Who needs bathrooms? ([email protected])
Sun, 08 Nov 1998 11:10:10 -0600
Check out the U2NEWS poll at:
http://www.members.home.net/u2-news/poll.html
Please help me out with the HISTORY section at my page.
http://www.members.home.net/u2-news/his_intro.html
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Releases:
"This World is Not My Home-The Best of Lone Justice", Bono appears
in a live duet with Maria McKee, released November 10, 1998
CONFIRMED: "U2 PopMart - Live From Mexico" VHS November 17, 1998
NA (No word on DVD yet...)
1*POP MUZIK 2*MOFO 3* I WILL FOLLOW 4*GONE 5*EVEN BETTER THAN
THE REAL THING 6*LAST NIGHT ON EARTH 7*UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD
8* NEW YEAR'S DAY 9*PRIDE (IN THE NAME OF LOVE) 10*I STILL HAVEN'T
FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR 11*ALL I WANT IS YOU 12*DESIRE
13*STARING AT THE SUN 14*SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY 15*BULLET THE
BLUE SKY 16*PLEASE 17*WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME
18*DISCOTHEQUE 19*IF YOU WEAR THAT VELVET DRESS 20*WITH OR
WITHOUT YOU 21*HOLD ME, THRILL ME, KISS ME, KILL ME 22*MYSTERIOUS
WAYS 23*ONE 24*WAKE UP DEAD MAN
Across The Bridge of Hope: The Omagh Tribute Album, UK November 30,
1998
Across The Bridge of Hope: The Omagh Tribute Album, NA March 17, 1999
Concerts/Live Events:
RUMOUR: U2 at Amnesty International's 50th anniversary of the
United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
Celebration, Paris, France, December 10, 1998.
RUMOUR: U2/Bono at Micheal Hutchence Tribute Concert, January 22,
1999, Australia
Confirmed: U2 at my house. Today. :)
Television/Radio Events:
BBC: Straight from The Edge's mouth -- The BBC are working on a
special for "Classic Albums" about the Joshua Tree. Airdate TBA
Channel V(Australian) : U2 video special, November 14, 9:30 - 11:30pm
Network TV:
MTV:
MuchMusic/MuchUSA:
SPOTLIGHT(and a huge 3-day one at that!):
Much programming repeats 3 times a day so each show airs 3 times :)
-- 7 pm, 11:30 pm, 5:30 am, November 10, November 11, and November 12.
VH1: "U2 Day", November 9th,1998 UK/EUR
WestWood One: Will air U2 radio special on November 10, 1998
(I am not sure if this is the same special that Rocktropolis is doing, but
suspect that it is...)
Net Events:
Vote for U2 at NBC: http://www.nbc.com/NBCFridaynight/frimusic.asp
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Island Records Contest -- actually a bit difficult!
Entries judged by U2 themselves! http://www.island.co.uk/u2/main.html
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Win a U2 Trip to Ireland!
http://www.musicblvd.com/rocktheworld
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Support Breast Cancer Research and buy the Bear!
http://www.pinkribbonball.ozemail.com.au/bear_star.html
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Bono/The Edge on Sly-Fi TV : http://www.davestewart.com
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SonicNet :Chat with Producer Steve Lillywhite, November 9,
8:00 pm EST/5:00 pm PT 's Michael Goldberg & Gil Kaufman
special guest: Producer Steve Lillywhite
This week R'N'R Insider interviews and chats with famed
producer Steve Lillywhite, best known for his seminal work
with U2 and Peter Gabriel. Learn about the man behind the
curtain twirling knobs for platinum artists like the Rolling
Stones, Morrissey and most recently The Dave Matthews
Band. Ask him about his recent collaboration with U2 on a
new single for their forthcoming compilation release "The Best
of U2, 1980-1990.
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Vote for U2 at Triple J's(Australian Radio) poll at
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/net50/vote.htm
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Vote for U2 at DotMusic's Top Albums of All Time
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Vot for U2 at http://www.bradfitz.com/votingbooth?schwag402
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Fan Club/WIRE/U2 nutzoid meetings:
18th Anniversary of U2's first performance in Canada Celebration
DEC 9th 1998. Check out http://www3.sympatico.ca/p.m_c.c/
or email [email protected] for more information.
(Peter wants to rent a theatre to show Rattle N' Hum on Dec. 9.
The proceeds will go to the a hospital for sick children.
He is putting up a LOT of money himself and he needs 70 people to go.)
