Rock Encyclopedia

HISTORIC PERFORMANCE AT BERLIN’S BRANDENBURG GATE

U2 will perform in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on November 5, as part of the 16th MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs), the news was announced by MTV Networks International (MTVNI), owned by Viacom Inc.. As a prelude to the Fall of The Wall celebrations in Berlin, U2 return to the city for a free ticketed performance which will be beamed into the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards.

U2′s manager Paul McGuinness said: “It’ll be an exciting spot to be in, 20 years almost to the day since the wall came down. Should be fun.”

Tickets to attend MTV EMAs present U2 at the Brandenburg Gate will be free of charge and available by registering on www.u2.com or www.mtvema.com from 9pm (CET) on Wednesday 28 October 2009. Tickets, which will take the form of a bar-coded e-ticket, will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and will be restricted to a maximum of 2 per applicant. Access to the performance will be strictly via one advance, scanned e-ticket per person. Tickets will not be available on the night of the show.

Commented Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, EVP, Music Brands, MTV Networks International and Executive Producer for the MTV Europe Music Awards: “The exceptional musical heritage of this year’s EMAs spans genres and generations and we are extremely proud to be bringing U2 to Berlin for this extraordinary performance. This year’s Awards will be remembered as the night when the world’s major music players came together against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall to celebrate music, freedom and the birth of a new age in Europe.”

The MTV Europe Music Awards will take place at the 02 World, Berlin on Thursday 5 November 2009 and will be broadcast live on MTV at 9pm CET. The MTV Europe Music Awards are sponsored by Sony Ericsson, MTV Games / Harmonic’s The Beatles(TM): Rock Band(TM) and Dell.

For more information on 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards artists — and to vote — please go to: www.mtvema.com

Source: MTV Networks International

“If stadium rock is the final frontier, U2 has boldly gone where no rock band has gone before.” — The Globe & Mail, Toronto.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — When it wraps up this week, the U2 360 Tour will have played to over 3 million fans in just 44 cities. With record shattering sales including the largest attendance at the Rose Bowl this evening as well as setting the all time record at New York’s Giant Stadium where the audience surpassed that of the Pope – the largest rock and roll touring production ever has just confirmed the return to North America beginning June 6th at Anaheim’s Angel Stadium. The tour is once again produced by Live Nation Global Touring and sponsored by BlackBerry®.

Having performed in a limited number of North American cities in 2009, U2 360 is set to touch down in a new set of stadiums next summer including stops in Anaheim; Denver; Oakland; Seattle; Edmonton; East Lansing; Miami; Philadelphia and Montreal. Due to overwhelming demand, U2 360 will also return for one night only in Toronto and Chicago before finishing the North American leg in New York at the New Meadowlands Stadium.

With sell-outs already reported for the 2010 European tour including Denmark (2 shows sold out); Brussels (2 shows sold out); Helsinki (2 shows sold out) and Coimbra (2 shows sold out); and Paris where over 90,000 tickets were sold for a third show at that venue, U2 2010 will offer fans who missed out a new opportunity to experience the U2 stadium spectacle.

With a cylindrical video system of interlocking LED panels, and a steel structure rising 150 feet from the floor over a massive stage with rotating bridges, the band has truly created an intimate 360 experience for concert goers. In keeping with the concept that this tour is more about a unique staging configuration with excellent sight-lines, tickets for the U2 360 2010 tour will once again be scaled so that 85 percent of the tickets are priced at less than $95.00, general admission floor tickets at $55.00 and at least 10,000 tickets per venue priced at $30.00.

Tickets for the U2 360 Tour performances in Oakland, Edmonton, and Toronto will go on sale Monday November 2. Additional North American on sales will take place over the following few weeks in November. Full details of all dates and on-sale information as well as multiple imagery and video of the unique production and seating positions can be found at www.U2.com.

