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Tue Dec 8
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@Davio: Yes! Although a day (or maybe even a couple) earlier in other parts of the world, so if you're one of those people who downloads things from the Internet for free, the wait is a bit shorter.
I think U2 is well past their prime, but they haven't become the Rolling Stones, yet.
I don't see any reason to mock people for liking them, but I don't really think they're too terribly science-fictional.
Bono's kind of a wiener, but no more so than most celebrities. He's certainly no worse than all those "charity concert" pukes. I'm just so motivated when people who are several orders of magnitude richer that I tell me I should donate money to a cause, since they're donating their precious, precious time.
@Klebert L. Hall: It is better when celebrities don't donate their time, and instead, poor or middle-class people use all of their leisure and clout to reach millions of people.
I know! So many people loathe U2 for helping people who aren't white. Where do you live, in Capetown? Are you fucking kidding me?
Ive met more haters of the Stones, the Doors, and even Zeppelin than I have U2. They're like the Big Mac of contemporary classic rock- they tap a mainstream vain bulging on the cholesterol American classic rock radio.
I love io9, I do I do. But what about Sigur Ros? Or Trans Am? Or the Mars Volta? Or Porcupine Tree? Or even Rush for chrissakes, or a million other more bands whove taken time to influence the genre in some way?...
It could have been a slip of the fingers, but Annys is right--How the hell does a self-proclaimed U2 fan--as big as this man claims to be--manage to get the drummer's name wrong? Larry Mullen, Jr. founded the band, for Pete's sake!
The fact that Bono makes hundreds of millions of dollars while preaching his ass off about his cause of the week and telling everyone that tax payers should pay off the third world's debt only to turn around and do everything humanly possible to avoid his own tax burden while pushing various corporate initiatives that conveniently save him from having to invest any of his own money in the causes he supposedly champions is more than enough for me to want him to burn in hell. So I think listening to his music is totally out of the question.
@Harrison_Bergeron: I don't care for U2 or Bono's music much (see above), but one could argue that the awareness that Bono brings to those causes is worth more than a huge donation, because it spurs others to act and donate, in addition to possibly having a viral or ripple effect that might last for years.
Sometimes a celebrity's fame is worth more than a specific sum of money would be.
PS - Moff, I hope you'll forgive me for not liking Bono and being too serious since I'm defending your band! ;)
PPS - I don't think anyone's called me "serious" before! Whee!
@Lee Waters: Awareness doesn't do much when no one donates to your cause because they all think you're a total tool saying, "do what I say, not as I do."
@Harrison_Bergeron: So basically, because he's keeping something private, which could be for a number of reasons (like his Christianity, which advocates not advertising one's own good deeds to the world, even as it asks us to ask more of others), you're sure he's hiding something. Because it makes more sense to think he's devoting all that time off from the band to these causes but never just writes a check? It seems a bit odd that someone would do relief work in Africa, start and promote international relief organizations, and sit through Congressional meetings when they could be out being a rock star, and then suddenly be too selfish to donate any of his own money.
Anyway, neither of us has more than an assumption to go by, but yours seems predicated on some pretty bizarre behavior -- generally, people give money first, long before they actually get directly involved in a cause. (And even if Bono isn't giving any of his money, just calling what he has done "awareness" is pretty weak when he's not making PSAs but meeting with heads of state. His pet issue, Africa, is one of the only things Bush ended up getting much right on, and yes, some of it was because Bono was fighting for it, and pushing the president's religion in his own face.)
@Lee Waters: Oh, I was being tongue-in-cheek, too. ;-)
@Harrison_Bergeron: So basically, again, because his band, which includes four people beyond him (their manager, Paul McGuinness, has always been part of their business decisions), made a choice to pay less in taxes, as any business entity might, Bono is a fraud?
I mean, wow, dude -- it's no wonder more famous people aren't involved in good causes. If you try to do some good and then do anything less than saintly from that point on, you're somehow a worse person than all the celebrities who don't ever lend their time or money to anything worthwhile.
Bono and U2 haven't ever pretended not to be capitalists (I like how an article on Bloomberg.com makes that word sound like a pejorative), and they've always been very clear that they don't think they're saints. That so many people are eager to accuse them of it probably says more about those people, as is usually the case when people are throwing stones.
