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U22 Tracklisting
After what seems like months, U2.com has announced the tracklisting for the 'U22' subscriber voted CD:
1. Bad
2. Where The Streets Have No Name
3. Magnificent
4. One
5. Ultraviolet
6. Even Better than The Real Thing
7. With or Without You
8. Beautiful Day
9. City of Blinding Lights
10. The Unforgettable Fire
11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
12. All I Want is You/Love Rescue Me
13. Moment of Surrender
14. Until The End of the World
15. The Fly
16. One Tree Hill
17. Stay (Faraway, So Close)
18. Walk On
19. Zooropa
20. Elevation
21. Out of Control
22. Mysterious Ways
U2.com are also promising a download bonus.... Let's hope it is a track that didn't make the CD!
From memory, Moment of Surrender is from Perth, All I Want is You/Love Rescue Me from Sydney and One Tree Hill from it's home in Auckland.
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Q Achtung Baby Cover Cd On Itunes
For those of you who were unable to get a Q magazine with the Ahk-Toong Bay-bi cover CD, it is available now via the Apple ITunes Store. Most proceeds from the release go to an anti porverty charity, Concern.
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Q Magazine
U2 were awarded the 'The Greatest Act of the Last 25 Years' in an online poll celebrating Q Magazines 25 year anniversary at the Q Awards overnight. The entire band turned out at the awards with Edge doing a short interview. Historically, Q has always been in the U2 camp when other elements of the UK music press have not always been quite so positive about U2's commercial success and size.
As a part of the Achtung Baby re-release Q have a U2 cover story in their October edition as well as a cover CD, 'AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered' . The CD has a wide array of bands and performers performing Achtung Baby tracks. CD's accompanying Q magazine releases are typically available in Australia/NZ when the magazine eventually comes out downunder a few months later. If you want the disc and don't want to risk missing out you can buy copies from the U2.com shop.
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Achtung Baby Baby!
With the various 20 Year Anniversary editions of Achtung Baby being released later in the week there are a few things to look out for:
Firstly, as pointed by RXX in our forum, From The Sky Down airs on NZ TV Prime, Mon, October 31st, 9.30pm. To date we can't find anything scheduled for Aussie TV but will keep an eye out. If you see anything let us know!
Triple M radio in Melbourne are running a competition to win a deluxe edition: "Not only are Triple M giving these Deluxe packs away but there’s also copies of U2's ‘Achtung Baby’ Remastered to be won". You can listen online.
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Finally- here is the first NZ/Aussie review we have seen in the NZ Herald... thanks to U2glen:
U2: Swinging an axe at the Joshua Tree
Twenty years ago, U2 headed to Berlin to record their first truly challenging album. Graham Reid considers the inevitable anniversary reissue After the excitement of Beatlemania began to pall in early 1965, the Beatles realised if they were to survive they had to do something more than write chirpy pop. Fortunately they had that combination of talent, opportunity and wealth to push their musical boundaries for that remarkable album trilogy of Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper's, all released (along with the groundbreaking single, Strawberry Fields Forever) in 18 months from late 1965.
Few artists enjoy that rare combination - or have the desire for a significant change of musical direction. Bowie did - notably with Low, Heroes and The Lodger - as did Radiohead and Wilco with OK Computer (97) and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) respectively.
Perhaps the most courageous band, with the biggest audience to lose from a sudden change, has been U2 who - after the critical drubbing for the album/film Rattle and Hum in 1988 - went to Berlin, teamed up again with producer Brian Eno and turned away from the stadium anthems that had formed the backbone of their albums The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree.
Just as the Beatles tapped the mood of their era - esoteric exotica and psychedelia, in their case - U2 also locked on to what was happening around them in the discomforting era of Ronald Reagan, the first George Bush, Margaret Thatcher and the Gulf War.
There were internal ructions in the band about their direction, Public Enemy were making headlines, and DJs, remixers and heavy rock-electronica acts like the Nine Inch Nails were entering the mainstream.
In Berlin's Hansa Studios (where Bowie and Iggy Pop had resurrected flagging careers) U2 began an album as different as it was abrupt. Out went chest-baring ballads and in came electrostatic; swaggering confidence was replaced by uncertainty; iconic became ironic; Bono's messianic pose was cast off for the leather-clad, shades-wearing caricature of The Fly; optimism was pushed aside by darker moods, chaos embraced ... and the result was Achtung Baby in 1991.
