30.12.07

Sobre o Tempo (About the Time) by Pato Fu
Pato Fu is a Brazilian musical band from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The band was formed by lead singer Fernanda Takai, guitarist John Ulhôa and bassist Ricardo Koctus, in 1992. Their drummer, Xande Tamietti, joined the band in 1996, as did keyboardist Lulu Camargo in 2005. Their first album, Rotomusic de Liquidificapum, was released in 1993, followed, since then, by other eight releases: Gol de Quem? (1995), Tem Mas Acabou (1996), Televisão de Cachorro(1998), Isopor (1999), Ruído Rosa (2000), MTV ao Vivo: No Museu de Arte da Pampulha (2002), Toda Cura para Todo Mal (2005), and Daqui Pro Futuro (2007).. The band's popularity began to increase simultaneously with two other groups from Belo Horizonte, Jota Quest and Skank. The band plays in pop-rock style, but resorting frequently to electronic music elements. Pato Fu is frequently said as being influenced by Os Mutantes, a famous Brazilian tropicalist group from the 1960s, probably because of the experimentalism found in both bands' songs. Their music is influenced by Devo, The Cure, Radiohead, Pizzicato Five, Super Furry Animals and also Brazilian Popular Music, among various others. Takai and Ulhôa are married and had a daughter, Nina, in 2003. The band name is from a Garfield comic strip. Garfield attacked the mailman with his "Cat Fu" techniques. The band liked the wordplay, but decided to change Gato (cat) to Pato (duck). Coincidentally or not, the expression had also previously appeared in the Brazilian translation of the Howard the Duck movie; in it, Howard says he knows "Pato Fu" (Quak Fu in the original). With the release of Ruído Rosa, Pato Fu was elected in 2000 one of the best bands of the world by Time Magazine. The band made its 10th birthday in 2003 with the release of MTV ao Vivo: No Museu de Arte da Pampulha, a live performance with some of their most famous songs.


Link, here

Lyrics: Sobre o Tempo
Tempo, tempo mano velho
Falta um tanto ainda eu sei
Pra você correr macio
Como zune um novo sedã
Tempo, tempo, tempo mano velho
Tempo, tempo, tempo mano velho
Vai, vai, vai, vai, vai, vai
Tempo amigo
Seja legal
Conto contigo
Pela madrugada
Só me interrompe no final
ah ah ah ah ah ahh..

Lyrics: About the Time
Time, time, old brother
Is lacking a little, I know
To you run so softly
As sounds a new sedan
Time, time, time old brother
Time, time, time old brother
Go, go, go, go, go, go
Time friend
Be cool
I count you in
through the early morning
Just stop me at the end
ah, ah, ah ...

8.12.07

Black Orpheus - making the sun rise




A Testament to Black Orpheus, Bossa Nova and the Partnership That Started It All:
By now it should be apparent the lone, dissenting voice crying out in the Tijuca-forest wilderness belonged to that of Vinicius de Moraes, the country's best-known, modern-day bard; and the work that had wreaked such havoc with his fiery temper, if not his high blood pressure, was that of French director Marcel Camus' Orfeu Negro, or Black Orpheus, his 1959 screen adaptation of Vinicius' musical play in verse, Orfeu da Conceição ("Orpheus of the Conception"), from 1956.

Filmed on location in Rio between the years 1957 and 1958, and based on a modern reworking - set during the city's renowned Carnival celebration - of the ancient Greek tale of poet-musician Orpheus, now transformed into a happy-go-lucky streetcar conductor, and his beloved Eurydice, the joint French-Italian and Brazilian co-production soon took on mythic proportions of its own.

As a cross-cultural phenomenon, for example, it proved an international hit with delighted movie audiences, not only grabbing the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes
Film Festival but sweeping all others before it, including major entries by the likes of Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard, in the Best Foreign Picture category at the following year's Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

Though not a homegrown product of Brazil by any means, Black Orpheus nonetheless opened the world's eyes to the newly emerging Cinema Novo ("New Wave") movement concurrently taking place there, which was a homegrown product, and about as "close" to the French New Wave as the talkies were to silent films, Vinicius' other pet passion. (In reality, it had a lot more in common with Italian neo-realism, the European avant-garde and Russia's pioneering moviemaker, the great Sergei Eisenstein.)

At any rate, it did help draw needed attention to such previously unknown figures as Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Glauber Rocha, Ruy Guerra and Carlos Diegues (more about his individual contributions later on), thus making straight the path to serious cinematic recognition via a cadre of influential reviews and opinions.

The film also caused real-life poet and musician Vinicius de Moraes no end of controversy, as evidenced by his bringing down the wrath of Zeus onto the hapless Camus and his producer, Sacha Gordine (who had befriended Vinicius during the poet's stay in Paris), for perpetrating such a travesty of his stage conception, with the deadliest of verbal thunderbolts hurled at screenwriter Jacques Viot - so much so that the Carioca native insisted his name be taken off the credits.

In view of the topnotch qualities of the work itself, why would de Moraes raise such a splendid ruckus over it, especially after previewing the end result in all its prize-winning glory? What did the film world's most respected award committees see in Camus' magnum opus that its originator found so offensive and untrue?

To better comprehend the rage behind the poet's unforeseen departure in Rio we must look to how the idea for his play first came about - and who better to communicate the history behind it than the Brazilian Renaissance man himself:

"It was around 1942, that I began, one night, after rereading the [Orpheus] myth in an old anthology of Greek myths, to sense the structure of an all-black Carioca tragedy subtly taking shape [before me]. The legend of the artist whose power over music was such that he was able to descend into the Netherworld and bring back his lost love Eurydice.could most definitely be transported to a Rio de Janeiro shanty town.

"I started to jot my vision down into a few verses, which then became a full act, finalizing it just as the sun rose over Guanabara, now visible through the window. It was another six years after that, while living in Los Angeles, that I was able to add the last two acts, and even later [1953], after misplacing the third and having to rewrite it, in Paris, before it was completed."

-Vinicius de Moraes, in the preface to the book Orfeu da Conceição: A Carioca Tragedy, Rio de Janeiro, 1960.

In 1954, at the urging and insistence of his good friend, the poet João Cabral de Mello Neto, Vinicius entered the finished draft of his play in a contest commemorating the Fourth Centennial Celebration of the founding of the city of São Paulo. It won the top prize. Notwithstanding that fact, Vinicius' representation of the Thracian minstrel Orpheus as an Afro-Brazilian of suitably "humble" origins (the direct result of his friendship with American writer and social critic, Waldo Frank), and Jobim's depiction of favela ("slum") life through the pulsating sounds of 1950s street samba, were not as novel a choice of material as might initially have been suggested by the above writings.

According to musicologist Richard Taruskin, in The Oxford History of Western Music, Volume Three: The Nineteenth Century, it was clear the allegorical Greek figure was the subject of numerous elaborate stage treatments long before de Moraes got a hold of his mythical lyre: "Orpheus was present.at the creation of opera. Several of the earliest 'musical tales' that adorned Northern Italian court festivities in the early seventeenth century were based on his myth."

Taruskin then took this notion a step further, emphasizing his strongly-held belief that

"The Orpheus myth was a myth of music's ethical power, the supreme article of faith for all serious musicians.whenever the need was seen to reassert high musical ideals against frivolous entertainment values."

That might have worked for opera's founding fathers, but how would it play with Rio's common folk? Indeed, whatever "high musical ideals" our serious-minded Brazilian poet intended for his poor-bound black Orpheus would have to wait, due to his participation in some of those very same "frivolous entertainment values" Taruskin had just railed against.

In essence, what Vinicius had failed to recount for readers were the subliminal influences the work of another close companion would have on the final scope and scenario of his play.

22.11.07

The Joshua Tree remastered

U2 - The Joshua Tree 20th Anniversary Edition
Still fresh and clean after all these years.

November 21, 2007 - Hard to believe that it's been 20 years since U2—Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen—first released Joshua Tree, arguably their breakthrough to the big league album. Sure, both War and Unforgettable Fire thrust the band into arena rock territory, but it was JT that truly made them stadium stars the world over. It was also a turning point album, showing them moving even further away from their post-punk roots and into more streamlined, albeit lushly so, sonic terrain. Bono and company began experimenting more with the Blues and Gospel intonations, mixing those elements into their harmonically saturated guitar spectrum and taught rhythm structures.

For the 20th Anniversary celebration the boys have released two versions, one a double disc package, the other a double disc + CD package. Both feature the original 11 track album, which holds up surprisingly well all these years later. Seminal tracks like "Where The Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and "With or Without You" still resonate with that hit status the enjoyed upon release. Meanwhile "Bullet the Blue Sky" is still one of the most incendiary things the group has ever kicked out, rumbling with turgid intensity. "In God's Country" still manages to conjure up spine tingles thanks to Edge's scratchy guitar theatrics and Bono's raggedly impassioned yelping, not to mention Clayton and Mullen's steady back beats. And both "One Tree Hill" and "Mothers of the Disappeared" still reverberates with the ghost of "40," a quiet, progressive number that bubbles with hidden smolder. Even the lesser known numbers ("Exit," for example) burn brightly upon rediscovery.

On the whole this is one of the last truly great—from start to finish—albums that U2 put out at what was arguably the peak of their career. Sure, they've gone on to bigger fortune, fame, and social consciousness since, but this album, without question, was a benchmark in their aural legacy to the world. If you have yet to discover the wealth of passionate material that this album has to offer, then this will be a worthy treat indeed. And if you just needed a reminder of how great the band was at this particular moment in time, well here it is.

While revisiting the original album is worth the price of admission, the real treat here lies in Disc 2, which features a number of B-Sides (back in the day U2 were great about releasing singles packed with bonus outtakes and rare tracks, many of which were often as inspiring as those that actually made it on to their albums).

