You may not know that for years U2 has traveled by charter. AMP Visual has been the company hired to produce the graphics for the charter tour planes. Graphics are updated each leg of the tour. In our photo section we have a couple of action shots of the plane as it flys around the world.
“For this U2360° tour, we called the airline, THREESIXTYAIR with the name featuring above the first passenger windows. For the US leg of the tour, we called the plane ‘Infinity’ from the song Breathe. We also added ‘The Future Needs A Big Kiss’ from the song Get On Your Boots as a sign-off near to nose of the plane.”
Dave and the boys are re-working some classics like ” All I Want & Grace” Dave reported on Twitter that they are in “Sacramento” now this does seem a bit strange. Why would the boys be in the studio with Dave? Maybe he was saying that he is doing some work for them. That sounds more like it. In case your wondering Hollister is a former member of the R&B quartet BLACKstreet and has also released several solo albums.
Fans thats why you have to follow on twitter, this whole conversation went on during the early hours of 3AM however in Cali it was a bit earlier. Sign up for twitter and follow along.
U2’s recently cancelled North American tour is likely to cost the London market $17mn due to contingency cover purchased by the band and its promoters, The Insurance Insider can reveal.
The rock band were forced to call off the US leg of their 360o World Tour when Bono underwent emergency surgery after injuring himself while rehearsing for the shows.
Tour promoters Live Nation and U2 have a contingency policy placed into the London market by specialist entertainment broker Robertson.
Well we knew it would be a matter of days before we started to see some interesting comments about the boys and the cash they earn. Frankly who cares. Its their money and so what. If you like the music and you buy the CD’s and everything else that comes along with being a fan of course they are going to make money. Now the lead dog has the best view so its natural for the dogs that follow to be an ass, because hell thats all they look at all day as they try to reach the top. Here is an interesting view from an ass. - Share your comments, thoughts and of course all views are always welcome. Just remember if your an ass we may just point it out.
Tooth-sized phallus, Bono, is probably swimming in his room of coins right now while he waits for The Edge to finish making his 500 ft tribute to Barbara Cartland made out of diamonds, saffron and black printer ink.
Oh, not to mention also having the audacity to expect people like us, who earn about 6 pence an hour, to cough up our meagre incomes into the hands of whichever plight they’ve aligned themselves with when they woke up this morning. And we know Bono & Co. are rich because Forbes have released their rich-list of musicians which, for the most part, is a list of artistes so dull that you might need to staple your eyeholes open just to get through it.
Over the past 12 months, U2 have been raking it in, earning an outrageous £84.9m. If you believe the rumours, most of that tootles off to some offshore account in Holland, which probably has cheque books made from African children’s woe.
Last month, the band gave a push to another up-and-coming technology — BD Live, which was installed on copies of its “U2 360° Tour” Blu-ray DVDs.
Using an Internet-connected player, BD-Live connects discs to a website where content is uploaded from a host.
Every time a user inserts the disc, new items and feeds, such as clips from the band, can be accessed through their television set.
Users are given a live feed of the band’s progress throughout the tour: The first download will feature a video that U2 filmed for users, in which they apologize to fans for missing a leg of their tour.
“U2 360° Tour,” released through Universal Music, marks the first Blu-ray title to be produced in the U.K. with BD-Live content. It was installed through specialty content production company the Pavement.
Cost to install the program code is around £200-£300 ($300-$450), while cost to manage the website averages approximately $7,600 per year.
“It’s important that the world knows the tech is out there,” says Pavement founder Andy Evans. “One of the biggest concerns I hear from clients is that they fear BD-Live costs too much to install and maintain. The reality is it probably costs less than a full-page magazine ad.”
Evans adds that while Hollywood majors currently use BD-Live as a means of streaming up-to-date trailers on Blu-ray discs, it also a marketing tool for distributors.
“With BD-Live, you can monitor how often people are watching your DVD, who they are and where they are viewing it,” he says.
Evans says that soon users will be able to buy tickets through their Blu-ray disc and link up to friends and communicate through the disc.
U2 are making their latest comeback. Following Bono’s back surgery (which forced the cancellation of their North American tour), the group will hit the road in Europe for a series of dates and be back around the United States next summer.
U2 have had a fascinating career, as even though they’ve been one of the biggest bands in the world for the better part of the past three decades, they have still regularly been cast as underdogs on the comeback trail. Their story arc is remarkable, and it hit an interesting point when they released Pop in 1997.
