California, US U2 have confirmed via video blog that their sold-out concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California, this Sunday, 25th October, will be streamed free, in full and live on YouTube. It’s the first time a show of this size will be streamed live.
The Rose Bowl show is the penultimate U2 show this year - with more to come in 2010 - and already is set to host the venue’s biggest ever audience of over 96,000 fans. The 360° Tour, which has been critically acclaimed and ‘re-invents rock’n’roll’ (Rolling Stone Magazine), will now boast unique access for fans worldwide - as fans in territories yet to be visited by the tour, or not at all, will be able to enjoy the whole show online.
Managed in partnership with Live Nation, this sell-out tour has broken attendance records in most venues it has visited - its success due in part to increased capacity coupled with a lower ticket price and great sight lines afforded by the stunning in-the-round stage set.
U2 manager Paul McGuinness said, ‘The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As we’re filming the LA show, it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 - this time U2 can go to them, globally.’
YouTube will be streaming live across five continents. The show will be available in the usual You Tube way, as video-on-demand, following two full replays - after the live stream - on both U2.com and You Tube.
‘YouTube is thrilled to be able to provide our global audience with a live streaming performance from one of the world’s greatest bands,’ said Chris Maxcy, Director of YouTube Partner Development. ‘We are always looking for new ways to connect fans around the world with their favourite artists, and this is the perfect opportunity to do just that.’
For more information stay tuned or visit You Tube .
DVD to be released (Rose Bowl Show)
U2.com has just sent out an e-mail informing fans that this Sunday U2’s 360° Show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will be filmed for DVD release. The show will also be streamed live on YouTube.
Live from The Rose bowl !
DENVER (Billboard) - U2 and YouTube have teamed up to broadcast a live stream of the band’s Los Angeles-area concert this weekend via its YouTube channel.
The Sunday, October 25 show will take place at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Any fan wishing to tune in from the 16 countries supported will be able to do so for free.
This is YouTube’s second effort at live-streaming concerts. In August, it aired portions of the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco. The U2 show will be the first start-to-finish live stream.
Like other live concert streams, portions will be archived and available for streaming after the event.
(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)
U2 makes it a night to remember for 60,000 fans in Norman
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.
Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Okla. Photo by Sarah Phipps
“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.
Too Big For Texas: U2's 'Claw' Vs. Cowboy Stadium
By John McAlley
What happens when the biggest stage show in rock and roll history — U2’s 360-Degree Tour — sets up in the biggest domed stadium in the world — the new $1.2 billion Cowboy Stadium?
The answer is obvious: big problems.
Although they’ve scorched crowds with some of the most incendiary concerts of the past decade, the Irish rock band has not attempted a run of stadium shows since 1997’s much lambasted and remote-feeling PopMart tour. The 360-Degree outing, with its massive in-the-round stage set known affectionately as “The Claw,” is intended to solve the intimacy problems of playing to crowds upwards of 80,000. The thinking: if the stage is almost as big as the stadium itself, no fan will be left behind.
Did it work in Dallas? Find out after the jump.
First, the numbers: with an operating budget of $750,000 a day, U2’s tour employs nearly 400 people and 200 trucks to move three separate versions of the same 170-ton set from venue to venue. While U2 performs on one set at, say, Cowboy Stadium, another is being assembled at the next tour stop in Houston while a third is being transported for an upcoming gig in Oklahoma. The $40 million tangle of steel requires as much as 8 days of set-up and breakdown — for a two-hour show.
Cowboy Stadium accommodates over 100,000 fans. Its high-definition video screen — again, the biggest in the world — weighs the same as a 747, runs 60-yards in length and is suspended so ostentatiously at midfield that the showplace venue suffered a national embarrassment before it formally opened. In a preseason game against the Dallas Cowboys, Tennessee Titans punter A.J. Trapasso sent a kick right into the low-hanging guts of the thing.
The Claw — slightly off center — illuminates Cowboy Stadium. The 170-ton stage set requires as much as 8 days to set up and break down. (John McAlley for NPR)
Whether the Claw helps U2 hit its fans in the gut is something we’ll never know in Texas. Taken separately, the Claw and Cowboy Stadium are epic feats of engineering, but throwing them together was like trying to wedge the Guggenheim Museum into the foyer of the Met. As soaring as Cowboy Stadium is, it couldn’t accommodate the Claw. The structure, which is designed to play at dead center of the field, had to be shunted into an end zone because of the looming GinormoTron, leaving tens of thousands of fans, well, a football field away from their favorite rock and roll band.
It caused the whole show to feel a little off, too — almost as if Bono and his mates sensed the loss of the centripetal, focusing force of their spectacular set.
But as anyone who has tracked his numerous global initiatives knows, Bono loves a challenge. And despite the need to enthrall the masses — over 70,000 attended the Dallas show and larger crowds have made dates in New York and Los Angeles sell-outs — the U2 song list doesn’t pander. The band fearlessly pushed forward material from its new No Line On The Horizon album and paraded — through the use of video images and Bono’s impassioned preachifying — noble causes ranging from the staunching of AIDS in Africa to the pursuit of justice for the persecuted Burmese-goverment opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
“Just sing!” protested some of the Big D crowd. That is, until Bono thanked local icon George W. Bush for his contribution to the fight against AIDS. The mention was met with an ear-shattering roar, proof that even in an age of garishly outsized sports palaces and over-the-top entertainments, the oldest trick in the book — name-checking a good ol’ cowboy — can bring down the house.
