L.A. gets its U2 date: Oct. 25
U2 will perform in the Los Angeles area on Oct. 25, bringing its massive Live Nation-produced trek to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Tickets for the in-the-round tour, dubbed "U2 360," will go on sale April 6.
A press release promises that 85% of the tickets will be priced at less than $95, not including surcharges (expect about $18 to be added to the price of the ticket, based on Ticketmaster searches of U2 dates that are not sold out). At least 10,000 seats in the 90,000-plus capacity venue will carry an initial price of $30.
Opening for U2 will be locals the Black Eyed Peas, who are set to release a new album this summer. The pairing may inspire a collaboration, as the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am worked with U2 on the new album's "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight."
The North American leg of the tour, in support of U2's "No Line on the Horizon," opens with a two-night stand in Chicago beginning Sept. 12. The album debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts after selling 484,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. After three weeks on the charts, it currently rests at No. 2.
-- Todd Martens
Photo: EPA
Even with "360 degree views of the stage"
http://360.u2.com/?utm_source=Publicaster&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EMLU2COS_20090308_TourAnnouncement_FullList
the Rose Bowl is a HORRIBLE place to stage a concert, I hope the second leg of the Stateside tour will be at a smaller venue.
Posted by: Inthemix | March 30, 2009 at 02:29 PM
Wait, wait--did you just say Black Eyed Peas?!?!
That is just so, so wrong. Hey Bono, if you want people to take your band seriously in 2009, you could start with a decent opening act! Boo.
Posted by: Linda Barrett | March 30, 2009 at 02:31 PM
They have decent opening acts..... Snow Patrol are opening up for them on some dates and Muse are opening up for them on some of the others.
Posted by: Jack | March 30, 2009 at 08:49 PM
Well you must have not seen the news that said on some of the opening dates Snow Patrol is with them and then Muse takes over for Snow Patrol after several dates.
Posted by: Jack | March 30, 2009 at 08:53 PM
U2 is hands down THE most overrated band in music history. I used to think it was Aerosmith, but U2 has to take the cake. The only people I've ever met who listen to them are balding squares in their late 30s and early 40s who are so out of it that they think listening to a band that was never anything more than a media-concocted sensation makes them seem hip to their kids. I remember around the time the Joshua Tree came out you'd occasionally run into a 'U2 fan' and the one thing they all seemed to have in common is that they didn't know a thing about music and didn't even seem to listen to any other music besides U2 and a handful of new-new-wave one-hit wonders MTV was forcing down people's throats. Defying logic, they managed to get even worse over the years. The only purpose they serve now is to promote corporate products no one but their rich neo-yuppie fans can afford. They might as well be the jingle-singing band from the freecreditreport.com commercials, but with less edge (no pun intended).
Posted by: Sean K | March 30, 2009 at 11:17 PM
U2 have the YES band opening up U2's show.
That would be a riot, a great English band supporting the headling Irish band!
Posted by: Chad Pratt | April 01, 2009 at 11:10 AM
@Jack: That's all well and good, but for those of us here in Los Angeles, the insufferable Black Eyed Peas are the opening act, not Snow Patrol (who are pretty lame, too) or Muse (who are pretty awesome). Why does L.A. have to deal with BEP?
Posted by: Jordan Catalano | April 01, 2009 at 02:37 PM
Editor - Please Print this Honest Critical Commentary on the Matter of U2 -
On the poster above commenting about "U2" fans during the Joshua Tree era...I think the man is not merely overgeneralizing while attacking all U2 fans of the past 25 years, but his account of thier number when the album went multi platinum in 1987 - when they appeared on the cover of TIME and swept the Grammy's (and in 86 when U2 headlined Live Aid, even 85 - when Rolling Stone dubbed them ...The Band of the Decade).
I always suspect a person who takes generalization of a group of persons he dislikes to this kind of extreme, but he appears to also hate 'new wave' ... and to believe this was a small phenomenon - if we are to take him seriously at all. He seems to believe the late 30's to early 40's .... and 'balding'...no doubt...is OLD, in which case he is probably not old enough to RECALL 180 countries watching Live Aid as U2's coming out party or to accurately recall this era with any maturity. Now, I personally agree with his scathing observations about U2's commercialist obsession with continuing to monopolize - US radio....and to note that organized crime was most definitely part of radio monopolization in U2's era and yet...