When you consider most albums, you have to consider the context along with the songs. But in the case of Pop, it’s almost all about the context. The last time U2 had appeared, it was a part of the absolutely gigantic ZooTV tour, which at the time was one of the most ambitious stadium-sized rock shows ever produced.
It was in support of the hugely successful Achtung Baby, a moody art rock album masquerading as pop music (it helped that “One,” the one track on the album that doesn’t really fit, was a huge international hit). The band followed Achtung with a pair of strange experiments: 1993’s Zooropa, which was an album that leaned heavily on electronics and was written and recorded in between legs of ZooTV, and 1996’s Original Soundtracks 1, a heavily ambient album produced by Brian Eno and credited to Passengers (it was so out there that the label didn’t want them to release it under their own name).
That meant it had been nearly six years since a “proper” U2 album had been put on the market, so expectations were high. Those expectations were compounded by the fact that in the run-up to Pop’s release, people were suggesting that U2 had somehow managed to solve the conundrum that was facing rock music at the time.
Back in 1996, a reasonable portion of the population believed that dance music was going to take over as the next great underground genre to blow up to stadium size. Everybody was extremely excited about the Prodigy, and the Chemical Brothers were being treated like big time rock stars and not just a pair of DJs.
More and more bands were dipping into the electronic pool, augmenting their rock tunes with breakbeats, bits of trip-hop and whatever else floated over from the United Kingdom. It was seen as a conundrum that needed to be solved, as though somebody would eventually crack the code and deliver a song or an album that would successfully bring together the two disparate worlds to create a new genre.
Everybody was convinced that Pop was that album. Before anybody heard any music, people who thought about pop music for a living seemed to think that U2 had solved it, and when they dropped the single “Discotheque” a month before, it seemed like Pop was going to change everything. “Discotheque” grafted some super-distorted guitars, techno-funky bass and a sweaty breakbeat, and it still allowed for a killer chorus it sounded like the collision of modern dance music and rock and roll.
But when the album came out and fans listened to the other 11 songs on the album, there was much confusion. The first three songs on the album — “Discotheque,” “Do You Feel Loved” and “Mofo” — made an effort to attach disparate dance genres (like techno, house and drum and bass) to U2’s refined approach to stadium rock.
The problem is that none of those songs particularly succeed as dance songs or as rock workouts. “Discotheque” runs out of steam, “Do You Feel Loved” isn’t dynamic enough and “Mofo” devolves into a beat-happy mess.
And then U2 seem to abandon the premise entirely. Luckily, they do it for the sake of “If God Will Send His Angels” and “Staring at the Sun,” neither of which contain very much in the way of electronics but both of which contain blissful melodies and hypnotic hooks. (“If God Will Send His Angels,” in particular, seemed to be laying the groundwork for their throwback 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind.) “Gone” is also a spectacular anthem with a giant chorus — in fact, Bono has a great time on Pop, as there are places for him to experiment as well as to hit his usual high notes. (Conversely, the Edge has the roughest time on Pop, as his guitar tones are often subverted, distorted or lost entirely.)
Latter day U2 albums also contain a healthy amount of obsessions with American culture, and Pop contains two such tracks: “Miami” and “The Playboy Mansion.” The former is an intense beat experiment that does a lot of swirling but doesn’t go much of anywhere, and “The Playboy Mansion” is about the closest thing the band has ever come to making a novelty song. Still, it’s charming in spots and has a jaunty little melody.
The album wraps up with the smoldering “If You Wear That Velvet Dress,” the lurching “Please” and the sparse, powerful “Wake Up Dead Man.” Really, those three songs act as a microcosm for U2’s entire career, as it has the right combination of romanticism, Catholicism, passion and darkness. Unfortunately, none of those songs have the sort of sweetness that lurks under even the most militant U2 tunes, which makes for a rather uneven finish to what ends up being a bizarre, disjointed album.
So Pop didn’t change the way we think about rock music, nor did it change the way we think about U2 (they ended up really coming back with All That You Can’t Leave Behind a few years later). Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. seemed to be distracted by keyboards and irony, which may explain why Pop is by far the most schizophrenic release in U2’s canon.
It’s an interesting entry in the band’s history (and a fascinating look at the state of rock music in 1997), but not up there with the essential All That You Can’t Leave Behind, Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree.
One thing is for sure, U2 has created something that you can’t leave behind.