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January 29, 1999, 8:00 pm U2 coverband "Vorsprung durch Technik"
Bremen, Germany. Email [email protected] for more information.
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NEWS dates:
Best of #1 album of all time in Ireland added Nov 8
Ottawa Sun review added Nov 8
Death to anthologies added Nov 7
Straits Times and NME added Nov 7
ST video #1 in Canada, song #7 in Holland added Nov 6
The Edge on next tour added Nov 6
2FM interview added Nov 6
U2 and Oasis ahead of Alanis added Nov 6
Hutch Tribute clarifications added Nov 6
For and Against added Nov 6
Peter Rowan Article added Nov 6
San Diego Review added Nov 5
Blu lyrics and cover added Nov 5
U2 Best of having strong sales added Nov 5
The Edge interview added Nov 5
Larry on future tour plans added Nov 5
Limited Edition no longer limited in US added Nov 5
Note on Zucchero and Italian charts added Nov 5
Note on Australian copies added Nov 5
Willie Nelson chooses sides in Ireland added Nov 4
More on the boxer entering to U2 added Nov 4
Best of fastest selling U2 album in Ireland added Nov 4
Best of surprise...were these guys even awake? added Nov 4
Hutch Tribute added Nov 4
Another U2 over Alanis added Nov 4
Minor Irish Times correction added Nov 4
Camera angles in POPMart video different from broadcast added Nov 4
Bono to appear on Maria McKee's live compilation added Nov 3
Adam Gussow added Nov 3
PopMart video delayed in NA added Nov 3
Resurrection Complete? added Nov 3
"One" and the murder of Brian Service added Nov 3
Picture House review added Nov 3
Boxer comes to ring with U2 playing added Nov 3
U2 kicks Alanis' bummy added Nov 3
One more... added Nov 3
Yet another article on Omagh Tribute added Nov 3
Another article on Omagh Tribute added Nov 3
Article on Omagh Album added Nov 3
Larry interviewed on 2FM added Nov 3
Windmill Lane added Nov 3
Defective copies in Australia added Nov 3
Home.com blew it. added Nov 3
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Thanks to Phil Ashby for the following:
>From Freeserve entertainment news:
Irish supergroup U2 has earned the accolade of
producing the country's fastest-selling album ever.
The band's collection of greatest hits went straight to No
1 in the country's album chart, outselling nearest rival
Alanis Morrisette by 11-to-one, said publicist Lindsey
Holmes.
She said 135,000 copies of U2: The Best Of 1980 - 1990
had been distributed to record shops around Ireland, and
six days after release they were selling out rapidly.
"Shops throughout the country are astounded at the
quantity and the speed with which the album is selling,
people are buying two and three copies at a time, which
is almost unheard of," she said.
The collection went on sale on Monday as a limited
edition CD pack, featuring 15 of the band's B-sides from
the 1980s along with the main album.
>From November 9, only the single CD of 14 greatest hits
will be distributed to the shops. "One shop even
mentioned the possibility of rationing the album to one
copy per person due to the restricted availability of the
album," said Ms Holmes.
U2 remains Ireland's most successful rock group ever
with album sales topping more than 75 million over a
20-year period.
-----------
The review from the Ottawa Sun have been added to
the Best of Reviews which can be found at:
http://www.members.home.net/u2-news/gh_reviews.html
-----------
>From Interference news:
>From Scotsman Publications:
This year's bumper spree of greatest hits releases means pop is starting to
show its age
SIMON FRITH
UNLESS enough of us buy U2's The Best of 1980-1990
between now and Christmas, Polygram will be in
trouble. The record is Polygram's Christmas
blockbuster - 14 A-sides and 15 B-sides released on a
double CD as part of a complex deal with the band
itself, and now the object of a huge sales campaign (&1
million spent on television commercials
alone).
Record company and retailer profits alike depend on
the next six weeks' sales. According to Music Week
figures, for example, the Corrs' Talk on Corners album
sold 24,131 copies in Britain, about 100 more than
when the album was No 1 in the charts in July. Robbie
Williams's I've Been Expecting You, meanwhile, sold
132,000 in its first week of release, and his record
company, Chrysalis, will expect these weekly figures
to rise. This is, as they say, going to be a very
commercial Christmas.
