures are ”unprecedented” for a rock concerts in Moscow.

This is the first ever concert of famous U2 in Russia and the musicians arrived in the country three days prior to their performance, which according to organisers is unusual for this band.

Yesterday, U2 leader Bono met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

Besides music, they discussed various social and charity activities that Bono and his musicians are involved in.

Bono, who actively works in fighting AIDS around the world, requested Medvedev to recommend some Russian company, which could market his Red items, proceeds from which could go to charity fund for HIV infected people, Moscow Times reported.

U2.com Announces New Membership

A bit early by a couple of months U2.com has announced its new membership package for 2011 ( or the marketing wizards call it 2010-2011) will include a new CD titled DUALS

 

Over the years a unique community of artists have shared a recording studio with U2. From folk to punk, from country to blues and soul, these extraordinary collaborations have spanned musical genres… but until now they’ve never been collected together. U2:DUALS is a specially commissioned collection capturing U2 in collaboration with other artists over three decades.

The track list has not been made available in the announcement. Expect it to be released in the FALL/Winter of 2010.

'Songs of Ascent' lead single live on tour

 

on August 21, U2 performed a never-before-heard track called “Every Breaking Wave” in concert in Helsinki, Finland. That song - which can now be heard online - is reportedly the lead single from the band’s upcoming album Songs of Ascent.

U2 has already played three new songs on the current European leg of its 360° Tour: “Glastonbury,” “North Star,” and “Return of the Stingray Guitar,” all premiered during the opening concert in Turin.

After performing “Every Breaking Wave,” a slow-tempo acoustic song, lead singer Bono told the crowd, “No one has heard that before - not even us.”

Bono talked about the song to music magazine Rolling Stone in March 2009, saying it had originally been intended for the band’s 2009 studio album No Line on the Horizon but would instead serve as the lead single for forthcoming LP Songs of Ascent, which may be out by the end of 2010.

Bono recently told Rolling Stone that the band has three additional albums worth of material in the works: a rock album, a “club-sounding” album, and the band’s music for the Broadway play Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

 Editor Note

Watch U2’s performance of “Every Breaking Wave”:Video from U2GIGS * We have fan videos too however this really is the best one from the show - Cheers to Matt and Ax -