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Post by Sneelock on Nov 6, 2021 16:14:12 GMT
Our Man G:
Can you loan me a few bucks?
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U2
Nov 8, 2022 17:15:16 GMT
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Nov 8, 2022 17:15:16 GMT
This is pretty good
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U2
Nov 8, 2022 18:48:23 GMT
Post by fonz on Nov 8, 2022 18:48:23 GMT
Rare moments of humility there…
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U2
Nov 8, 2022 19:00:47 GMT
via mobile
Post by Reactionary Rage on Nov 8, 2022 19:00:47 GMT
I lasted until the fistbump
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U2
Nov 8, 2022 22:46:05 GMT
Post by Charlie O. on Nov 8, 2022 22:46:05 GMT
The Van Morrison story was pretty funny.
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U2
Nov 8, 2022 23:28:48 GMT
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Nov 8, 2022 23:28:48 GMT
He's good on late Elvis too.
I wouldn't want to be stuck in a van with him THO
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U2
Nov 9, 2022 0:17:27 GMT
via mobile
Post by harrylemon on Nov 9, 2022 0:17:27 GMT
I've downloaded his book. Haven't had any interest in his music for years and years. The ads with him narrating were pretty good.
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Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Nov 10, 2022 15:51:07 GMT
Posting part 2 deliberately 'cos it warms up after a (their) few gulps of rum.
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Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Jan 11, 2023 21:27:36 GMT
Lots more stuff on YT recently, following on from the publication of his memoirs. Decent interview with B and his lesser-spotted wife here (the Gorbachev bit is gold):
whatever you think of the man, you don't get anecdotes like that from Peter Hook.
Unfortunately it seems the band have decided to re-record many of their big hits, which is always a bad sign. You get the full 'Unplugged and knackered on the sofa' flavour with this one:
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U2
Mar 16, 2023 12:11:46 GMT
via mobile
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Mar 16, 2023 12:11:46 GMT
U2 have always dealt in grand gestures. No other rock artists from the world of post-punk chased megastardom with the same missionary zeal: they seldom made any bones about wanting to be the biggest band in the world, something they duly achieved in grandstanding style. Their tours have involved everything from stage sets so big they required aircraft warning lights to prank calling the White House to the highest-resolution video screen ever seen at a gig: the most recent one grossed $390m. Even when they screw up, it’s on a monumental scale: the PopMart tour of 1998, with its malfunctioning 40ft motorised mirrorball – or was it a giant lemon? – that got stuck; the debacle of Songs of Innocence’s unexpected appearance in 500 million iTunes users’ libraries.
So perhaps it’s unsurprising that what should theoretically be a low-key project – reworking their back catalogue in muted, largely acoustic style – has turned into an epic undertaking. Songs of Surrender is 40 tracks long and lasts the best part of three hours. So much for understatement. Neither a greatest hits nor a selection of deep cuts, its title suggests a link to Bono’s recent autobiography, Surrender, its 40 chapters each named after a U2 song – but that’s not quite the case. Picked by all four members, 11 of Songs of Surrender’s tracks don’t appear in Bono’s book. The main takeaway from its tracklisting is that U2 think Songs of Innocence was underrated, its contents drowned out by the iTunes controversy: it has a stronger presence here than any other album.
The record’s conceptual shakiness is less of an issue than its unwieldiness, at least if you try to listen to it in one sitting. Given the album’s self-imposed sonic parameters (largely piano, guitar and synth washes; little in the way of drums) it struggles to hold your attention. Taken in smaller doses, there are great moments marked by a sense of genuine reinvention: a fantastic, brass-assisted take on The Joshua Tree’s Red Hill Mining Town; a version of Every Breaking Wave that supports the band’s point about the contents of Songs of Innocence being undervalued; early single 11 O’Clock Tick Tock stripped back to make the power of the melody more obvious.
The last one also features one of Songs of Surrender’s most consistently intriguing sounds, that of the Edge adapting guitar parts influenced by PiL’s Keith Levene, and heavily dependent on echo and signal processing, to a more straightforward acoustic sound. The best example comes with Achtung Baby’s The Fly, which eschews the original’s feedback-strafed sound, heavy on wah pedal, for loose, organic funk decorated with eerie backing vocals. It’s run close by Desire, ripping out the original’s muscular heft, leaving a falsetto vocal treated with effects: it suddenly sounds like a song about being weak with love, about a clinging desperation. But Desire and The Fly are the exceptions that prove Songs of Surrender’s basic rule. For the most part, the biggest songs here don’t work rendered in soft-focus miniature. Maybe With or Without You, Pride et al are simply too familiar, or they were too efficiently constructed with the aim of moving stadiums full of people en masse: their widescreen ambitions an integral part of their appeal, a sense of intimacy hard to locate. At best they sound pleasantly inessential, the kind of thing that would once have been confined to track three on a CD single, and at worst their gentle piano figures and hushed ambience sound like cover versions commissioned for a bank advert. It’s certainly more fun hearing tracks excavated from the recesses and reconsidered – Zooropa’s Dirty Day; How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’s lovely Miracle Drug – than listening to U2 struggling to work out what to do with Vertigo and Get Out of Your Own Way and not coming up with a satisfactory answer: the strings on the former are no replacement for raging guitars, the latter loses all its propulsion stripped of its motorik beat in favour of a rough busking.
Neither a disaster on the level of their iTunes launch, nor a triumph to match Zoo TV, Songs of Surrender sits somewhere in the middle of that sliding scale of success. It might have been more satisfying if U2 had stuck to digging through the more recherche corners of their catalogue, or used it as an opportunity to rework music they felt was underdone first time around: instead, their rushed second album October and 2009’s coolly received No Line on the Horizon are discreetly ignored and only bassist Adam Clayton picks a track from 1997’s derided Pop. But then, without the hits and the lyrical tweaks to update celebrated songs – Walk On altered to reference Ukraine rather than Aung San Suu Kyi; Pride appended to mention Alan Kurdi – Songs of Surrender would have seemed less grand a gesture: less U2.
www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/16/u2-songs-of-surrender-review
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 16, 2023 13:38:21 GMT
tldr
Here's the shortened version...
Dublin....Christianity....blah blah...mullet....blah blah...tree....B.B. King...blah blah....post-modernism...blah blah....MacPhisto....blah blah...Mandela...blah blah...itunes.
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U2
Mar 19, 2023 10:30:10 GMT
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Mar 19, 2023 10:30:10 GMT
Bono and the Edge's desk job
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 19, 2023 11:28:39 GMT
Stop looking up videos of Bono on youtube!
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U2
Mar 19, 2023 11:37:46 GMT
via mobile
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Mar 19, 2023 11:37:46 GMT
There's a LOT!
I was going to post one interview with him and Edge out in the desert with that even-more-pretentious prick Zane Lowe, but....anyway it's there if you want. As Fawlty says, there's enough there for an entire conference...
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U2
Mar 19, 2023 11:45:40 GMT
Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 19, 2023 11:45:40 GMT
Why are you so interested?
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