The Irish Examiner has posted news about the upcoming and highly awaited tour.
"The tour will feature a 360-degree central stage and credit crunch-busting ticket prices which, according to unofficial reports, could be as low as €30.
U2 are due to confirm Irish dates at Dublin’s Croke Park on July 24, 25 and 27 and early August concerts at Wembley, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and the City Of Manchester Stadium.
The tour is expected to start at Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium at the end of June, with dates at Stade de France in Paris on July 10 and 11, then Nice, Berlin and Amsterdam before heading to Dublin for an emotional Croke Park homecoming.
U2 then head for the United States and Canada, with tickets for those concerts going on sale on April 4.
In the US, they are due to play New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami and San Francisco.
The band’s 12th studio album No Line on the Horizon came out on Friday in Ireland, Holland, Germany and Australia and will be released in the rest of Europe and North America today.
Tour tickets are to go on sale on March 14 and an instant sell-out is expected. The tour will feature a 360-degree central stage and credit crunch-busting ticket prices which, according to unofficial reports, could be as low as €30.
U2 are due to confirm Irish dates at Dublin’s Croke Park on July 24, 25 and 27 and early August concerts at Wembley, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and the City Of Manchester Stadium.
The tour is expected to start at Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium at the end of June, with dates at Stade de France in Paris on July 10 and 11, then Nice, Berlin and Amsterdam before heading to Dublin for an emotional Croke Park homecoming.
U2 then head for the United States and Canada, with tickets for those concerts going on sale on April 4.
In the US, they are due to play New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami and San Francisco.
The band’s 12th studio album No Line on the Horizon came out on Friday in Ireland, Holland, Germany and Australia and will be released in the rest of Europe and North America today.
Tour tickets are to go on sale on March 14 and an instant sell-out is expected.
U2 manager Paul McGuinness revealed the band’s tour details to music industry magazine Music Week.
Arthur Fogel, global touring chief executive of U2’s promoters Live Nation, confirmed the bargain tickets prices.
He said: "There will be extreme [price] tiering. The notion of single-price tickets is not something I have ever embraced. "In this particular [economic] climate, it’s important to really look at tiering carefully."
source:www.examiner.ie/ireland
Monday, March 2, 2009
Salvation in Adam´s bass...
U2.com has published reviews of NLOTH from different important publications.
Some excerpts...
Blender - 'Great, alienated album from the universe's biggest rock band'
'Moment of Surrender' is the high point - seven minutes of Bono in gospel mode, lost in the late-night city, questing for salvation and finding it in Adam Clayton's bass.'
NME - 'some new tricks, some old tricks'
'the pomp and arrogance of their best work, enough new sounds and interesting new avenues to satisfy the musos and, at its core, is a very good collection of very good songs played very well. A little more silliness would go a long way, though.'
The Times - 'not the best after all, but don't write off U2'
'Cedars of Lebanon takes shape amid a sonic fug that mirrors the exhaustion of its war reporter narrator:'Child drinking dirty water from the riverbank/Soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank.'
Daily Telegraph - 'less a record than an event'
'No Line On The Horizon' is a bold, beautiful and highly speculative re-imagining of U2's music.'
'U2's celebration of life has always also been a celebration of itself, and Bono still has a gift for radiating joy in a way that feels inclusive, not egotistical. At the same time, "No Line on the Horizon" is most interesting when the band and its producers let their well-deserved wallowing become a drift down the river toward something different.
"Fez -- Being Born" will only sound experimental to those who haven't heard Eno's other collaborations (he pulls a sample from one, his exquisite 1984 collaboration with Lanois and pianist Harold Budd, "The Pearl," on "Cedars of Lebanon"), but the song's Radiohead-style cutting beats and dusty undertones work productively against the band's instinctive upward thrust.'
Chicago Tribune - 'Once again in transition..'
'The Irish quartet is once again in transition, uncertain of its destination, and producing some fascinating music along the way. Five of the 11 tracks sound as fresh as anything U2 has done in a decade. The rest isn't nearly that good, putting this in the middle tier of the band's dozen studio releases. But at least the band is trying to reconnect with the sense of yearning and mystery that once made it special...
