VIDEO: 9 Minutes of Bono at the Desert Music Festival in Mali

We’ve already posted several videos on the main website from Bono’s recent appearance at the Desert Festival in Timbuktu, Mali, but this one below is by far the longest and best of all.

It’s from the festival organizers and features about nine minutes of non-stop Bono — the first seven minutes are from his performance, and then a couple minutes of him enjoying the music from the crowd.

Look for his typically subtle entrance at the 1:00 mark and don’t miss the 5:00 mark, when he starts pulling out some of his favorite stadium moves.

Paul McGuinness and U22 Final Tally

Yesterday’s announcement of the final votes for the U2.com fan club gift U22 was both surprising and enlightening. U2.com reported that “tens of thousands of votes” were cast for this year’s subscribers gift.

Over the three months of voting, U2.com asked a handful of guest contributors to offer their list of 22 songs they’d like to see make the cut. Our very own M2 was asked to share his thoughts. After seeing the list, I was curious to see whose list was the closest to what the fans’ final 22 songs were. Drum roll please…

PAUL MCGUINNESS! Yes, that’s right. He got 16 out of 22 correct. Tied for second place were Joe O’Herlihy, Claudia Espanosa (Bajagirl), and M2 with 15 out of 22. Willie Williams tied with John Noble (Bigwave) for third with 12 out of 22, and in fourth place was Caroline van Oosten de Boer (VonB) with 8 out of 22.

There were two songs that everyone agreed upon: “Bad” and “Ultraviolet.” Six out of the seven guest contributors agreed on “City Of Blinding Lights,” “One Tree Hill” and “Zooropa.” Only Joe O’Herlihy included “Elevation,” while only Paul McGuinness included “Mysterious Ways.”

Even though not all the songs I chose made the list, I’m happy with the mix of old and new. My favorite song did make the list (“The Fly”), but it still would have been nice to see some of the more rare tracks make the cut. The biggest surprise was seeing the only song that was in every U2 360 show, “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (remix),” not make it. For a recording that’s representative of the tour, it seems out of place not to have it included.

@U2 readers are sharing their thoughts in our Forum – check out the discussion and add your spin on U22.

U2 at Giants Stadium: A Look at The Live Nation Concert Contract

After a nearly three-year legal battle, a court order has forced the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority (NJSEA) to make public hundreds of contracts that it signed for concerts that have been held at the Meadowlands complex — the stadium and arena. You can read more about the court fight on NJ.com.

Also on that page is a viewable PDF with thousands of scanned pages from those contracts (and a link to download the PDF if you’re so inclined).

It just so happens that the released documents includes the contract that NJSEA signed with Live Nation for the two U2 concerts on September 23 and 24, 2009. I’ve read through that material and put together this collection of notes that any U2 fan might find interesting.

Note, too, that U2 was originally scheduled to perform on September 24 and 25, but the second show had to be moved after the New York Jets football team rescheduled their September 27th game.

Here are the details that I found interesting…

Live Nation rents the facility from September 20 at 7:00 pm until September 26 at 11:59 pm.

Stadium rental fee: $252,500, plus $15,000 per day if additional time is needed

Ticketmaster is the approved ticketing agency.

All seating is reserved, floor is general admission.

Four ticket prices: $253, $98, $58 and $33

Stadium authority gets to set aside 750 tickets per show and buy them from Live Nation at discounts: $25 for $253 tickets and $15 for $98 and $53 tickets.

Stadium authority gets to collect and keep $15 service fee on $253 tickets, $10 service fee on $98 tickets and a $5 service fee on $58 tickets.

Ticket prices include $3 facility fee, to be split equally between stadium and Live Nation. Ticketmaster also entitled to charge a convenience fee.

Stadium gets to keep use of 9 suites at no charge.

Stadium can hold tickets related to obstructed view suites until Sept. 14 – after that date, all held seats will be released to general public for sale.

Live Nation gets 100 parking passes, plus parking space for working personnel.

Live Nation has a separate contract with Aramark for merchandise sales. Split is 77.5% / 22.5% on sales, which can change to 80/20 split based on sales totals. (Assume Live Nation gets larger portion of the split.)

Stadium determines where merchandise booths are located.

Live Nation required to purchase minimum $5 million insurance policy to cover bodily injury and property damage. Live Nation and U2 also required to have Workers Compensation insurance as required by state law. Proof of insurance must be supplied at least 10 days prior to the concert.

Stadium agrees to open doors at 5:30 pm.