Bono's grandstanding over poverty seems deeply seated in his concommitent acquiescence to the personal wealth and French Riviera lifestyle he lives...he MUST do SOMETHING SERIOUS to quell the sense that he experiences too much luxury by ranting at the poor Americans over how they should share thier wealth with devastated Africa....
Except that Bono then preceeded to demand that the comparably wealthier Irish...pay .7 of their budget...while the US contribute 1%, .... while U2 were never paying normal TAXES on thier own songwriting royalties due to an "artists pay no tax law" they helped pass in Ireland.
Problem was...U2 are now worth more than 2 billion...yes...and all along the amount of money they made in comparison to paying no taxes on thier royalties made them sickly rich.
Next, when the Irish government decides after decades of this that U2 should pay taxes on only 50 % of thier royalties.....they suddenly decide to SPLIT Ireland and move thier offices to the Netherlands. This outraged the Irish Finance Minister who declared publically...that had Bono just paid his taxes Ireland would have been able to pay the .7 % of its budget for Bono's Africa cause.
ALL this appears to suggest to SO MANY PEOPLE who have followed this story with Bono.....that the outlandish lifestyle he lives really ISN"T even normal for aging rock stars or others in entertainment. He and U2's guitarist share a 7 million dollar yacht which is sitting in a Marina along the Riviera near thier Meditarranian mansion...They go to extremes to parade around with a particular crowd and flaunt money to gross extremes...no matter the notion that there are plenty of rich persons in the world NOT obsessed with that crowd and area of the world...and that lifestyle. It has nothing to do with rock music....it tells us about THE KIND of people THEY REALLY ARE ..... what is really behind the ranting at others about the "suffering of the poor".... and why the more Bono focused on that lifestyle....and the more it threatened the cause of his "poverty ranting".....the more he lived it .....regardless of the fact that it threatened his cause: that's because it was the lavish lifestyle that motivated the ranting to the point of Shakespearian monologues.
He didn't care that the cause was threatened by his lifestyle..... and that tells you what the bitter root is of that ranting: Bono has an absence of living identification with the poor. He feels guilty over his undeserved gross wealth though he is obsessed with accumulation and won't get off the stage so the young deserving artist can live thier own dream.
Thier obsession with accumulation and with a specific THAT PARTICULAR lifestyle that represents the world's richest adult playground in Nice and Cannes, and Monte Carlo.... is the 'bi-polar' integrity of U2. Bill Gates is meanwhile, at home with his family...as are most persons who are wealthy yet have a NORMAL affect with real spiritual contentment in their lives. They don't need to be on the Riviera every other week - hanging out with the others and maniacally rolling in the ability to spend money in front of others who have money and live out thier elitist convictions as people of the world.
That elitism and the desire to risk any pitying cause for the prolitariat of Africa was described in 'The Conditions of the Working Class In England' in 1844 by Fredriech Engels. He elaborated on the burgoise fascination with the pitiful poor and the love of the Wealthy English for creating these pet charities where they blessed the poor and patted them figuratively on thier dirty heads for being so terribly pitiful and well....poor. It's a past time where the rich would have elegant dinners and the women kiss one another another on the cheeks and commiserate on the condition of the poor souls in poverty, and remark to one another about thier gowns and newly redecorated homes. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and his wife Polly have pointed out the contemporary manifestation of this in Britain.... They don't need to galavant up and down the Monte Carlo coast with their children every other week because they aren't part of the mindset Bono embraced as he harped ever louder about the pitiful state of the desperately poor and didn't mind endangering the cause .....if it meant being able to live his manic dream as the King of the Cape on his yacht in Cannes hosting Brad and Angelina - and well, mostly other rich celebrities. His elitism and the incredible greed that has him running around on the world's stage pretending to be 27 still and in need of whatever cash you might normally throw at "rock stars" has made he and his comrades appear incredibly silly and greed oriented as 'artists'.
Meanwhile, Bono cared so little about the subject of music as a craft....he never picked up any skills for playing instruments regularly and recording in a small home studio like those artists who do care about....music itself. Rick Rubin was mortified by thier carelessness of music itself, the way Bono would show up at the studio with no lyrics unprepared and cal them out to 'Edge' (the guitarist) who would jot notes on an available envelope nearby. The music to U2 was just a means to an end --- the money. So, Rick pulled out and they went and offered Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.....to write FOR THEM.....and Lanois announced to the press that the
"Next U2 Album is Writing Itself" in a wry way that only WE MUSIC PRODUCERS would understand as the ultimate slang in referring to artists as lazy and careless.
