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WIRED: U2’s City of Blinding Lights
Pan across derelict concrete runway at dawn, somewhere in the American Southwest: Someone’s unpacked the whole convoy of semis that haul the equipment for U2’s Vertigo//2005 tour. Unpacked the lights and the behemoth speakers and the Wi-Fi cart for the backstage offices and spread it here, on the outskirts of some city from a ’50s horror film where distance plays tricks on the eye. Every last piece of cargo has been set out, part of an angular, bilaterally symmetrical Rorschach blot – a hard-edged Mothra, inducing a faint d?j? vu.
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06.21.05 Glasgow, Scotland
Vertigo, All Because of You, The Electric Co., Elevation, New Year’s Day, Beautiful Day – Blackbird, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, City of Blinding Lights, Miracle Drug, Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own, Love and Peace or Else, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bullet the Blue Sky – When Johnny Comes Marching Home, Running to Stand Still – Walk On, Pride, Where the Streets Have No Name, One. Encore: Zoo Station, The Fly, With or Without You, Yahweh, Vertigo
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06.19.05 London, England
Vertigo, All Because of You, The Electric Co., Elevation – Hot in Herre, New Year’s Day, Beautiful Day – Blackbird, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, City of Blinding Lights, Miracle Drug, Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own, Love and Peace or Else, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bullet the Blue Sky – When Johnny Comes Marching Home – Please, Running to Stand Still – Walk On, Pride, Where the Streets Have No Name, One. Encore: Zoo Station, The Fly, With or Without You – Take Me to the Clouds Above, Yahweh, Vertigo – London Calling
U2’s Tangled Financial Web
A cursory glance at U2’s accounts might lead hasty observers to conclude that the band is in a spot of financial bother. Accounts for Not Us, the band’s holding company, for the year ending December 31, 2003, show the firm with debts of more than EU18.5 million.
A deeper inspection of the band’s finances -– a myriad of subsidiaries, inter-company loans and trusts -– reveals that much of the money owed by Not Us is owed to other companies under the control of U2.
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