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Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
I've been getting more into U2 lately. Got The Joshua Tree and No Line On The Horizon and have been digging it a lot. It's about time, eh?
Wise move picking The Joshua Tree. Its the perfect starting point for new/casual U2 fans.
Good to see you're liking No Line. Album is amazing but it didn't seem to go over too well with the general public. Sold decent but it isn't getting much attention like previous U2 albums. This album, especially lyrically, is definitely more mature and that's probably why the songs are struggling for a mainstream audience. Its unfortunate the album didn't have a Vertigo type song or the album would be regarded as one of their best.
Magnificent
Moment of Surrender
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
White As Snow
Cedars of Lebanon
can stand up against ANY band/artist's music this decade. While those songs are sandwiched between filler, I still think No Line is the best album of 2009, although Lily Allen and Buckethead are right on their ass.
Go download Rattle and Hum. Probably the most polarizing album in their discography. While tons of U2 nutswingers like Bono don't like it very much, there's people like me(and Russ) who think its their best album. Bono made a comment about it being their Live Like A Suicide and while he was joking, that's a pretty good assessment of the record. Its definitely a compilation, but it has some killer tracks on it, and is worth the download for Helter Skelter which destroys the Beatles version and of course the track When Love Comes to Town.
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
whoa whoa! never ever said I didn't like R&H very much. At one point it was my favorite U2 album. Can't even say that about Joshua Tree. James is right R&H has some killer tracks. God Part II, Heartland and the classics like Desire and All I Want is You. Love Rescue me is fantastic I think. R&H is a great, great album. Sadly it wasn't given it's proper due cause critics were to busy bashing the band for their "self absorbed" movie Rattle and Hum.
Rex my favorite album ever is Achtung baby. I've said many time I think it's the most ambitious or brave album any band has ever done considering where U2 was at and what their signature sound and message was. The transformation the band made from JT/R&H to Achtung baby musically and style wise is incredible and not only did it go over with critics and fans they already ahd they gained even more fans and became even bigger. Among U2 fan circles it's consitently recignized as the fan favorite when U2 fan sites do polls. Often times gaining over 50% of the total vote. Joshua Tree will always be the general public's favorite U2 album but Achtung baby reigns supreme as the hardc ore fans choice.
Also I'd highly recomend giving the album Pop a fair chance. Don't read anything about it or ask anyone what they think just listen to it and judge for yourself. The album gets an insanley unfair rep as being a dance album and the point where U2 got "shitty" when in reality A LOT of U2 fans like that album better than their first two albums this decade.
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
I never got the negativity regarding the Rattle and Hum film. They did a dual promotion(film and album), so maybe that rubbed the media(and some fans) the wrong way.
They don't perform Helter Skelter on tour which is pretty disappointing to me. Would love to hear that live. While they're older, they could still do the song justice. I also realize that their discog is so strong they could NEVER please all their fans.
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
another reminder that U2 will be streaming their concert live from the Rose Bowl in Pasedena tomorrow night free on youtube. This is the first time a show this size as ever been streamed on youtube this way. the show starts at 8:30 pm Pacific Standard time youtube.com/u2
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
This is pretty cool. An interactive diagram on how the Claw works, is built and looks. very cool
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne … .htmlstory
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
U2's concert on youtube goes live tonight at the following times
8:30pm Pacific time
9:30pm Mountain time
11:30 pm Eastern time
the rest will have to figure it out on their own 
http://www.youtube.com/u2#p/u
[youtube]W2xae9dcAVg&feature=player_profilepage[/youtube]
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
No Money on the Horizon
When U2 takes the stage of the Rose Bowl on Sunday night, the Irish band will have performed 42 shows on its 360° tour. They will have played in front of almost 3 million fans, broken dozens of attendance records and grossed close to $300 million.
They will have drawn rapturous reviews, made the cover of Rolling Stone and given the troubled concert business a gigantic shot of adrenaline.
What they won't have done is make any money.
The U2 tour is so elaborate, its 170-ton, $40 million, four-pronged stage so enormous, its overhead so costly that the band has been on the road for four months just to cover its startup costs.
They're finally on the verge of hitting the break-even mark -- just in time to shut down for the winter, because the weather's getting too cold for outdoor shows and their stage is far too big for indoor arenas.
Even when the band heads back out next spring and starts earning a profit, they'll be burning $750,000 a day in overhead as three separate models of the biggest stage in rock history hopscotch around the world, each attended by a separate crew and each requiring close to two full days just to dismantle.
The financial picture is not completely unprecedented (the most extravagant of U2's past tours, such as the Zoo TV and Pop Mart excursions in the 1990s, also took some time to break even) but the band has never before had to work for this long before seeing a profit.
And their two previous tours in this decade were relatively stripped-down affairs that took place mostly in indoor stadiums and didn't require anywhere near as much overhead.
On The Wrap: Box office preview | Will Polanski walk? Do the math | They call it 'Survivor,' but really!
