May 2011 Archives

As revellers thronged to the first Slane, it was far from a perfect day for Bono from Ballymun, writes Damian Corless

By Damian Corless, Irish Independent

IT was 1981. The summer soundtrack was 'Stars On 45', featuring Beatles songs mushed in a blender and blared out at ear-splitting volume by the new super-pirate Radio Nova.

Every second car windscreen had a sticker boasting 'I Shot JR', and Bono was buzzing around his native Glasnevin doing his usual impression of a young man in a great hurry.

This time, however, he really was in a great hurry. In a few hours' time he was due on stage 20 miles up the road at Slane Castle for the biggest gig of U2's young lives, but before he could go he had to get rid of his batch of complimentary tickets for the show.

By Tom Morton, Casper Star-Tribune staff writer

"This is for the Rev. Harold Camping," U2's frontman Bono told 70,000 fans at Invesco Field in Denver on Saturday night.

"Being taken up into the air, sounds like fun to me -- just as long as Larry Mullen is with me. God is in the house."

Then Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen tore into "Until the End of the World" from their "Achtung Baby" album from the early 1990s.

By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- After a poignant wake-up song requested by wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords for her astronaut husband, Endeavour and the two other space shuttles each marked milestones Tuesday for the retiring fleet.

In its first full work day in space for its last flight, Endeavour's commander Mark Kelly and his crew conducted their final post-launch inspection for damage to the shuttle heat shield -- a routine procedure started after the 2003 Columbia disaster. Initial results "looked really good" for NASA's youngest shuttle, lead flight director Gary Horlacher said Tuesday.

Back at the Kennedy Space Center launch site, Atlantis, which will fly the final shuttle mission of the 30-year program, moved for the last time from its hangar to the massive Vehicle Assembly Building. And Discovery, which flew its last mission in February, had some of its remaining toxic fuel drained from its smaller engines. It will go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum hangar outside of Washington's Dulles Airport.

By Colin St. John, Reverb

"Sucks" is admittedly a very childish word, as least as far as its utilization within the modern lexicon. But, it's immediate, descriptive and evokes an emotional response. Everybody knows, plainly, that "sucks" is bad. And, quite possibility, it is very bad. Using the word "sucks" may be juvenile, but so is liking U2.

U2's entire image, catalog and influence are a major drain on the rock 'n' roll that surrounds it. The Dublin quartet -- quite literally -- sucks the life out of whatever it touches, progression be damned. (When's the last time you heard a U2 song and said, "Oh my god! That was completely unexpected and fresh!"?) And whether you are as vitriolic and vehement as this all might seem, or you plain don't care about U2 -- like, say, Ric Ocasek whose Cars played Denver on Sunday -- you then have, at least, dismissed them in some way, shape or form. If, however, you are going to Invesco on Saturday, you've got some 'splainin' to do. Of course, as Ocasek says in his New York Times interview, musical preferences are subjective. The point here is just that you shouldn't subject yourself to listening to U2.

After a three week hiatus Bono gets the most expensive musical in history back on the road

By Cathy Hayes, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Broadway's most expensive musical of all time ($65 million) will return to the stage on Thursday night. The show under U2's Bono has been overhauled significantly over the last three weeks.

In an interview with the New York Times Bono talked about how the show has been changed. He said " What was not right about it was a catalog of commonplace problems -- story knots, bad sound and, finally, a failure to cohere, meaning that the whole was not greater than the sum of the parts, as wonderful as some of those parts were."

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy softens its opposition to the rocker's plans for an exclusive development on a Malibu ridge in exchange for $750,000.

By Steve Lopez, LA Times

Let's have yet another round of applause for the fabulous, long-running Malibu morality play starring the eco-conscious U2 guitarist and international humanitarian who calls himself The Edge. After five years, it just keeps getting better.

In the latest act, The Edge's considerable entourage of lawyers, lobbyists, flacks and assorted rabble have struck a sweet deal with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that has the locals in a dither.