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Sun, 27 Dec 1998 08:54:42 -0700
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Releases:
Best of Maria McKee/Lone Justice, Jan 12, 1999 -- features Bono
in duet with McKee singing "Sweet Jane"
Earth Love Fund : "Protection", UK January 17, 1998 (Benefit for
survivors of Hurricane Mitch in Central America)
Across The Bridge of Hope: The Omagh Tribute Album, NA March 17, 1999
(rumoured)
Concerts/Live Events:
Confirmed: March 24, 1999 Hits Under The Hammer Auction,
Bono's original lyric sheet for "Sweetest Thing" to be included in
the auction
Rumour: U2 at Millenium Concert, Dec 31, 1999 - Jan 1, 2000
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
Network TV:
FOX: Family Channel will air the Nobel Prize Concert, December 20,
at 8:00pm EST and December 27 at 6:00pm EST
K-Rock (92.3FM) in New York City has a U2 Harley Giveaway Contest
currently running. Listen to 92.3FM for more details.
MTV:
MuchMusic/MuchUSA:
Win Disc #000001 promotion starting Nov 23, 1998
The answers are: All I Want is You, Desire, and Pride(In The Name
of Love)
MuchMoreMusic:
The Making of Band Aid Dec 23, 10pm, 1am , Dec 24 2pm, Dec 25
9:30pm, 12:30am, Dec 26, 1:30pm, 10:30am ALL TIMES Eastern!
Channel V: December 28, Best of 1998 featuring U2 and The Corrs,
The Drum, 2130 EST
VH1: U2 Legends, Saturday, January 2, 1999 6:00pm EST
POP UP Videos with "New Year's Day" Thursday, Dec. 31st 7:00am,
10:30am, 2:00pm EST, and Saturday, Jan. 2nd 9:30am.
Net Events:
--------------
http://www.musicvideos.com has "Christmas Baby" on it's site for
free download.
--------------
Official Omagh Album Tribute Site http://www.omaghcd.com
--------------
Vote for U2 at Triple J's(Australian Radio) poll at
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/net50/vote.htm
--------------
Vote for U2 at DotMusic's Top Albums of All Time
--------------
Vot for U2 at http://www.bradfitz.com/votingbooth?schwag402
--------------
Fan Club/WIRE/U2 nutzoid meetings:
Coming Soon : U2 Internet Fan Club(WIRE, EXIT, One, U2Lemon,
etc.) Convention -- Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--------------
January 29, 1999, 8:00 pm U2 coverband "Vorsprung durch Technik"
Bremen, Germany. Email [email protected] for more information.
--------------
A SORT OF A HOMECOMING 99-The second annual gathering of U2 fans
anywhere and everywhere! July 22-25, 1999, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
For info, e-mail Liz at [email protected] or checkout the webpage at,
http://members.aol.com/conguero/asoh.html
--------------
NEWS dates:
WTSHNN in "A Civil Action" added Dec 26
Top Ten EBAY added Dec 25
X-mas and a new baby added Dec 25
U2 #1 in Europe added Dec 25
New Voices of Freedom cover U2 on new CD added Dec 24
Bono impersonators added Dec 24
Best of goes Multiplatinum! added Dec 24
Oh no...more Cher added Dec 23
Entire Muse Interview added Dec 23
A Gig in Heaven added Dec 23
Omagh Goodwill added Dec 23
Some Island Contest Winners added Dec 23
U2 Collection For Sale added Dec 23
David Harth added Dec 22
Sonny/Bono added Dec 21
Bergin looks for next U2 on RTE added Dec 21
Celtic bid ends before presentation added Dec 21
Dalglish/Kerr/Bono and Celtic added Dec 21
Houston, Cher, King, Springsteen praise U2/Bono added Dec 21
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U2's "Where The Streets Have No Name" is featured in
John Travolta's new movie, "A Civil Action".
Thanks to DJ Gibigiane for this info.
-------------
Top Ten Over-used/Mis-used EBAY.COM Buzzwords
10. Rare
9. PROMO
8. Import
7. Complete Collection
6. CD/CDR
5. Pressing(and the item doesn't refer to vinyl)
4. Mint
3. Rare Bootleg
2. CD quality bootleg
1. Ultra Rare
By Prarit Bhargava
-------------
Well, it certainly was a very Merry X-mas in the Mullen household.
German TV VIVA reports that Larry's signifigant other Anne gave
birth to their second child, a baby girl. No name was announced with
the report.