The music industry has to take the Gordon Brown view
of the economy (or, at least, to assume that declining
sales of bigger consumer items will mean increasing
sales for relatively cheap CDs). We've had most of
the autumn's big (ie, heavily advertised) studio albums
by now (Manic Street Preachers, Robbie, REM,
Beautiful South, M People, Alanis Morissette - only
Whitney Houston to come), but new titles always have
an element of sales uncertainty, and these days record
companies assume that the year-end charts will be
dominated by anthologies.
U2 will be competing, then, with The Best of George
Michael and Phil Collins' Hits, with Sultans of Swing -
The Very Best of Dire Straits and One Way of Life -
Best of the Levellers, with the greatest hits of Julio
Iglesias and the level best of Level 42, with the
Depeche Mode singles collection, Oasis's B-sides, Abba's Love
Stories and Mariah Carey's No 1s, with retrospectives
of Suzanne Vega, Del Amitri, Paul Weller, John
Lennon, the Doors, Duran Duran, Marianne Faithfull.
This may be, as one retailer claims in Music Week, the
best Christmas line-up he can remember in 25 years of
retailing but, for me, pop's festive season is
increasingly dispiriting. It's not just depressing that
there's still a market for Duran Duran, how deeply the
Lennon anthology scrapes the barrel of his dead and discarded
recordings, that I've already got previous Christmas
packages of Abba and Iglesias and Marianne Faithfull.
There's also the overwhelming sense that if pop is
always a trade-off between art and commerce, at this
time of year the terms of trade are set entirely by
commerce. Even the U2 set, which does seem to have
been put together as a genuine tribute to the band,
sounds oddly frantic and seems aesthetically pointless.
The history of U2 in singles turns out to be quite
unrevealing. We know the band too well to be surprised
that growing musical confidence meant, in their case,
an increasingly light touch. The group's more pompous
tracks still sound pompous; U2's unique musical
tension is still an effect of the way in which the Edge's
restless, distracted pursuit of a guitar fix comes up
against Bono's Tigger-like egotism.
The fact remains that U2 are an album not a singles
band. There's novelty value to the B-side disc, but
mostly what The Best of 1980-1990 does is send you
back to source and, I guess, trigger memories. Which
is perhaps why the Christmas music market is such a
retro music market.
Hits packages are safe presents ( I know that
Dad/Mum/Gran likes Paul Weller/Mariah Carey/The
Levellers, and this is a brand-new old album), and they
tie in with seasonal nostalgia. And these days, of
course, nostalgia is rock's raison d'tre. Heritage acts
such as Phil Collins, bands with 20 and more years of
hits behind them, now dominate daytime programming
on Radio 2, which these days has A, B and C playlists
just like Radio 1. Rocking Radio 2 broke not only
Leanne Rimes's country cross-over How Do I Live but
also Aerosmith's I Don't Want To Miss a Thing; Radio 2
playlists presently feature not only Cher and Cliff
Richard but also Paul Weller, John Lee Hooker and
Billy Bragg.
This is a shift in the British musical map (as Radio 1
gets ever more youthful and dance-oriented) that record
company marketing departments have only just begun
to read. A shift that helps explain why the U2 anthology
sounds particularly poignant. These are tracks from the
days when rock still meant young men strutting their
stuff; and they're tracks coming to us now from old pro
entertainers doing their Christmas show.
-----------
Reviews from The Straits Times and NME have been added to
the Best of Reviews which can be found at:
http://www.members.home.net/u2-news/gh_reviews.html
-----------
The ST video is #17 on MuchMusic charts in Canada, and #7 in
Holland.
-----------
>From Wall Of Sound:
U2's The Edge Speaks
With the album U2: The Best of 1980-1990 hitting shelves soon (a limited
edition containing a bonus CD quietly hit shelves Tuesday, with the
official version coming out Nov. 10), U2 guitarist The Edge granted an
interview to the Los Angeles Times, discussing the new album the band
currently has in the works with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, as
well as the tour that will likely follow its release.
When queried about U2's new work, the guitarist was reticent to give too
much away for fear of starting a rumor mill. "I'm [nervous] about that�after
what happened with Pop�the way people started making judgments even before
they ever heard it." The Edge projected a wrap date of sometime in the
summer of 1999, but "we don't want to set a firm deadline because we don't
want to get into the same trap that we did last time. We made a mistake of
establishing a deadline too far in advance with Pop. The last month
turned out to be a real scramble to get it out before the PopMart tour."
He continued, "We might have wanted another week to just sit back and
relax with it�so that we wouldn't have had to deliver it to the record
company the day it was finished, which is what we ended up doing."
