U2 unplugged

for good?

I can call myself a fan of U2, but never has talent been spread so thin for such a large reward...in the music world anyway...and the decision to avoid tax in Ireland is a disgrace. Ireland should pursue a proper boycott against them.

95% of their income is outside Ireland, they pay all sorts of tax globally, I have no problem with them being tax efficient.  I never ear anyone complaining about, say, pro Golfers tax residency, for example.

More importantly their latest album is fantastic.  As with all their music it comes alive when played live. and I can't wait to see them on tour next year.

But Ireland has always been very good to its artists - for so many years the govt. charged artists no tax at all. Even now, I think you are allowed to earn 250,000 Euros as an artist before you get taxed.

In the words of Tolstoy, "How much land does a man need?"

If I was Irish and paying taxes, I'd be dead against U2. They are a business first and musicians second.

And "Songs of Innocence" ffs! Who are they kidding? Daylight robbery! They had the cheek to sue those musician lads that did the U2 parody but they're quite happy to rob William Blake...

Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief

Yeah - that's got to be worth £600,000,000 - £2 BILLION of anybody's money...it's always the same - you have great original artists who don't always prosper, and then you have the "formula" guys who do.

Ozymandius   
24 Oct 14 16:22 
95% of their income is outside Ireland, they pay all sorts of tax globally, I have no problem with them being tax efficient.  I never ear anyone complaining about, say, pro Golfers tax residency, for example.

Good point. That scumbag Rory McIlroy is too big for Ireland. Lives in Holywood now. Probably fancies becoming an actor when he retires.

Unforgettable Fire was released about now, 20 years ago. I remember buying it and listening to it on a Saturday morning laying on the bed, it was a typical autumn day - grey clouds blowing by quickly, patches of blue sky. I love that album still, always takes me back. They lost me a long time ago though.

30 years ago even

Y'all so casual 'bout tax dodgin' on a MASSIVE  scale...

The only time I saw them was when they supported John Cale at the Lyceum Ballroom in The Strand, in London's busy West End, in spring 1981.

They were a late replacement for Subway Sect, and the whole audience was thoroughly p1ssed off with the promoter for trying to get away with this tired, plodding American-style rock group. We thought that sort of uninspired pomposity had been swept aside for good five years earlier.

They had a backdrop of some brick-red guttering spelling out U2, just in case we didn't know who we were booing.

They even had the cheek to come out to try and perform an encore, and were met with a few plastic beer glasses, but, being the troupers they are, they persisted with five more plodding minutes of exactly what they'd been churning out for the previous half hour.

One woman who might have appreciated their future tax evasion was Nico. She appeared at the front of the audience for Cale's set and spent the rest of the evening yelling at him to give her the money she reckoned he owed her.

  They have come along way since the Lyceum Ballroom.  Here they are in Boston in front of 50,000 with an epic performance.  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofVa5ob2mT0

Bullet The Blue Sky - Live From Boston 2001

U2 have a recipe and they pretty much stick to it. One of the things they do is to take a bit from the Bible and they rehash it for their lyrics. Where the Bible is specific and sharp, U2 blunt the "message" to give it a Universalist appeal. I say U2, but it must be Bono, really...

Ozymandius - you sound like a U2 fan - give us a U2 song and I'll show you what I mean...go on, any U2 song...I reckon I can do this without even googling...

the sweetest thing

You want to try another?

Yet another band on the "Rinse and Repeat" cycle.

"So he said to them, “Out of the eater came something to eat, And out of the strong came something sweet.” (Bible )

Also referenced in WILD HONEY...and..."You're honey, child, to a swarm of bees..." EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING...Bono loves that Samson imagery from Judges :

"...and look, a swarm of bees and honey were in the body of the lion." JUDGES 14.

This is a blind kind of love
Oh oh oh, the sweetest thing...

Samson was blinded because of his love for Delilah...

Yeah, go on -- I'll try another...why not...?

BAD.

Books have been written on this subject, Velasquez, not sue what you are getting so excited about.  Clearly there music is replete with Biblical reference and imagery.

In "U2: The Name of Love";, published in Italy in 2009, Andrea Morandi laboriously extracts Biblical allusions from almost every U2 lyric.

Hee hee...yeah I know, but their little U2 trick here is to take something sublime and make it banal...BAD ....next up...

here is a list of bibical references in U2 music.

http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/biblerefs.html

"Heart of clay..." from the Bible term, "Jars of clay" referring to the body...also, "Hearts of stone turned to flesh..."