@Moff: Bottom line for me is the guy is annoying and his music makes me want to rupture my eardrums with toothpicks. Top that off with the fact that his charitable efforts nearly always coincide with the release of a new album or tour. So his shameless use of world tragedies to pimp his own wares has the collateral effect of helping some of the people involved, does that make him any less of a tool?
@Harrison_Bergeron: I don't care if you find him annoying -- most of us who are fans roll our eyes plenty at Bono -- and I don't care if you don't like the music. I just think you're letting your personal feelings color your take on the situation.
I mean, no, his charitable efforts don't coincide with the release of albums -- U2's media coverage increases as they get closer to releasing new albums, and Bono's coverage increases as a result of that; and he's never shy about promoting his activism. But he ends up going on at length about third-world debt relief to journalists who want to talk about music, not using questions about Africa to market his CDs. And U2 haven't released anything in four and a half years and he's kept plenty busy working on Africa stuff in the interim. He started doing it in the mid-'80s, even before The Joshua Tree came out and they were international superstars, after he took a break from music to do relief work in Ethiopia.
I'm just saying, he's logged the hours, and the record shows he uses his music as a platform to talk about the issues, not the other way around. God forbid rich and famous people should get involved in making the world a better place. That's something we need less of. :-p
@Harrison_Bergeron: Sorry to be so vehement. It's not really even about U2. I just think it's really frustrating that so many people talk about improving the world but sneer at anyone who tries to do that if they're not perfect. We shouldn't mindlessly rally behind celebrities, or anyone else, but we shouldn't automatically call their efforts illegitimate either, just because they're rich and famous.
This is kinda proving that U2 was SF's finest band. Back in the 90's.
I've been an SF fan since Original Trek was new, and if you'd asked me to name SF-ish bands, I'd have gone with Queen, Bowie, some of the punk and electronica bands, Wendy Carlos... I doubt I'd ever have gotten to U2, even in the 90's. I mean, I'd have thought of Blue Man Group before U2!
@Evil Tortie's Mom: This is sort of true. But you can still get all the material from the '90s, and the years since have not diminished the quality or relevance.
And there would have been all sorts of logistical problems trying to write about U2 for io9 back in the '90s.
2)hipsters who think success means you've sold out, or
3)racist
Maybe people who don't like them just don't like their music? It all sounds the same to me (your standard rock-pop), but I don't fall into any of those groups you mentioned.
@Garrison Dean: Yes, people who use Facebook are lesser people. io9 should really remove Facebook Connect. I know I won't be using it again after this comment, because I don't want to be part of the underclass.
Alright, since you've both shown how much smarter and wittier you are than me. How does one go about deleting Facebook Connect comments? This is more grief than I wanted for just commenting on an article.
Or am I stuck showing my inferiority to the world forever?
@Lee Waters: The backstory is that before Facebook commenting was brought in, you had to audition on the Gawker Media sites to become a commenter: You came up with a username, wrote a comment, and if the Powers That Be deemed it interesting or witty enough -- voilĂ ! You had earned the right to comment.
So seriously, it's nothing personal. It's just that there used to more gatekeeping, and those of us who've been around for a while have seen a slight decline in the quality of input in the comments, and that there (truly) seems to be a correlation between the incriminating comments and the tiny [f].
Your comments here have been totally fine, of course, as have many other Facebookers' (not that my opinion matters). But the old people here will probably continue to make fun of Facebook people until it gets old, because to do is funny to us and that sort of irreverence and rudeness has been for a long time the hallmark of these comment sections. On Gawker, we are still using "Jezebel commenter" as a derogatory term, and that doesn't stop the Jezebel commenters from doin' what they're doin' (mostly being crazy-screamy ladies).
@Lee Waters: You are stuck. The good news is, no one cares. They're much more concerned by all the inappropriate Miley Cyrus comments Garrison has written, and the pictures he posts with them.
What's wrong with thinking The Dark Knight deserves an Oscar? Even the professional movie critics think it got robbed of a nomination when every single movie that got a Best Picture nod not only pulled in a bare pittance at the box office (in real terms, not just in comparisson to the US Mint that TDK walked off with), but none of them scored anywhere near as well as TDK did on Rotten Tomatoes (and that's just going by the combined Critic scores, not including all the user votes). So, if TDK performed better, and got better reviews, what exactly did it fail to do that would have gotten it a BP nomination? Did they actually need to bribe someone?