-------------
>From BillBoard:
U2 "Best of" is #1 (again) in Europe...
-------------
GRAND OPENING!!! JANUARY 1, 1999 coming at
http://www.guavajamm.net
the newest online record company featuring U2's favorite choir
(as seen & heard live at madison square garden with U2 in
"Rattle & Hum" and Bill Murray's "Scrooged" A&M Sountrack
doing "The Sweetest Thing" by request of the band))
in The Album ROCKSPEL!!
NEW VOICES OF FREEDOM
DENNIS BELL-MUSICAL DIRECTOR
Featuring their gospel version (that Bono loved so much he asked
them to perform it with U2 at Madison Square Garden) of
"I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR"
(****never before available****)
also featuring New Voices' Rockspel Versions of
MYSTERIOUS WAYS (U2)
THANKYOUFALETINMEBMICELF (SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE)
plus a host of originals from the number 1 Rock & Roll Choir in the
world as seen and heard with Lenny Kravitz and Sean Lennon, Peter
Gabriel, Yoko Ono and others in the re-make of John Lennon's
"GIVE PEACE A CHANCE" and with Sting, Peter Gabriel, Dave
Stewart, Wayne Shorter, Suzanne Vega, Laurie Anderson, The Gypsy
Kings, Chrissie Hynde, Salif Keita and othersin the BBC/Virgin Records
in
"ONE WORLD, ONE VOICE"
Get this special CD release only at http://www.guavajamm.net
-------------
>From The Irish Times:
Is it Bob? Is it Bono? No, it's a tribute band
They may not be the real thing, but as far as
Christmas punters are concerned, they're the
real McCoy. Kevin Courtney investigates the
current craze for pop star lookalikes
AS the curtain rises on Christmas, the streets and
shopping malls are filled with Santa impersonators,
all paying seasonal tribute to the jolly old man in the
red suit. They're not the real Father Christmas, of
course, but they do provide a pleasant illusion,
keeping the children amused until Santa himself
arrives on Christmas Eve.
There's another group of imitators abroad this
season, and their names are as familiar as that of
Mr Claus. If you head down to your local music
venue during the holidays, you're likely to spot
Bono, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Sting, Phil Lynnott
and Jim Morrison, all alive and kicking, and all
performing their greatest hits on stage. Not the real
ones, mind, but a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Better not cry or pout, though: it's just another
harmless illusion, created by young musicians with
stars in their eyes - and it's keeping the punters
very, very amused at Christmas.
Tribute bands have been with us for a number of
years, but instead of turning out to be a fad, they've
proved to have lasting appeal on the live circuit.
There's no shortage of original music out there in
popland, but at this festive time of the year, punters
want something they can sing along to - and what
better tunes to sing along to than the hits of ABBA,
The Beatles, The Doors, The Eagles and U2? And
for only a tenner, too.
The rest of the article can be found at:
http://www.irish-times.com/cgi-bin/highlight.plx?TextRes=u2&Path=/irish-times/paper/1998/1224/fea1.html
-------------
Condensed from Yahoo:
Dion sings her way to top selling artist title
R. Kelly and U2 also nabbed multiplatinum certifications for two-disc
sets ``R'' and ``Best of 1980-1990/the B-sides,'' respectively.
(Certifications cover shipments by labels to retailers, and not actual
sales by retailers to consumers, and can be misleading because
retailers generally return unsold stock to the labels.)
-------------
Cher is quoted in this week's NME as saying she would like
"I Still Haven't Found(What I'm Looking For)" as being the song
she would like to be played at her funeral.
-------------
From: Deseree Stukes, [email protected] of
Interference.com:
>From dSIDES:
Buzzin'
You wouldn't think it to look at them that we are here to go dancing. The
man they call The Edge is sporting a sharp Stetson and a brilliant moustache
so he's rocking the Village People look tonight. The man they call Bono is
talking with his mouth full of chips and red meat and he's rocking the Elvis
Costello look that he seems to have been rocking since The Sweetest Thing
video.
They are freestyling about dance music and club culture, and have been for a
good hour. We have just finished talking about Puerto Ricans and The Pogues
for reasons which will hopefully become clear sometime soon. Let's rewind
the tape and go back to the start and see how we got to here from there.