U2 kept the stadium-option open with the ballad One, but Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses and Mysterious Ways - which could have been archetypal Joshua Tree songs - were given a studio duffing up in line with the brittle and abrasive approach they brought to material like Zoo Station (the crackling opener with searing guitar, arresting distortion and clanking drumming) and The Fly.
On its 20th anniversary, this album - U2's most challenging, critically essayed and acclaimed - gets multiple reissues.
There is the album re-presented; a deluxe version with a disc of B-sides, remixes and covers (the Stones' Paint It Black and Creedence's Fortunate Son); and a six-CD/four-DVD edition with the remastered album, its Zooropa sequel, remixes and B-sides, an alternative Achtung Baby, videos, a doco and the ZooTV live film shot in Sydney. And there's the album and remixes over four vinyl records.
Only Lotto winners and obsessives might go for the super deluxe edition so, given many have the original, attention turns to the 14 extra tracks on the double-disc version.
Lady with the Spinning Head sounds like very bent Oasis in Morocco; Blow Your House Down is a straight-ahead rocker with a dirty glam foot-stomp and keening guitar; Lou Reed's Satellite of Love is less persuasive than when Bono duetted with Lou's image on the big screen on the ZooTV tour; the Temple Bar remix of Wild Horses neatly strips it back to a more familiar ballad with Springsteen-like breadth; those covers are effectively rendered in the Achtung Baby ethic but aren't up to much; and the broody instrumental Alex Descends to Hell would have fitted neatly on the album.
The extra disc could be read as a lost U2 album from this exciting period. And Achtung Baby remains a defining artistic achievement. Although recently they have mostly reverted to type, it shows what a creative urge money, power, will and desperation can be.
Makes you wish they'd be "ready to let go of the steering wheel", as Bono sang on Zoo Station, again.
Achtung Baby (Deluxe Edition)
Stars: 4.5/5
Lowdown
What: U2's 1991 album, Achtung Baby. Deluxe edition released October 29
Also: Doco of the album's recording From The Sky Down, screens on Prime, Monday, October 31
-TimeOut
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Achtung Baby Remastered
U2.com has confirmed that the Achtung Baby Remaster will be released in 5 formats on the 31st of October 2011. The release will include a limited edition "Uber" Deluxe Edition which includes just about everything except some of the Berlin Wall. Interestingly, Zooropa is included in the release, indicating the remaster of Zooropa will not have its own individual release but will be a part of the ZOO TV themed Achtung Baby release. As previously reported, Davis Guggenheim's documentary, From The Sky Down, is included in many of the formats.
The formats as listed on U2.com are below:
1. A limited, numbered Uber Deluxe Edition is a magnetic puzzle tiled box which will contain: 6 CDs including the original Achtung Baby album, the follow-up album, Zooropa, B-sides and re-workings of previously unheard material recorded during the Achtung Baby sessions. 4 DVDs including 'From The Sky Down', 'Zoo TV:Live From Sydney', all the videos from Achtung Baby plus bonus material. There will also be 5 clear 7" vinyl singles in their original sleeves, 16 art prints taken from the original album sleeve, an 84-page hardback book, a copy of Propaganda magazine, 4 badges, a sticker sheet, and a pair of Bono’s trademark 'The Fly' sunglasses.
2. The Super Deluxe Edition will contain the 6CDs and 4 DVDs, in addition to a 92 page hardback book and 16 art prints in a wallet.
3. The Vinyl Box Set is a limited release containing 4 LPs, two of which are pressed on translucent blue vinyl containing remixes and B-sides. The box includes a 16 page booklet.
4. The Deluxe Edition is a 2xCD set containing the reissue of the original album plus B-sides and rarities.
5. The Standard CD is the original album.
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Rise Above 1 Video And Goodbye U2360
With the U2360 Tour making its final curtain call over this weekend we all dread the hiatus we are bound to experience over the next 12 Months. However, there is still some U2 related stuff to look forward to. The Achtung Baby Remaster will be out prior to Christmas which will include Davis Guggenheim’s documentary on the legendry album, From the Sky Down. The doco will make its debut at the Toronto Film Festival in September. Meanwhile, Bono & Edge continue to promote Spiderman: Turn off The Dark. Thanks to U2NT.com, here is the video of Rise Above 1 featuring Bono & Edge. You can download the full album now from your NZ/Australia ITunes Store. We have also embed U2’s goodbye song to the U2360 Tour in the USA. Can you think of a better goodbye? I can’t. Thanks to atu2.com for the video.
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U2.com Live Stream From Montreal
In Montreal over the weekend, U2 will play the second of two shows at the Hippodrome and U2.com will carry a live, uninterrupted audio stream.