... "Magnificent" lurks in the shadows for a minute, then breaks into a gallop over the Edge's ringing guitar and Clayton's bounding bass. It's a quintessential U2 moment: Big and yet somehow vulnerable. "Moment of Surrender" completes the journey, and lays out one of the album's key themes: "Two souls too smart to be in the realm of certainty." Nothing can be taken for granted. Anxiety hovers like the organ chords draped over Bono's patient vocal melody. Once again Clayton's bass serves as an empathetic foil, standing just off the vocalist's shoulder, answering his every line.'
Read more here.
White as Snow
U2 started their first programme in the Late Show with David Letterman.
Theyy performed "Get On Your Boots" during the second taping, and took part in a comedy sketch called "Ask U2." This show will air on Friday.
Then they performed 'Breathe' during the first taping today. They also appeared briefly during Letterman's opening monologue, all four pretending to be outside shoveling snow ... except Larry.
Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGurpsGKPCg
Good workers, guys!!!Hey,Larry you are supposed to shovel too!!!
source:www.atu2.com// www.youtube.com/user/CBS
Last Gang in Town
The New York Times has published an article on U2 called "U2, the Biggest of Veterans Wants to be the Next News Thing" and subtitled "Last Gang in Town" (A way Bono called themselves); interesting headings and very good article too...
"Onstage at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Center here was a glittery dress rehearsal for the annual Brit Awards.Although U2 was not among the nominees, it had the opening slot for the Feb. 19 show: a live performance of the hard-riffing “Get On Your Boots” from its new album, “No Line on the Horizon” (Interscope). U2 had blasted the same song earlier in the month at the Grammy Awards.
After the run-through the four band members headed to a grimy loading zone behind the auditorium for a photo session. The photographer had them walk down a ramp;Bono, who often calls himself a “Method actor,” wanted to know what kind of walk. A short discussion settled it. The band started a proud, seasoned swagger as Bono announced, “Last gang in town!”
It wasn’t exactly a joke. U2 has entered the fourth decade of a career that began in 1978, when its members were teenage schoolmates in Dublin; they are now in their late 40s. And U2 may well be the last of the megabands: long-running, internationally recognized rockers whose every album, from “Boy” in 1980 to “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” in 2004, has sold millions of copies worldwide. In an era when CD sales have plummeted, Top 40 radio favors hip-hop and teen-pop, albums are fractured by MP3 players’ shuffle mode and the old idea of a rock mainstream seems more and more like a mirage, U2 still, unabashedly, wants to release a blockbuster...
A conversation with Bono is a free-associative adventure. Between thoughts about the album he dispensed fascinating digressions, casual but carefully placed on and off the record. He gave a full-voiced demonstration of Italian opera vowels and Frank Sinatra style — heads swiveled nearby — and mused on cathedral architecture; he described encounters with presidential candidates and plans for his future columns on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. He spoke fondly about his band mates as characters he’s still trying to figure out, about songs as bursts of serendipity and about what he wants in a performance: “spastic elastic energy.”
Bono added: “It’s very hard to be relevant, so there’s a lot of stake for us on this album. I know the quality of the work is there, but will it be taken? I really don’t know. I’m genuinely curious. I think it might have a bumpy start.”
In the United States radio stations gave “Get On Your Boots” a lukewarm reception.U2 also faces competition from younger bands steeped in its own music. At the Brit Awards other rock bands performing on the show — Coldplay, Kings of Leon, even the grown-up English boy band Take That — couldn’t help sounding like U2 knockoffs.
One theme that runs through the songs, Bono said, “is the ability to surrender, to give yourself, whether in reverie or revelry. And the journey of the artist is surely the journey away from self-consciousness.” He paused and smiled ruefully. “Fame is all about self-consciousness.”...