John Lydon seems to be suffering from more delusions than his usual sort lately, as evidenced by a new interview with Britain’s Daily Star tabloid.
While discussing why he chose not to work with Damon Albarn on Gorillaz’s latest release, Plastic Beach, the former king of controversy also threw in a dig at U2 for reasons no one but John Lydon would probably understand.
The former Sex Pistols frontman revealed he was annoyed to not have been invited to participate in many major UK festivals, saying they hadn’t had any offers.
“They have been quite negative, which has astounded us because PIL is the perfect festival band,” he said. “You don’t want U2 — that’s a band that never should have existed, there’s no life experience in any of their songs.”
Somehow, Lydon goes from talking about why PiL is right for festival shows to why U2 shouldn’t exist.
Don’t worry, John: U2’s itinerary was messed up recently because Bono hurt his back. Didn’t you hear about them pulling out of Glastonbury?
The 54 year old said, “They gave me a bell but the answer was ‘no’. I really don’t want to be dabbling in other people’s gene pools.”
“I’ve worked the many so-called famous people but it’s never been for any deliberate financial motivation. If I did it wouldn’t be a business phone call followed by a management agreement and then for an album manufactured and marketed as to what the current popular trends were.”
Instead John’s is keen to make new music with his band Public Image Limited (PIL) who kick off a six-date UK tour next week.
Public Image Limited are playing a string of 02 Academy dates around the UK in London, Bristol, Liverpool, Oxford, Leeds and Glasgow.
Helping Bono on his way to recover he seems to have a great deal of support from his friends in high places.
U2’s front man his wife of nearly 29 years, Ali, were snapped lounging on Oracle owner, Larry Ellison’s yacht “The Rising Sun” with Roman Abramovich. “The Rising Sun” is the largest privately owned yacht in the world.
This spotting of Bono comes just weeks after he hung with his friend Lance Armstrong at his villa in the South of France. It must be nice to be in with such circle of friends.
The Chelsea football club owner, Roman Abramovich, met the couple of the massive yacht in the Mediterranean sea just off the French coast.
Bono has been staying at his own holiday home in the South of France. His hope is to be healthy enough to return to performing this fall for the next leg of his “360 Tour”.
If these are the people he calls friends imagine who his doctors are!
Did you know ?
Co-owned by Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation, and David Geffen of Geffen Records, Rising Sun carried a price tag of $200 million.
Built with the intention of surpassing Octopus in size, 453 feet long Rising Sun was built by Lürssen in Germany. Not only did Rising Sun surpass Octopus, the yacht is so big that it can’t even dock at most marinas—it exceeds their size limits.
With 82 rooms on five stories, Rising Sun’s living area exceeds 8,000 square meters. Rising Sun is totally pimped-out with onyx countertops, a gym, spa and sauna, Jacuzzi bathrooms and a private movie theater with giant plasma screen.
It also boasts an extensive private wine cellar, 3,300 square meters of teak-layered deck space, and a basketball court on the deck doubles as a helicopter pad.
Also did you know that “The Edge” owns one?
U2 guitarist The Edge (David Howell Evans) has banded together with a group of mates to buy £12m luxury yacht The Cyan. Bono had a chance to lease the boat a couple of years back. Wonder if the going rate of 200K is still available ?
Rumours wondered if it was that Bono had purchased the yacht however the The Edge set the record straight by saying:
It’s not Bono’s yacht at all, it’s mine. Bono doesn’t know a thing about boats.
“For years it was a dream of mine to own a yacht, but to be honest, it was a bit out of my league. So myself and a few friends got together, chipped in, and bought the Cyan. I don’t know where the story that Bono owns it came from.”
Luxury motor yacht CYAN has a total of 6 cabins able to sleep 10 guests. The yachts master cabin which is full width of the beam on the main deck has a King size bed, a large study, two walk-in closets, and his and hers bathrooms interconnected by a Jacuzzi bath. Aldo located on the main deck is an additional Queen cabin with ensuite which is best suited for a nanny or bodyguard as the entrance for this cabin is via a separate corridor leading to the galley. On lower deck are another 2 Queen staterooms with ensuite bathrooms and 2 Twin cabins with ensuite shower room. All of the cabins have a TV, DVD and VCR. All guest cabins are decorated in limed oak and are light and spacious.
Rock Stars and their toys, you gota love it. Hey what would you do with your rock star money?
