Mary J. Blige shared some thoughts in the Feb. 5-11 issue of TV Guide. When asked “Is there any one of the nominations you feel proudest of?” she responded:
Album of the Year, Song, Duet - they all mean a lot to me. They all show my evolution. The U2 song, poeple have never seen Mary J. Blige like that in rock and roll. It’s all about growth.
As a reminder, the Grammy Awards will be televised on CBS on February 11 at 8 p.m. eastern time.
For those of you keeping track, VH1 has started airing a revised version of the “Window in the Skies” video. As director Gary Koepke pointed out in his interview in the Washington Post, Beatles footage clearance came too late for the first version of the video. The new version incorporates The Beatles footage midway in the video, just before Elvis’ 1968 comeback special footage. This now makes 3 different versions of the video.
Well, it looks as if the rumors are true. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Bono was indeed present at the famous festival in Park City, Utah last week.
He took in a screening of Son of Rambow, surprising fellow guests and even some of the filmmakers. You can listen in on an interview with Director Garth Jennings that Filmspotting’s Sam Van Hallgren conducted here (fast forward to the 20:20 mark for the discussion) and hear his reaction to Bono’s attendance.
Apparently, B-man also had time to stop and help Sundance volunteers solve a jigsaw puzzle. Wish we had a photo of that.
Well, CBS’s Cold Case television program just concluded here on the East Coast and I have to admit - if a television show could take the *most literal* interpretation of a song lyric, then this program wins the award for it. Most of the songs used could be found on U218 Singles:
Beautiful Day
Window in the Skies
Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
Running to Stand Still
Bad
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
MLK
With or Without You
With the exception of the CBS promotional advertising for the show prior to the broadcast, U2 received no acknowledgement for the songs used in the program during the opening or closing credits, nor were there any commercials during the program to promote U218 or any other U2 item/product. If you’re wondering what the tie between the band and the show is - well, the consulting producer for the episode is Mark Pellington. Yup - the same person responsible for some of the creative work behind ZooTV and other U2-related endeavors.
For those who can’t wait to find out more about the upcoming episode of the CBS program, Cold Case, here’s your spoiler alert!
The Daily Trojan student newspaper at the University of Southern California has a little spoiler alert:
In the all-U2 episode, written by executive producer Veena Sud, the team tries to connect two drug-related murders that happened at 8:03 a.m. on the same day in 2002.
With both a wealthy white teenager and a poor African American teenager as two murder victims, the episode provides a valuable commentary on the negative effects drugs can have, regardless of race or socioeconomic background.
Timed to coincide with Bono’s latest appearance at the World Economic Forum, Richard Tomlinson and Fergal O’Brien have published one of the all-time hatchet jobs in the now yawn-inducing Bono-is-ultra-rich-yet-wants-everyone-to-give-away-their-money-while-not-
talking-about-how-much-money-he-gives-away theme of profiles we’ve seen so often in recent years.
The article says nothing new, and frankly isn’t worth the time it took them to research and write it. It’s also not worth the time I’m about to spend in reply, but I won’t lose any sleep over a few lost minutes. So, here goes…..
Bono, Who Preaches Charity, Profits From Buyouts, Tax Breaks
The headline already tells you where this one is going. Actually, it tells you where it’s coming from: How dare someone preach charity and make money at the same time! You could replace the name “Bono” with almost anyone else who’s trying to do something good with the world, like Gates or Buffett.
“One,” a song about a love affair gone sour
Not really, but we’ll overlook the lack of lyrical awareness.
While Bono was making his appeal, U2 was racking up $389 million in gross ticket receipts
Here we go again with that same myopic attitude from the headline, the one where it’s not okay to make money and still care about the less fortunate.
Revenue from the Vertigo tour is funneled through companies that are mostly registered in Ireland and structured to minimize taxes.
Every smart business on earth tries to minimize taxes. Every smart individual, too. I make sure to take advantage of every deduction the law allows. I’m guessing the authors do, too.
“Bono’s campaigns reflect a great amount of concerns that U2’s audience also has, such as AIDS and malaria in Africa, and that can’t help but have a beneficial effect on record sales,”
In other words, U2 fans are a bunch of sheep that will buy anything the band sells us because we believe what the Great Leader says and does.
Bono declined to be interviewed for this article.
The Great Leader is wise.
a special RED line of clothing, cell phones and other merchandise and donating 40 percent of the profit they make
Actually, different companies are donating different percentages, but let’s not let a little research get in the way of a good story.
Bono’s own dealings haven’t always followed the altruistic ideals he espouses, says Richard Murphy, a Downham Market, U.K.- based adviser to the Tax Justice Network, an international lobbying group.
And Mr. Murphy is actually privy to the details of “Bono’s own dealings”?
Murphy points to the band’s decision to move its music publishing company to the Netherlands from Ireland in June 2006 in order to minimize taxes.
PR-wise, perhaps not the best move. But minimizing taxes is completely within the law. It’s no different than me taking advantage of the U.S. tax breaks that are afforded to a married couple with two kids.
“This is somebody who’s exceptionally rich taking the opportunity to shift his tax burden to somebody else, but then asking governments around the world to spend that tax take in the way that he would like,” Murphy says.
This is somebody who’s spent the past 8-9 years of his life trying to do something for people who would otherwise be ignored.
U2’s move to the Netherlands is wrong, says Dick Molenaar, senior partner at All Arts Tax Advisers, a Rotterdam-based tax consulting firm for artists and musicians. “Everybody needs to pay his fair share of taxation to the government, and therefore we have roads and education and everything,” he says.
U2 pays more than its fair share of taxes, Dick. And since when is a tax rate hike from 0% to 42% called a “fair share”?
