Results tagged “u2”

            

"We've got new songs, we've got old songs, we've got songs we can hardly play!"

WMATA sent out word today that it will be keeping the Metro system station open late on Tuesday night in order to accommodate U2 fans coming home from FedEx Field. All stations except Morgan Boulevard will be exit-only after midnight, but those who enter at Morgan Boulevard after midnight will find both trains waiting for them at that station, and additional trains at all transfer points on the Blue Line to take them to their destinations, Metro spokesperson Steven Taubenkibel said.

We know: You hate U2! Hate them. Bono, especially. For all the celebrity charity campaigners in the world, he's one who has actually gotten results, persuading even ultra-right-wingers like Rick Santorum and Jesse Helms to get on board with debt forgiveness and HIV-treatment-and-prevention efforts in the world's most impoverished countries. Held his band together, sans lineup changes, since 1977. Married to the same woman for more than 25 years, a father of four, and not a single knocked-up supermodel on his resume. What a douche!

                   

As a Historic Event, Sunday’s We Are One concert on the Mall was often stirring and inspiring. But as a show? As music?

We recently got some unconfirmed but reliable information that U2, and not just Bono, would be playing a concert in D.C. during the inaugural festivities, and today another tipster emailed in to point out this announcement on U2's official web site:

U2 join a stellar line up of artists at The Lincoln Memorial in Washington this Sunday for 'We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration'. Don't miss it. It's open to the public and aired on HBO.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of being right up close at a U2 concert, let me divulge a spoiler: Bono — a.k.a. Paul Hewson, a.k.a. The Fly, a.k.a Mr. MacPhisto, champion of Africa and two-time Nobel Prize nominee, debt-relief crusader and F-bomb-dropping bane of the Federal Communications Commission, the big-brained, big-hearted, big-mouthed and wholly unembarrassable front man for The (all together now!) World’s Biggest Band — is a wee, short little dude. Five-seven, five-eight, tops. When he performs — and truly, no rock and roll frontman has ever looked more at ease serenading a stadium-load of air guitarists than this guy — he wears thick-soled boots that give him an extra inch-and-a-half on the vertical plane. Every little bit helps, right?

Ever wonder what it's like to be a band out on tour? And by "band out on tour" we don't mean U2 or even Scott Stapp. We mean bands that load in themselves, play their show and then get in the van and drive all night to the next gig. D.C.'s own These United States is such a band. Criss-crossing the country, playing upwards of 100 shows a year with bands like Califone, Someone Still...

When the band first broke onto the scene in the mid to late 1990s, Glasgow's Travis was at the forefront of the British trad rock revival. Like its counterpart, Oasis, Travis is a descendant of established bands, such as The Beatles, U2, and Radiohead, as well as a progenitor of Coldplay, the more recent arena kings. The band never attained the success of either Oasis or Coldplay, partly because it rarely attempted to be larger than life while those groups openly admit to a certain amount of megalomania.

If you've been to the box suites at RFK Stadium, you may have noticed photos of acts that have played the stadium lining the hallway - U2, New Kids on the Block, the Promise Keepers and so on. But after we finished laughing at the New Kids, one plaque off to the side caught our eye: "Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, site of Olympic football, 19 July-4 August 1996." What? The Olympics were at RFK? There...

The first thing we noticed when City-State's first full-length, Monument, arrived is that it looked very professional. Often with local bands the CDs look (and usually are) homemade. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just something that stuck out as a good sign. The CD cover has a picture of Vladimir Tatlin's unbuilt sculpture "Monument to the Third International," one of those things that pops up in architecture books from time to time, superimposed over the Washington Monument in a night photo of D.C.

We really enjoy giving away free stuff, and so apparently do your favorite local bands. That's why we got together with Cedars to arrange for an EP and ticket giveaway to their show tonight with Scotland's the Cinematics and Chicago's the Changes at the Rock and Roll Hotel! Who loves ya? DCist loves ya.

The green-ness of the station comes mainly from environmental news pieces that the DJs read about things like solar power, renewable energy, and the use of cow dung for flooring. Their Web site also notes the station's transmitter is run on renewable energy and they have a lot of links for various ways to do good stuff for the planet.

-era U2 and all energy, I knew I was witnessing something special. I bought their EP on iTunes soon after and it became regular listening for me during my morning commute. So when we started brainstorming the line up for Thursday's Unbuckled, they were at the top of my list. Luckily for all of us, they said yes. Lead guitarist Nate Martinez answered some questions for us in advance of the gig.

