Random U2 news
Checking through the news sources today, I found a fun link: http://www.ruggedelegantliving.com/a/003660.html:
“Move Over U2: The iPod Digital Music Player is The Apple of Queen Elizabeth’s Eye & Ears
Queen Elizabeth II has turned to the Apple iPod for her listening pleasure.
The seventy-nine year-old British Queen bought her 6 GB iPod Mini Silver for 169 pounds (currently $236.55 — at the time of publication). Her pocket-sized digital music player holds up to 10,000 songs.
Apple has the Queen’s second son Prince Andrew to thank for getting the Queen Mum into electronic devices like mobile phones and iPods.
In 2001, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, taught his mother how to use her phone.”
I wonder if she’ll download the Complete U2!
In other news….
It looks like someone at The Rock Radio.com didn’t care for the band’s performance in Gelsenkirchen. You can read their review here: http://www.therockradio.com/2005/06/u2-fail-to-impress-gelsenkirchen.html … It’s interesting that they point out the stage looked cheap, as well as the political and religious statements they were making. I thought there wasn’t much cheap on this tour, but I digress.
The Washington Post’s article on June 13 about the Michael Jackson case had a little blip in it about Paul McGuinness. Alan Light, editor of Tracks Magazine, said about Michael Jackson’s career issues: “Just about any musical act that has had long-term success has been closely chaperoned by some business whiz, Light points out. U2, for example, considers its manager, Paul McGuinness, to be the fifth member of the band, says Light. Jackson, by contrast, has pulled away from éminence grises of the business such as Berry Gordy and Quincy Jones, who have been instrumental in his success.” The full story can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/13/AR2005061301717.html
The Independent’s story on Franz Ferdinand’s recording sessions touched on how bands used webcams in the studio, and contains a quote from U2log’s vonB:
“Rock bands, particularly artful image-conscious rock bands, have evidently learned from those early revelations. U2 were one of the first groups to use webcams. But although much excitement occasioned the announcement that followers would be able to log-in and tune in to the creation of the group’s Pop album, the reality was more prosaic. Caroline van Oosten de Boer was one of a group of fans that set up a weblog to monitor what U2’s cameras saw - but found little to report.
‘It was very organised and directed with a time delay in operation. Plus the camera was trained on a very uninteresting part of the studio. Basically, all you saw was people sitting on the couch,’ says De Boer.
The band turned the webcam on once again during the final stages of recording All That You Can’t Leave Behind. This time a slightly more sophisticated monitoring system was set up, and viewers were able to watch Bono sitting with his laptop on his knee and singing lyrics into a microphone. Although sometimes seen cradling a set of bongos, Larry Mullen seemed to spend all his time in from of the camera reading the day’s newspapers.
The webcam’s function according to De Boer was “to create a buzz among hardcore fans and let them know that an album was on the way.” In that respect it worked, helping All That You Can’t Leave Behind become the band’s most successful album in years. So successful, in fact, that by the time the group came to record their current release How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb, the momentum was already rolling and the studio was kept webcam-free.”
To read the full story: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/features/story.jsp?story=647318
Just some random news for your Saturday reading.