Producers deal with it as a COMMON PROBLEM.... Bono then proceeded to show up in Morroco and recite poetry from an old World War II book he picked up....for lack of lyrics at recording time. So, U2 clearly aren't like the average young artists who are involved in the process of thier craft...who long to share it with the world. And, they aren't like the older artists who become serious musicians like fine wine ages and work in theim studios producing new material with a bold and mature statement deserving of thier maturing fan's money.
They want the young fans into pop punk to flock to see U2 put on that thier rockers in their mid-20's....faking the artistic reference: so they can support their newest highrise building projects and investments in violent videogame companies - to make even mooooore loot.
Our poster earlier is right in THIS sense...he is voicing in newspapers and bulletin boards what so many other general music fans have said (along with the Irish Minister of Finance and so many politicians, artists, authors, and average folk and critical thinkers across the world have said: Bono is an inexcusable contradiction on the matter of 'being' an artist, wanting to be a 'rock star' (that is, to merely play the role like an actor or spokeman in exchange for money in his bank account). Yet, he's a man who, aside from touring and stints in the studio has NOT been employed for most of his adult days and become apathetic to even working on the art for which he consciously chases after his identification with himself as 'rock star'.
He became to rock and roll what Kim Kardashian is to...celebrity; famous for being famous, a rock star for playing the role of 'rock star'.
Posted by: Kim Mullen Le Blanc | August 02, 2009 at 02:13 PM
On the poster above commenting about "U2" fans during the Joshua Tree era...I think the man is not merely overgeneralizing while attacking all U2 fans of the past 25 years, but his account of thier number when the album went multi platinum in 1987 - when they appeared on the cover of TIME and swept the Grammy's (and in 86 when U2 headlined Live Aid, even 85 - when Rolling Stone dubbed them ...The Band of the Decade).
I always suspect a person who takes generalization of a group of persons he dislikes to this kind of extreme, but he appears to also hate 'new wave' ... and to believe this was a small phenomenon - if we are to take him seriously at all. He seems to believe the late 30's to early 40's .... and 'balding'...no doubt...is OLD, in which case he is probably not old enough to RECALL 180 countries watching Live Aid as U2's coming out party or to accurately recall this era with any maturity. Now, I personally agree with his scathing observations about U2's commercialist obsession with continuing to monopolize - US radio....and to note that organized crime was most definitely part of radio monopolization in U2's era and yet...
Bono's grandstanding over poverty seems deeply seated in his concommitent acquiescence to the personal wealth and French Riviera lifestyle he lives...he MUST do SOMETHING SERIOUS to quell the sense that he experiences too much luxury by ranting at the poor Americans over how they should share thier wealth with devastated Africa....
Except that Bono then preceeded to demand that the comparably wealthier Irish...pay .7 of their budget...while the US contribute 1%, .... while U2 were never paying normal TAXES on thier own songwriting royalties due to an "artists pay no tax law" they helped pass in Ireland.
Problem was...U2 are now worth more than 2 billion...yes...and all along the amount of money they made in comparison to paying no taxes on thier royalties made them sickly rich.
Next, when the Irish government decides after decades of this that U2 should pay taxes on only 50 % of thier royalties.....they suddenly decide to SPLIT Ireland and move thier offices to the Netherlands. This outraged the Irish Finance Minister who declared publically...that had Bono just paid his taxes Ireland would have been able to pay the .7 % of its budget for Bono's Africa cause.
ALL this appears to suggest to SO MANY PEOPLE who have followed this story with Bono.....that the outlandish lifestyle he lives really ISN"T even normal for aging rock stars or others in entertainment. He and U2's guitarist share a 7 million dollar yacht which is sitting in a Marina along the Riviera near thier Meditarranian mansion...They go to extremes to parade around with a particular crowd and flaunt money to gross extremes...no matter the notion that there are plenty of rich persons in the world NOT obsessed with that crowd and area of the world...and that lifestyle. It has nothing to do with rock music....it tells us about THE KIND of people THEY REALLY ARE ..... what is really behind the ranting at others about the "suffering of the poor".... and why the more Bono focused on that lifestyle....and the more it threatened the cause of his "poverty ranting".....the more he lived it .....regardless of the fact that it threatened his cause: that's because it was the lavish lifestyle that motivated the ranting to the point of Shakespearian monologues.