Things kick off with "Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)," one of the B-Sides from the "With or Without You" single. The track is built around piano and rippling drums that caress Bono's whisper croon. It's a melodramatic, slow-burn number that is much more PoMo Romanticism than perhaps anything else they've ever done. "Walk To The Water" is the other number sniped from the "With Or Without You" single. It's mostly Bono waxing poetic in a loping spoken word style over hollow drums, lulling basslines, and a droll, crystalline guitar riff of a circular nature. It's an interesting experiment, if nothing else (Bono doing "beat").

"Spanish Eyes," taken from the B-Side of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," brings back that O.G. U2 vibe thanks to upfront harmonics and Bono cajoling his lyrics at the outset. Then it dips into neo-Glam territory (think Bowie, Pop, and Ferry all mixed into a blender and spilled into a too small glass). In the end it dissolves into a hodge-podge of various U2 stylistics and suffers from a bit of identity crisis. The other B-Side from "I Still..." is "Deep In The Heart." Sounding not unlike something leftover from Unforgettable Fire it unfurls with drifting harmonics, lumbering bass, taught drums, and Bono's signature breathy vocal croon. It's mesmerizing.

"Where The Streets Have No Name" almost dominates the second disc thanks to several B-Sides, a single edit, and an alternate version of one track. First up from the flip side is the Blues intoned "Silver and Gold," which signals the sound that The Edge would begin exploring more in-depth post Joshua Tree, utilizing a much grittier guitar tone and going for big, sprawling riffs with an obvious Link Wray infatuation. Then there's "Sweetest Thing," which was one of those rare B-Sides that went on to be a hit in its own right and with good reason. Bono's lilting croon bobs from being smoothly alluring to a beguiling yelp in the drift of a moment. "Race Against Time" again sounds like something leftover from Unforgettable, dwelling much more in that ambient slipstream than anything on JT (it's more or less a bass and conga driven slice of shifting tonality). The single edit of "WTSHNN" will take a discerning ear to notice the differences between it and the original. And the Sun City version of "Silver And Gold" is a rambling, ramshackle Country Blues shuffle thanks to the presence of Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and Steve Jordan. Raspy, ragged, and gritty to the core.

The final five inclusions on this disc are outtakes from the Joshua Tree sessions, providing a glimpse into some of the music that was left on the proverbial editing room floor. "Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs Of Experience" is rife with ambient textures, utilizing Brian Eno's drifting temperament expertly (although the track was produced by the band and not the Eno/Lanois combo most noted for their lush enhancements to the music). In many ways this track sounds like something Peter Gabriel would have kicked out circa Peter Gabriel III. Bono's whisper rendition of a William Blake poem creates a really hypnotic vibe that is light years away from anything that ended up on JT.

"Wave Of Sorrow (Birdland)" is built around piano and synth and produced by Lanois and Eno. It's a stripped down piece of quietude and melancholy. Meanwhile "Desert Of Our Love" puts Mullen's drums and Clayton's bass upfront, wrapping themselves thickly around Bono's tentative vocalistics. It's stripped down Blues-meets-Testifying Gospel that slowly brings in piano and lets Bono flex his vocals from croon to yelp to shouting passion, though most of it unintelligle mumbling (as if he were channeling early Michael Stipe). It's rough around the edges, sounding a lot like something that they were working on loosely in the studio, which adds greatly to its appeal.

With "Rise Up" the group continues to extrapolate the Country/Blues elements that are sprinkled throughout the bulk of JT. As with "Desert Of Our Love" this track feels rough around the edges, showing the band in a looser, almost jammier light as they work through the track (though it's mostly Bono who seems tentative and working out the vocal kinks more than anything else). Still, it's the overall loose nature of the track that makes it so appealing.

The final inclusion is "Drunk Chicken/America" in which Bono recites chunks from Allen Ginsberg's epic poem, "America." It's kind of weird to hear Bono affect an quasi Ginsberg-meets-Burroughs intonation to his speaking. Instrumentally, the track is all jagged guitar, bouncing drums, whiffs of organ and bubbling electro rhythms. It's an interesting take on beat attitude, that's for sure, and continues to highlight the group's fascination with the good, old U.S.A. (as also evidenced on core JT tracks like "Bullet The Blue Sky").

For someone who already owns the original version of Joshua Tree and is a U2 completist (i.e. they have all the singles, B-Sides, rarities, 12-inches, and whatnot) then this release might seem a bit redundant. But for somebody who is looking to update their well-worn copy of JT or a young'un who might not as of yet discovered the joy that lurks in the U2 back catalog, then this release is essential indeed. The original album is still teeming with emotion, running the gamut from anger and frustration to emphatic jubilation. The secondary disc is equally packed with all manner of music from the profound to the profane, the artful and the arcane, which is exactly how a disc of B-Sides and Rarities should be.

Download Worthy:
1. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
2. "Bullet The Blue Sky"
3. "Running To Stand Still"
4. "In God's Country"
5. "One Tree Hill"
6. "Silver And Gold"
7. "Sweetest Thing"
8. "Race Against Time"
9. "Silver And Gold (Sun City)"
10. "Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs Of Experience"
11. "Desert Of Our Love"
12. "Rise Up"

ign

4.11.07

STING - FRAGILE:
"It's Probably Me" and "Fragile" (Sting). And speaking of Brits, even the Demolition Man himself, that sturdy-old stand by Mr. Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting, got into the act with "It's Probably Me," taken from the soundtrack to the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover action vehicle Lethal Weapon 3, released in 1992, and boasting the assistance of Eric Clapton, on guitar, and jazz-pop staple David Sanborn, on sax. It resurfaced a year later, with a totally redone rhythm arrangement, on Sting's excellent Ten Summoner's Tales (A&M), and joins an earlier achievement, available on Nothing Like the Sun (A&M, 1987)-the achingly beautiful "Fragile" ("On and on the rain will fall / Like tears from a star / On and on the rain will say / How fragile we are")-as his two most convincing forays into this area. Mixing sincere concerns for the environment with a lovely guitar-arpeggio interlude, "Fragile" is the one to get, and his finest all-around effort to date, as it all-but incorporates the basic bossa formula I've been hinting at throughout. There's also a version for the Latin American market, sung in excruciatingly bad Portuguese, on the otherwise all-Spanish-language Nada Como el Sol., from 1988 (A&M). From there Sting wandered perilously close to "lounge lizard" territory, most of all with his Mercury Falling (A&M, 1996), a dreary affair whose few highlights do not include the risible "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets," sung en français, naturellement, and patterned after the oeuvre of the late Tom Jobim. He has yet to fully recover from that misguided conception. Let's hope his concerts with ex-Police band-mates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers can repair the damage done to their musical integrity and turn things around for the eclectic songsmith.

3.11.07

Astrud's Contribution - The Bossa Nova territory. If ever any singer lacked the goods to make it in the music field, that person was undoubtedly Astrud Gilberto. In hindsight, most Brazilians still owe a profound debt of gratitude to her ingenuous language skills: she built up a solid career-footing on the flimsy foundations of one fortuitous recording session - a session that eventually gave rise to an entire generation of pop idols. As luck would have it, Astrud was asked by Verve Records to perform the English verses of the songs "The Girl from Ipanema" and "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" (Corcovado) in her patently awful Brazilian accent. With her then husband João Gilberto on acoustic guitar, starting off in Portuguese in his typical rambling style, the legendary Stan Getz, as winsome as ever on tenor saxophone, and composer Tom Jobim in the background, strumming away on his rhythm guitar or gently stroking his piano, the tunes instantly caught the imagination of a hit-starved world audience - and catapulted every one if its Brazilian participants, including drummer Milton Banana, to the front ranks of jazz-pop artists, way back in 1963. It would do well for us fans of Música Popular Brasileira to remember, then, that if it had not been for Astrud Gilberto's allegedly "bad" American English, many of the songs and composers we now honor and take for granted would never have been recognized at all, let alone recorded, by such greats as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald, just to name a random few. An adventurous Foreign Sound - in view of the foregoing, it's really not so "foreign-sounding" after all.
This is a video 'Call Me' a tribute for films with phonecalls:

16.10.07

Joe Carioca (Aquarela do Brasil + Tico Tico No Fuba)

The first song is "Aquarela do Brasil" by Ary Barroso and the other is "Tico Tico No Fuba" by Zequinha de Abreu.

10.10.07

Bono Re-finds His Inner Yeats

by Matt Cibula

Ah, memories: I was a devotee of the Saturday night "New Wave" show on Portland's KISN-AM in 1981, and I remember those songs like it was really yesterday instead of 21 years ago: Orchestral Manoevres in the Dark's "Enola Gay", "Wordy Rappinghood" by the Tom Tom Club, the B-52s, The Teardrop Explodes, Adam and the Ants, it was all so totally excellent. It was a time of possibility, of hammering away at the disco and soft rock menace, of people wearing the really strange clothes and attitudes that I was not allowed to have in my small farm town high school sophomore existence.

One song they played every week was "I Will Follow" by U2, which struck me as the coolest possible name of a band, like, ever. To me, it was all about that searing Edge riff, you know the one, and the incredible tightness of the rhythm section, but I remember thinking that that singer, whoever he was, was okay too. I made a really crap-quality tape off the radio and played it for my brothers, and they liked it too; but when one asked me, "Where are these guys from?" I gave him the no DOY look and said, "England, of course."

As I write this, U2 is the world's biggest band. Again. (This is at least the third time I can count that they've been there.) They make the most money, they draw the most fans, they win the most awards, they perform at the Super Bowl halftime show. They are beloved in a way that few musical acts have ever been -- the Beatles, the Stones, Bruce Springsteen -- and they've been bigger longer than anyone else; it's been 22 years since their first album, Boy, was first released, and they are huger now than they ever were before.

