Legit live disc/Next tour/Joy theme/Donadel


rob okorn ([email protected])
Fri, 04 Dec 1998 23:54:14 PST


There'll never be a mountain of legit live U2 concert releases from
Island or U2, the reasons would require reams of converted deadwood.
Fortunately I've sifted through the deadwood, here's the condensed bark
extract watered down version.
Reason #1: Because!
Reason #65: Saturation points should never be exceeded.
Reason #205: Logistics
Reason #364: Suits at Island may sue Bono for suggesting it after being
hospitalized with deep groin pulls from laughing uncontrollably.
Reason #577: Concertgoers would be so used to the canned soundboard
sound, that the crowd noise would confuse them.
Reason #649: Plethora of live releases has desensitizing effect, less
compelling reason to see live gig of an inferior performance, especially
if seat location is in another time zone within the expansiveness of a
stadium.
Reason #843: Island red tape, the idea would rotate in an endless
management loop. Bono would then have to spend his last millions
getting a programming guru to come up with an exception statement so
that the loop would cease and the live disc project would be seen to
fruition.
Reason #954: There are only a finite number of great performances, a
boatload of good but 'ordinary' performances, as well as the weaker
performances. Releasing everything is akin to throwing everything in
some genetically mutated pool, sifting through the excesses, and
invariably releasing subpar product.
Reason #972: The bootleggers have already released some of the best
performances in better than official release 'live' quality.
Reason #973: Soundboards cannot capture the 'live experiennce' prompting
Bono to suggest playing the board tapes through his home speakers and
recording with a portable DAT recorder to mimic the 'live experience'.
Rumour has it, bono has a patent pending on this live recording
technique.

BTW, there is no number pattern for those wondering. :)
In reality, I'm sure something will be released down the road. Since
the recordings are already in the can, it's a sunk cost, breakeven will
be lower than new album with much larger production costs and marketing.
Alot of it hinges on how U2's next album or 2 are received and how they
sell at the live gate. The less successful, the more rapid the vault
releases.

What will be interesting to see is what size venues will be targeted,
Island had the savviness to sell popmart tix pre-album, and then shout
'sold out' for venues that were thousands of seats away from sellout to
spur even more demand. I'm sure more people will sit on the fence til
the album is released and Island selling the show as an 'event' rather
than a live performance won't work this time. I see Island pushing the
DIFFERENT 'joy' theme and new direction as something UNIQUE for U2,
anyone who's picked up a marketing 101 book knows that the key attribute
to sell a product is it's uniqueness relatively speaking, the
differentiation factor is the selling point. North america will again
be a tougher sell than europe so arenas are a real possibility, better
intimacy than a stadium, also creates more demand.
The video factor will be scaled down, Bono already apologized for the
excesses to VH1, the cost would also be too prohibitive to justify the
previous barrage.
So we're left with a more humble Bono without theatrics, smaller venues,
basic vid screens, and happy themes.

As far as the 'joy' theme, what's inherent is that it won't be as
compelling as a 'dark theme' but it's different and sheds some
positivism in the U2 camp. Will fun fluffy songs cut it? We'll see,
with Lanois on board the odds improve markedly. I wonder if Bono will
cop some of his fave old Stones songs, Stones kinda combined
bluesy(dark)with party(fun) quite a bit, you'll notice trademark old
Stones songs end with a party type atmosphere that simply continues into
the fading and never really ends.
   
Two weeks seems a tad premature to be putting someone's name(Donadel)
through the mud with alarmist subject headers capitalized with mucho
exclamation marks. You could have a very legit gripe, as far as I know
he's legit, italian mail isn't exactly the fastest in europe either.
I've also had traders who said they mailed on X date yet the postmarked
date was several days to a week or so later.

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