While he has been mocked as St. Bono, he strives not to be too single-minded. He said: “Edge is always whispering in my ear: ‘You’re an artist. That’s how you’re getting away with this. If you start to behave in a correct fashion and very serious and doing a serious job, it’s awful.’ ”
Bono added: “I feel as an artist that my job is to try and understand the forces that are shaping the world that our songs occupy. And maybe, if you get a chance, try to shape it. That’s what the band didn’t understand. They thought the natural flak that we would receive for daring to want to play with the big boys, philosophically and every other way, would frighten our audience away. But actually our audience feels much more powerful.”
Making the new album was “arduous,” Mr. Mullen said. “There has to be a simpler way,” he continued, “but we don’t understand simple or easy.”...
Making the music was determinedly intuitive: a collation of momentary impulses and collaborative sparks. Bono’s lyrics blurt out declarations of love, character sketches and self-mocking admonitions: “Be careful of small men with big ideas.” The Edge, after making a guitar documentary, “It Might Get Loud,” with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Jack White of The White Stripes, decided to try writing the kind of brash guitar riffs he had long shunned. Mr. Eno brought loops and textures that became seeds of songs and pushed the band toward vocal harmonies. Through the album U2’s longtime strengths — hymnlike melodies, guitar superstructures — are preserved but revitalized, bent in new ways as the songs reach for U2’s defining duality: an intimacy that strives to encompass the universe.
source: www.nytimes.com
Later that night Coldplay and The Killers shared a bill at the 2,000-capacity Shepherd’s Bush Empire, in a benefit for War Child International. For the finale Bono joined Coldplay, Gary Barlow from Take That, and Brandon Flowers from the Killers in the Killers’ song “All These Things That I’ve Done.” Backstage, Mr. Flowers marveled at having Bono sing his song: “I was trying to write ‘Where the Streets Have No Name,’ so it’s a real honor.”...
After two albums of comparatively straightforward guitar-driven rock, “No Line on the Horizon,” U2’s head-spinning 12th studio album, takes new experimental tangents and redefines the band yet again. The album, to be released Tuesday, 3rd March burbles with cross-rhythms, layered guitars and electronic undercurrents in songs the band wrote with its longtime producers, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. It’s not as startling a swerve as 1991’s “Achtung Baby,” on which U2 reinvented itself after the earnest ’80s with irony and electronic beats. But “No Line on the Horizon,” the result of a convoluted two-year process, presents a band that is still restless and impassioned, kicking formulas aside.
In songs about true love, worldwide connections, transcendence and technology the music heads for extremes. “Get On Your Boots,” at 149 beats per minute, is U2’s fastest song ever, while “Cedars of Lebanon,” which ends the album, is a somber meditation on war, separation and enmity. The album includes likely arena singalongs in “Magnificent,” “Unknown Caller” and “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” but it also encompasses the ricocheting patterns of “Fez — Being Born” and the stately “White as Snow,” which bases its melody on the Advent hymn “Veni, Veni Emmanuel.” (Mr. Clayton said “White as Snow” was conceived as the last thoughts of an Afghan killed by an improvised explosive device; its four minutes are the time it takes to die.)...One theme that runs through the songs, Bono said, “is the ability to surrender, to give yourself, whether in reverie or revelry. And the journey of the artist is surely the journey away from self-consciousness.” He paused and smiled ruefully. “Fame is all about self-consciousness.”...
While he has been mocked as St. Bono, he strives not to be too single-minded. He said: “Edge is always whispering in my ear: ‘You’re an artist. That’s how you’re getting away with this. If you start to behave in a correct fashion and very serious and doing a serious job, it’s awful.’ ”
Bono added: “I feel as an artist that my job is to try and understand the forces that are shaping the world that our songs occupy. And maybe, if you get a chance, try to shape it. That’s what the band didn’t understand. They thought the natural flak that we would receive for daring to want to play with the big boys, philosophically and every other way, would frighten our audience away. But actually our audience feels much more powerful.”
Making the new album was “arduous,” Mr. Mullen said. “There has to be a simpler way,” he continued, “but we don’t understand simple or easy.”...