"If you tear yourself in two again..." Abram cuts the animals in two pieces - Genesis 15-10.

"See you walk, walk away...through the flame..." Bible : Daniel walks through the flames of the furnace.

"Separation, Condemnation, Revelation..." Really?

"I'm wide awake, wide awake - I'm not sleeping..." Jesus' disciples falling asleep in Gethsemane, and the protests that ensue...

BAD

Thanks for that, but HONESTLY...I don't need it...

What an epic song!

Yeah, and an epic book they have mined and re-packaged! Ker-ching! $$££!

They have come along way since the Lyceum Ballroom.

In what way? They haven't come any distance at all.

Here they are in Boston in front of 50,000 with an epic performance.

Exactly. I commented that they were a "tired, plodding American-style rock group" when I saw them at the Lyceum in 1981. Twenty years later they proved it in Boston.

In fact, they might as well be the band Boston, in, say, 1976, which is why the audience jeered them in 1981. Back then they were the sort of band your elder brother liked. No surprise that they went on to become the band your mum and dad like.

Ozy - at 19.42 there...suspecting an EPIC fail...!

I think your links of 'sweet' and 'blind' to the bible are rather tenuous in this songs instance tbf!

Screaming, there truly is no accounting for taste;

150 million records sold.


Awards    Won

BRIT Awards    8
MTV Video Music Awards    6
Grammy Awards    22  Moe than any other rock band!
Q Awards    11
Pollstar Awards    12
Juno Awards    3
Billboard Music Awards    9
American Music Awards    1
Meteor Ireland Music Awards    15
NME Awards    3
Las Vegas Film Critics Society awards    1
Golden Globe Awards    2
People's Choice Awards    2
World Music Awards    2
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame    Inductee
Total
Awards won    90

Ozy...Come on, ffs - get a grip! "Sweet" and "blind" love sums up Samson to a...T...and then you can chuck in "Wild Honey" and the other 99,000 Bonoesque paraphrases of Bible stuff!

Bees...swarms...honey...blindness...the general idea being that "forbidden love" is the sweetest...come on...COME ON!...I only have ONE thing to say to you :

Lay down your guns
All your daughters of Zion
All your Abraham sons
-------------------------

Thin and Crispy's RIGHT!

All those awards are great...but it's like the French academic painters of the 19th Century - they were weighed down by Salon medals but no-one gives a flyin' feck about them now. You're doing great if you can even name one.

whatever, dude! 

I'm off to church AKA the pub.

Ali shuffle here, dude...

I'm off to the pub AKA church.

Ace of Base...30 million album sales in nine years.

Velasquez 25 Oct 14 19:07

Ozymandius - you sound like a U2 fan - give us a U2 song and I'll show you what I mean...go on, any U2 song...I reckon I can do this without even googling...Excited

Things To Make and Do

A song. (psalm 108)

"...make music with all my soul...I will awaken the dawn."

Moose, ya basturt!

vastly over rated imo

Yeah, Moose is over-rated - have to agree with that.

same smell every year

Ozy never twigged that I'm a bigger U2 fan than he is...

Velasquez, dissect 'Running To Stand Still' for me please.

Apart from Depeche Mode and Carter USM I have seen U2 live more than any other band.

Sorry about delay...was listening to Alan Rough footy phone in...will get on job, Slippy...

Chop chop fella.

Isn't this the song they wrote about the friend they had who was a heroine addict and she lived in the high-rise flat? Sounds like a big Lou Reed influence...the Bible references I can see are in one line and the use of the PEARL...Jesus told the "Parable of the Pearl of Great Price." The merchant sells everything he has to buy the beautiful pearl.

"Sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth..." recalls Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good AND Evil...also, John in Revelation : "I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour."

This U2 lyric is the opposite of John's experience : "...bitter the taste in my mouth..."

"White gold and pearls stolen from the sea" could have been suggested by the famous painting by Botticelli...

The Birth of Venus -- Botticelli.

Pretentious...? Moi?

Well thank you for that Velasquez, I'm an atheist so it doesn't mean a great deal to me to be honest. I was exused from R.E. and assembly at school

I had to stand up in class and deny God existed until the nutcase teacher told me to get out as I was a disruptive influence on everyone else. Two free periods a week, I wasn't complaining.

Don't get that as Job took some pot shots at God along the way. R.E. was never for me either.

They're not daft, are they?