Whether it should actually win BP is another matter, but when both the critics and the fans are left going "WTF" over the lack of a nomination in either Best Picture or Best Director, that's a pretty bad sign.
I haven't ever really gotten into How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but I just loved the U2's output in the 1990s (Achtung Baby, Zooropa, Pop), the three of which really captured the zeitgeist of the era. "The Playboy Mansion" in particular really captures the spirit of the late 90s boom (and to a certain extent the mid-00s boom), and it really is sad that it never got widespread radio play.
I have a special place in my heart for Zooropa, which is not only chock full of great tracks like "Numb", "Lemon", "Stay", and the title track, but it also introduced me to Johnny Cash via the last track "The Wanderer". The next year Cash had his big comeback with American Recordings, and I would not have snapped up that excellent album had it not been for Zooropa.
I'm just a little saddened that their newer albums have not been as experimental as their 90s output. There really weren't any songs on the last album that grabbed me like those on Zooropa. Even All That You Can't Leave Behind had songs like "Kite" and New Your" that really moved me.
@Batmanuel: Yeah, Zooropa vies with Achtung Baby for top spot in my personal favorites list just about every day. There's just nothing else like it in music.
I like the last album, but it really is their take on adult-contemporary rock. The bonus track that came with the deluxe versions, "Fast Cars," was easily the best song on it -- which is not a good thing.
Just because someone assumes something "should" happen, doesn't mean it should. That's why communism failed. It tried building a world as people thought it "should" work, yet they were idealistic instead of pragmatic.
As a child of the 80's and a musician, I should like U2. I don't. Mostly it's Bono. I know, I know... always separate the music and the musician, but it's hard when that guy is just so greasy and in your face.
That, and their music hasn't changed much from the ZooTV tour.
@Paul_Is_Drunk: It has, man. Listen to Achtung, and it's very much flirting with electro, whereas these days it's straight up middle-aged white person rock -- or where they would have been in 1995 if they had just stayed put on the Joshua Tree path.
@howdybeep (runs with monkey wrenches): It's true -- they got a little gun-shy after Pop and retreated back to a safer sound, although I would argue it was still heavily influenced by their '90s work and that there's still a lot of material on the last two albums that's more interesting than they're given credit for.
Anyway, I've heard the new album, and it's a step in the right direction.
02/16/09
But I love U2 as well, so carry on! March the 3rd isn't it?...
02/16/09
02/16/09
I don't see any reason to mock people for liking them, but I don't really think they're too terribly science-fictional.
Bono's kind of a wiener, but no more so than most celebrities. He's certainly no worse than all those "charity concert" pukes. I'm just so motivated when people who are several orders of magnitude richer that I tell me I should donate money to a cause, since they're donating their precious, precious time.
-Kle.
02/16/09
02/16/09
Ive met more haters of the Stones, the Doors, and even Zeppelin than I have U2. They're like the Big Mac of contemporary classic rock- they tap a mainstream vain bulging on the cholesterol American classic rock radio.
I love io9, I do I do. But what about Sigur Ros? Or Trans Am? Or the Mars Volta? Or Porcupine Tree? Or even Rush for chrissakes, or a million other more bands whove taken time to influence the genre in some way?...
02/16/09
02/15/09
02/15/09
02/15/09
02/15/09
02/15/09
Second -- really? You think he hasn't put any money -- not to mention his time -- into his causes? You really think that?
02/15/09
02/15/09
Sometimes a celebrity's fame is worth more than a specific sum of money would be.
PS - Moff, I hope you'll forgive me for not liking Bono and being too serious since I'm defending your band! ;)
PPS - I don't think anyone's called me "serious" before! Whee!
02/15/09
This is rather enlightening as well: [www.bloomberg.com]
02/15/09
Anyway, neither of us has more than an assumption to go by, but yours seems predicated on some pretty bizarre behavior -- generally, people give money first, long before they actually get directly involved in a cause. (And even if Bono isn't giving any of his money, just calling what he has done "awareness" is pretty weak when he's not making PSAs but meeting with heads of state. His pet issue, Africa, is one of the only things Bush ended up getting much right on, and yes, some of it was because Bono was fighting for it, and pushing the president's religion in his own face.)