And no one makes the same mistake I made when I was a kid. Everyone knows they're Irish -- actually, as Morrissey pointed out in a pissy interview a couple of years ago, both Dave Evans and Adam Clayton were born in England. They got together in Dublin as teenage school friends, won a contest and a record contract, huge underground success leading to Irish buzz leading to English buzz leading to War, which broke them huge everywhere. By spring of junior year, I had friends in Canby, Oregon, who were U2 freaks and knew everything about them. We played "Sunday Bloody Sunday" at parties and the whole football team pounded out that Larry Mullen Jr. drum tattoo on coffee tables in perfect unison back when U2 ruled MTV riding those white horses through the forest in the snow. Anyone who thought that U2 were English -- or, worse, American -- got pounded on by the biggest fanatics of us all. (Those fanatics' mother actually burned all their rock record albums in a fit of religious insanity -- the next day, they went right back to the store and bought War and Under a Blood Red Sky…but this time on cassette.)

We knew, just knew, that U2 was so political and fiery and impassioned because they were Irish. Hell, they probably went to sleep at night with gunfire in their ears, something we all were secretly jealous about. But instead of being bitter and twisted by all the violence and poverty and confusion of his world, Bono wanted peace -- an end to war. Because that's what all good Irish people really wanted, right?

What the hell did we know? We were kids, American kids, and even those of us who were half Irish-American (of the infamous Kane family, San Francisco, Mission District, four generations, thank you very much) didn't really know what was going on. We subscribed to the generalized horror/fascination model that most people had, and still have, of Ireland and Irish culture: man, they have it bad over there, but man, they still know how to party and tell stories and write kick-ass songs. And U2, with their blazing sincerity and their rock-solid wavey grooves and Bono's intensity, were what we thought all Irish young people were: brave soldiers for the good, forged in the fire of the bad.

Everyone believed this, even Bono himself. In an early interview, he claimed, "'Irishness' was even a box people tried to put us into, but that's a box we're quite proud to be in because our music is Irish." Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can ask: "Huh?" Yeah, there were some early overt nods to Eire on Boy and October: a melody line here, an Irish title there. And back then Mr. Hewson was still able to pull some very Yeats-like images out of his hat. But how often did the songs actually reference real places? Hardly ever. And how was the music inherently Irish? Only, really, in our imagination.

By War, it was clear that U2 was trying to fry bigger fish. Yeah, "Sunday Bloody Sunday" broke them worldwide, and yeah, there are at least two different "Bloody Sunday" dates in Irish history, but nothing else in the song indicates that Bono is really talking about Protestants and Catholics and England at all. And the fact that a truce ended up being called for New Year's Day was purely coincidental to the song "New Year's Day." Yet the cult of U2 that was springing up all over the world made us believe that we were right there in it with 'em, fighting the good fight in Dublin and Belfast.

But we started to suspect something when The Unforgettable Fire broke out in 1984. It was recorded at Slane Castle outside Dublin, but it didn't sound Irish to us. This might have been because of its English (Brian Eno) and Quebecois (Daniel Lanois) producers, but it was more likely because the big centerpiece songs were about Martin Luther King, Jr. ("Pride (In the Name of Love)") and the myths of the U.S. ("Elvis Presley and America", "4th of July"). And this was tripled on their biggest breakthrough, The Joshua Tree, which seemed to be set in the desert land of the United States, in El Salvador ("Bullet the Blue Sky"), all over the world…but not really anywhere in Ireland at all. And forget about Rattle and Hum, which was recorded everywhere and features such not-really-all-that-Irish ditties as "Angel of Harlem", "Van Diemen's Land", and "When Love Comes to Town" with B.B. King.

Yep, we thought, they've become Everyband for Everyone Everywhere. So we weren't at all surprised, really, when U2 completely reinvented themselves as internationalists for Achtung Baby in 1991. From the German-sounding title (actually cribbed from the hippie Hitler in Mel Brooks' movie The Producers) to the Eurobeats to the very look of their videos, Bono and The Edge and Larry and Adam had dropped any hint of being Irish whatsoever -- they were world citizens now, baby, and deal with that shit, like, schnell. Their lyrics had become as simple as possible -- seemingly for easy translation -- and even their song titles were clues: "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World", "One". And, while their themes were actually kind of interesting behind all that vagueness -- "One" is still one of the ten greatest songs written in the rock era, a great accomplishment considering that it's written in the voice of a son with AIDS talking to his disapproving father -- U2 was now the world's band, and loving it.

This, of course, was widely assumed to be Bono's way of dealing with the pressure of expectations, which could also be interpreted as the pressure of being Irish. At this point, he was the world's best-known Irishman, and had served as an advisor for the Irish government on youth issues. This had brought him dangerously close to being part of the system…but how is an artist supposed to remain free when the system is jamming its tongue down your throat? Better to just drift, be global, be bigger than any kind of puny little concerns like where you were born or what your last name is. Adam Clayton briefly married British supermodel Naomi Campbell; Dave "The Edge" Evans split up with his wife and took up with a bellydancer from the live version of "Mysterious Ways". Little by little, they were all falling victim to all the clichés of Rock Star living…so why not just act the parts onstage?

So U2 went completely over the top with Zooropa, a concept album about the upcoming European Union, and everyone assumed that they were no longer interested in being Irish anymore at all -- that it was an outmoded idea when "With satellite television / You can go anywhere / Miami, New Orleans / London, Belfast and Berlin". The Zoo TV tour, with its wall of satellite images from all over the world, Bono's Dark Lord of Rock persona called "Mephisto", and its gimmicks like talking to Russian cosmonauts, had put the nail in the coffin that was U2's Irishness.

Or did it? "Lemon", one of Zooropa's most affecting tracks, seemed to actually recall earlier times in its plaintive melody and sad lyrics about Bono's mother's early death…and wasn't she Irish? The album closer, "The Wanderer", strongly implied that the further you go and the farther you run, the more you miss your home. Bono still seemed to be wandering on the semi-flop that was Pop, but he was returning once again to his more religious material, and questioning the whole subsumation of his personality in those ridiculous but necessary "Fly" and "Mephisto" characters: "You wanted to get somewhere so badly / You had to lose yourself along the way / You change your name, well that's okay, it's necessary / And what you leave behind you don't miss anyway".

And then, like a bolt from the blue, All That You Can't Leave Behind roared back into the world's consciousness in 2000 and put them back on top. How? It had a lot to do with beauty and melody and big huge rock choruses like that monster on "Beautiful Day" -- but it had even more to do with dropping all the masks and letting go. It's almost as if Bono has decided that the most heroic thing he could do is to become Bono again, singing songs about his daughters ("Kite"), sadness about losing friends to rock excess (Michael Hutchence in "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"), and accepting the help of others ("Wild Honey"). And, in a very significant way, he reconnects with being Irish -- the nods to Irish-American accomplishment in "New York", and the horror that was the 1998 Omagh massacre in "Peace on Earth". Here, intoning the names of victims ("Sean and Julia / Gareth, Ann, and Breda"), Bono sounds human again for the first time since he became a Rock Star. He almost, maybe, sounds Irish again.

What was that poem by Yeats again? The one where he talks about having made his song into a coat and then having to deal with other people walking about wearing the exact same coat? You know the one, the one that ends:

Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
You don't suppose someone was reading his Anthology of Irish Literature, do you?

popmatters

1.10.07

Police (by Titãs), is to who needs police


The majority of the members of the band Titãs met at Colégio Equipe in São Paulo at the end of the seventies and, after their first live performance at the school itself in 1981, the band began to play shows in several night clubs in the city. The first formation was: Arnaldo Antunes (vocals), Branco Mello (vocals), Marcello Fromer (guitar), Nando Reis (bass guitar), Paulo Miklos (sax and vocals), Sergio Britto (keyboards and vocals), Tony Bellotto (guitar), Ciro Pessoa (vocals) and André Jung (drums). It was a pop/new wave-styled band, with a rather conventional sound and odd looks, with tender and little ball neckties. In 1984, without Ciro Pessoa, who left over a disagreement about Andre Jung's drumming skills, the band signed with the WEA label to record their first album, Titãs, produced by Pena Schimdt. Although poorly promoted and hardly a success, the band spawned their first hit: "Sonífera Ilha"(Sleepy Island), later recorded by singer Moraes Moreira. In 1985, with Charles Gavin replacing André Jung on drums (the latter going on to Ira!), their second album, Televisão (Television), produced by Lulu Santos, was released with tighter arrangements than their debut album. Not only was the title track their greatest hit to date, the album was more heavily promoted than the first one and brought more opportunities to the group. In November 1985, Tony Bellotto and Arnaldo Antunes were arrested for heroin traffic and transportation. The episode made so much of an impact in the band, the next album, Cabeça Dinossauro, released in June 1986, contained a lot of tracks criticizing the public institutions ("Estado Violência"(Violence State) and "Polícia"(Police)), as well as other "pillars" of the Brazilian society and indeed society in general ("Igreja" (Church) and "Família" (Family)). The heavy and punk-influenced rhythms and the forceful lyrics, characteristic of the band in this phase, are fully represented in this album which is considered by the critics one of the best works of the group and one of the landmarks of the Brazilian rock.

(Portuguese lyrics for Policia)

Dizem que ela existe pra ajudar
Dizem que ela existe pra proteger
Eu sei que ela pode te parar
Eu sei que ela pode te prender

Policia! Para que precisa?
Policia! Para que precisa de policia?

Dizem pra você obedecer
Dizem pra você responder

Dizem pra você cooperar
Dizem pra você respeitar

(My English version)
They say that it exists to help
They say that it exists to protect
I know that it can stop you
I know that it can arrest you

Police! To what needs?
Police! To what needs police?