If you're a free registered member of the site you will be able to tune in for the first 3 tracks of the show and full subscribers can stream the entire show.
Aussies will need to tune in at about 11AM AEST Sunday the 10th and Kiwis at 1PM NST.
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Broadway's Spider-Man Spins Stage Magic
Daily Telegraph
HERE'S my advice: If you trek to New York and shell out for a ticket to "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," grab a seat in the dress circle.
Sometimes that's called the mezzanine and sometimes the first balcony. For this show it's called the Flying Circle for the simple reason that it offers the best view of the truly spectacular flying effects, including the climactic airborne battle between Spidey and the Green Goblin.
The final confrontation was impressive enough for a near-capacity audience to roar its approval last week at the Foxwoods Theatre. But then this crowd roared its approval for a lot of what went on in this already legendary show.
To put it mildly, I've never seen anything like it, in a Broadway house or anywhere else. The show, whose troubled history has been exhaustively documented by the New York press, is a strange hybrid that combines elements of conventional Broadway musicals, theme-park rides and Cirque du Soleil razzle-dazzle.
Creators pursue serious artistic ambitions while dishing up spectacle designed to get the same sort of response as if you woke up one morning and saw a mastodon grazing in your backyard. At first glance you wouldn't believe your eyes, but you couldn't wait to tell your friends about it.
The show doesn't officially open until June 14, so this is not a review. The producers wouldn't like that. This is just a series of impressions, a gut reaction, an accounting of what I saw and heard at the 134th preview (a record, as of last week) of the biggest, fattest and most expensive Broadway musical of all time.
We don't really need to go over the show's troubled history - the cast injuries, technical problems and the departure of director Julie Taymor, who helped write the book and developed the piece from its inception. What matters now is what the show is and what it's likely to be when it officially opens.
What it is, much to my amazement, is entertaining. Vastly entertaining. Yes, it's an example of bloated excess and insists on seeking meaning in the fantasy adventures of a character created almost 50 years ago for comic books printed on cheap pulp. But the show in performance answers a question that I've heard repeatedly: How on earth could you spend $65 million on a Broadway musical?
The answer is simple: By doing things in a theater that nobody in his or her right mind has ever attempted.
Like all the flying. Like having maybe a half-dozen performers play the title character at different times. Like George Tsypin's brilliant, forced-perspective scenic design that emulates the art of Marvel comic books. And Eiko Ishioka's mind-blowing costumes that seem to bring the Sinister Six - Carnage, Electro, Swiss Miss, et al - to life in three dimensions. This is a show with a thousand moving parts.
All of which might suggest that this is a show swallowed up by special effects. But strangely enough, it also happens to be an actor's show.
Reeve Carney, who plays Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) is a charming performer with a terrific rock voice. But the real star of the show is Patrick Page, who seems to be having the time of his life as scientist Norman Osborn, who becomes the Green Goblin.
Page is an accomplished stage actor - he appeared at what was then Missouri Repertory Theatre twice in the 1990s, in "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Deputy" - who chews this show's formidable scenery with gusto and finesse. It's tough for any actor to relax into a show as laden with special effects as this one, but Page looks like he belongs there.
He has some of the show's funniest lines, including an aside about the production's gargantuan cost, and he makes the most of a bit in which the Goblin tries by telephone to get through to the editor of the Daily Bugle, only to be frustrated at every turn by a labyrinthine menu.
The show also has fun at the expense of the Fourth Estate. Michael Mulheren registers a nice comic performance as Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson, who at every turn is just wrong, wrong, wrong in his assumptions about the biggest story in his life - a superhero defending his city against a host of supervillains.
At one point he even utters the words so often spoken by real newspaper journalists in the age of the internet and the 24/7 news cycle: "We're dinosaurs!"
Philip Wm. McKinley was chosen to take over the show after Taymor's departure. She now receives credit for the "original direction," and McKinley is identified as a "creative consultant."
Based on reports and unauthorized reviews by frustrated critics who got tired of waiting for the show to open, it's my guess that the new "Spider-Man" is a lighter, less pretentious affair than it may have been early on. The producers brought in playwright/screenwriter/comic-book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to punch up the original book by Taymor and Glen Berger, and McKinley has always demonstrated a shrewd instinct for giving the public what it wants.
The original version included Arachne, a mythological character dreamed up by Taymor to become a competitor with sweet little Mary Jane Watson (Jennifer Damiano) for the attentions of Peter Parker. But Arachne (played by T.V. Carpio) has been transformed into a benevolent figure, a sort of guardian spirit who watches over Peter - and whose presence seems largely irrelevant to the narrative.
