“Mankind is in the house!” declared Bono at the Corporate Name Stadium Where the Baltimore Ravens Play last night. Look, you can’t stop him talking like that. Larry Mullen, Jr., U2’s ever-scowling drummer, has tried. And mankind was, empirically speaking, present in large part, to the tune of roughly 80,000 people.
Thinking about hopping into a car for the ride up to Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium for tonight’s big U2 gig? You should have left by now.
“We’ve got new songs, we’ve got old songs, we’ve got songs we can hardly play!” As usual, Bono, you’re mostly right. U2’s supersized pageant at FedEx Field last night was an awkward, sometimes shapeless, frequently thrilling mix of new of and old. Perhaps in deference to the formidable Bono-quaciousness of prior U2 gigs in this town, where the Nobel Prize nominee has effectively become a part-time resident, U2 gave us a lunch-special version of the…
Image courtesy U2 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…
U2 perform at Fordham University in the Bronx on Friday morning. Photo courtesy Gothamist. 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…
As a Historic Event, Sunday’s We Are One concert on the Mall was often stirring and inspiring. But as a show? As music? Pretty much the same, actually. These all-star Frankenstein line-ups, usually the stuff of benefit gigs and 20th century Super Bowl halftime shows, are often train-wrecks. But We Are One reflected the same rare mixture of persuasion and efficiency that Team Obama showed during the presidential campaign. The talent fell into line. None…
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…
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…
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…