As always, subscribers to U2′s official website u2.com will have an opportunity to purchase tickets in advance of the public on sale date. Existing members who renew their memberships as well as new subscribers will be eligible to receive a Limited Edition U2 remix CD as well the chance to participate in the pre-sale for the 2010 shows. Complete details at: www.u2.com.

U2 360 TOUR 2010
Presented by BlackBerry
NORTH AMERICAN ITINERARY

6-June Anaheim, CA Angel Stadium On sale soon
12-June Denver, CO Invesco Field On sale Nov. 6
16-June Oakland, CA Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum On sale Nov. 2
20-June Seattle, WA Qwest Field On sale soon
23-June Edmonton, AB Commonwealth Stadium On sale Nov. 2
30-June East Lansing, MI Spartan Stadium On sale soon
03-July Toronto, ON Rogers Centre On sale Nov. 2
06-July Chicago, IL Solider Field On sale soon
09-July Miami, FL Land Shark Stadium On sale soon
12-July Philadelphia Lincoln Financial Field On sale soon
16-July Montreal, QC Venue to be announced On sale soon
19-July New York New Meadowlands Stadium On sale soon

EUROPEAN TOUR ITINERARY
10-August Frankfurt, Germany Commerzbank-Arena On sale now
12-August Hannover, Germany AWD Arena On sale now
15-August Horsens, Denmark Casa Arena SOLD OUT
16-August Horsens, Denmark Casa Arena SOLD OUT
20-August Helsinki, Finland Olympiastadion SOLD OUT
21-August Helsinki, Finland Olympiastadion SOLD OUT
25-August Moscow, Russia Luzhniki On sale soon
30-August Vienna, Austria Ernst Happel Stadium SOLD OUT

03-September Athens, Greece Olympic Stadium On sale Nov. 2
06-September Istanbul, Turkey Ataturk Olympic Stadium On sale Nov. 2
15-September Munich, Germany Olympiastadion On sale now
18-September Paris, France Stade de France SOLD OUT
22-September Brussels, Belgium Stade Roi Baudouin SOLD OUT
23-September Brussels, Belgium Stade Roi Baudouin SOLD OUT
29-September Seville, Spain Estadio Olimpico De La Cartuja On sale now

02-October Coimbra, Portugal Estadio Cidade Coimbra SOLD OUT
03-October Coimbra Portugal Estadio Cidade Coimbra SOLD OUT

Additional dates and cities to be confirmed. Itinerary subject to change.

For complete tour and ticket information, fan club memberships, merchandise and more, visit:www.U2.com

Source: Live Nation

Historic Jimi Hendrix concerts… a legendary performance from Nirvana… U2′s remastered The Unforgettable Fire… every recording by Buddy Holly… nearly every Rolling Stones album since 1971… and a collection from famed sideman Klaus Voormann. With new box sets and albums from UMe, holiday gift-giving has never sounded so good.

Buddy Holly:

He had a brief three-year professional recording career, but Buddy Holly left the music world a vast recorded legacy of 203 tracks–all of them on the limited edition six-CD Hip-O Select box set Not Fade Away/The Complete Studio Recordings And More.

The tracks range from his earliest recordings to demos with Bob Montgomery; from his earliest recordings with The Crickets to his first studio recordings for Decca in Nashville; from the Coral and Brunswick recordings and hits that made him famous to his heralded apartment tapes. There are six previously unreleased tracks plus another 11 previously unreleased in the U.S. All of the original, locatable undubbed recordings and all 57 overdubbed versions recorded after the “day the music died” are here. Many are hard-to-find or make their CD debuts.

Jimi Hendrix:

Two box sets from Dagger Records (Experience Hendrix through Geffen/UMe), offered exclusively through Amazon.com, are each presented with exclusive reproductions of Hendrix memorabilia, including a poster, postcard set replicating classic Hendrix concert posters, set of badges reminiscent of the era, Hendrix iPod Skin, PikCARD with four guitar picks adorned with Hendrix artwork from the concert posters and more.

