U2 TOUR FANS

The “crown” presented on Monday evening, the best band in the world live in the Ernst-Happel-Stadion. U2 enthusiasts with a spectacular show of the “360 °-Tour” and the largest round stage, the stages of this world have seen so far, some 70,000 fans.

 We knew that sooner or later we had to have one show that may not be consider the best of the group. This may go down as one of them. Bono is very talkative, suggestions that the pain meds may be the cause of it. Sure that could be possible. The techincal issues after a long sound check may be in question. The issues left long breaks between songs, great for the recording of the show, not so great for the audience. The Edge seemed to have most of the issues.

Traveling family on this show. three women and six children flew in on the private 360 AIR jet of course a police escore and a tight security detail. This show was considered to be a “runner” band came in, band played, band flew out. Adam flew in solo as reported.

Bono with wife Ali and sons Elijah and John. The Edge with children Ava and Ezra and wife Morleigh Steinberg. Larry is accompanied by time girlfriend Ann Acheson and the sons of Levi and Sian.

At the Vienna program includes the concert and a short sound check a platinum award and an exclusive backstage dinner. At midnight, we then jetting back home.

We are a family band: John is here, Elijah, Ava, Ezra, Levi, Sian. “In his address to the mega hit I Still Have not Found What I’m Looking For is Bono (50) on Monday in Vienna Stadium are very personal.  Bono made it a point to say that the family was in attendance.

After the show, the band flew home to Nice, and its on to Athens.

Update on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 10:59PM by U2TOURFANS

We want to be sure that we got it right -

Bono and Ali have two daughters, Memphis Eve and Jordan, and two sons, Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q (yes, his real name) and John Abraham. Edge has four daughters and a son: daughters Holly, Arran, and Blue Angel with Aislinn; and daughter Sian and a son named Levi with Morleigh Steinberg. Larry and Anne are the proud parents of  three children, Aaron Elvis ,Ava, and Ezra.

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. 

In the new issue of GQ, we hear from the man who stands behind it. Manager Paul McGuinness has written a fascinating article: How To Save The Music Industry.

There is no doubt this is a business in peril. Every economic quarter brings more bad news from the commercial frontline. Put bluntly, falling CD sales are not being matched by rising legal digital downloads, and all the mooted new revenue streams of sponsorship, sync deals and direct sales are not taking up the slack. Even the live scene, supposedly the last refuge for working musicians, is suffering, with major stars failing to sell out dates.

The battleground of the music industry (and, indeed, every creative industry) is copyright, and McGuinness has placed himself at the forefront of this campaign for several years.

McGuinness’s GQ essay is an interesting and well-informed attempt to define the problem and suggest possible solutions. McGuinness, at his most optimistic, envisages “a world of millions of micro-payments, paid daily and triggered by technology that will track every use of a song, identify the rights owner and arrange instant electronic payment. Music subscription will be the basic access route to enjoying tracks and albums, but by no means the only one. Households will pay for a subscription service like Spotify, or they will pay for a service bundled into their broadband bill, to an ISP such as Sky and Virgin Media. But many customers will also take out more expensive added-value packages, with better deals including faster access to new releases. There will also be a healthy market in downloads to own and premium albums.  iTunes will be fighting its corner in the market, probably with its own subscription service. And a significant minority will still buy CDs, coveting the packaging, the cover designs and the sense of ownership:

The Edge/ Paul McGuinness/Bono - U2

Quote from Paul:

“It is two years on from my Cannes speech. Some things are better in the music world, but unfortunately the main problem is still just as bad as it ever was. Artists cannot get record deals. Revenues are plummeting. Efforts to provide legal and viable ways of making money from music are being stymied by piracy. The latest figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) shown that 95 per cent of all music downloaded is illegally obtained and unpaid for. Indigenous music industries from Spain to Brazil are collapsing. An independent study endorsed by trade unions says Europe’s creative industries could lose more than a million jobs in the next five years. Maybe the message is finally getting through that this isn’t just about fewer limos for rich rock stars.

Of course this isn’t crippling bands like U2 and it would be dishonest to claim it was. I’ve always believed artists and musicians need to take their business as seriously as their music. U2 understood this. They have carefully pursued careers as performers and songwriters, signed good deals and kept control over their life’s work. Today, control over their work is exactly what young and developing performers are losing. It is not their fault. It is because of piracy and the way the internet has totally devalued their work.

So how did we get here? How is it in 2010, in a world of iTunes and Spotify, of a healthy live music scene and hundreds of different legal sites, that making money fairly from recorded music remains so elusive?”

Bono / U2 360 Tour 2010 In the September issue of the Rolling Stone which hits newstands Friday in North America Bono tells all about a new album with a club sound.

As already reported the band has plans to release a rock album, and SOngs of Ascent a set of songs from the recording session of their 2009 album “No Line On the Horizon” also Bono and The Edge have been busy with Spider- Man the musical.

Bono says he thinks he “could have made a limp work.”

He adds: “There are a lot bigger problems out there than the ones I was facing. … But I came out of it perfect. And I feel incredibly grateful.”

U2 Rocked Horsens for Two Days, the largest stage in the world arrived nearly two weeks ago as fans watched in amazement, dreaming of the show they would soon see. Tickets sold out, camping gear spotted around the stadium, fans positioning themselves around the non ticket holder areas to catch the massive screen.

The middle aged Irishman sounded like they should have been shoulder to shoulder in a sweaty summer club, maybe CBGB’s (reference to our friend Hilly) however tonight Horsens turn to experience U2 in a 360 view was.  

The boys climbed the stage in a remarkably leisurely pace here as dusk turned into his most dark blue hue. But from the first chord in new instrumentals Return of the Stingray Guitar and its jumpy synth theme was solid beats and loud, and announced that tonight’s first peak could come as soon it should be. And it did: It’s a Beautiful Day song Bono to the riveting beat, and the answer came promptly in the form of ecstatic reunion joy that stretched all the way down to audience numbering 35,000 in the rear end of the arena.

The Edges familiar riff on guitar for New Year’s Day reminded us that U2 has three decades old, while Bono edge on the outer circle was all skepticism to shame that the very question back injury is a hindrance. He pulled hard on the body at a pace that drove the song even faster than the original, and grooved, dirty Get On Your Boots beats gave a further upward thanks to a metallic, treble  that perhaps vibrated inappropriate under-grandstand roofs, but turn easily reached all corners of the arena.

It was frankly hard, sharp rock, and although the pace was choked a bit down in the beautiful pop Magnificent with Bono high clear song, it was not until tonight’s sixth number, Mysterious Ways, that there was something that reminded just a little on air and cracks in the sound barrier (while sensual female bodies writhing in front frontman’s face on the big screen to the sexy groove). Just to party and rock the machine threw yet another dunk gasoline on the fire with Elevation: Bono is out on the edge with big gestures - and the audience responded!

At the time of the concert was so looked deeply into U2’s history books, but actually, the four be commended for serving a very contemporary program. Half of the concert a total of 23 songs were from the last decade, and perhaps it is also why an estimated 25 percent of the audience this evening was not even born when the group came up - and many of them do not know when U2 had its absolute artistic zenith in the final 80 / start-’90s.

U2 will continue to blaze the world with this tour and fans await the release of something new. Something different as U2 continues to define rock as music that you feel in your soul and you can’t feel it if your sitting on your ass !