They say for you to obey
They say for you to answer

They say for you to cooperate
They say for you to respect

30.9.07

FROM 'GOOD VOICE' TO GREAT VOICE
Bono rose from humble roots to rock icon to king of celebrity activists
By JONATHAN TAKIFF

takiffj@phillynews.com 215-854-5960

ONCE UPON a time, way back in the idealistic 1960s and '70s, almost all rock 'n' roll musicians thought they could change the world with a song.

Since then, sadly, rampant cynicism and fatigue and age have robbed most of that lot of their passion and commitment. But one guy, Paul David Hewson, better known to the world as Bono, still believes in the power of song to shake and remake the world.

"All you need is three chords and the truth," he famously said. And the funny thing is, after almost 30 years of listening and watching him work, it's hard not tobelieve in him, too, because he has been so effective.

Tomorrow, Bono is being honored here for his good work as a musician-statesman and reformer with the prestigious 2007 Liberty Medal, to be bestowed on the artist at the National Constitution Center.

Born May 10, 1960, and raised in a middle-class suburb of Dublin, Ireland, Hewson was the son of a Protestant mother and a Roman Catholic father. While he didn't align with either religion, he grew up with a strong sense of spirituality and respect for all people, running counter to the oft-warring nature of Irish religious/political sects which split north versus south in his childhood and early adult years.

An early tragedy reinforced his sense of life's frailty when, at age 14, Paul saw his mother, Iris, die of a brain hemorrhage during her own father's funeral. Several songs from U2 albums, including "I Will Follow," "Out of Control" and "Tomorrow" focus on this loss.

The kid found emotional, intellectual and creative support at Mount Temple Comprehensive, a multidenominational secondary (junior-high and high-school equivalent) academy. There, free expression of ideas and individuality were encouraged. And did Paul ever speak and sing out — with such brio and sheer volume that one of his mates gave him the nickname "Bonovox." It was the brand name of a hearing aid, suggesting both (a) he deafened people by his rants; and (b) was in need of a hearing aid himself. The tag grew on the guy, though, when he learned it loosely translated from Latin was "good voice." Eventually it was shortened to Bono, even before he had a band, and he's answered to it — even among his family and friends — ever since.

U2 was spawned at Mount Temple. Fledgling drummer Larry Mullen Jr. instigated the project, asking the school's principal if a rehearsal space could be found for him and some classmates. Bono was initially enlisted as guitarist and singer, although as another bandmate (David Howell Evans — nicknamed "The Edge") — got more proficient, Bono would pass off those strumming duties. In the video documentary "God's Favourite Son," the guys' history teacher, Donald Moxham, recalls that he was asked by the principal to be the band's unofficial supervisor.

Moxham had already seen a performance spark in Bono, he says, from his demeanor in the classroom. "He was an extremely dynamic, interested student, challenging in a very positive way."

U2 developed in the late 1970s, a time when hippie bands like the Electric Tea Pot were still brewing in Ireland, while punk was taking over in London. The group kind of broached the two worlds. "We never sat down and thought, 'Wow, this would be a great sound,'" Mullen would recall. "We were basically influenced by things like seeing the [Sex] Pistols or the Clash or the Jam on 'Top of the Pops' [a London-based TV show.] We came out of the hippie-dippy thing into the new wave, as such, so we were fairly directionless."

Chris De Whalley, the CBS A&R man who produced the first U2 recordings in 1979, says the group's appropriation and polishing up of punk was similar to The Boomtown Rats, their Dublin big brothers whose leader, Bob Geldof, would inspire not only the showmanship and business strategies of Bono and mates, but also, eventually, his political/social activist mindset.

At the start, Whalley recalls: "They weren't brilliant. They were loud and fast and clattering along. They were sort of a division two new-wave band. Bono was particularly outstanding. I guess he was mesmerizing. The attention was entirely about him and him only. He had this whole vocabulary of dramatic gestures on top of the standard shakes that you expect from a lead singer."

This writer felt the same way, watching the group's Philadelphia debut performance at the Bijou Café in December 1980, to mark the release of their "Boy" album.

The rhythm section was sloppy as hell, The Edge's guitar work intermittently interesting, and the patchwork quality of the lyrics (themed on youth and adolescence) reflected how U2's early work had been largely improvised in the studio.

But some tunes, like the standout "I Will Follow," had an arresting, ring-them-bells spirituality that was breathtaking, that literally shook the house. And Bono had such personal charisma, such passion, such a swaggering air of the poet, that he could have kept our attention reciting listings from the phone book.

With their second album, 1981's "October," U2 delved more deeply into religion with songs like "Gloria" and "Rejoice." While not a huge hit, it arguably jump-started the contemporary Christian-rock movement and solidified a fan base for the band among true believers — although then and since, Bono has refused to characterize U2 as part of any particular music scene.

Then came "War" in '83 — the first U2 album that actively reflected a political/social reformist agenda and trumpeted their Irishness to the world, as Bono and his mates raged against homeland violence in classics like "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day." America started to believe in and embrace the group in a big way — with triumphant shows here at the Tower Theater.

"The [American] audiences are wide open, quite naive and up for you," Bono said at the time. "They're not cynical the way a London audience can be cynical."

All heaven and hell broke loose with "The Unforgettable Fire" in 1984, from whence came their hugely popular "Pride (In the Name of Love)," a ragged but much appreciated homage to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the nonviolent civil-rights movement.

By this point they'd been elevated to arena headliners, and then, the following July, stole the show at "Live Aid," the Bob Geldof-sparked, two-continent concert for African famine relief and Bono's coming-out party as a champion for the world's oppressed.

That appearance changed the band's perception of their place in the big picture, noted Gerry Ryan, Ireland's top DJ on RTE radio and longtime friend of the group, speaking in a "God's Favourite Son" interview.

"They understood if you're gonna have 80,000 people standing and cheering and singing along with your songs, they've got to be big. That was their trip. Whatever skills they had, whatever they were going to sing about, whatever passion they had, it was important. And what was really important — that it was big. The sound was huge. At the heart you had soul, but also had soul on a gigantic level."

Following Live Aid, Bono and wife, Ali, spent a month working in war and drought devastated Ethiopia — doing literally everything from "shoveling s---," he'd recall, to writing uplifting songs for the children to sing as they did their chores. From this experience, the die was cast for Bono to embrace his calling as an "aggressive passivist" in song, word and deed. He'd also study up on and trumpet the causes of Third World debt relief, war's youngest refugees, and environmental threats. The pressure to create another album or tour could never stop him.

Nor, even, could the threat of bodily harm. In 1987, Provisional IRA paramilitaries threatened to kidnap the little (5 feet, 7 inches) big man for his onstage condemnations of their violence in his homeland.

Bono had to live up to his name. He'd use his music and appearances as a bully pulpit, to remind the world of corruption and injustices, and shame politicians to respond with real action, rather than hollow rhetoric. The life and work of reggae legend Bob Marley would also offer a template for Bono, he suggested. "Bob Marley is one of the great, great heroes of mine. He did whatever he wanted with his music. He had his faith, his belief in God, or Jah as he called it. He had no problem combining that with his sexuality and the sensuality of some of his love songs.

He was tender and open and politically a hard-ass. He had those three dimensions and it's everything I want from U2."

Clearly, many artists — from John Lennon to the Dixie Chicks — have worn out their welcome, shrunk their fan base for pushing personal causes too hard. But Bono's skill and passion, combined with that quintessentially anthemic, verging on metaphysical music of his colleagues have only solidified U2's bond with listeners.

As the band closes in on three decades, they remain one of most successful and important musical phenomena of modern times. *
philly.com
Bono: A rocker, activist or both?
By Dan DeLuca
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Article Launched: 09/30/2007 03:05:45 AM PDT


When Bono was but a boy, the rock-star-to-be heard John Lennon whispering inspirational words in his ear.
"That changed the way the world looked outside my bedroom window when I was 12 years old," says Bono, lead singer of U2 and co-founder of DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), a Washington-based advocacy group.

On Thursday, Bono and DATA were honored with the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, whose president, Joseph M. Torsella, cited Bono for proving through his activism "that the office of 'citizen' is the most important in the world."

The award puts the 47-year-old Nobel Peace Prize nominee in rarefied company -- for more than 18 years, the award has gone to statesmen and justices, world leaders and scientists, to Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel, former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, now chairman of the Constitution Center.

On the phone from his home outside Dublin, Bono talks about the African triple killers of AIDS, malaria and extreme poverty. And he says accepting this medal in Philadelphia, the American home of both Live Aid and Live 8, is "a very big deal."

"In the American body politic," he says, "there's no poetry like the poetry of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."

'Sick of the sound'

Bono doesn't just talk: He speechifies. He may have a reputation as a pompous world-saver, but in conversation he's relentlessly charming and self-critical, referring to himself as "annoying," adding: "I'm sick of the sound of my own voice. I'm not kidding you." And he mocks the trademark tinted glasses that serve as his Superman's cape: "Without them, I'm an amorphous mass."
He says there's a symbiotic relationship between his day job as frontman for one of the biggest rock bands in the world and his second career "moonlighting" as a celebrity agitator lobbying for aid and debt relief for Africa, "a magical, extraordinary place."

Though tired of hearing his own brogue, he vows to continue to employ it: "Music gave me a soapbox, and I'm going to use it," he says with a laugh. "It gave me a platform and a loud-hailer (bullhorn). It's put me in a place where people are foolish enough to listen to what I have to say. So use the moment."

U2 rose to superstardom in the 1980s with heroic stadium-size anthems such as "I Will Follow" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." While his band mate the Edge's guitars rang out, Bono was the guy in the mullet literally waving a white flag. "I still am," he quips, "but with a better haircut."

U2 played at Live Aid, Bob Geldof's 1985 African famine charity concert. The next year Bono and his wife, Alison (the couple have four children), traveled to Ethiopia to work in an orphanage for six weeks.