We are talking to Bono and Edge in the resident's lounge of the Clarence
Hotel, their swanky gaff 'just an inch on the posh side of town' if you
listen to Bono. The room is full of their friends and acquaintances. Most
are here because the boys have just set up a new dance label that they are
launching tonight. Neither U2 boyo will be larging it as Kitchen Records'
Pete Tong, that task is left to long-time bud Reggie Manuel. The plot is
that Reggie will find the acts, the chaps will nod their heads, sign the
cheques and the rest is a cool new release in the shops every so often.
The first release is from Dublin's heavyweight champion of minimalist
techno, Rob Rowland, an artist we know from his incredible output on D1 over
the past two years. The second release will come from Belfast beat duo Basic
whom we don't know very much about aside from their rather impressive show
in The Kitchen on the night of the label launch. And we are assured that
there will be more.
There are many reasons why rock stars start labels. There are alleged tax
advantages, there are egos, there are friends looking for something to do
and, well, there's the Edge. 'What would you do if you were in a big band
with loads of money? You have to stay alive, you have to stay tuned in to
what's happening and this is the perfect way for us to do that. It's our way
of keeping on top of everything that is happening. It's not just going off
buying loads of twelve-inches but having our own label to release stuff
which catches out attention. We're the instigators but we don't have the
time or whatever to throw ourselves into the culture enough to be like the
man or men making all the decisions on a daily basis. Reggie is in the
driving seat so we'll be getting tapes from him and listening to what he's
coming up with. We'll hear everything before it goes out, but we won't be
hands on.'
It's not their first venture into the world of wannabe label moguls. That
was Mother Records, a label which began life as a one-stop shop for the
likes of Cactus World News, Hothouse Flowers, The Word, In Tua Nua and many
other Irish Next Big Things of the Eighties and subsequently became a part
of the Polygram corporation with Audioweb and Bjork (for Europe only)
currently on the roster. 'Mother has become a lot bigger than it was when it
started' Edge explains. 'It's based in London for a start, and has turned
into a major label, albeit a small one. It's like Island Records twenty
years ago. In that sense, they don't really need us. Occasionally, we send
on a tape we come across that we think is really great but that's about the
height of our involvement.'
U2 and dance music, it's a weird one. The release of that recent compilation
of Eighties' singles shows that U2 and the groove did not do much
cheek-to-cheek smooching during The Decade That Taste Would Prefer To
Forget. Into the Nineties and it's a different matter. Paul Oakenfold's
remix of Even Better Than The Real Thing. DJs touring with the band.
Supernova remixes. The recruitment of Howie B. The opening of The Kitchen in
Dublin. Albums like Achtung Baby and Pop which acknowledged riddim and beats
as the new R&B. In fact, just as discotheques became clubs, U2 became hip to
the groove. Or did they? Edge smiles and delivers a short history lesson.
'We actually worked with Fancois Kervokian in 1982 in New York. We did three
remixes with him around the time of Sunday Bloody Sunday. I hung out with
him in New York and he turned me on to some fantastic stuff.' Kervokian
remains one of the dons of the New York scene, his Sunday afternoon Body &
Soul shindigs at Vinyl being life-affirming events for a cast of NYC queens,
club kids, smart kids and gobsmacked out-of-towners wondering how the hell
they'll make that flight from JFK after this. And we can recall those U2
remixes with some glee. As can the Edge.
'I remember that was the same year that Atomic Dog was out and that was all
over every club in New York. That was the first taste we had of what was
happening on the dance side of things. We also realised it wasn't like
everyone had been saying that disco was the enemy. We were lucky because we
were signed to Island Records and they were very interested in sub-culture
stuff so they introduced us to this scene and these people like Francois. If
we had been on CBS, I don't think that would have happened. But that's the
whole thing about Chris Blackwell (Island MD at that time), he's always been
the culture-vulture kind of guy, a real musicologist on a street level,
always digging out new things.' And then there were tracks like Bass Track,
subtle B-sides which had some shimmering glows to them. 'Oh yeah' remembers
Bono. 'That was ambient before ambient. We were piggybacking Brian Eno a
little bit but we brought a certain (long pause as Bono stares across the
room) earth to it...' Edge starts to laugh. "it's amazing the way you come
out with these things. Earth! How can you just roll out with something like
that?" Bono just grins. We roll on. Tell us about the discos when you were
growing up, chaps. Edge: 'Well, I used to go to the Afro Spot and.... Bono
(interrupts): 'To be perfectly honest, it was the mid-Eighties when I got
all funky and actually got into dance stuff. I didn't have a huge interest
in it up to then. In the Seventies. club culture was the enemy. It was
girl's music and we were boys. I did buy Love Machine. Was it by The
Stylistics? (sings the tune with a fairly credible falsetto) Yeah, it was.