September 25th rescheduling:

• Stadium liable to pay for 1) ticket refunds, 2) cancellation of suite holds/requests, and 3) any other claims by ticket holders including lost expenses like travel, hotel. Stadium and Live Nation agree to cooperate to “defend and/or minimize and/or settle” type 3 claims.
• Stadium liable for all those claims up to $735,000 (which represented 10% of ticket/suite sales at time of contract).
• Stadium discounts the rent for September 23 show from $155,000 to $77,500.

All advertising and promotional activity will be directed by Live Nation’s Tour Promoter.

Stadium agrees to turn off all signs inside the stadium during the concert, and agrees to use “best efforts” to cover signs near the stage to avoid appearance of sponsorship/endorsement with U2.

Blackberry has right to participate in all press/publicity events.

All advertisements, promotions must include “U2 presented by Blackberry.”

Blackberry is allowed to run booths/kiosks on-site for marketing, and may include giveaways; any sales must go through Aramark.

Stadium will provide a 100-person hospitality suite to Blackberry for pre- and post-event parties.

Blackberry gets up to 20 “prime” pairs of tickets for free, and right to buy more tickets.

Stadium allows Live Nation to distribute charity-related pamphlets.

Stadium must provide daily ticket sales counts to Live Nation, but is not allowed to provide ticket counts to anyone else.

Stadium and/or Ticketmaster will provide Live Nation with ticket customer details, including “addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.”

Contract recommends that seated and floor tickets be withheld from sale to allow for “unforeseen seating difficulties” (i.e., relocating troubled ticket holders).

Live Nation has right to contract with a third party for ticket/transportation packages.

U2 gets two private suites.

Venue is allowed to sell VIP packages and gets 10% commission on the gross, less the cost of tickets.

“It is the policy of the Tour that no cameras or recording devices of any kind be admitted to the Venue.”

Tour policy disallows sales of bottles, cans and other “potentially dangerous objects” and venue agrees not to serve refreshments in cans, bottles, glassware or other hard containers.

Live Nation gets use of venue’s in-house video screens/scoreboard at no extra charge.

Venue will supply parking for up to 70 tractor-trailers, 12 tour buses and 50 vehicles at no extra cost.

T1 lines (internet) are installed at $250 plus $75 per additional day of service.

(END)

So now you know a little more about what goes into a U2 concert contract! Thanks to @carynrose on Twitter for the tip.

U2 Still In “The Story of Christian Rock”

Bleed Into One, a film telling the story of Christian rock music, is still in development and now has a Kickstarter campaign to raise $60,000 to pay music licensing fees and post-production costs.

Producer Tim Hudson has cut a new trailer for the film (which you can watch at the Kickstarter page), but U2 fans who remember the first trailer will notice  the footage of Bono and Edge, and of Phil Keaggy talking about U2, is conspicuously gone in the new trailer.

Hudson assured me he still plans to include all of the U2 content (which is more than in the trailer) and hopes to land an interview with Bono for the final film. He recently wrote about why he chose  Bleed Into One for the film’s title and the special meaning “Drowning Man” has for him.

For more details about the project, you can read my report from June 2010.

The original trailer is below, with clips of Bono speaking at 1:27, 1:43, and 3:47. That’s Phil Keaggy at 0:43, the legendary guitarist who formed Glass Harp, who says U2 is the “world’s greatest band, in my opinion.”

VIDEO: Band-Aid, Minus Bono, Sings “Do They Know It’s Christmas”

Here’s something I’ve never seen before: Band-Aid singing (err, lip-synching) “Do They Know It’s Christmas” on Top Of The Pops, but without Bono.

And yet, despite not having all of the singers there, they go on lip-synching right over Bono’s line as if there’s nothing strange about it at all.

I don’t know the exact date of that TOTP performance, but it would surely have been December 1984. And since U2 was touring the U.S. that month, there was no way for Bono (nor Adam) to show up for the TV performance.

How weird it all is.

VIDEO: U2′s Tribute to Metallica’s 30th Anniversary

I think we mentioned somewhere on the site already (or maybe it was just on our Twitter account) that U2 did a short video skit in honor of Metallica’s 30th anniversary. Metallica did a series of concert “parties” earlier this month in the Bay Area and all kinds of artists gave video tributes that played during the week.

You can find U2′s video tribute on Metallica.com, but since that video isn’t embeddable, we’ll grab the one that U2News converted to YouTube (via Scatter O’Light on Twitter).