"Once you become a witness," he says, "it becomes very hard to walk away, knowing you stand a good chance of landing a punch on the problem."

He didn't get deeply involved in African issues until the late '90s, when he joined the Jubilee Movement, a lobbying effort to erase the debt of the world's poorest countries and free up money for health care and education.

A transformation

That marked the transition of Bono -- real name Paul Hewson, but long known by a version of his teenage nickname, Bono Vox, which loosely translates from Latin as "good voice" -- from rosy-eyed idealist to real-world pragmatist. He started hanging out with guys such as Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who heads the UN Millennium Project, with whom he is pictured in GQ as two of 15 men "we believe will change our future."

Bono says his "least favorite verb in the English language is 'to dream.' I think these years that we're living in are about doing. Even Nike ... figured that out."

So what's he done lately? Besides "reapplying for the job of best band in the world," beginning with U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind" in 2000, he's been working as a professional persuader with leaders from George W. Bush to George Soros.

"Many of these stars are counseled by their agents to show a human side," says Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who has worked with the rocker on global AIDS issues. "Bono's different. He's clearly committed, and he knows what he's talking about."

And he uses his celebrity, Durbin says, as a super-lobbyist on both sides of the ideological divide. "He can get in to see the president, or Jesse Helms. I don't know that anybody can say no to Bono."

Share of critics

That's because the guy who co-founded DATA, and the anti-poverty One campaign, isn't just another activist. He's Bono, who joined with Geldof in organizing Live 8, guest-edited the July issue of Vanity Fair on Africa, and spearheaded the product (Red) campaign, the alliance with retailers such as Apple and the Gap to raise money to supply antiretroviral drugs for HIV-positive people in Africa.

Along the way, the singer skewered by the Mekons in 1989 as "the Dublin messiah, scattering crumbs" has come in for plenty of flak. Paul Theroux, in a New York Times op-ed piece called "The Rock Star's Burden," argued that by treating Africa as a place that needs to be saved, Westerners do more harm than good. And (Red) has been attacked for making self-satisfied consumers feel they can eradicate AIDS by buying a T-shirt at the Gap.

Bono, a former teenage chess prodigy who tries to think ahead, has heard the criticisms. "They say the real route out of extreme poverty is to grow the middle class. Growth, opportunity, commerce. I agree with them. But having been in rooms where we see people begging for their lives, where there's not even rage in their eyes, I have to ask: What are we going to do in the meantime?"

For his activism to be effective, Bono knows that U2, which is working on a new album with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, must make music that resonates.

"There's enormous pressure to be relevant," says the singer, who feels that "great music is written by people who are either running toward or away from God." (Count him among the former.) "Which is different than successful, and a lot harder."
contracostatimes

29.9.07

Sera - To fight for what? If it is without wanting; who will protect us?

Legião Urbana — "Urban Legion" in Portuguese — is one of the most successful rock bands in Brazil's history. Originally created in 1983, the band continued to exist until 1996, with the death of its vocalist, Renato Russo. Many elements helped shape the identity of Legião Urbana. Consciously or not, Renato Russo, the main singer, was heavily influenced by The Smiths, particularly Morrissey, in his extremely personal lyrics and idiosyncratic on-stage performance. He was also influenced by Joy Division's Ian Curtis. Thematically, Russo and the other members were also influenced by literature, especially that of Portuguese poet Luís de Camões, whose poetry is featured in more than one of the band's songs. Despite the death of Russo and the group's disbanding, Legião Urbana continues to be the third best-selling artist in Brazil, with approximately 350,000 albums sold per year as of 2003. With more than 13 million records sold, the band continues to be very well-known among young Brazilians. Legião Urbana was, and remains, loved because of the songs remain timeless and whose words told of many aspects: love, spiritualism, politics, family, sex, drugs. The raw reality of these issues struck a chord with many, including Russo himself. A well-known characteristic of the band is that they made very few music videos, and by the low quality of the few ones they agreed to make. Renato Russo hated to make them. Renato Russo was the former creator of the band, vocalist, played guitars, bass or keyboards, and wrote or co-wrote most of the band's songs.

(Portuguese lyrics for Sera)
Será
Letra: Renato Russo
Música: Dado Villa-Lobos/Renato Russo/Marcelo Bonfá

Tire suas mãos de mim
Eu não pertenço a você
Não é me dominado assim
Que você vai me entender

Eu posso estar sozinho
Mas eu sei muito bem aonde estou
Você pode até duvidar
Acho que isso não é amor.

Será isso imaginação?
Será que nada vai acontecer?
Será que é tudo isso em vão?
Será que vamos conseguir vencer?

Nos perderemos entre monstros
Da nossa própria criação
Serão noites inteiras
Talvez por medo da escuridão

Ficaremos acordados
Imaginando alguma solução
Pra que esse nosso egoísmo
Não destrua nosso coração.

Brigar pra quê
Se é sem querer
Quem é que vai
Nos proteger?

Será que vamos ter
Que responder
Pelos erros a mais
Eu e você?

(My English version for Sera)
Will be
Lyrics: Renato Russo
Music: Data Villa-Lobos/Renato Russo/Marcelo Bonfá

Takes off your hands of me
I don't belong you
It's not dominated me thus
That you will understand me

Maybe I'm alone
But I know very well where I am
You can until doubting
I find that this is not love.

Will be this one imagination?
Will be that nothing its to happen?
Will be that everything in vain?
Will be that we'll keep winning?

We will lose ourselves between monsters
From our proper creation
It will be entire nights
Perhaps from fear of the darkness

We will be waked up
Imagining some solution
For that this our egoism
Doesn't destroy our heart.

To fight for what?
If it is without wanting
Who will
Protect us?

Will be that we'll to have
That to answer
For more errors
You and me?
Fatima by Renato Russo and Fabio Lemos - Capital Inicial acoustic perform

28.9.07

Bono’s Liberty Medal Acceptance Speech



Won't take long. I'm the Fidel Castro of speechifying. We've got a few hours, don't we?

Right. Thank you. Thank you Mr. President. (George H.W. Bush) Thanks Joe. (Joseph Torsella, President and CEO, National Constitution Center) and everyone here at the National Constitution Center. It's an inspiring place. In the words of Robert Zimmerman - Bob Dylan – "ring those bells…ring those bells."

I want to thank my wife, Ali. And I also want to thank the members of U2 for not firing me when they hear I'm in Philadelphia this evening because they're in the studio expecting me, and I know they won't fire me because it is Philadelphia and we've played everywhere here. From 70 people to 70,000 people here. An important city for the U2ers, as well as these both Live 8 concerts which really turned my life upside down.

I've got 5 minutes to talk and I can spend that doing the shout-outs, but I want to thank Ngozi. (Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister of Nigeria and current member of DATA's Policy Advisory Board) Really for what she said, for what she is and for what she does. This is the kind of leader we all want to work for. This is the reason we in DATA do what we do. We love you dear.

I must tell you it's a bit humbling for me to be here where it all got started. Where America got started. Because along with a mayor, a governor, a former president, and so many others that served the cause of freedom while I, it has to be said, have served the cause of my own ego. President Bush, you may remember that when you were in office in 1992 and U2 was touring America, I used to do this bit every night in the show where I would bring a phone out and I'd ring you up at the White House. You never took my calls, Sir. You had far too much sense. That's the truth. Now your son, he did not have your sense. He not only took my call, he had me over to lunch. And then I wouldn't leave. I think he's been regretting it ever since because when I come over to the house, I'm not exactly what you call "house trained" - even White House trained. I'm not exactly what you call a good guest either. I can be rude and I ask for things before we even sit down for tea, like billions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa. Things like that.

I'd like to think that I've always left the White House with more than I arrived. Not only budget commitments, cutlery, silverware, candelabras, one or two Bush family photos, -OK one Gilbert Stuart portrait…of George Washington; it was in the bathroom – nobody could see, I'll give it back.

I have to say that people took risks in working with us. And want to say that current President Bush was not only gracious, he was passionate. Passionate about doing more for the poorest of the poor, and smart enough to know that he wasn't just letting a rock star run amok with his staff. He knew that DATA, the organization being honored tonight, was bursting with energy. Filled to the brim with the best and the brightest people – policy people, campaigners, I salute you. Your servant. (bows)

Still, it is risky working with rock stars, children, animals. People we wouldn't have expected had us in their offices again and again hammering out new initiatives, like the Millennium Challenge Account, which rewards poor countries that were tacking corruption. And, like Ngozi was talking about, was looking for investment, you know aid as investment. And we also worked with President Bush on a historic AIDS initiative where now I can tell you that it's not just one million that you heard about, it's now one-and-a-half million Africans who owe their lives to the two pills a day that they receive from the United States of America. It's a great thing.

I might add that this can only happen because in Congress, heroic Democrats and Republicans put down their politics and put in their political capital to make things happen for people who don't have a vote. And it couldn't have happened without the leadership of president number 43, but number 42 as well. I just had the pleasure of telling William Jefferson Clinton, whom you travel with so much, that thanks to his and other G8 leaders supporting debt cancellation, and as a result of inspired African leadership, there are now as you heard earlier, and I can confirm it, 20 million African children going to school that wouldn't be otherwise. Twenty million African children – WOW! That's worth shouting about. That's the America I love.

And that's why I'm so honored to be here to receive this award – a punk rocker from the north side of Dublin. An organization that until very recently had its data in haversacks and had its office in Kinkos around the corner. No, I want to thank the organization and people like our instigator and part-time flame thrower, Bobby Shriver and Jamie Drummond who's sitting there who are something special. Jamie, if you've noticed, Jamie and I have accents. Subtle. We come from "over there" across the water. But we're over here because we're fans of America. And, in that sense, we're no different than the two-and-a-half million Americans who have now joined the ONE Campaign which began its life in this great city of Philadelphia in 2004 right in front of Independence Hall. We're fans of America.