There was an instrumental on the B-side which had a serious groove. I bought
that record but I don't think I told anyone because it was just at the time
punk rock was breaking and punk rock was about as male, white, hormonal
music as you could find.
'It's funny as you get older that the music you loved as a boy now just
sounds so wrong and especially so long! And the music that was supposed to
be so trivial and throwaway has lasted the test of time. Pop music and dance
music from then sound so cool now, whereas progressive rock and the like,
well (laughs). Rock & roll critics used to shit all over the Bee Gees. Fair
enough. the hair-dos were appalling but to think that they were dismissed in
favour of (loud voice) prog rock!'
In fact, U2 discovered their rhythm in the strangest of places. 'We didn't
get rhythm until we went on the road with BB King' Bono exclaims. 'R&B was
where we discovered rhythm and that wasn't until the late Eighties. While
everyone was doing drugs in the summer of love in London, we were in Memphis
hanging out with the Muscle Shoals brass section getting into rhythm that
way. I guess it really came together for us with Achtung Baby.'
So Bono proceeds to switch continents faster than Concorde. 'You see, our
orientation towards the groove came via America. It didn't come to us
through London. It was New York, then LA, then Chicago, then Detroit. Our
first connection with a European groove came in Berlin. What was that band
you were into for a while, Edge? The ones who used to live in the holes in
the ground? Spiral Tribe! They were mad. They used to have bits of military
aircraft with them that they obtained from this site outside the studio in
Berlin that we used. This was in the original centre of Berlin, O'Connell
Street or Trafalgar Square if you like, before it was bombed to bits during
the war. Then, there was all these, what do you call them, crustations? You
know, the people who lived in the ground?'
Edge looks blankly at his companion. The journalist thinks fast and tries to
forget that great Courtney Love line from her interview in The Observer
about celebrity isolation and malapropisms. Er, do you mean crusties, Bono?
He grins. 'Crusties! Yeah, thanks! There was a huge scene like that just
outside the studio. Loads of crusties and gypsies and chickens running
everywhere and bits of fighter planes. That was quite a scene. So we went
from an LA hip-hop scenario to this in Berlin which was quite a trip.'
And before you have time to take that in, Bono is running down the road with
Paul Oakenfold. 'I remember Oakie saying to me "Do you know what people are
playing at the end of these huge raves in the middle of nowhere outside the
cities? They're playing With Or Without You." I was like "No way, you're off
your trolley". And they were! But that was our connection with that scene
because our music was ecstatic. In the Eighties, U2 made ecstatic music.
Whether you want to call it a religious thing or not, the music was big and
universal and it was open in such a way that people who off their nuts and
who were not in raincoats any more and getting into all these drugs were
completely thrown by it.' So if you view your Eighties catalogue as
uplifting, how do you feel about the way acts like Embrace and to an extent
The Verve, those acts standing po-faced under the new seriousness banner,
keep getting compared to U2 scowling under The Joshua Tree? 'Some of that is
a fair cop' Edge accepts 'but it was a different time. It's funny to look
back and realise just how out of step with the Eighties we were. This was
the era of the material girl, this was the era of Reaganomics, it was a very
selfish era and our music certainly doesn't seem to have been in step with
that. It's quite interesting that we survived and thrived in that situation
whereas this is the caring, sharing, loving Nineties and it's perhaps more
predictable that people would be making that sort of music now.'
If that was then and this is now, what sounds are rocking your world at the
moment? And will we hear them on Kitchen Records?
Edge: 'I like techno, I'm not big into drum & bass, I like hip-hop. I like
the fact that the Fugees clan are coming out with some unbelievable stuff.'
Bono: "Lauryn Hill is just amazing, that album man is just one of the
defining records of the last few years. Really. she's head and shoulders
above the pack. Autchere. I dig them. Squarepusher, those beats are mad.
I'll also go for Dave Angel and for Surgeon. Edge, it's strange to hear you
say that about techno because it is so white and your music tastes are
usualiy so black. I'm just curious to hear you come out with that one'
Edge: Well, it's just the sound as a whole, I think techno is the sound of
Europe. I was always interested in industrial music and in a sense, this is
where it's gone to. I'm a minimalist at heart so I love the stripped-down
sense of it all.'
-- Prarit....[email protected] U2 news: http://www.members.home.net/u2-news/u2.html U2 NEWS is MOVING -- AGAIN!!!!
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