This extravagance comes in an economic climate that argues against grandiose undertakings.
And it comes at a time when U2's latest album, "No Line on the Horizon," is suffering from the effects of the record industry meltdown.
The album's first two singles weren't hits, its songs aren't getting the radio airplay of past smashes like "Vertigo" and "Elevation," and overall sales have been slow. Released in March, it took seven months to reach sales of 1 million, a significant disappointment by usual U2 standards.
In the past, it wasn't unusual for a band to lose money touring because the shows would help boost record sales, where the real money was made. But these days, with music sales a digital catastrophe, the reverse often is true: You put out CDs that won't make money so that you can earn your living on the road.
So U2 is flying in the face of conventional wisdom by launching the most expensive tour in history during the worst economic climate in decades. At a time when their sales figures would argue for a no-frills show to maximize the profits they aren't getting from music sales, they decided instead to go for broke.
Are these guys nuts?
In a way, yes. "Will it sell out? Who knows?" drummer Larry Mullen Jr. said to Rolling Stone before the tour began. "Will the economic woes have an impact? Probably. But that's not going to stop us."
So far, every show has sold out, at prices that start at $30 and go up to $250, plus special seats that are auctioned off for charity. The huge concert promotion firm Live Nation is a backer as part of a 12-year deal with the band, and U2 signed a sponsorship deal with BlackBerry to offset other costs.
And U2 is taking advantage of other opportunities to lure music buyers: The Rose Bowl show, which will draw the biggest concert audience in the venue's history because its in-the-round staging allows more seats to be filled, will stream live on YouTube and be filmed for a subsequent DVD release.
In a way, this is nothing new for a band that has always taken big risks with its tours.
In 1987, when U2 wrapped up its Joshua Tree tour with two Phoenix stadium shows that were filmed for Phil Joanou's movie "Rattle and Hum," the band members financed the shows and the filming themselves, without the benefit of studio backing (though Paramount later picked up the film) or even much box office income.
Tickets were priced at only $5, because the band was worried about attracting a crowd and about charging full price for a show where the musicians might occasionally be obscured by the cameras.
"It's like 'Apocalypse Now,' without so many helicopters," laughed Bono on the afternoon of the first of those shows, as he surveyed what was for its time a huge stage, with 12 cameras, cranes and, yes, a helicopter for aerial shots.
U2 spent so much that at the end of that tour, which came on the heels of an album that had sold 14 million copies, Mullen remembered walking away with about $20,000.
Five years later, the band took even bigger financial risks with the exponentially more elaborate Zoo TV tour.
When they planned the first leg of the tour, they didn't know if ticket or album sales would be strong enough to pay for more than a couple of months' worth of shows; if attendance had been even slightly down, U2 would have ended the tour bankrupt.
Instead, they toured for more than a year and ended up making money, though not nearly as much as they could have with a simpler show. Before the 157th and final show of that tour, Mullen addressed the topic with writer Bill Flanagan. "In comparison to a lot of people in our position, we don't make a lot of money, but that's irrelevant," he said.
"In the end it's investing in our future. Not in our future financially, in our future musically -- cause at the end of the day that's what it's all about. We've all made enough money to live for the rest of our lives quite comfortably."
In a sense, that's the lesson the band is now applying on the 360° tour: As long as you come out in the black, maximizing profits should take a back seat to creating a startling, fresh show that, in the words of guitarist the Edge, "makes sense of playing stadiums."
(On that front, by all accounts they've succeeded: Reviews have been almost unanimously rapturous about the show, and the staging. "The concert was high-minded and earthy, exalted and playful, sometimes even goofy, wielding rock-star prerogatives while undercutting them with disarming informality," wrote Jon Pareles in the New York Times.)
Before the tour ends (probably late next year), U2 manager Paul McGuinness has said, it will likely top the Rolling Stones' $558 million Bigger Bang tour to become the highest-grossing tour of all time -- not the biggest moneymaker, mind you, but the highest-grossing.
It may not leave U2 as rich as they could get if their touring tastes weren't quite so extravagant -- but then, the band members have said they're fine with that.
To a degree.
Bono summed up the delicate balance in an interview with USA Today at the beginning of the U.S. tour. "I want to put on an extraordinary show," he said, "but I'd like to own my house when it's over."
http://music.msn.com/the-wrap/u2-no-mon … ?GT1=28102
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This band will never cease to amaze me....
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
Fantastic article James. Thanks for that. Whether people like U2 or not they are without a doubt in a league of their own in the history of music. They just do things differently and when I say differently, in this case that more often than not means better.
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
This live broadcast is so amazing. Everyone should tune into this!! It has't started yet but they're filimg the crowd and filming the band back stage. It's deadly. youtube.com/u2
Slash was playing with the Black Eyed Peas tonight when they opened for U2
Re: U2 - Acoustic Achtung Babies
SlashHudson - The U2 production is nothing short of spectacular I must say. http://bit.ly/3K4MtF