I'm also a fan of Benjamin Franklin. Which I noticed earlier – Franklin who wore John Lennon glasses before anybody, before they were cool. Franklin who went electric before Dylan. Franklin who said, as you heard earlier, God grant that not only the love of liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the Earth so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say "this is my country." Well, in case you hadn't heard, I am not a philosopher, I am a rock star, though after a few pints, this rock star starts thinking he's a philosopher.

So, not a philosopher, but let me set my foot here and say to you tonight this is my country. With humility and pride in my own country, let me say America is my country in the sense that anyone who has a stake in liberty has a stake in the United States of America. For all you've been through, good and bad, this is my country too. For every time I wince, or gasp or punch the wall, when I read something that galls, there's another time I'm reminded of your generosity, your resilience, your innovation, your work ethic, your compassion. Although today, today I read in The Economist an article reporting that over 38 percent of Americans support some kind of torture in exceptional circumstances. My country – NO! Your country – tell me no. (Crowd answers back "no") Thank you.

Today as you pin this great honor on me, I ask you – I implore you as an Irish man who has seen some of these things close up, I ask you to remember you do not have to become a monster to defeat a monster. Your America is better than that. Your America is the one where Neil Armstrong takes a walk on the Moon because he can. Your America is the one where so many Irish people discovered their value. Your America is the one where a brave military fought and died for freedom in places like Omaha Beach, and in the Pacific, where president number 41 here – a true World War II war hero served. Your America gave Europe the Marshall Plan. Your America gave the world the Peace Corps, JFK, RFK, MLK, the Special Olympics, Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen – the bard and the boss – Steve Jobs, local hero Will Smith, the meditations of Mark Rothko, the poetics of Allen Ginsberg, Edward R. Murrow, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Mary J. Blige, Frank Gehry, of thee I sing, all of thee.

Hey, these are the reasons I'm a fan of America – and one more. America is not just a country. It's an idea, isn't it? It's a great and powerful idea. The idea that all men are created equal. That "we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These are great lyrics, Mr. Jefferson. Great opening riff. The Declaration of Independence has a great closing line too – "we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." Well the men who made that, the men who signed that pledge, had a lot to lose by signing - like their lives. So what then about you and me? What are we ready to pledge? What are we ready to pledge ourselves to? Anything? Anything at all?

What about this idea of liberty? Not liberty for its own sake, but liberty for some larger end – not just freedom from oppression, but freedom of expression and worship. Freedom from want, and freedom from fear because when you are trapped by poverty, you are not free. When trade laws prevent you from selling the food you grow, you are not free. When you are dying of a mosquito bite for lack of a bed net, you are not free. When you are hungry in a world of plenty, you are not free. And when you are a monk in Burma this very week, barred from entering a temple because of your gospel of peace, it is an affront to the thug regime, well then none of us are truly free.

My other country, America, I know you'll not stand for that. So, look I'm not going to stand here, a rock star who just stepped off a private plane, and tell you to put your lives on the line for people you've never met or your fortunes – I haven't. But our sacred honor might just be at stake here. That and a whole lot else. So what, then, are we willing to pledge? How about our science, your technology, your creativity…America has so many great answers to offer. We can't fix all the world's problems. But the ones we can, we must.

Enough of my voice. Listen to the voice of young Africa. Good night.

27.9.07

Espatodea by Nando Reis.



Nando Reis wrote the lyrics to his little daughter Zoe. He says she is his inspiration and he stays so emotional when sings in her presence. Espatodea Campanulata is a tree of the Bignoniaceae's family. Their root aren't profound and frequently its branchs fall down; this tree isn't a good option to urban centres. Gineceu are the female parts of a flower. This name is from the division in the old Greece, reserved only to the women. The male part is called androceu.
Read about Nando Reis, his life, his career, here



(Portuguese lyrics to Espatodea)

Minha cor
Minha flor
Minha cara

Quarta estrela
Letras, três
Uma estrada

Não sei se o mundo está bom
Mas ele está melhor
Desde que você chegou
E perguntou:
Tem lugar pra mim?

Espatodea
Gineceu
Cor de pólen

Sol do dia
Nuvem branca
Sem sardas

Não sei se o mundo está bom
Mas ele está melhor
Porque você chegou
E explicou
O mundo pra mim

Não sei se esse mundo está são
Mas pro mundo que eu vim já não era
Meu mundo não teria razão
Se não fosse a Zoe

(My English version to Espatodea)
My color
My flower
My face

Fourth star
Letters, three
A road

I don't know if the world is good
But it is better
Since you arrived
And asked:
Is there a place to me?

Espatodea
Gineceu
Color of pollination

Sun of the day
White cloud
Without freckles

I don't know if the world is good
But it is better
Because you arrived
And explained
The world to me

I don't know if this world is OK
But to the world that I came wasn't
My world wouldn't have reason
If wasn't Zoe

20.9.07

U2 returned home to play at their junior high graduation ceremony

Avenue/Uncle Sam's, U2 returned home to play at their junior high graduation ceremony - Image by Greg Helgeson (Helgeson shot a portrait [above] in the southeast corner of the club, in the day of the show)

Boy tour - 3rd leg - April 09, 1981 / Minneapolis, MN / Venue: Uncle Sam's / Opening Act(s): The Panic / Main Set: The Ocean, 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, I Will Follow, An Cat Dubh, Into The Heart, Another Time Another Place, The Electric Co, Things To Make And Do, Stories For Boys, Boy-Girl, Out Of Control, A Day Without Me, 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, The Ocean, I Will Follow


"They were hobbits. They were pot smokers. In 1981, they were just kids called U2.
All That You Can't Leave Behind
by Jim Walsh
September 21, 2005
At some point during U2's concert at the Target Center Friday night, Bono will talk about the first time the band played the host city, as he has at almost every stop on this "Vertigo" world tour. He will invoke the words "First Avenue" (or "Uncle Sam's," as it was) and, in doing so, remind himself and all gathered that U2 may have started in drummer Larry Mullen's cramped kitchen in Dublin, but their roots are in tiny clubs all over the planet.
It was April 9, 1981. U2's first record, Boy, had been released the previous year. I had read about it in New Musical Express and ordered it from Ryan at Hot Licks on Hennepin Avenue--now a parking lot. The day the import-only vinyl arrived, Chico brought it out from behind the counter, looked at the photo of the wide-eyed child on the cover and said, "Cool cover, man. Who are these guys?"
I only had a vague idea. Bands were sprouting up everywhere and everyone was inspiring and competing with everyone else. U2 was "one of us, just like us," according to Man Sized Action drummer Tony Pucci, who was working stage crew that night. "We were young punks in bands, too. I told Larry, 'Hey, man, I'm a drummer, too,' and he let me hit his drums. They were just another bunch of guys going through town."
When U2 hit Minneapolis, some lumped them in with the so-called New Romantics, along with the likes of the Psychedelic Furs and Echo and the Bunnymen--albeit with a powerhouse single in their holsters, "I Will Follow."
Matt Wilson was the 16-year-old drummer for U2's local opening band, the Panic. The future Trip Shakespeare leader and his mates spent the month before the show reading about U2 in Rolling Stone, listening to Boy, and getting pumped to play in front of their new heroes from across the pond.
"We hadn't been around very long, and we were so excited to play for these guys. We envisioned them standing there, taking in every note," recalls Wilson. "We played this incredible set, even faster than we usually played. We were sweating when we were done; it was like the show of our lives. And then we watched them walk in through the back door next to the stage as we were tearing down our stuff. It was crushing."
Former Sam's/First Avenue booker Chrissie Dunlap recalls that tickets were "probably 10 dollars" (top-end tickets for the sold-out Target Center show go for $160) and most who were there agree that no more than 500 people were in attendance.
As for the show itself, former Hüsker Dü and Sugar leader Bob Mould recalls that "they didn't have enough material, so they did 'I Will Follow' twice." Wilson recalls, "I don't think I'd ever seen that much concentrated dry ice before. I just remember them moving in and out of the mist, and there was this sort of sense of a religious happening."
U2 was on the second leg of their Boy tour, which took them to clubs such as the Paradise (Boston), the Ritz (New York City), Park West (Chicago), Merlyn's (Madison), and Ol' Man River's (New Orleans). Longtime Sam's/First Avenue DJ Roy Freedom recalls, "They asked me and [fellow DJ] Kevin [Cole] to come back to the dressing room, because they hadn't met any American kids on their tour. I think they thought this was going to be their only shot in America. We smoked pot with 'em and talked about music and had a good time."
"They were like the nicest Catholic school boys you could meet," recalls Wilson. "They talked about chess; they were really into chess. They gave us their beer. They didn't drink."
While the Beatles' visit to Minneapolis in 1965 was thoroughly documented, U2's exact itinerary 25 years ago is only hazily remembered. Legend has it that the band pulled into town the day before the show and rehearsed--an account that varies significantly from the scenario of Friday's reported fly-in, fly-out timetable. Longtime U2 watchers contend that much of their sophomore album October was cooked up on the First Avenue stage during practice, including "I Threw a Brick Through a Window."
A bootleg exists of that Boy-era Sam's show, the title of which comes from how Bono introduced the band that night: "We're called U2."
Like many such beginnings, precise memories of the night now require a gong to ring a bell. "Let's see...it was a really nasty night, really cold, but warm and electric inside," says Tony Pucci, who will attend the Target Center show with his sons, John and Mike, and his wife, Rita, who was up front for the Sam's show in 1981. "All I remember," she says, "was Bono had his foot up on a monitor, and it slipped down and stomped on my arm. I had a huge bruise for days."
The day of the show, photographer Greg Helgeson and Sweet Potato music scribe Martin Keller hung out with the foursome. The band lounged on beds at the now defunct Normandy Hotel, and Keller and Helgeson accompanied them to sound check. Helgeson shot a portrait [above] in the southeast corner of the club.
"They were very confident," says Helgeson. "Marty's Catholic, so the conversation was about Catholicism and world politics and religion, which, in the long run, fits in."
Keller's memories of his brush with what might be the biggest rock band in the world are not unlike the article he wrote after the fact--in a box somewhere, and difficult to access. "They were all little," he says. "They were Hobbits. Who knew they'd get as big as they did? They were very young. They struck me as kids, like, 'What are these guys doing on the road? They're a long way from home.' But they owned the stage once they got on it."
Jim Walsh can be reached at jwalsh@citypages.com or 612.372.3775 - citypages.com

15.9.07

Zeca Baleiro - Lord's Heavy Metal


The saints asked for God to play a cool sound and He answers: 'Be strong I Will Play a heavy metal' - It´s Zeca Baleiro, a guy from Maranhao, northeast of Brazil, a talented composer, with a strong personality and very sexy voice, sense of humor and sharp verve, criative poetry added to a very peculiar accoustic guitar playing. Charismatic, the artist enchants crowds of all ages wherever he performs. Here in this song called 'Heavy Metal do Senhor' (Lord´s Heavy Metal) pay attention to the guy at right side, he plays the genuine sound of the northeast´s interior, with a lamented acoustic guitar, but a brute, crude lamented guitar. It´s excellent. It´s our 'Until The End Of The World'.