Making the music was determinedly intuitive: a collation of momentary impulses and collaborative sparks. Bono’s lyrics blurt out declarations of love, character sketches and self-mocking admonitions: “Be careful of small men with big ideas.” The Edge, after making a guitar documentary, “It Might Get Loud,” with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Jack White of The White Stripes, decided to try writing the kind of brash guitar riffs he had long shunned. Mr. Eno brought loops and textures that became seeds of songs and pushed the band toward vocal harmonies. Through the album U2’s longtime strengths — hymnlike melodies, guitar superstructures — are preserved but revitalized, bent in new ways as the songs reach for U2’s defining duality: an intimacy that strives to encompass the universe.
source: www.nytimes.com
U2 Caricatures
This German site by the artists Christian Stellner shows wonderful caricatures of U2.Have a look!
Christian Stellner:: Karikatur Illustration: U2 Galerie
U2 free show?
It seems that U2 will follow-up their free concert in London last week (27Feb09) by treating students to a secret show at New York's Fordham University, according to U.S. reports.
The group is continuing to promote their latest offering with a free show for students in the Big Apple on Friday (06Mar09), reports Connecticut newspaper the Hartford Courant.
The show will reportedly air live from the University's Bronx, New York campus for a segment on U.S. chat show Good Morning America.
source:www.contactmusic.com
Sunday, March 1, 2009
U2 in the Live Lounge
U2 was in the BBC Radio 1 programme "Live Lounge", Jo Whiley, the hostess, asked interesting questions; some a bit bizarre and they came from the audience...
Jo Whiley: Hello to all of the band. My first question , sent in by listeners, is 'do you pee in the shower'? Look at their faces! (Gasps and much laughter) Adam: Not at all! No, I definitely do not pee in the shower! Larry: Well (laughing) when I read that Madonna did it.. Jo Whiley: You had to follow suit. Larry : Well I had to try it. Jo Whiley: Yeah, we heard that. Bono? I bet you don't. (More laughter) Edge: That means she pees standinng up! (More laughter) Jo Whiley: You guys! Well I asked my listeners what they wanted to know, and a lot of them asked for that one. Bono: That's amazing! Jo Whiley : Bono, you did an interview just now with Zane Lowe where you talked about Coldplay and said that Chris Martin is right up there, right up there with the likes of Paul McCarthey? Bono: Yes, I did. I think he is that good a melodist. I mean, he's a wanker (more laughter)... but, eh... Jo Whiley: Are you going to apologise for what you just said, live on my show on Radio 1? Bono: (gasps, inhales sharply) Oh, sorry, I'm a reformed character, by the way! I don't do that any more! JW: You're not showing signs of being reformed... Bono: Can we delete that? Jo Whiley: No we can't. Bono: And he's a disfunctional character and a cretin. Jo Whiley: (laughs) Again apologies.. Bono: (getting serious) But he happens to be a genius melodist and, I think, up there with Ray Davies and Noel Gallagher and Paul McCartney and I absolutely think they're a great band and it actually turns out he's a great soul as well. So, I'm sorry, sorry about that... (Both laugh) Jo Whiley: And I am sorry if anybody is listening at the moment and you were offended by the bad word that Bono said just now, and I apologise on Bono's behalf too. Bono: I was just joking entirely. Jo Whiley: I know, it's pretty early. Jo Whiley: And I know you like to play the album to other people, contemporaries, was there talk of a night out with Chris Martin in Dublin, did you get him over to listen to the music? Bono: We were up in Scotland actually, for Hogmanay and that's the best place to be in the world for New Year isn't it? And people were coming and going and Chris as well... we play it for everyone, really, from the bell boy... Jo Whiley: Taxi drivers. Bono: Yeah, taxi drivers, the hotel people and you can always hear songs through other peoples ears... you know if there's a boring bit cos then the taxi driver starts to call his missus, must be the start of the guitar solo. (both laugh) OK, it was the chorus. (More laughter in the studio) Edge: Bono always sings over the guitar solo!
source:U2.com
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