Mercy…Merci!
Greetings from a rainy, icy and darn-right cold Portland, Oregon! Yes, ice your only rivers *do* run cold! But enough about the weather….
On behalf of everyone on the @U2 staff, I would like to thank everyone who braved the ice storm to come out to celebrate our 10th birthday with us. We had over 200 fans join us - amazing! It was fantastic to see some familiar faces, as well as to meet so many new people.
Our birthday party got kicked off with the results from the official @U2 fan survey. During November, we asked fans worldwide for your opinion in our comprehensive survey. We were excited to see that over 4100 of you took our survey. Typically, when Time Magazine or CNN does a survey, they’re lucky to get 1500 responses - and they use those numbers to generalize about the entire population. So, with almost 3-times that amount responding to our survey, we are assured that we have a pretty good idea of the “typical” U2 fan.
We plan on having the survey results up on the site in the upcoming week or so, but to give you a little sneak-peek on what the results are (and to recap for everyone at the event)…the “typical” U2 fan is….
Male, aged between 25-36, still living with his parents, listens to U2 at least once a day, thinks that Larry would win on the television show Survivor, and feels that Edge is the best musician in the band. The typical fan also believes that Adam’s 1981 afro was the worst fashion mistake U2 has ever had….beating Bono’s Live Aid mullet and everything associated with PopMart. As I said, the survey was quite comprehensive! (More to come in the following days.)
After about an hour of presenting the survey results to everyone, we broke into the birthday cake, handed out some prizes, and then listened the musical stylings of Scott Perretta (who does an *awesome* version of Acrobat, by the way). Then, Zoo Station took the stage, performing for about 2 hours.
After surveying the @U2 readership, it was the hands-down conclusion that we all wanted to hear Mercy, and Zoo Station took on the challenge! To the best of our knowledge, this was the first time Mercy had been performed live by any band. And…it rocked the house. (I know I’ve said this before…but Mercy is the best U2 song they’ve ever written…but then again, I’ve been begging for Mofo to be added to the set too…at least Zoo Station opened with it last night!)
The fans wanted more, and Zoo Station happily gave them one more song at the end of the night, closing out their set with Unchained Melody. Other surprises they pulled out of the U2 discography included Lady with the Spinning Head (blending that with The Fly….brilliant!), Two Hearts Beat as One, and Twilight.
It was an absolute blast getting to listen to them, and we are very thankful to Zoo Station for coming all the way up from California to join us. If you get a chance to see them perform, don’t miss it! (Side note: they’ll be at Kells tonight as well.)
Good times were had by all last night. Congratulations to all of our prize winners! Thank you to Kells for hosting us and for keeping the Guinness, and Vertigo specialty drinks flowing last night. I would also like to give a special thank you to the @U2 staff who travelled a long distance to come to the event.
Photos from the event can be seen here, and special reports from the event will be in the next @U2 podcast.
suesea said,
December 19, 2005 @ 11:25 am
The average fan is male, 25-36 and still living at home? Ai-yi-yi - either that means they’re very loving sons with a great parental relationship, or…well, I’m not sure what it means, but please, give your folks a break! Ha!
Glad the evening was a success, despite the terrible weather. I bet the show tonight will be fabulous and can’t wait to hear about it.
Sue (mother of a 24-year-old male U2 fan with his own apartment - hope this doesn’t mean he’s moving back home next year!)
Mick said,
December 19, 2005 @ 2:41 pm
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the song “Mercy”? I don’t see it on my “Complete U2″ song list. Where can I get a copy?
p8ru2 said,
December 19, 2005 @ 9:51 pm
[i]The average fan is male, 25-36 and still living at home? Ai-yi-yi!…[/i]
Ai Carumba! So I guess it’s obvious where rent money is going! lol.
Congrats on 10 great years gang, party hardy & the cakes look delish! Wish I were there!
-Mick - I guess your ‘complete U2′ isn’t so complete!
It was cut from Bomb…Try to google it…Mercy, it’s out there.
c said,
December 20, 2005 @ 3:09 pm
perhaps it is more accurate to say “the typical @u2 reader” is …. male, 25-36 and still living at home.
perhaps the readers of this site are not “typical” u2 fans, but more like “hardcore internet geek fans” - (i’m including myself there, not male, not living at home, but still a geek….)
Mick said,
December 20, 2005 @ 5:26 pm
Man…my $150 didn’t get all of the U2 songs?? I guess “complete” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. I found Mercy out there was able to listen to it (I agree, great song), but now I’m having technical problems saving…..sigh.
I’m in the average fan age range, but certainly not living at home with the parents!!!
m2 said,
December 20, 2005 @ 9:22 pm
c - we had 4,106 completed surveys. When you consider that TIME magazine and other media sources do surveys of about 1,500 Americans and then say it’s representative of the country as a whole, I feel pretty confident that a statistician would tell us 4100 U2 fans is a representative sample of U2 fans as a whole.
Plus, the survey was advertised on multiple mailing lists, web sites, etc. Not just @U2 readers.
Barely Larry of Zoo Station said,
December 21, 2005 @ 4:39 pm
Thanks for the kind words! We had a great time pulling out all the rare stuff for hard core fans. We’ll probably never have another show quite like it and we were honored to be a part of such a special evening. Plus, I met a nice girl.
c said,
December 27, 2005 @ 12:30 pm
m2 - i see your point.
and i definitely didn’t mean to be snide. no doubt your site has a wide variety of fans coming to check in everyday. you guys do a great job.
happy holidays
Sweetest Thing said,
December 28, 2005 @ 2:05 am
So the average fan is male, 25-26 and still living at home?
mmmm… when Bono was asked what he thought of boybands (like nsync and Westlife) said “we are a man band”
Interesting…………don’t you think?