4.9.07

Smooth Operator and The Sweetest Taboo (Sade) - Sensing an opportunity brewing, the doe-eyed Sade (née Helen Folasade Adu) was clever enough to take up the slack in the music charts, and subsequently steamrolled her way past the competition during the latter half of the eighties and early nineties, with her perfunctory vocal style and smoke-gets-in-your-eyes delivery.

She earns a space on the shelves of smooth-jazz collectors, for her infectious chartbuster ("No need to ask"), the knockout number "Smooth Operator," from her smash debut album Diamond Life (CBS Portrait/Sony, 1984), alongside such showstoppers as "Your Love is King" and "Hang On to Your Love."


In a similar vein, there's Promise from 1985 (CBS Portrait/Sony), featuring the serpentine-like "The Sweetest Taboo," a cut that solidified her hold on Latin-music lovers and other romantics. Though her voice is closer to the cool side of jazz than to straight-up bossa nova ("Ice Queen" is the phrase most associated with her persona), the former model-turned-pop-diva was inspired by no less than Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, with a smattering of Astrud Gilberto's breathless naiveté thrown in for good measure. It's a style that Suzanne Vega has also cultivated, to an extent - not bad for non-natives. (text by a naturalized American citizen born in Brazil, Joe Lopes)

1.9.07

Caramel - Suzanne Vega


'Caramel' a wonderfully laidback vignette from Suzanne Vega's 1996 album Nine Objects of Desire (A&M). It has a solid and respectable bossa nova beat ("It won't do / to dream of caramel / to think of cinnamon / and long for you"), with an equally fine, syncopated guitar accompaniment-not the kind of thing one associates with an American pop tune of the period, but not so rare as to be totally off-course. Factor in Vega's hushed and reflective tone, and a modern-day classic was born. Caramel is a kind of sweet candy. In this song, a woman consoles herself with food because she misses her lover. Says Vega, "It's a song about longing for something and wishing for something you know you really shouldn't have. Caramel is the metaphor for the thing you long for, but you shouldn't really touch."

Lyrics for: Caramel

It won't do
to dream of caramel,
to think of cinnamon
and long for you.

It won't do
to stir a deep desire,
to fan a hidden fire
that can never burn true.

I know your name,
I know your skin,
I know the way
these things begin;

But I don't know
how I would live with myself,
what I'd forgive of myself
if you don't go.

So goodbye,
sweet appetite,
no single bite
could satisfy...

I know your name,
I know your skin,
I know the way
these things begin;

But I don't know
what I would give of myself,
how I would live with myself
if you don't go.

It won't do
to dream of caramel,
to think of cinnamon
and long
for you.

31.8.07

Candle In The Wind


August 31, 2007

Text of Prince Harry's Eulogy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:05 a.m. ET
LONDON (AP) -- The text of Prince Harry's eulogy for his mother, Princess Diana, delivered Friday at a memorial service in London:

William and I can separate life into two parts. There were those years when we were blessed with the physical presence beside us of both our mother and father.

And then there are the 10 years since our mother's death. When she was alive, we completely took for granted her unrivaled love of life, laughter, fun and folly. She was our guardian, friend and protector.
She never once allowed her unfaltering love for us to go unspoken or undemonstrated.

She will always be remembered for her amazing public work. But behind the media glare, to us, just two loving children, she was quite simply the best mother in the world.

We would say that, wouldn't we.

But we miss her. She kissed us last thing at night. Her beaming smile greeted us from school. She laughed hysterically and uncontrollably when sharing something silly she might have said or done that day. She encouraged us when we were nervous or unsure.

She -- like our father -- was determined to provide us with a stable and secure childhood.

To lose a parent so suddenly at such a young age, as others have experienced, is indescribably shocking and sad. It was an event which changed our lives forever, as it must have done for everyone who lost someone that night.

But what is far more important to us now, and into the future, is that we remember our mother as she would have wished to be remembered as she was: fun-loving, generous, down-to-earth, entirely genuine.

We both think of her every day.

We speak about her and laugh together at all the memories.

Put simply, she made us, and so many other people, happy. May this be the way that she is remembered.

****the life never will be the same, after loosing a parent ... still, I feel myself devasted as Hiroshima's city .... how to dismantle an atomic bomb?

30.8.07

Ol' Man River - since september 12, 2005, U2 played 22 times this song during 'Vertigo' tour, ever as a reference of the Katrina's devastation in New Orleans and area ...


(this version is from September 12, 2005, in Toronto, Canada)

Ol' Man River (lyrics)

Dere's an ol' man called de Mississippi
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd like to be
What does he care if de world's got troubles
What does he care if de land ain't free

Ol' Man River
Dat Ol' Man River
He mus' know sumpin'
But don' say nuthin'
He jes' keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along

He don' plant taters
He don' plant cotton
An' dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten
But Ol' Man River
He jes' keeps rollin' along

You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an racked wid pain
Tote dat barge, lif' dat bale
Git a little drunk, an' you land in jail

Ah gits weary
An' sick of tryin'
Ah'm tired of livin'
An' skeered of dyin'
But Ol' Man River
He jes' keeps rollin' along

Colored folks work on de Mississippi
Colored folks work while de white folks play
Pullin' dem boats from de dawn to sunset
Gittin' no rest till de Judgement Day

Don' look up an' don' look down
You don' dast make de white boss frown
Bend your knees an' bow your head
An' pull dat rope until yo' dead

Let me go 'way from de Mississippi
Let me go 'way from de white man boss
Show me dat stream called de river Jordan
Dat's de ol' stream dat I long to cross

Written by Hammerstein and Kern from the musical Showboat

25.8.07

Monte Castelo: I Corinthians 13 + Soneto 11 Luiz Vaz Camoes = Poetry from Bible's texts with philosophics concept of Plato's theory. 'As Quatro Estaçoes' (The Four Seasons) is the fourth album by Brazilian rock band Legião Urbana, recorded between August and October, 1989 and released on the Emi-Odeon label on October 26, 1989. Shortly before the sessions began, bassist Renato Rocha left the band, and the bass duties were taken over by both Dado Villa-Lobos and Renato Russo. The musical style differs greatly from that of the previous album, reaching for a more tranquil, peaceful general atmosphere, while the lyrics sound much more spiritual and thoughtful. Inspiration for some of the lyrics come from the Bible, Portuguese poet Luís de Camões, as well as the teachings of Buddha. It is one of the band's best selling records, and scored numerous hits in Brazil, such as "Há Tempos" and "Meninos e Meninas". "Pais e Filhos" is one of the band's most well known and anthemic songs.



Lyrics for Monte Castelo
(Portuguese)

Ainda que eu falasse a língua dos homens
E falasse a língua dos anjos,
Sem amor eu nada seria.

É só o amor, é só o amor
Que conhece o que é verdade
O amor é bom, não quer o mal
Não sente inveja ou se envaidece.

Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver
É ferida que dói e não se sente
É um contentamento descontente
É dor que desatina sem doer.

É um não querer mais que bem querer
É solitário andar por entre a gente
É um não contentar-se de contente
É cuidar que se ganha em se perder.

É um estar-se preso por vontade
É servir a quem vence, o vencedor;
É um ter com quem nos mata a lealdade.
Tão contrário a si é o mesmo amor.

Estou acordado e todos dormem todos dormem todos dormem
Agora vejo em parte
Mas então veremos face a face.

É só o amor, é só o amor
Que conhece o que é verdade.

(my English version to Monte Castelo)

Even I said the language of the men
And said the language of the angels,
Without love, nothing I would be.

Is only the love, is only the love
That it knows what is truth
The love is good, does not want the evil
It does not feel envy or vanity.

Love is fire that burn and you can't see it
It's wound that pains and is not felt
It's a contentment discontents
It's pain that makes crazy without pain.

It's not to want more than to want well
It's solitary to walk among people
It's not to content itself of contented
It's to take care of that it's gained in losing.

It's to be imprisoned for will
It's to serve to who is successful, the winner;
It's to have with who kills the loyalty.
So contrary itself it's the same love.

I am waked up and all sleep all sleep all sleep
Now I see in part
But then we will see face the face.