Speaking of tours, don't expect to see a repeat of the gargantuan
undertakings following the release of PopMart and Zooropa. "The mood
at the moment woul be to do something small, having done Zoo TV and
PopMart, it's like we've done that." He went on to say, "The truth is it
takes such an incredible amount of energy and time and money to do
stadiums. It's not that we want an easy life, but having done it twice now,
we are going to wait awhile before we think about it, before making
another commitment.
"We are in a constant state of development and evolution, and that's
one thing I've enjoyed about the band," he added. "Right now, it's hard
for me to say we are at the beginning of something or at the end. We are
waiting for the music to tell us just where we are going."
-----------
There's a waaaay cool interview with Larry online at
You have to enter the VIP Area...
-----------
Oasis and U2 battle it out, whilst Alanis watches from the sidelines
In the run-up to Christmas record sales rocket and the battle for album
top-slots is never fiercer. This week's battle is between Oasis and U2,
who are fighting it out for the all important chart-topper. Slightly
ahead in the mid-week chart positions are U2, with the first of their
'Greatest Hits' compilations '1980-1990', chased by Oasis in second
place with their B-sides compilation 'The Masterplan'. U2 have the edge,
value-wise, as first week buyers will be able to get a, limited edition,
80's B-sides compilation for a few quid extra. Also U2 fans tend to be
Saturday buyers and a little more patient than Oasis fans who rush out
early to be the first to own it.
However, Oasis fans will get their album at well below the normal price
for a CD, courtesy of Noel Gallagher's insistence, to his record
company, Creation, that the album should not be exploitative,
price-wise.
Both albums, released last Monday (2nd) are way ahead of Thursday's
number three, Alanis Morissette's 'Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie',
the follow up to her 28 million selling, 'Jagged Little Pill', which was
the biggest selling debut album ever.
Last time out, Oasis gained the distinction of attaining the highest
'first-week-record-sales' in the UK, ever, with their album, 'Be Here
Now', which clocked up almost 700,000 sales in the first week. However,
by the second week general apathy had set in and the sales plummeted to
a disappointing level, as word got around that the album did not live up
to expectations.
In next Sunday's singles chart, Cher is expected to retain her position
at the top for the third week running, with 'Believe', which will be a
great disappointment to the recently re-formed, and re-named, E-17, with
their single, 'Each Time', culled from their forthcoming, come-back,
album. By Thursday, Cher was out-selling them by 2 to 1 - - not bad for
a lady who had her first hit over 30 years ago.
-----------
Condensed from Addicted to Noise:
Michael Hutchence Memorial Planned For Death Anniversary
Father of late INXS frontman schedules Nov. 22 event to mark
day charismatic Australian vocalist took his life.
INXS manager Martha Troup was careful to make a distinction
between the memorial service and the tribute concert she is
organizing to take place in Australia on Jan. 22.
"The band will not be playing at the memorial service," Troup said,
quashing published rumors that INXS would be debuting unreleased
compositions during the service...
The band's former Australian publicist, Shawn Deacon, who had
called Farriss' comment premature, previously confirmed
that such major artists as pop-rocker Elton John, glam-rock pioneer
David Bowie, proto-punk-rocker Iggy Pop, crooner Tom Jones, Duran
Duran singer Simon Le Bon and Hutchence crony/U2 singer Bono had
been approached to play a benefit show.
Troup would not confirm the participation of any of the artists.
Bono paid tribute to his departed friend at a Sydney concert in February
when he dedicated the U2 song "Wake Up Dead Man" to Hutchence and
played the INXS song "Never Tear Us Apart" (RealAudio excerpt) over
the PA system after the show.
Troup has said that more than 40 unreleased songs by INXS exist and
might still be issued. The band released nine albums over the course of
its 20 years together.
-----------
>From The Irish Independent:
U2: the final verdict
This week U2 released their eagerly-awaited compilation The Best Of
U2:1980-1990. With more than 100,000 advance orders for the album in
Ireland alone, it is set to be one of the biggest-selling Christmas albums of
all
time. But despite being one the biggest bands in the world, U2 have always
divided Irish critics and fans. Here, unashamed fan Ian O'Doherty and long-time
critic George Byrne state their case.
AGAINST: GEORGE BYRNE
During the late 80s it was common practice among certain music journalists
to disparagingly refer to the 70s as `The Decade That Style And Taste Forgot'
... but, good God, one wonders how on earth those self-same people now feel
about
the excesses of the period from 1980 to 1990, the decade that most of this
`greatest hits' material comes from, an era whose boundless self-importance and
complete
lack of humour was best exemplified by the career of U2.