Bono’s empire encompasses real estate, private-equity investments, a hotel, a clothing line and a chain of restaurants.
LOL! Norman Hewson’s eateries aren’t about to challenge McDonald’s anytime soon…..
In addition, Bono shares three homes with his wife and four children,
He actually owns more than that and … get this … he pays taxes on all of them!
Elevation’s first investment was a stake in two computer game companies, Edmonton, Canada-based BioWare Corp. and Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios LLC. BioWare makes a war game called “Destroy All Humans 2.” Pandemic’s catalog includes a war game called “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames,”depicting a mercenary invasion of Venezuela.
And did you know that if you play “With or Without You” backwards, you hear satanic messages?
While Bono promotes charitable causes, he doesn’t disclose whether he personally gives any money to them and, if so, how much. These include Amnesty International, the Burma Campaign U.K., DATA, which stands for Debt, AIDS, Trade and Africa, the environmental group Greenpeace and ONE.
Again, just a little research would’ve helped with this paragraph. U2’s policy is to not reveal the donations it makes. This goes all the way back, long before they were super rich. Jack Healey told us about the “very nice” donation U2 made to Amnesty International way back in 1984, and how the band demanded that the donation not be revealed. And just last year, we learned that U2 made a “sizeable donation” to Careflight in Australia, as thanks for a 20-minute helicopter ride to the Queensland Sports and Athletic Centre. And you can be sure there’ve been dozens more quiet donations — both from the band and from the individuals — over the years.
Whether or not Bono gives money himself is immaterial to ONE
And should be immaterial to all of us. It’s none of our business, even if our job title includes the words “reporter” or “writer.”
Bono has not said how much, if any, of his money he gives to DATA, of which he is a board member.
….
Bono doesn’t invest his own money in RED
As the Great Leader has said, it would be a lot easier to write a check and be done with it. It costs a lot more to give your time for almost a decade now.
Bono’s public charitable activities date to 1985, when the band performed at the Live Aid concert in London
If you want to get technical about it, the charitable activities date to 1978, when U2 did a benefit show for the “Contraception Action Campaign” and another benefit for a group called “Rock Against Sexism.” But let’s not split hairs….
The details of U2’s money making are out of public view
Which is right where they belong.
When he’s not touring or lobbying for charities, Bono spends time on his investments. “He gets more out of a week than most people get out of a month,”McGuinness says. “It’s hard to keep up with him at times.”
I’m 99.9% certain that Paul McG.’s quote was about Bono’s crazy schedule, not about how much time he spends “on his investments.” Sloppy and irresponsible journalism…..
Bono has an undisclosed stake in Nude, a chain of three Dublin cafes founded in 1999 by his elder brother, Norman. Business is brisk at the Nude cafe on downtown Dublin’s Suffolk Street on a Friday in December.
When you add in that last sentence, it’s like you’re saying … “Bono is making money from these people eating food. Tsk-tsk.”
It will be just one more landmark in Bono’s burgeoning capitalist empire.
Oh, please.
You may know that the Soweto Gospel Choir does a cover of “One” on its new album, African Spirit. And you may know that Bono is a special guest on the track.
Someone please tell Amazon … not that Bono!
(Thx Collin)
Thanks to U2Log for pointing this out - Willie Williams has surfaced on YouTube over the past few months, sharing with the world his special view on things during his time with U2 and the 5th leg of the Vertigo Tour.. Besides putting up videos of U2 performances taken with his secret agent surveillance camera, he’s also put up little videos like this one showing how his creative mind gets inspired (well, sort of!).
It helps if you’ve read all of his diary entries at U2.com to put some of these videos into context - especially the ones where he’s showing his various meal choices whilst travelling.
To view more of his videos, check them out here.
Thx to U2tour.de for pointing us toward this recent article in The Guardian where various artists and writers reveal their favorite gig(s). Somewhat predictably, Bono chooses a 1977 gig by the Clash in Dublin. I say “somewhat predictably” because Bono has spoken on this topic before, and about his belief that U2 wouldn’t exist if not for The Clash and the impact of this gig.
Here’s what he wrote in The Guardian:
Can’t remember the set list, can’t remember much about the music, to be honest. I just know that everything changed that night, and I’m sure it was not just for me. Year zero. The shock of the new, where everything reconfigured. The venue was the exam hall of Trinity College, founded by Bishop Berkeley 300 odd years previously … the man who spent his entire existence trying to prove the existence of existence. I’m not kidding. He also had a corner of San Francisco named after him. Other reconfigurations, other revolts.It wasn’t so much a musical event. It was more like the Red Army had arrived, on a cold October night, to force feed a new cultural revolution, punk rock. Marching boots and the smell of sulphur. Not weed or speed but fear, fear of the future, no future. And the delight, so much delight. All kinds of symbols pinned on jackets, some ridiculous swastikas, Red Brigade t-shirts, hand made knock-offs of extremely expensive Seditionaries threads fromLondon. But as there was a war going on 100 miles from here, in a strange way, the Clash made more sense in Dublin than anywhere.
As I sat in the box room and stared out the window the next day, it was very clear. The world is more malleable than you think; reality is what you can get away with.
My greatest gig ever? Hmmmmmm…
That would have to be U2 in San Jose, April 20, 2001.
And you?
An article in the Belfast Telegraph reports that “U2’s goal” of having the tallest building in Ireland will be killed by a Belfast projected slated to come in at just 9 metres taller than the planned U2 Tower in Dublin. Plans have been submitted, but nothing has been started yet. I haven’t really heard any official word that having the tallest building in Ireland is actually one of U2’s goals - should be interesting to see how the media plays this one.