Jimi Hendrix Experience Live 1968 Paris/Ottawa encompasses a pair of concerts, highlighted by performances of “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary” and “Little Wing” from the L’Olympia Theater in Paris and a “Hendrixized” version of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” taped at Ottawa’s Capitol Theater later that same year. Jimi Hendrix Experience Paris ’67 is a custom-swirled, colored vinyl album documenting an earlier concert at L’Olympia and featuring performances of “Stone Free,” “Hey Joe,” “Wild Thing,” etc.

Nirvana:

One of the most bootlegged concerts in the annals of rock– Nirvana’s August 30, 1992, headlining appearance at the U.K.’s Reading Festival–Nirvana Live At Reading (DGC/Geffen/UMe) will be issued in a limited edition DVD+CD Deluxe Edition in November. The footage and audio come in the original multi-track masters and are presented in 5.1 Surround Sound. Only two of the 25 performances on the DVD have ever been released before.

The concert ranked #1 in Kerrang’s “100 Gigs That Shook The World” and “Nirvana’s #1 Greatest Moment” by fans in an NME poll includes nearly the entire Nevermind tracklist, early performances of then-unrecorded songs (“All Apologies,” “Dumb” and the first performance of “Tourette’s”) and live versions of songs later heard on Incesticide. The career-spanning set list also reaches back to the band’s beginnings.

The Rolling Stones:

Thirteen of the 14 Rolling Stones albums since 1971 have been newly remastered and are available from UMe separately or in a limited edition collectible box set exclusively through Amazon.com (1972′s Exile On Main St. will be remastered and released in early 2010). Included is a full-color poster of the band’s Sticky Fingers classic promotional image re-created specially for this package.

The box brings together Sticky Fingers (1971, “Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses”); Goats Head Soup (1973, “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker),” “Angie”); It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (1974, “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)”); Black And Blue (1976, “Hot Stuff,” “Miss You”); Some Girls (1978, “Beast Of Burden,” “Shattered”); Emotional Rescue (1980, “She’s So Cold”); Tattoo You (1981, “Start Me Up”); Undercover (1983, “Undercover Of The Night”); Dirty Work (1986, “Harlem Shuffle”); and Steel Wheels (1989, “Rock And A Hard Place”) plus Voodoo Lounge (1994), Bridges To Babylon (1997) and A Bigger Bang (2005).

U2:

U2′s fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire, has been remastered for the first time with direction from U2 guitarist, The Edge, and will be released by Island/UMe on October 27, 2009. This special edition marks 25 years since the album’s original release in October 1984. Recorded at Slane Castle, Ireland, The Unforgettable Fire was the first U2 album to be produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, and spawned the US top 10 hit – “Pride (In The Name Of Love).”

The limited edition super deluxe box set features bonus audio material, including two previously unheard tracks from the Slane Castle sessions: “Yoshino Blossom” and “Disappearing Act” (a track which the band recently completed), and a DVD including music videos, a documentary and unreleased live footage from the Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope Tour in 1986.

Klaus Voormann:

On A Sideman’s Journey (UMe), famed musician Klaus Voormann, who played bass on solo albums for every Beatle as well as for Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Yoko Ono and others, is joined by musical friends in seven studio sessions in London, Memphis, Hamburg, Los Angeles and Munich. The limited edition two-disc box set, available exclusively through Amazon.com, includes three bonus audio tracks, a DVD documentary on the making of the album, a hardbound book of photos (renowned graphic designer Voormann created the Beatles’ Revolver cover) and more.

Featuring Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh, Yusuf (aka Cat Stevens), Dr. John, Bonnie Bramlett, Van Dyke Parks, Albert Lee, and others, A Sideman’s Journey finds Voormann & Friends performing favorites such as “Blue Suede Shoes,” “All Things Must Pass,” “Mighty Quinn” and “Just Like A Woman.”

Source: Universal Music Enterprises