In the 70s we at least had the comic-book burlesque of Glam Rock to sustain
us (not to mention that era's legacy of immortal three-minute wonders) and the
sheer vitality and life-changing force of Punk Rock to irrevocably alter our
perspectives on the world. But the ten-year period that followed despite the
undoubted
brilliance of The Smiths, REM, The Go-betweens and New Order will forever be
associated in my
mind with one image: Bono and that bloody white flag!
``This is the only flag I believe in!'' he'd bellow, full of the rhetoric
of the truly righteous, never stopping for a moment to consider that said banner
is
something you only wave when you've been comprehensively beaten to a pulp and
are
about to hurl yourself at an opponent's feet to beg for your life like a
craven mongrel.
But that,of course, was before U2 discovered `irony', because if they
hadn't copped some of (God help us!) Gavin Friday's cod-cabaret moves they'd
surely be the subject of a gradual selectivity in their punter appeal and be
lucky
to sell out three Midnights at the Olympia, following the same fate as those
other 80s
blusterers Big Country and Simple Minds.
Even a long-time sceptic such as myself has to hand it to U2 for the way
they've re-invented themselves so successfully since Achtung Baby and the
PopMart
tour was utterly wonderful but for ten years this band were an embarrassment to
the country and music in general.
When Boy was released in 1980 U2 were already well-established as a live
act around Ireland. They were undoubtedly passionate but Bono was already
beginning to display distressing signs of toe-curling horror in his efforts to
get
the band's message across, a trait which would reach terminal velocity once he
was
exposed to America on a regular basis.
Whereas Boy had displayed admirable subtlety amidst storming tracks like I
Will Follow, by the time October came around the following year U2 were aiming
squarely for Row Z of mid-Western enormodomes, creating a bombastic, crude,
lowest-common-denominator form of uber-Rock designed to make
manufacturers of cigarette lighters and t-shirts very happy indeed.
War was even worse, with the band's anthemic traits reaching an absolute
nadir with Sunday Bloody Sunday one of the worst songs ever written yet
guaranteed to have the unthinking masses believing they were witnessing great,
compassionate poets rather than the musical equivalent of the Harlem
Globetrotters: all
flash musical moves geared towards the crowd rather than coming from within
first ... at
least Duran Duran were honest about what they were up to.
Even if they did manage a couple of half-decent singles during the 80s
Pride (In the Name of Love) and With or Without You they can never be forgiven
for
(a) inflicting a host of sub-U2 local acts upon us, several of whom were signed
to their own
label Mother or (b)those execrable performances at Live Aid and Self Aid.
At Wembley Stadium in 1985 Bono with a haircut that looked like Charlie
Nicholas ater a two-week bender brought his `man of the people' routine to the
deepest depths by climbing into the crowd during Bad and rarely has a song been
so aptly
named dancing with a girl from the audience and cutting the band's set a song
short as a result.
At Self-Aid the following year they were spiteful and bitchy (which at
least showed some refreshingly human traits) and by the time they donned cowboy
hats and
began patronising old blues men for the atrocious Rattle and Hum they were an
absolute joke.
In fairness, when Bono told the crowd at The Point that they were off to
``dream it all up again'' few of those on this side of the fence thought they'd
any chance
of exorcising the horrible memories of that blighted decade.
U2 were definitely one of the worst bands of the 80s ... but they're a bit
better now.
FOR: IAN O'DOHERTY
Like at least half the population of the country, I couldn't wait to get my
hands on U2: The Best of 1980-1990. A fascinating collection covering a decade
in
the life of one of the truly great groups, a limited number of the albums even
come
with a collection of b-sides and rarities.
Unlike most Dublin journalists, I wasn't peering over Larry Mullen's
shoulder when he placed that notice up on the board in Mount Temple. I never
even saw
them play in the Dandelion. And while I can quite easily believe that The Blades
were
the best band in Dublin at the time, my sweaty nights in the Baggot came a few
years too late to actually see for myself.
But, despite these obvious failings, I like U2. In fact, I would go as far
as to say that they are one of the best bands in the world. Not the best,
certainly that would
probably be REM but in a career that spans the decades, involves millions of
fans and
even more millions of dollars, through more fashion mistakes than you can shake
a very big stick at, and a couple of moderately remain absolutely unique in what
they do.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Sun Nov 08 1998 - 10:25:08 PST