He didn't care that the cause was threatened by his lifestyle..... and that tells you what the bitter root is of that ranting: Bono has an absence of living identification with the poor. He feels guilty over his undeserved gross wealth though he is obsessed with accumulation and won't get off the stage so the young deserving artist can live thier own dream.
Thier obsession with accumulation and with a specific THAT PARTICULAR lifestyle that represents the world's richest adult playground in Nice and Cannes, and Monte Carlo.... is the 'bi-polar' integrity of U2. Bill Gates is meanwhile, at home with his family...as are most persons who are wealthy yet have a NORMAL affect with real spiritual contentment in their lives. They don't need to be on the Riviera every other week - hanging out with the others and maniacally rolling in the ability to spend money in front of others who have money and live out thier elitist convictions as people of the world.
That elitism and the desire to risk any pitying cause for the prolitariat of Africa was described in 'The Conditions of the Working Class In England' in 1844 by Fredriech Engels. He elaborated on the burgoise fascination with the pitiful poor and the love of the Wealthy English for creating these pet charities where they blessed the poor and patted them figuratively on thier dirty heads for being so terribly pitiful and well....poor. It's a past time where the rich would have elegant dinners and the women kiss one another another on the cheeks and commiserate on the condition of the poor souls in poverty, and remark to one another about thier gowns and newly redecorated homes. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and his wife Polly have pointed out the contemporary manifestation of this in Britain.... They don't need to galavant up and down the Monte Carlo coast with their children every other week because they aren't part of the mindset Bono embraced as he harped ever louder about the pitiful state of the desperately poor and didn't mind endangering the cause .....if it meant being able to live his manic dream as the King of the Cape on his yacht in Cannes hosting Brad and Angelina - and well, mostly other rich celebrities. His elitism and the incredible greed that has him running around on the world's stage pretending to be 27 still and in need of whatever cash you might normally throw at "rock stars" has made he and his comrades appear incredibly silly and greed oriented as 'artists'.
Meanwhile, Bono cared so little about the subject of music as a craft....he never picked up any skills for playing instruments regularly and recording in a small home studio like those artists who do care about....music itself. Rick Rubin was mortified by thier carelessness of music itself, the way Bono would show up at the studio with no lyrics unprepared and cal them out to 'Edge' (the guitarist) who would jot notes on an available envelope nearby. The music to U2 was just a means to an end --- the money. So, Rick pulled out and they went and offered Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.....to write FOR THEM.....and Lanois announced to the press that the
"Next U2 Album is Writing Itself" in a wry way that only WE MUSIC PRODUCERS would understand as the ultimate slang in referring to artists as lazy and careless.
Producers deal with it as a COMMON PROBLEM.... Bono then proceeded to show up in Morroco and recite poetry from an old World War II book he picked up....for lack of lyrics at recording time. So, U2 clearly aren't like the average young artists who are involved in the process of thier craft...who long to share it with the world. And, they aren't like the older artists who become serious musicians like fine wine ages and work in theim studios producing new material with a bold and mature statement deserving of thier maturing fan's money.
They want the young fans into pop punk to flock to see U2 put on that thier rockers in their mid-20's....faking the artistic reference: so they can support their newest highrise building projects and investments in violent videogame companies - to make even mooooore loot.
Our poster earlier is right in THIS sense...he is voicing in newspapers and bulletin boards what so many other general music fans have said (along with the Irish Minister of Finance and so many politicians, artists, authors, and average folk and critical thinkers across the world have said: Bono is an inexcusable contradiction on the matter of 'being' an artist, wanting to be a 'rock star' (that is, to merely play the role like an actor or spokeman in exchange for money in his bank account). Yet, he's a man who, aside from touring and stints in the studio has NOT been employed for most of his adult days and become apathetic to even working on the art for which he consciously chases after his identification with himself as 'rock star'.
He became to rock and roll what Kim Kardashian is to...celebrity; famous for being famous, a rock star for playing the role of 'rock star'.
Posted by: Kim Mullen Le Blanc | August 02, 2009 at 02:17 PM