And then there's the music. The songs by Bono and the Edge took their knocks from some of the critics who reviewed the show early, but I have to say this score includes some of the most effective songs I've encountered in a rock musical. There are times when Carney is in full voice that you can close your eyes and easily imagine Bono singing these tunes.
There's a whole of team of arrangers, orchestrators and music supervisors, and now and then the arrangements threaten to swallow up the songs. And listening to the cast recording, when it eventually becomes available, might not convey just how well the songs work amid all the humor and visual spectacle. But we'll see.
I can say this: All the music, projections, lighting effects, aerial stunts, trap doors and elevators conspired to create images in this writer's memory that won't fade away anytime soon.
If You Go:
"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" resumed previews on May 12 and took in almost $810,000 in the first five performances. That's in line with weekly grosses of between $1.3 million and $1.5 million before the show was rewritten. And that means that even with its problems, "Spider-Man" was a hot ticket and apparently will remain so. Tickets are $76.50 to $314 at Ticketmaster.com, 800-745-3000. The show will officially open June 14 at the Foxwoods Theatre in New York.
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A-Listers Turn Out For Long-Awaited Spider-Man Opening In...
Melbourne Herald Sun
A BEVY of A-listers brought their star wattage to Broadway last night for the long-delayed, official opening of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, where even ousted director Julie Taymor made an appearance.
Bill Clinton arrived at the $70 million extravaganza, which has been plagued by stage disasters and scathing reviews for months, a half-hour before curtain time, to the roars of hundreds of onlookers across West 43rd Street.
U2 rockers Bono and The Edge, who wrote the show's musical score, jogged up the carpet smiling and shaking a few hands before ducking into the Foxwoods Theater.
At one point, they even cordially posed for photos with Taymor - who they helped boot in April - and the director who replaced her, Philip William McKinley.
On Monday night the Irish rock stars warned the overhauled show was still not complete, according to The Wall Street Journal. They also praised Taymor, but admitted that they differed with her on how the production should have been fixed.
"There is still a little ways to go. I would say we are 10 percent off," Bono said. "I think that in the next weeks and months there will be another shift."
Despite that, among the Hollywood celebrities who showed for the event were Matt Damon and screen legend Robert DeNiro.
Former supermodel-turned-mom Cindy Crawford was accompanied by hubby Randy Gerber and their two kids.
And Booker Prize-winning novelist Salmon Rushdie arrived with stunning model Topaz Page-Green.
Other star attendees included Steve Martin, Liv Tyler, Jimmy Fallon, Liam Neeson, Vanessa Redgrave, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Spike Lee, who brought his kids.
It was the troubled show's sixth scheduled opening. All the previous ones were cancelled as the show continued to be retooled.
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U2 Too Loud For Yuppie Suburbs?
From the Brisbane Courier Mail
PROMISES to keep noise levels down at Suncorp Stadium rock concerts have failed. Reports obtained by The Sunday Mail show Irish supergroup U2 exceeded the regulated 100-decibel limit inside the venue at one of their two 360 Degree World Tour concerts in Brisbane last year.
The group notched 105 decibels, but will not be fined for the breach, unlike the $50,000 penalty the band received from their hometown of Dublin earlier in the tour.
The reports also reveal one of the five external sites Stadiums Queensland is required to audit is still failing to accurately record noise levels and recorded excess levels for U2 as well as Bon Jovi a few nights later.
Tens of thousands of people live around the stadium in some of Queensland's most expensive suburbs such as Paddington, Auchenflower, Red Hill and Milton.
The flaws come five years after a problem with the "skewed" site at 105 Hale St was discovered and recommended to be fixed, and two years after Sports Minister Phil Reeves failed to explain why they had not been fixed.
The reports show acoustics contractor Cardno Consulting had measuring difficulties at the noisy Hale St site, where the same problems occurred during concerts by Robbie Williams in 2006.
The stadium had 21 complaints and three compliments over the two U2 nights last December but only one complaint for Bon Jovi.
"There were some slight exceedences on night one and none on the second night," the report said of U2's performances.
Mr Reeves yesterday said the problem site would be reviewed next year.
But Opposition sports spokesman David Gibson said the five-year delay was another example of poor management.
"It is disgraceful that not only has the Government failed to fix the 'skewed' monitoring station but that they also fail to adhere to or enforce their own regulations," he said
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