@Lee Waters: Oh, I was being tongue-in-cheek, too. ;-)
02/15/09
I mean, wow, dude -- it's no wonder more famous people aren't involved in good causes. If you try to do some good and then do anything less than saintly from that point on, you're somehow a worse person than all the celebrities who don't ever lend their time or money to anything worthwhile.
Bono and U2 haven't ever pretended not to be capitalists (I like how an article on Bloomberg.com makes that word sound like a pejorative), and they've always been very clear that they don't think they're saints. That so many people are eager to accuse them of it probably says more about those people, as is usually the case when people are throwing stones.
02/15/09
02/15/09
I mean, no, his charitable efforts don't coincide with the release of albums -- U2's media coverage increases as they get closer to releasing new albums, and Bono's coverage increases as a result of that; and he's never shy about promoting his activism. But he ends up going on at length about third-world debt relief to journalists who want to talk about music, not using questions about Africa to market his CDs. And U2 haven't released anything in four and a half years and he's kept plenty busy working on Africa stuff in the interim. He started doing it in the mid-'80s, even before The Joshua Tree came out and they were international superstars, after he took a break from music to do relief work in Ethiopia.
I'm just saying, he's logged the hours, and the record shows he uses his music as a platform to talk about the issues, not the other way around. God forbid rich and famous people should get involved in making the world a better place. That's something we need less of. :-p
02/15/09
02/15/09
I've been an SF fan since Original Trek was new, and if you'd asked me to name SF-ish bands, I'd have gone with Queen, Bowie, some of the punk and electronica bands, Wendy Carlos... I doubt I'd ever have gotten to U2, even in the 90's. I mean, I'd have thought of Blue Man Group before U2!
02/15/09
And there would have been all sorts of logistical problems trying to write about U2 for io9 back in the '90s.
02/15/09
02/15/09
1)spoiled, upper-middle-class babies,
2)hipsters who think success means you've sold out, or
3)racist
Maybe people who don't like them just don't like their music? It all sounds the same to me (your standard rock-pop), but I don't fall into any of those groups you mentioned.
02/15/09
4) Facebook commenters who take things too seriously
02/15/09
02/15/09
Sheesh.
02/15/09
Alright, since you've both shown how much smarter and wittier you are than me. How does one go about deleting Facebook Connect comments? This is more grief than I wanted for just commenting on an article.
Or am I stuck showing my inferiority to the world forever?
Thanks.
02/15/09
So seriously, it's nothing personal. It's just that there used to more gatekeeping, and those of us who've been around for a while have seen a slight decline in the quality of input in the comments, and that there (truly) seems to be a correlation between the incriminating comments and the tiny [f].
Your comments here have been totally fine, of course, as have many other Facebookers' (not that my opinion matters). But the old people here will probably continue to make fun of Facebook people until it gets old, because to do is funny to us and that sort of irreverence and rudeness has been for a long time the hallmark of these comment sections. On Gawker, we are still using "Jezebel commenter" as a derogatory term, and that doesn't stop the Jezebel commenters from doin' what they're doin' (mostly being crazy-screamy ladies).
02/15/09
02/15/09
Whether it should actually win BP is another matter, but when both the critics and the fans are left going "WTF" over the lack of a nomination in either Best Picture or Best Director, that's a pretty bad sign.
02/15/09
I have a special place in my heart for Zooropa, which is not only chock full of great tracks like "Numb", "Lemon", "Stay", and the title track, but it also introduced me to Johnny Cash via the last track "The Wanderer". The next year Cash had his big comeback with American Recordings, and I would not have snapped up that excellent album had it not been for Zooropa.
I'm just a little saddened that their newer albums have not been as experimental as their 90s output. There really weren't any songs on the last album that grabbed me like those on Zooropa. Even All That You Can't Leave Behind had songs like "Kite" and New Your" that really moved me.
02/15/09
I like the last album, but it really is their take on adult-contemporary rock. The bonus track that came with the deluxe versions, "Fast Cars," was easily the best song on it -- which is not a good thing.
02/15/09
As a child of the 80's and a musician, I should like U2. I don't. Mostly it's Bono. I know, I know... always separate the music and the musician, but it's hard when that guy is just so greasy and in your face.
That, and their music hasn't changed much from the ZooTV tour.
02/15/09
02/15/09
Anyway, I've heard the new album, and it's a step in the right direction.
02/15/09