Is only the love, is only the love
That knows what is truth

24.8.07

Taj Mahal is a song by Brazilian soul singer Jorge Ben Jor. Released in 1972, it's a track of the album Ben, and is one of the successful songs by the youngest fans of Jorge Ben Jor. Taj Mahal is a clear reference to the history of the palace in Agra, India. The palace was constructed during the empire of Shah Jahan, as demonstration of love to Aryumand Banu Begam, his favourite wife. Begam died after the birth of 14º son of Jahan. In 1978, Jorge Ben Jor accused Rod Stewart to have plagiarized the part of Taj Mahal (“De-De-Dederede”), that he was used in Do You Think I´m Sexy?, great success of the Scottish singer. Jorge Ben Jor directed process against Rod that blamed his partner Carmine Appice for the occurrence and yielded the profits of the band to the Unicef in a beneficient spectacle in the headquarters of the ONU, in New York. Thus, Benjor didn't receive anything from the plagiarism.



Lyrics for Taj Mahal
(Portugues)
Foi a mais linda história de amor
Que me contaram e agora eu vou contar
Do amor do principe Xá-Jehan pela princesa Num Mahal
Do amor do principe Xá-Jehan pela princesa Num Mahal
Dê, dê, dêdêredê
Dê, dê, dêdêredê
Dê, dê
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal

(my English version):
It was the most beautiful love story
That I heard and now will tell you
Of the love of prince Xa-Jehan for the princess Num Mahal
Of the love of prince Xa-Jehan for the princess Num Mahal
De, de, dederede
De, de, dederede
De, de
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal

23.8.07

On God - Expressions with "Deus" the word for God in Brazil
The meaning of the word "Adeus" (goodbye), as there seems to be "a"+"deus" in it. Due to his remark, we had another very fruitful discussion on the many expressions Brazilians use on daily conversations, apparently not aware we are speaking the name of God in vain. By the way, Brazilians don't like to say "Adeus". There's a song called 'Partido Alto'. Read a piece of the song "Partido Alto", by Chico Buarque, and watch a video (below) with a group called MPB4, singing this song.

Diz que deu, diz que dá
Diz que Deus dará
Não vou duvidar, ó nega
E se Deus não dá
Como é que vai ficar, ó nega

(Say it was possible, tell me it is
Say God will make it so
I won't doubt it, my babe
And if God doesn't
How will it be, my babe?)

As you could read, God is mentioned in times of despair, or when we can't speak what we really mean. In fact, the song "Partido Alto" is one of the many which had its lyrics censored in the dark years of the military dictatorship. One could naively think that due to the strong presence of Catholicism in Brazil, we speak the name of God at least once a day, completely unaware of the weight of our words. However, there are many other reasons to call Him: blind faith that compensates poverty, total disbelief against our social pyramid, deep indignation on our politicians, the list is long. Here are very popular expressions (among many) on "Deus".

1. A Deus dará.: give it to God, He will solve it
2. Deus te crie!: in southern Brazil, when someone sneezes, we say, God raises you!
3. O amanhã a Deus pertence.: tomorrow belongs to God
4. (também sou) filho de Deus.: (I‘m also) son/daughter of God, I also have rights
5. Se Deus quiser...: if God wishes so, if it‘s His will
6. Pelo amor de Deus!: for the love of God! I can‘t believe it!
7. Só Deus (resolve)...: only God (solves it, fixes something)
8. Fique / fica com Deus.: be with God, take care, goodbye

What about "Adeus"? In the past, the full expression at parting was "A Deus te entrego", or "To God I deliver you", meaning I won't be here anymore, so you're in His hands. As time went by, some of the original words were forgotten, the sentence was contracted to "A Deus", and nowadays it's only "Adeus", everything together. Naturally, many don't know the origin of the word, but we all comprehend it's a beautiful, but sad farewell. And that's one of the reasons we Brazilians avoid saying "Adeus". Maybe its translation is "Take care".

Morroco, Spiderman, Abbey Road, U23D - The Songwriting Seam

U2.Com hooked up with Brian Eno, Danny Lanois and U2 in Morocco earlier in the summer, to bring you the inside track on the Fez songwriting sessions.

In Part 1 Larry explained that ‘Sometimes you just have to get away in order to write the songs.’ In our second Fez story, the band check out a headline act at the Festival of Sacred Music. In our third story Adam discussed the ‘looser rhythmic structures’ the band have been working with and in our latest update from Fez Edge muses on everything from why they went to Morocco to working with Bono on ‘Spiderman’ and the ‘shock’ of the third dimension at the Cannes film festival. Read on!

So how would you describe what you’re doing here in Morocco with Brian and Danny?
We’re following our instincts which has inspired us to work with the two of them without any clear ambition for where the music is going to go. And for the first time we’re writing together which is totally new and the idea is that we’ll make music and decide later what’s going to happen to it. Everyone’s been quite liberated by this proposition so the music has been coming really easily - the few things we have reviewed we’ve really enjoyed but at the moment we just keep coming up with new ideas.

Why Morroco?
It’s partly about getting out of our comfort zone, giving us the ability to concentrate intensely on the music which can’t be done in Dublin so easily because everyone’s lives are there. But it’s also because we’d had a good time here once before, because the Festival of Sacred Music was taking place and because Brian has been interested in Arabic music for years. And then we also felt we might meet some interesting musicians and we certainly have, some great percussionists, some violin players and it’s exciting for us if we can find new territory.

Compared with All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb this feels quite left-field.
We’re always up for that, for trying something different. It was an early decision of ours that whatever we were going to do next, we didn’t want to go into it with the same set of ideas about what it would be and what we were trying to achieve. We’ve tried to free ourselves of the constraints of thinking ahead, we just wanted to make music for the sake of it.

And Brian and Danny are co-musicians at this stage?
Yes, co-writers, co-conspirators and we don’t know where the music is going to go. We’ve recorded a lot here and elements of that might end up being used, we’ll see, but it could be that we take this material and re-record it elsewhere. We’re planting seeds really, working with the knowledge that whatever we end up with we’ll definitely preserve some element of what we have here.

Does being in North Africa make you think differently about how you make music?
Definitely and that’s coming through in the work, in the musical structures… we don’t feel confined by the standard formats of contemporary music. So if we feel like we’re doing something too reminiscent of how we might have done it in the past, we move on. We’re trying to find other blueprints and formats for songs.

Eno describes Arabic music as having a more narrative thread than the cyclical nature of African-based music…
Because of its scale it’s not a music that lends itself particularly to harmony and so it tends to be about a very clear melodic line. That top line can be taken by a vocal or another instrument - violin often - and it’s interpreted, reconfigured and restated in all kinds of different ways. So effectively a melodic idea, sometimes a very involved melodic idea, is really the centrepiece of the whole thing, unlike a lot of songs founded on the principles of western harmony. Now we’re not jettisoning that tradition but we’re allowing some of those ideas to bleed through into this new work.

Larry remarked on the connections between Irish traditional music and North African music, connections which have been obscured over the centuries.
Yeah, there are certain musics you can find in Ireland which are almost identical, like those you find in the west of Ireland, a kind of singing based on all the little quarter notes with a style totally North African and stretching out to India. It seems to have nothing to do with western music at all.

Last time U2.Com were in the studio with the band it was Abbey Road in London and Rick Rubin was at the helm?
We’re very excited about the material we worked on with Rick, some great songs came out of it - none of which we have played with Brian and Danny. It feels like that is a separate set of material. There were two recordings that did come out from that period on the last collection but if there is maybe not a full record there with Rick, there is the bones of a record and I think we’ll get back to that because we enjoyed working with him, he’s a very inspiring character.

It feels like you’ve hit a very strong songwriting vein since late last year ?
And we just want to keep going with it. It’s like we’ve hit a seam and we want to keep hammering away as long as we can. Inevitably, when you go on the road, your songwriting chops start to get a little dull - there are so many other considerations when you’re playing live - but we’re going to keep this writing going until we want to stop or until it is time to tour again.

At the same time, Bono and you are writing for another project?
Yes, the rumours are true, we’ve been working on the Spiderman stage show. What attracted us was the opportunity to work with Julie Taymor, the director. We’re also working with a writer, Glen Berger, and producers from the world of Broadway. We’ve actually done a lot of the writing already and we’re entering a phase where we’re going to workshop the first draft of script and songs. After that we’ll be in a better position to see if we’re close - or not too close! For us, like Julie, we’re kind of intrigued by the possibility that if we can find an interesting angle on Spiderman then it could have a far greater audience than if we got together with her to work on an opera which would risk being confined to the art house world. We don’t want to do something that is the usual musical fayre of Broadway, and we do want to break new ground, but we also want to make something that people can relate to, that has the chance of being popular on a mass scale.

U23D has also been on your mind recently, particularly with the Cannes premiere.
It’s worked out really well, and it does everything it says on the can. We had a great team on this who came on stage really close to the band and it is the perspective that all true fans of the band, of music generally, would really want to have at a concert. You get the full scale of the event, 3D and big-screen. I found the images of the stadium show pretty awe-inspiring along with the incredible intimacy that 3D brings, the ability to be so close to individual members of the band that you feel like you are standing next to them.

The Director of Photography on U23D said that the film would give even the band would a new take on being in the band.
Yes, its true, I’ve never seen a U2 show so this was the closest I’ve been. Some things were quite shocking to me - like Jim Sheridan picked up on how separate we are during the show up there. When you’re watching a 2D image, you don’t get a sense of that depth and distance and while there are lots of moments when we are very close to each other, a lot of the time we are really separated. Jim said to me he just realised how lonely it must be being the drummer - you’re holding down the whole foundation of the thing but there’s no-one there saying, ‘Come on Larry!’ or whatever because everyone else is off doing other things. Sure, with the technology we use, ear-monitors and so on, we’re totally in touch with each other musically, but physically that separation is interesting to me and I haven’t figured it out.
It’s an unashamed concert movie but as a visceral experience it is on a different planet to anything we’ve ever done in 2D. I was shocked by it, it’s extremely powerful.

More from Fez in a little while. source: U2.com / aug 14, 2007