Call us old fashioned, but we like our year-end backward glances to come after we're done furiously ripping open presents and before we pop the champagne for New Year's. Rather than subject you only to what we on the DCist music staff deemed this year's best and brightest (don't worry, we'll do that too), we asked a handful of our favorite local artists what their favorite albums of 2006 were. A lot of great musicians...

Wednesday’s unseasonable warmth called for sunny day music. A happy coincidence then, that Ben Kweller, a purveyor of cheerful college rock, was headlining the 9:30 club that evening. Looking at the small crowd of underage early arrivals jostling for position, a question came to mind: is Kweller an artist or a phase? To paraphrase a famous film quote, it seems that he gets older but his fans stay the same age. The answer came...

You don’t have to be a recently-disgraced member of the U.S. Congress to be a little freaked out about what breadcrumbs you’re leaving as you schlep around the World Wide Web. They can pretty easily be gathered and presto – you’re an instant demographic target, with preferences and interests neatly catalogued. Aside from whatever skeletons we’d like to keep safely tucked away in our closets, you can color us curious as to what our tastes...

Written by DCist Contributor E.K. Eckert. DCist's angst-ridden inner teenager was summoned last night to the Verizon Center to party with the only grunge band from the mid-90s to have managed to avoid heroin overdoses and general disintegration. Pearl Jam, in short, rocked. Opening with “Release,” an atmospheric track off their first album Ten, Eddie Vedder’s iconic voice soared through the indoor stadium and never sounded better. After such a soothing opening, they jumped...

FRIDAY: >> There have only been a handful of actors in this world who are genuine badasses. Robert Mitchum. Robert Redford. Robert Loggia. Any of the Roberts, really. And then there's Kris Kristofferson. This is a guy who has hung out with both Sam Peckinpah and Janis Joplin, been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and oh, makes time to kill a few vampires on the weekends. Dude is so virile a gal could...

This review by DCist contributor Genevieve Smith.

FRIDAY:

Monday: >> Over at Black Cat there's a Pitchfork friendly line up of mid-tempo, indie folk, with John Vanderslice, Portastatic, and Brandon Butler. There's sure to be some quality balladeering, but you'll probably want to hit the 14th Street Caribou for some caffeine beforehand. $10. >> As for us, DCist is going to see The Sentiment at DC9. They're loud, they're fun, and they let you jump on stage. On a Monday, this is what...

Hey trivia fans, if you're up tomorrow morning, be sure to tune into National Public Radio's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" between 11 a.m. and noon (on 88.5/WAMU) because a DCist contributor (not your editor) will be on the air lending his authority on a certain subject to confuse the hell out of an unlucky contestant. We don't want to ruin the surprise, but it may or may not involve something in a triangular-shaped park across the street from a mansion-turned-historical society-turned-museum designed in a form of beerhouse baronial architecture where -- in a piece of personal trivia -- this DCist's great-great grandfather did all the ornate woodcarving.

Calm down, you World Bank bureaucrats. We have not allowed the news of your new boss to pass us by. As President Bush positions his nominee to run the Bank and European governments brace for the coming change, it’s difficult to see who comes out ahead in the transfer of power. One early winner is definitely the guy who’ll change the office nameplate, as they’ll merely have to scrape the “-ensohn” off the door and replace it with “-owitz.”

When U2 originally announced dates for their "Vertigo" tour, in support of their new album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb", local fans must have been upset. The closest the Irish rockers were coming to D.C. was Philadelphia's Wachovia Center -- a road trip that wouldn't dissuade the most hardcore fans, but would leave more casual fans without the chance to see the band's live show. But local fans have reason to celebrate: U2 is coming to the MCI center for two nights, Oct. 19 and 20. Priority sales for U2.com subscribers began this morning at 10 a.m., hopefully without the problems of previous pre-sales. Sales to the general public begin at 10 a.m. this Saturday, with a lottery for priority at 8 a.m. Tickets are priced at $52.50, $98.00, and $163.00 and are available through Ticketmaster or the MCI center box office.

Continuing on with the WHFS obituaries ... Today marks the first full day in over 20 years that FM 99.1 has not carried HFS. It could be argued that the end of WHFS was inevitable. The station began going downhill some time ago -- perhaps at the introduction of "Loveline" in the place of the Top 11 at 11, the inexplicable addition of Metallica to the playlist, or the mainstreaming of alternative music in the...