CowBoo Stadium U2 Plays in Tin Can
Dallas: More than 70,000 people attended U2’s 360 show that stopped off at Cowboys Stadium last night.
The boys from Ireland could not be more comfortable in a sea of massive people and stage. They played for a little bit over 2 hours which for this tour seems to be the norm. Check the set list out on the following pages. The larger than life stage once again seemed to melt away as the band played thru some hits, new songs and songs they could not play. (Bono’s comments once again to the crowd)
Dressed in black and prone to raising his arms and tilting his head back, as if basking in the presence of his disciples, he wasted no time in preaching peace, asking for a “non-violent revolution” and turning “Walk On,” the final number before the encore, into a thought-provoking tribute to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi.
U2 explosive “Vertigo,” “Get On Your Boots,” “Elevation” and “Beautiful Day.” If you wanted a good groove, they delivered with “Mysterious Ways” and “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.” The tunes from No Line On the Horizon, the quartet’s newest disc, blended perfectly with older material.
“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” an anthem that prompts fist pumping. It’s just as inspiring a song now, with all the violent political unrest in the world, as it was back in 1983 when it was originally released.
U2 landed its massive spaceship/stage comfortably inside the even more massive Cowboys Stadium on Monday night for a show that will be remembered as much for its sights as for its sounds. Bono also gave a shout out to the Cowboys which were met with Boos. The night did not seem as magical as other cities yet fans agreed the show was far from what they expected and just as the feared. Cowboy Stadium was not built for sound some would argue not met for football either. However that’s not our focus.
So for the show stage, bands and music if you were up close we give the show an “A”. For Cowboy Stadium “F” this will go down as the worst venue on the North America tour.
Get on your Party Pass Dallas
The Irish quartet hasn’t been to North Texas since around that same time — 2005 — while touring in support of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. It has been more than a decade since U2 has played stadiums in North America; it last did so in 1997, during the infamous PopMart Tour.
With buzzy opening act Muse in tow, U2 plays Cowboys Stadium on Monday to promote its latest album, No Line on the Horizon. Tickets, as of this writing, are still available (Ticketmaster’s Web site showed seats at all price points), as are $30 “party passes” similar to the type sold for Dallas Cowboys games.
Here’s a closer look at U2’s gargantuan stage, designed, the band says, in an effort to “establish a physical proximity” to the audience. It will be situated near Cowboys Stadium’s eastern end zone.
Much has been made about the fact that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is willing to move the gigantic HDTVs for a rock concert but not
for a pro football game. That’s
probably because few punters could manage the considerable height of U2’s elaborate 360-degree stage. The overall steel structure is 90 feet tall, while the center pylon reaches a height of 150 feet.
Ready for a close-up
While the whole audience can’t be on the field for an up-close look at Bono and his stylish shades, the band has made it easier to watch the action. Wrapped around the 360-degree stage is a cylindrical video screen, described by the band as “groundbreaking.” The screen weighs a whopping 54 tons — the overall design is built to withstand a weight of up to 180 tons — and covers 4,300 square feet.
Plenty of pixels
Building it up, tearing it down
A stage this dramatic doesn’t go up quickly: The steel structure alone takes four days to build (the stages were originally constructed by the Belgian company Stageco). The construction of each stage requires the use of innovative, high-pressure hydraulic systems. It takes an additional 12 hours to load in the screen, stage and other production equipment. Once the crowds have dispersed, it takes the crew six hours to dismantle the production aspect. Forty-eight hours pass before the steel structure is taken down and removed from the stadium.
Sources: U2TOURFANS File,U2.com, Live Nation
Everything is bigger in Texas 360 Arrives
By any measure, U2 is one of the world’s biggest rock bands.
It stands to reason then, that for their latest jaunt around America, the rockers are delivering a truly outsized spectacle.
The Irish quartet hasn’t been to North Texas since around that same time — 2005 — while touring in support of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. It has been more than a decade since U2 has played stadiums in North America; it last did so in 1997, during the infamous PopMart Tour.
With buzzy opening act Muse in tow, U2 plays Cowboys Stadium on Monday to promote its latest album, No Line on the Horizon. Tickets, as of this writing, are still available (Ticketmaster’s Web site showed seats at all price points), as are $30 “party passes” similar to the type sold for Dallas Cowboys games.
Here’s a closer look at U2’s gargantuan stage, designed, the band says, in an effort to “establish a physical proximity” to the audience. It will be situated near Cowboys Stadium’s eastern end zone.
The highest point
Much has been made about the fact that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is willing to move the gigantic HDTVs for a rock concert but not
for a pro football game. That’s
probably because few punters could manage the considerable height of U2’s elaborate 360-degree stage. The overall steel structure is 90 feet tall, while the center pylon reaches a height of 150 feet.
Ready for a close-up
Plenty of pixels
The cylindrical video screen is made up of 1 million individual elements: 500,000 pixels; 320,000 fasteners; 30,000 cables; and 150,000 machined pieces. It can be broken into segments on what’s called a “multiple pantograph system.” This allows the screen to open and/or spread apart vertically as an effect. The screen can open to 14,000 square feet, roughly the size of two doubles tennis courts.
Building it up, tearing it down
